Planning Board - Regular Meeting

All right, very good. Minutes of June 16th. Take a motion on the minutes that were in our packet. While people are looking around, I do have a comment regarding the fellow, Michael Ouellette, who came in. The minutes really don't reflect the conversation that we had with Mr. Ouellette. I think the tenor of our discussion amongst board members and Mr. Ouellette and staff was to figure out something. I'm not sure we should have been here in the first place. It doesn't allow that. I don't think that it prohibits it. But that's the call. It seems to me he ought to fill out an application. If you deny it, he can go one way or the other, or you can approve it. But has there been any progress on that?

He has not contacted us.

I have a motion on the minutes.

After reviewing the minutes, I make a motion to approve them as written. Second that.

Second it. Discussion? All those in favor? Hands please. Good. Passes. New business. Site plan amendment, special exception, Tambrands, Inc., Proctor and Gamble, 2879 Hotel Road. Application submitted by Harriman Associates to expand an existing Proctor and Gamble Tambrands factory to construct two new warehouses and expand existing paved access drives. The property is located in the industrial district and will be reviewed under chapter 60, article 16, division two, site plan review, and division three, special exception. I understand there are representatives of the applicant here, but typically we hear first from staff. Is that the way you want to proceed?

Yes, this is an expansion of the existing Proctor and Gamble facility. The applicant can speak more to the specifics of what they're doing. I'm just going to talk more about the process and the review. So this is considered an amended site plan under section 6045A, which says any expansions of previously approved site plans greater than 10 have to go back to planning board so that's why this application is here this use is a special exception in the industrial zone it's classified as manufacturer of cosmetics toiletries and pharmaceuticals You'll notice in your packet there's a staff memo, which includes a summary of relevant review criteria and suggested staff findings. We also are now including draft findings of fact in the packet as well, which you'll find as well. And the findings of fact include the date of the applications that we received, materials, necessary permits, uh findings as well um so when the board goes to vote tonight you'll be looking through those and any changes or suggestions you have we will make prior to signing Staff have been working with the applicant. They have a complete submission. That's why they're here tonight. This is a public hearing as well. The only item that is noted in the staff memo pertains to access management and site distance. They are proposing to move the driveway location. And so we wanted to confirm that access management standards and site distance would still be met. I received an email from the applicant today, and he's given you, I believe, a handout showing that site distance will be met. So that's the only comment we have, and it's been addressed. You'll notice in the memo, there's a few suggested conditions of approval as well. The first being that they filed the FAA form 45 days before construction. The second is that they provide the performance bond for stormwater. And the third is that they provide the approved NRPA permits for wetlands prior to construction.

And with that, we would like the applicant then to generally present their project to queue up any other questions that you have. You want us to hold any questions we have? Yes, I would ask that you all hold questions until substantive review, which usually occurs after the public hearing. So open it up at the public hearing if you have some comments from the public, and then to start your substantive review.

That's a little different than we conducted ourselves in the past. Everybody on the board comfortable with that process? OK. Hear from the applicants now?

Afternoon, everyone. My name is David Latham. I'm the civil engineer with Harriman Associates. I'm here with Danielle Brown from Procter & Gamble. One small amendment to what Sam said. I did email the site distance study. I printed out the copies. I have not handed them out yet, so I will do that now. So this right here is the existing Proctor and Gamble site. We are proposing two new warehouse expansions, one on the north side of the building, one on the south side of the building. Sam, would you mind going to the next sheet? uh... so yes these are our two buildings uh... the north warehouse is going to interrupt the existing truck route so we are proposing a new routing around the building for site access you can see it's going to go into the existing tractor uh... trailer area The new, where Sam's hovering right now, that is the new access off of Kitty Hawk. In the existing condition, we have access points on Hotel Road and Kitty Hawk, but the Kitty Hawk one is a bit closer to the intersection. You can see where that arrow is down below. that's the existing kitty hawk access the new one is further away from the intersection we did the site distance study for the new access point it's on that email i just handed out but the short and sweet of it is that we need a 675 foot line of sight we have over a thousand going to the left we have a bit over 800 going to the right. So we're good there. And just from a practical standpoint, it's further away from Hotel Road. Traffic-wise, that's going to be easier. That is going to be just for trucks coming in and out of the site during construction. Employee parking will remain down on Hotel Road. So there's no changes there. The two new additions are just for...

I'm sorry. So there's no access for employee parking on and off Hotel Road?

Oh, no. It's only on Hotel Road, not on Kitty Hawk. And that's the way it is now, and we're proposing to keep that.

Those aren't changing?

Correct.

The only access that's changing is off Kitty Hawk Road?

That's correct.

Thank you.

Yep. Yep. In terms of traffic and employee demand, these two new warehouses are not going to bring in new employees. They're not going to hire people, so there's no impact to the traffic in that regard. One thing it will do, however, is allow for more trucks to be on site. We're adding a bit of truck parking there, too. Danielle can probably speak to it in more detail, but as things currently stand, Procter & Gamble, they have to store a lot of their materials off-site, which means trucks going to other sites, which obviously means more traffic. Having the new warehouse space means more storage, means less trucks, so the immediate traffic in the area will be improved by this project. I believe the short and sweet of it, that about covers it all. Daniel, do you have anything you'd like to add?

Sorry, you'll have to speak into the microphone just for and for people reviewing this online.

Apologies. So the parking lot that you see at the bottom right-hand side is actually the trailer park parking so that we're able to have enough materials to feed into the process during main winters to make sure that we don't run out. and also if we are kind of doing a buildup of product to ship out that we're able to build up and then it's being stored there. Additionally, we do have offsite storage and that's what we're looking to eliminate is the logistics behind shipping raw material and finished goods to and from an offsite storage facility.

Is that it?

Yes.

All right, I will open it up to the public. Anybody from the public who'd like to comment on this application? Nobody, we'll close the public hearing. Questions from the board, the applicant, staff? I have a question about your stormwater calculation. It doesn't appear that the staff is convinced by them. Staff memo says stormwater calculation provided in exhibit five, the application demonstrate proposed impervious expansion will result in net peak reduction. I'm sorry, that wasn't where I was. I apologize that I misread that. You are nonetheless expecting a reduction in the stormwater runoff from the site.

That's correct. We did this for the to the 10 in the 25 year storm events The pre development flows are greater than the post development So we're reducing the runoff rate and while we are adding impervious area to the site We are treating more than we are adding so it's going to result in a net decrease of untreated impervious area Leaving the site running into the wetlands that sort of thing.

So And with your solid waste you ship it to port or a reason all the way to Portland

for the solid waste disposal that we have. Right now, that is the solution that's available to us. I can definitely take that as a follow-up item and see if there's alternatives.

It's really none of our business. It's in the memo, so I was wondering why trucking in Portland rather than just up the street to facilities.

I will have to take that as a follow up. I don't have an answer for you.

Yes. Yeah, thank you guys for coming today. So I'm looking at Exhibit 14. As it relates to the traffic waiver request, could you just speak on why you guys put that request in?

Yeah, so we requested a waiver for the traffic study just because we are not traffic engineers. We would have had to outsource that, which would have been more cost to this project. Just even though we are building two new warehouses, it's not going to result in increased staffing. So from that standpoint, we're not adding any additional vehicles on the day-to-day and as mentioned earlier these These warehouses are going to increase the on-site storage capacity for Procter & Gamble, which means fewer trucks So basically by inspection you can see that the traffic is if anything getting better but not being affected negatively and we just didn't feel that a traffic study was necessary for that and incurring the cost for that was something we'd rather avoid

thank you I guess my other question is for staff I know that the passenger trip peak hour is 222 estimated so I understand that a hundred peak trips triggers a traffic movement permit so I don't know I know the city engineer also accepted their waiver request, so I don't know what other thing will be done to address that, if that makes sense. The traffic movement permit, DEP.

Sure, I could just speak to just our own local provisions. This is an amendment, if there's a reduction Or if the same level stays the same, it doesn't trigger the 100. If it's producing the 100, then that's when it's triggered. And so the city engineer, through the chapter 46, he does have the power to waive it. For this situation, they're taking case by case, right? For this situation, it didn't warrant a new traffic study because he could view the traffic study from

question for staff as well, maybe a couple. In your memo, anyway, the section is entitled Protection of Environmental Features and Natural Resources. It states approximately 12,000 square feet of wetland will be impacted and filled with the proposed development expansion of the African state Seven, the application that they're in the process of filing, they're in the process of filing the NRPA permit for wetland impacts. Do we not have any standards locally for wetland impacts that we need to address?

We don't have any specific standards. That is something that you all should look into, developing specific standards. wetland mitigation or protection in certain standards but because you're absent of those today it would go directly to the state so when a project not not this one necessarily but when a project does impact wetlands in this city there's not a standard by which we measure that not a local standard they still would have to get review by DEP and the one caveat to that is shoreland so if it is located within the shoreland you do have standards about protection of those features in the shoreland area but because this is outside of the shoreland area DEP standards would just apply as of today yes so just following up with that on in exhibit seven there was a

Close to the mic.

There was the request for the NRPA wetland permit, and if it's not secured, my question is, has it been secured by this meeting?

We are still working with the DEP and the Army Corps of Engineers to get it approved. We received comments earlier this week, but ideally we would have had it before now, but the DEP kind of operates on their own time frame, so we're here hoping for conditional approval pending that. Thank you.

Additionally, so for the conditional approval, we wouldn't be impacting wetlands. It is truly to just do our long lead items around this site not impacting wetlands. So a conditional approval to not come within a certain distance, whether it be 10 feet or whatever is decided, that's what we would be seeking.

One other thought regarding landscaping, and I guess this goes to the staff. Your memo suggests that though the parking lot does not include any landscaping, the applicant is not adding any new spaces or modifying the existing parking layout. Therefore, this standard is out of the scope of this review and is not applicable. So if a project as built doesn't comply with our present standards and you come back for

So if it's road standards and this is coming directly from the language of the zoning ordinance if it was road standards you can have specific language that says road standards are inadequate if they're coming in for an amendment or any adjustment you can ask them to come up to that standard. However, you do not have a similar provision within your amendment standard, amendment to a previous approved plan. If you feel that it is in scope, you can ask for those. As the planning board, you do have that power. But because this is an amendment, as a rule of thumb, it only can govern the things that are changing on site. And so because they're not directly impacting the actual parking area, staff does see that that may be out of scope for this one because they're not impacting the actual parking area.

Any other questions for the applicant or staff? Are you prepared to make a motion on this application? Riley's not here, so somebody has to step up and make a motion.

I make a motion to apply the application from Harriman Associates on behalf of Tam Brands Incorporated, known as Proctor and Gamble, to expand the existing development located at 2879 Hotel Road, City Assessor's PID 120-001. Sorry to interrupt.

You started your motion with apply. I did.

Approve, I'm sorry, I make a motion to approve the application from Harriman Associates on behalf of Tam Brands Incorporated, Proctor & Gamble to expand the existing development located at 2879 Hotel Road, City Assessors PID 12001 in the industrial district pursuant to chapter 60 article 16 division 2 site plan review and division 3 special exception with the following conditions. I have none.

Are you accepting the staff suggested conditions.

Second sake of discussion. Yes. The question is are you foregoing the conditions Tim in your motion?

I took it that those conditions were part of the Part of the motion but nothing outside of the conditions presented by staff in the packet I should clarify that your motion includes the three proposed Yes, yes

Yes.

I'll second.

No, I second. Any comments? Seeing none, I'll take a vote on the motion. All in favor?

Absolutely.

Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize for that. Have you both been paying attention? Kathy, I'm going to elevate you to the voting members tonight. Thank you. All right. All those in favor of the motion as presented? Thank you. Get to work. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for holding this out of cycle.

You're welcome.

Can I just say real quick, thank you for these new memos. It's very helpful. I really appreciate this new format. You're welcome.

Okay, sorry to jut in, I just had my hand up for you to recognize me. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. We're not done with this one. I know everyone is shuffling around papers, but you also have a findings of fact and conclusions of law now that you've made your decision. This is your official record of this decision. This is a new format, and I understand it's a new format. um but this is your written this is your written documentation of the motion that you just had um so normally here is when you all are discussing if you are if you are satisfied with the staff draft that we have proposed and if you would like any changes such as adding in the dates and times of the motions um from this evening's

You provided us with the proposed findings of fact in advance. Correct. Based on the motion that was made and approved by the board, we accepted the motion that you proposed along with the conditions that you proposed. I would suggest that we are comfortable with your proposed findings of fact. Do you want to insert the date of the meeting? I think that nature feel free and probably should. I might suggest that in the future if we have proposed findings of fact from you, that you could consider acceptance of the findings of fact as part of our motion.

I agree with that. I think we actually have to vote on those findings. So that if anybody has an issue with any one of those findings, at least it's recorded, because I think that's the whole intent, that in the future if there's some issue that arises, then the applicant as well as the board's been put forth that this could be an issue that might come back that needs to be reviewed.

Correct in authorizing the chair to sign on the board's behalf.

That's in the ordinance already.

Correct.

That would just really apply if there was a no vote, too, as well, correct?

Correct, yes. Their findings of fact are just your record of the decision. So whether you approve or you deny, you always have that.

So I understand, too, that there may be a finding that we may disagree with, but that may not hold up the overall approval. Correct.

Would it be the board's desire that we go through the findings of fact, or are we prepared to say that we accept the findings of fact as written?

I would, but I think we need to, I think we are, really required to take a vote.

OK. If you would like us to do that.

DeCarlo, you're referring to page seven of eight, correct?

Correct. So the whole eight pages are the findings of fact. And all that's required is just a motion. Approve the findings of that.

Make a motion that we accept the findings of fact.

Seconded.

Then moved and seconded to accept the motion to accept the findings of fact as presented by staff in connection with this application. Is there any discussion? I'll just say that I disagree. I don't think any evidence has been presented on whether this project will alter the essential characteristics of the neighborhood and not tend to appreciate the value of joining properties. There's no evidence of that. I don't know why we're approving that, but I don't have a problem with that. There are lots of things I think that this application doesn't address that are in this ordinance that we leave unsaid, and I think that we may need to be more perspicity in the future.

And that's completely fine. We just draft a financial fact for you, and we're okay with you editing anything in that document, but we needed to provide something for you to start to edit. That's our role as staff. It's really your record. You can say it's not applicable, that section.

You can say that you disagree personally.

You all would have to come to agreement of what the facts are, and then you would vote.

Right. And I probably shouldn't have raised this as an example, because there's absolutely no evidence. We don't have anything to discuss about that particular standard. We're OK with not applicable. I don't think it's for us to say that it's not applicable. But I voted in favor of the motion to approve this project, and I voted in support of the findings of fact, and I will, but I just wanted to point out that we're still not sure.

Absolutely.

I'm on my high horse. I'm not satisfied with the financial capacity because it's a 500 company. It doesn't tell me that they've got the money available. Fortune 100. Fortune 100.

We can discuss all portions of what you all want from us at any time, and we will adjust our process and adjust our documents to fit your expectations.

My expectation for tonight is that we've approved this project and I'm satisfied that our approval will be upheld. I don't think that anybody has shown a challenge.

If I might add, if there's anything that comes up after the fact that really needs to be heard or addressed, P&G wants to be partners in this project, so we're all ears.

Was there an official vote? I know there was a second to that motion for the findings.

We haven't voted on it yet. Is there any more discussion on the findings of that? None all in favor?

Thank you.

Thank you again, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

New Business Item B, Chapter 60, Zoning Amendment, Discussion of an Amendment to Section 60-145B1B, to strike the limit to four persons employed at a sawmill.

Staff? Yes, I will be presenting this. I'm trying to get to the page of our document.

There are 688 pages of our online document. So I can present. Give me one second, please.

As I'm bringing this up, I'll cue this discussion up. So this actually is, this came up because an applicant, a prospective applicant, was interested in starting a sawmill in the Ag Zone. And they came to us. It's actually, they wanted to do wood pellets. And we have to classify the use before we can actually uh... know what what standards to apply under the definition of sawmill you take in logs and you process them to wood products and talking with our legal representation that does classify as a sawmill under our definitions so we classify it as a sawmill during those discussions of standards application standards And looking through the standard staff saw, and actually the applicant saw as well, is that you're limited to only four employees for any sawmill. Limiting the number of employees in the zoning ordinance is not a spatial constraint. It's the number of employees. And as we start to become more and more industrialized with more machines, The number of employees does not have a direct relationship with the impact on the land. And since we're talking about zoning and land use restrictions, staff feels is that the four-person restriction is not really applicable to any type of business that wants to start and do business in the Ag Zone. rather than limiting the size or the scope of the actual impact on the land. If we want to apply spatial constraints, and we actually do have spatial constraints in sawmills for the land, those are totally, for our purposes, directly related to the impact of that use, but the employees does not seem to be directly applicable. and staff would be in favor of removing that restriction for the number of employees if we were to do the intent of the Ag Zone and actually use it for natural products and natural products processing. And the example I give exactly with sawmills is that it becomes an economic constraint only to mid-size producers. For lower-sized producers, or family, it may not be a constraint. For higher end, you can do direct manufacturing and hire out for services. You do not have four employees. You can literally purchase the services that come in, and they do not count as employees. And so the portion of the population that's actually impacted by the employee ban, the employee limit for employees, are mid-level. And those are actually the ones looking through the regulations and looking through our plans is that we want to encourage the growth of those type of businesses and small businesses rather than just small. the smallest business and the largest business. And so removing this would actually go towards that aim of allowing those small businesses to grow, because if not, then you're stuck in a situation where you can have a family sawmill, but you can never grow outside of that scope until you are a large corporation coming in and doing some type of So I wanted to bring this to your attention to see what you think. And this is why the scheme of the topic, staff is proposing a change, but we really need your opinion on this.

Members?

I'd certainly be supportive. I think that we do want a small business to grow. And I think that, so an amendment like this, we're just discussing it tonight, this would be something we'd have to take to public hearing?

Absolutely, yes.

No, I think that I agree with what has been presented.

Sounds reasonable to me as well. I don't think that the planning board necessarily needs to be involved within employee numbers. I do just have a quick question for staff. It looks like in the proposed motion, you are proposing a public hearing on August 25th, and I think I'm looking at a draft schedule that says our next regular meeting is August 11th. Is the 26th, would that be a special meeting, or do you wanna move it to the 11th?

So it wouldn't be the 11th if there's not enough time to advertise for the 11th. And so we were looking at dates for a special meeting, maybe the 25th, that would allow time for us to advertise.

If you could give us a second.

I'm looking for the, we have a lengthy schedule coming up, and I was trying to sync it up with that other schedule, and the schedule was formatted after 11th. I submit these documents. So give me one second. I can... Yes. We have a workshop review on the 27th. Well, it's a proposed date of the 27th. So I didn't know if the 25th or the 27th would be the date of a public hearing if you're interested in having a public hearing. Looking further down in your documents, you do have a stacked schedule. I don't know, Ed, it would be your pleasure if you wanted to talk about that schedule right now.

Let's talk about the schedule when it comes up.

Can we agree, though, that if we're going to hold a public hearing on a proposed change that we're discussing right now, that it would be on the 27th? Yeah. In other words, we're not going to meet on the 25th and the 27th? No, please. OK. So we will move forward in this discussion as if we're going to hold a public hearing on this proposed amendment on the 27th of August, which is a date. Should we agree that we're going to meet on the 27th, this will be on the agenda. Is that fair enough? That's fair. So do we think that there may be some other reasons, or what would be the reason that the drafters of this ordinance would have wanted to limit a sawmill forum?

I think it's a proxy regulation to limit the size of certain businesses in the ag. Auburn seems like a community that really wants, that really values its home businesses and the people who work here and giving people a chance to start these businesses and make sure that legacy businesses continue to have a fighting chance, especially in the Ag Zone. And so this seems like a proxy regulation to allow smaller sawmills to operate. But it may have outgrown its usefulness at this point, because you're not having new sawmills come in at all. So it's worked really, really, really well. But now it's time to think about, is that regulation still the direction that you want to go as a city?

I looked through the other uses allowed in the Ag Zone, and I may have missed some, but the only other one that seemed to have a number of employees was the slaughterhouse. Yes. I don't know much about those activities, but 15. Is there a reason that we limit that to 15?

I'm not privy to that reason why we limit it to 15, but any modern slaughterhouse would have more than 15 employees. It would be animal processing, would be the modern term for that. But I think it probably would be a similar case of at the time the regulations were made, maybe the regular size of the sawmills or the animal processing facilities were a certain size. Should we eliminate that too? I would say so. I would want you to think about... I haven't looked into... the slaughterhouse provisions, and that's why I haven't presented that today, but staff can review that to make sure that there are spatial constraints. This one that you have before you has spatial constraints, and so that's why we're confident of presenting this as a change to you, but we wanna make sure that any change that we're making isn't gonna have a detrimental effect spatially to its neighbors and things of that fashion.

I think you will find that there are some. Okay. I would urge that if these artificial limits on numbers of employees are not driven necessarily to the operations that we're trying to review and regulate, then put the slaughterhouse one on there too. Maybe as a group we'll want to take that limitation off and have a proposal.

I'd like the idea, however, when you schedule a public hearing, I have to have these available, these documents to the clerk and it needs to be available to any person in the public to review. What's the date of our next meeting, the 11th? You're proposing to discuss this I need to check with the newspapers if there's enough time on the 11th for you to officially schedule a public hearing on the 27th. It's all about the newspaper dates and doing notifications of amendments. And so I will develop this amendment for you all, but I need to make sure that there's enough time to advertise the actual wording. When you take a vote, this wording will be at the public hearing, and you're voting that in agreeance with the wording before you. I do not believe we can take, staff can take a general direction of scheduling the public hearing without your vote, of seeing the actual words that we draft. And that's the only reason I have a little bit of pause.

Can we just take a moment then to look at what our amendment process is, so that we.

Absolutely. Can you go to the amendment section and submission?

May I make a comment? Yes. I don't recollect exactly why this four person limit was put into the ordinance, except that my sense is that the feeling at the time was when you begin to size up an operation and it becomes more than four people, I'm not sure about that number exactly, it no longer is an ag operation, it's more of an industrial. And in my opinion, then it would not necessarily be suitable for our natural resource and agriculture protection zone.

Yeah, I guess I'd follow up. I agree with that, but I think you mentioned spatial constraints. So at some point, I'm reading into that that as you review it, they suddenly become, if somebody comes with an application, they kind of . that it's probably going more towards industrial and be more applicable to be only in the industrial zone.

The way that it needs to work is that if you want spatial constraints on the actual impact of the use, you have to place those spatial constraints in the provisions themselves. So we would not have the ability to say, hey, this is a very large sawmill, and we don't want this in the ag because it's a permitted use in the ag. You would have to put those constraints in the provisions themselves. Sawmills or slaughterhouses over a development size of XYZ are not permitted in the ag zone and shall only be permitted in the industrial zone. So those are just constraints that you can place, but we're not gonna be able to subjectively staff, say, this is inappropriate for this zone and we don't want it here because that is gonna be a policy makers decision.

So we do not have those spatial constraints to work with at this time?

So yeah, your only spatial constraints are the distances away from district boundaries residential dwellings so you're requiring 250 feet away from any district zoning boundary or any residential dwelling so that's the spatial constraints you currently have for sawmills and so if you would like more we can place more constraints on those

The sawmill applicant is still going to have to file a site plan application.

Correct.

It isn't just that as long as he's in the Ag Zone, he's a 100 feet or 50 feet from whatever resources he can do it. Yes. So the review process, the only thing that we're removing from the review process is the number of employees. Correct.

correct yeah that it doesn't it violates some specific standard that you have and so you can say this violates the standard and we don't feel that we are going to approve this project based on the standard

but I guess as a question do we even have those standards to say for a wood pellet facility not to go into a you say traffic but could they develop roadway enough to take the extra traffic would they the argument they're going to keep the decibel level at a certain rate they're not going to they're going to have lighting And I bring this up because we have a hard time with some of these developments where engineers can come up with good arguments that we will meet what the standards are, whatever they might be, and we can't really argue with some of these engineers. So it becomes more subjective as opposed to objective. So I guess, and again, kind of have to now begin to rescind what I said earlier. I think maybe Kathy's absolutely right. If you're operating a small sawmill, you can probably do it with four people. So you bring in, you might be cutting up logs for local projects. But when you get to a point of a true sawmill that's preparing finished material for Hammond and Hancock and so forth, no, that's not fitting necessarily in the Ag Zone. I think that's truly getting to an industrial operation.

I think we're digressing heavily from the point of this discussion, which is simply striking the verbiage from that line. And I think we need to stay on that topic of striking the verbiage on that line and not get into hypotheticals and other things like that.

And I can agree with that because I think we need to take it to public hearing because that's where we'd truly be discussing and debating and coming to a vote.

At the risk of irritating Tim by continuing this discussion, I just want to respond to one thing that you said, Bob, because it concerns me. Engineers can come in here and they can wave wands and say this isn't going to happen or this will happen.

You don't have to accept that.

I sense that a lot of board members think that they have to accept what the applicant's engineer says. That is not the case. They have to convince you. And you don't have to accept what they say. And I know that when we get into our little workshop on application review, that's gonna come up because the Maine Supreme Court recently announced that yet again, that we don't have to accept what is said, just that they have to face it out So I think I'm prepared to rely on what our ordinance has for standards and make a decision with each application that comes forward. And I recognize what Tim is saying for us as to whether we would entertain an amendment to the ordinance that would eliminate the ceiling for employees and sawmills in the Ag Zone. I guess since it's coming to us from staff, we do need to have a majority say we're prepared to entertain that amendment. And I don't see any requirement in our amendment procedures that says that we have to do this on November 11th and have the public hearing at a later date. We can decide tonight that we want to put this amendment forward at our meeting on August 27th.

Yes, for this amendment. It's more of the slaughterhouse amendment. The only question, you are correct, the only question I would have is what wording to exactly strike from the slaughterhouse provisions. And if we have that wording, I'm okay.

I'm prepared to put the slaughterhouse aside. I'm only using it as an example of other limitations that don't seem to relate.

I'm sorry.

I don't think we're going to have a slaughterhouse application in the next few years.

I only brought that up because staff is ready to amend. I would ask you to not be surprised. Yeah.

Go ahead.

I would ask you to not be surprised.

Okay.

Really? Staff is only bringing it up just because we're ready to amend the provisions. If you say you want to amend the provisions, we will create it.

Kathy, am I going to regret not pushing forward for the amendment to the slaughterhouse? We have a motion. Jim, would you like to make a motion?

Hopefully I don't mess this one up. I make a motion to schedule a public hearing for the amendment of chapter 60, section 145, agricultural and resource protection use regulations on August 27, 2026. I'll second that.

Thank you.

I moved and seconded. Do you want more specificity? That was the language that you gave us.

It's fine because you're referring to the document that's been submitted, so we're okay with that. You can just add in the time, correct, 6 p.m.?

6 p.m. Do we accept that friendly amendment?

Amended to 6 p.m., August 27, 2026. Second agrees.

Any further discussion on that? All those in favor?

Thank you. As we go into the next topics that we will be discussing, the Lake Royal Barn Watershed Report. This is actually, it relates to, can relate to a bunch of different topics. And I bring that up because in state law, In places that you allow industrial uses, you are given exceptions to certain housing restrictions. So that's something to be aware of as we continue our conversations, that if you do not want industrial uses in your ag zone, then you will be subject to other housing laws by the state. And that goes into our AG discussion about our reports.

I don't think that reducing or increasing the number of employees changes the use from non-industrial to industrial. Correct. Yes. I think what you're telling us is that our AG zone allows industrial users to be paid and now there will be such.

Yes. So as long as you allow industrial uses within your AG zone, you're not subject to those state regulations. But I wanted to just make people aware of that fact that you're not subject to those regulations because you have industrial uses in the zone.

I'm going to introduce the next topic. Business item C, Lake Auburn Watershed Report. Staff will present building permit data in the Lake Auburn Watershed for the last year.

Before we get into it. I don't know if I know it said I had two copies of this in my packet and one has a little bit different font and larger maps But other than that the content seems to be identical that anyone else run into that Which one are we going to be running from or does that matter?

They are identical we printed them twice one with bigger font

so you can see the information.

Speaking of that, and I'm going to digress now, back to the P&G application. We got this, and font size is absolutely microscopic. I cannot read anything. I don't know what we can do about that. This was not, I could see the lines on the pages and see the maps, but I cannot read.

We can ensure that all plan sets were going to be readable in the future, and we'll make sure that the digital format is expressly available, so you can zoom in and out at your own leisure.

All right. Lake Auburn-Watershed, report.

This is a very short report, and so per year, only three dwellings are permitted to We're only permitted to allow the construction of three dwellings in the Lake Auburn watershed per year. In prior years, since this regulation has passed, we've had two permits approved to be constructed in the watershed. One has been completely constructed. The other one, a permit has been issued, but the CO has not been completed just yet. And so that's what you'll see in your report. It is very brief. You will see a mention of two other permits that have been approved that the parcel itself, a part of the parcel itself is in the watershed, but the actual dwelling is not within the watershed. So from the last three years, two dwellings have been constructed and I provided the data from our SmartGov where we are actually getting permits in and also the maps so you can see exactly where they are. And so that is the shortest report I've ever made in my career, but that is the gist. I've also was requested, basically it's requested of me, have these dwellings instructed had an adverse impact on the watershed? And it's my professional opinion that they have not because it's only one dwelling has been constructed and to measure the impact of one dwelling a Certain distance away from the water where the water is actually measured for turbidity would be It would be hard to say that this one dwelling this distance away has had an adverse impact on the water quality for the entire city That's my professional opinion. I can be swayed. And we are in talks with the water district and other parties on getting additional data on at what level do we consider adverse consequences about turbidity and everything like that. I was going to say spark notes, but I don't think spark notes are a thing anymore. I'm just showing my age. Sorry about that. The version is that basically the levels of turbidity in the Lake Auburn watershed, they will go up and down throughout the year. just as the amount of water in any aquifer goes up and down throughout the year. And at different points, their turbidity, which is one of the measures of water quality, decreases and increases. And so instead of trying to waffle my way through this conversation of exact numbers, I thought it might be better if I bring in the experts so they can actually explain some of the levels and some of the levels that they are monitoring on a day-to-day basis to see what is an adverse consequences. And that way you can get a more well-rounded view of what may impact water quality when we're talking about the Auburn watershed.

I would welcome that presentation, that discussion, if we don't have a stacked agenda that can be done in the next couple of months.

I would like to see that on our future agenda.

But before we leave the topic, how many acres are in the Lake Auburn watershed?

I do not have that answer. I knew that question was coming up. I posed that question. I do not like giving incorrect or incomplete answers. And so I'll get that.

Let me try it another way. Do we have at our disposal a map that will show the Lake Auburn watershed?

Yes, you have a GIS layer of the Lake Auburn watershed. However, the one on GIS, I don't know if it's been updated. And so again, I could take that layer and quickly show you the acreage that is in that layer. But I want to get... I want to make sure I'm delivering an accurate acreage of the watershed itself since those things have changed very recently.

Forget acreage, can we see it? Absolutely, yes, sorry. Yes, Mr. Beale. Yes, yes, speak up though so that we all hear you. You don't have to necessarily go to the mic.

The total acreage in the watershed is over 11,000 acres. About 3,800 of those acres are in Turner, Minot, Hebron, and Buckfield. There's a total of about 7,700 acres of the watershed, including the lake in Auburn. of that total, about 2,280 acres, various surveys have it slightly higher or lower, are actually the surface of the lake itself. So that leaves about 5,500 acres of land in Auburn, in the Lake Auburn watershed.

Thank you.

But the purple is the water from the racks that area in purple is the watershed there has been slight changes to this just be aware of that.

The entire purple area in the city of Auburn we can only build 3 houses here.

Can I interject? Yeah. I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, the genesis for this was when we first, a couple years ago with the Lake Auburn watershed stuff, when we were talking about allowing building, we were going to allow a trickle effect of building within the Lake Auburn watershed to look for changes in the water level and over time that number could be increased as long as water quality was not impacted. That's what I recall, but I'm not saying that's what it is, but that seems very familiar.

And this report that you give us is on dwell. Correct within that watershed area. Are there other uses that are allowed other than dwellings. Yes. Because a lot of that is like Route 4. Correct. So you could build a car dealership on Route 4 out beyond St. Philip's Church, or you could do 101 things. As long as it's not a dwelling, you could have unlimited number of them.

There are limited uses in the watershed, but you are correct in the gist of, yes, you can do other things other than create dwellings in the watershed. We know why dwellings.

Actually, I did appreciate this report and I think it will come up maybe as we get into the next business because I was looking at this and then trying to apply what changes might come with the application of 829 and 2173 to look at these lots where we're looking at different zones and so forth to see what's permitted now and what might be permitted under the new LDs.

Yep. So one of the things that That conversation will probably come after the passage of the comp plan because the Lake Auburn watershed, sorry, I keep combining the terms, is actually granted a waiver from 1829 and 2173 because it's the water source of two cities, basically. So those provisions actually do not apply within the water.

Excuse me. I'm not sure. Lake Auburn watershed. OK, so all of these did touch some up on Lake Auburn watershed, but there are other zones apply there in other zones, too. So I guess that's where I was thinking that where we have a low density country residential or rural residential, but the new LDs What impact is that gonna have on those particular zones?

Yeah, so the Lake Auburn watershed's an overlay to the base zones, and so you do have AG and LC low country residential district within the overlays on top of those. And actually in the Ag, you can have zero new dwellings in the watershed. And it's actually the low density where you can have the number of the three dwellings. And so the LDs from the state, LD 1829 and 2173, they will not impact, they don't have to impact those. The state is not forcing us to increase density within the Lake Auburn watershed at this time. Correct. Yes. Correct. Correct.

Again, allow or not allow certain types of development.

Correct. It depends. And it's going to depend, basically, if they're also in the growth area or not. So if they're in the growth area, it will be impacted. If they're outside of the growth area, the state statute says, no, our own regulations still just apply. We don't have to increase it.

Okay. I thank you for that. That's a clarification. I guess I should have realized but didn't. So really we're talking only the application of these LDs in the growth area.

For the city of Auburn, yes, because your water and sewer service are completely within your growth area.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I wanted to make one observation. The materials that you provided to us included this chart. If I understand this correctly, somewhere around 50 or 60 building permits were issued one or two years ago last year.

Yes, correct.

I had no idea. I must be driving down the wrong road.

Most of those are infill. Those also will include teardown rebuilds or additional dwelling on a property that already has a home. And that's how development moves very slowly when you're not noticing it and then you wake up one day and everything is changed. That's usually how development happens over 50 years, 50, 40 years. We are seeing some growth in the city, and we want to make sure that the growth that we're seeing is the growth, the types of growth that you all want.

Anyone else surprised by that number of building parents?

Well, I looked at the address for a lot of them, and a lot of them are in the outlying areas, places you wouldn't really see.

Thank you. Is there anything more that you want to say about the watershed?

Not at this time, but I will be sure to bring back experts here to answer all your questions.

Thank you. for older continued business presentation LD 1829 LD 2173 discussion of proposed ordinance changes and trade-offs One second Okay, so

This will be a conversation, and this will be, for this period, this is kind of wrapping up my conceptual preparation for you all of provisions as we're going forward. Tonight you will not see individual language or specific language about a provision, but this will get you ready to make the trade-offs. Every decision you make or you do not make includes a trade-off and will have an impact on the built environment around you. I bring that up to you all, the planning board, because you're the municipal reviewing authority for the city. You're charged with ensuring that land use and the provisions of land use are adequate for your own needs. So with that said, what we're really talking about is restoration. This is actually in Massachusetts. It's not actually here in Maine. But this is what the mills were. These were factories and factory places next to dwellings. And that means that you have manufacturing and industrial use next to places where people live. It's like Minot Avenue, actually. And so this is about those trade-offs. What is more important for your land use purposes? Is it the commercial use? Is it the well-being of the people who are living in the home? So this is a direct question that will come up. It will come up more often than not. This... is this is a house that is located here in Auburn in a form-based co-district. And so when we're talking about regulations, we are talking about risk. We all like to assume, and we all, because we're here and we are, We're in this culture of, hey, we would like to give people most deference to what you're doing on your land, right? It's your own property. You should be able to do what you want on your own property. This is an example of they chose to build this structure, and they're the people who have to live in it. However, the risk is also proximity. Now this structure will be here for the next 20, 30, 40 years, and what impact might that be on the neighborhood? Or maybe there's no impact, but this is decisions that you will need to make going forward on regulations and the level of regulations that you want. We don't only think about the current landowner, we think about the next landowner, the next family that's gonna live there, the next family that's gonna live there. A lot of our homes are over 100 years old, That's kind of the way that we want it. We want these structures to outlive ourselves. Most times, they will outlive ourselves. So ask yourself, is this a risk?

Do we really care that they have this home here?

That's their problem, right? The risk about how you develop and what forms you develop. If you develop in more sparse areas, These people will have cars and they will be on the roads of where you're using them. This is how traffic is created. As developments get more sparse up, they continue to use these main roads or main highways and more and more cars will get on there and that will impact the experience that you all have on the roads. The roads that you have here in the city of Auburn Is there more or less traffic than years ago? And I want you all to continue to think about that because I'll have an actual fact that comes up later on and then you will have to think about that again. This is rural development, right? If you don't require sidewalks and people wanna walk, they will have to walk next to the road or on the road. There's nowhere else for them to go. Or they would have to get in their car and not walk at all so again risk tolerance to the individual to the community in certain areas it will be more appropriate to require sidewalks and pedestrian infrastructure and then other areas you may not want to have that in you do And but it's a risk as a community that you will have to decide on Wetlands Right? So again, these are environmental systems that are designed to keep water some places and keep water away from other places. But there is a risk. There's a risk to developing them. There's a risk to developing around them. They're carrying capacity. People also need somewhere to live. At one point, the land that you live on today did not look like it does today. There were probably trees there. know rocks um but at some time somebody decided to develop that land and now you live there and so that is the fact that we all have to deal with when we're talking about development and you have to weigh what to yourselves and to your communities because you are making decisions for your community what is most important to you at this time and what you're thinking about in the future So there's a bunch of human needs, but when we're talking about land use, there's three interrelated human needs. There's the environmental systems, and on top of the environmental systems, there's the physical systems that we create, and on top of that, those create the conditions for our social systems, which make everything work. Land is fine without us, but if we want to be there, it requires working together to build something, and it requires us building physical systems to operate. Everyone thinks social is optional. What happens when social systems fail, confidence fails, our systems fail, and then everything that we rely on starts to fail. This is just a picture of the Dow Jones, and this is what happens when people start believing something that they previously thought was a fact, that this company is valued at XY height. We no longer believe that. It drops. And there's real-world consequences to that. There's money loss, which means that there's resources lost, et cetera, et cetera. And I bring that up because everyone wants to think, oh, social systems, oh, that's this icing on the cake. It really isn't. It's actually how everything else works. So land use as physical rules. It impacts environmental systems. It will have an impact on environmental systems. It currently does, always has. It impacts social systems. So the rules, the physical rules that you're making for land use will impact both the physical and social systems. It directly addresses some physical needs. You need to go out to the grocery store. You need to travel from A to B. That's a need. You need to go to work. You need to be able to get there, and you need to travel somewhere on those physical systems. And it sets the foundation of social, as I discussed before. So really, I'm going to return to this, risk tolerance and values. They are essential environmental systems. That's why you have the watershed protection. You mess with them, now you have to go and think of some other solution. And that's actually why... engineers exist you know you can have engineers solutions but they're expensive and they cost money and you will pay for them in time and resources people need services to live food travel production work you have physical and social needs we're human so unfortunately you we're social creatures and punishment is isolation that's what we do that's how we punish people we put them in isolation And social infrastructure makes everything work. The law. The law only works because there's someone to enforce it. Family, those systems, productions of goods. You have a factory, you need workers. And if you need workers, you need a system for them to work within. Then we talk about the scale of decision, because all these decisions work at different scales. and scales that you directly will be impacting with your decisions going forward. I put region at the bottom because you're indirectly impacting those, but it's not a direct one. And so I like to start at the city scale. Subdivision regulations, general and scope. Street standards, again, general and scope. Uses, the full gamut of uses that you are allowing in your city, right? Then at the neighborhood, zones, separation of these zones and the different places that you're seeing. Open space standards, how those connected to each other. Uses, specific uses that you will allow in this area and not other areas. Just talked about the act. And then at the site, setbacks, heights, open space requirements. A lot of coverage requirements, connection requirements. If you're allowing people to do cul-de-sacs, those are good for the site. What happens if you're in a very, very dense area and everyone does a cul-de-sac? What happens to your street network then? Something to keep in mind. And then region and directly, services and employment. Here in Auburn, you are considered a super regional service center. which means that you have created services here that all the other places rely on. Your retail areas is over 2 million square feet of retail space. To fill that need, you have to have over 200,000 people. So you are the service center for these other places. And that directly relates to employment and the types and amounts of jobs that are gonna be available here for yourselves and for others. And then services, you know, health care and things like that. So the things that you all have to think about, and then it directly flows into your taxes. If you have more commercial uses, more of that tax load are going to be on more commercial properties. Now here's the fact. In 1960, you had an estimated population of 24,500 people. Today, in the latest census, 2020, we're gonna have a new one, you had 24,061 people. However, your built environment is completely different. So you have to ask yourself, what changed during that time and what regulations moved those changes? If you have the same amount of people in the city as that time, what changed? And then what changes do you wanna make going forward? And this is why we do what we do. This is what happened, actually. You have more diverse employment options. The mills aren't, they're not here anymore. More, just a fact, you have more diverse employment options, you have more single family home development, you have more car travel, more traffic, you're more spread out, you have more speed on the roads, right? You have less social infrastructure, and then you have less accessible open spaces. Just, this is a fact. Before, your open spaces were actually private land, people don't care. You go on someone's land, you go fishing, whatever, you go down to the river, it's fine. Development changes now, now, you're having to go to these designated open spaces and do for recreation or exercise and things like that. So what affects that? Retail and industrial zoning, more diverse employment, more single family home development, is subdivision standards change, density standards change? You didn't used to have a lot of density standards. More car travel, more traffic, those standards have changed. More spread out, more speed, less people, those standards again, the width and density standards have changed. And you have more restricted density, so people have to be more spread out, right? You have less social infrastructure, and that has a relation between where the structures are on the site and how the distance away from people and zoning. And less accessible open spaces. Again, subdivision happened in open space. So this is a direct example of that, of what we're talking about traffic and lane size and why it directly relates to zoning and land regulation. What actually happens is that you start having traffic. And this is called induced demand. So you have more lanes. You see it right outside this door, by the way. And where before you could park on the street, now you have two lanes each way. But what happens then? Because you have more speed closer to the pedestrian. So less people want to walk. lets people feel comfortable with walking, which then, okay, well, we move further away, and we'll add another lane, add another lane, and thinking that will decrease traffic. It doesn't happen. You have induced demand, so more people come from farther away because they can go faster to the same section, and you still have the same congestion. So the same congestion you see out there today is the same congestion you saw decades before. It's just in a different form. Same amount of people, just going in a different form. So what do we do? I'm asking you to think at multiple scales at the region, city, neighborhood, and site when we talk about these regulations and how they relate to each other. I'm asking you to think in systems and the impact of systems. So again, when we're talking about changes in land use, that is a change to that system and will have another impact down the line. I'm thinking in immediate changes, but also thinking in eventual costs as a city. So those will be very different. You may save a buck today and pay a lot more tomorrow by doing so. And then think about your values. This is the most important portion. And if they are reflected in the built environment around you. And if that is not true today, then you must make a change if you want that to reflect your values. So what will we do? We evaluate the city scales. So this is about staff and how we will present stuff. We evaluate the city scales. Region, city, neighborhood, site. Try to give you enough information so you're making an informed decision. We're trying to rebalance impact systems. Social is lacking today. We've taken a hit, and so we're going to ensure that you have enough information that you can take action on that. We're trying to regulate immediate costs and minimize eventual costs as a city. We're just thinking in long term, like, hey, we need to pay a little bit more today to save us money down the line, and we're going to present that information to you. And we're going to be transparent about my values and reflecting your values in the built environment. I'm going to have my own spin on things, but I want to be very transparent when I'm doing so. Hey, this is what I value, and this is why I'm putting this here. You guys feel free to disagree. This is not my show. This is your show. I am a facilitator of your needs. But I'm going to be very transparent. I'm going to tell you, I don't think that's a good idea. However, I will ensure that your decision is going to be positive. I'll tell you that. And so my goal is to strengthen the social infrastructure through changes in the built environment in order to make the city more resilient to economic and environmental shocks out of our control. I'm very direct with that. I use this as a base to better the lives of the people who live in the city, and I ask the question, is this change expected to better the lives of the people in the city of Auburn? If the answer is no, I do not propose it.

That's it.

I just thank you guys for your time. And as we go forward, we're no longer going to be talking about in theory or anything like that. We're going to be talking about specific regulations. And I have a bunch for you all to start reviewing. So anytime we have a workshop going forward, you're going to be looking at real language. Thank you. Any questions?

Great thought. Thanks. Your last comment about turning these ideas into actual changes or amendments to our ordinance and the practicalities of that. At what point do we have to get Or do we have to have counsel, legal counsel, saying that what we're proposing to do is lawful, constitutional, allowed? I don't want to go through these exercises and find that we've spent a lot of time and effort only to be told at the end of the game we can't do that. So where are we, or when will

every proposal that i'm bringing to you will be reviewed by legal that is my goal and actually has been the hold up why you haven't seen language before is that we've been waiting for legal to review certain provisions before i can bring them to you it's just best practice i don't want you to spend a lot of time on something then be told no you can't do that Through practice, though, I will say that anything that I'm bringing forward is a flavor of something that has been done somewhere else. I'm not creating brand, brand new ideas and new provisions. I can't afford to do so. I need to bring something before you that has been shown to work somewhere or been shown to be legal somewhere. That might be in the state, that might be in the region, in the country in a different state somewhere, but it has been done before, and I'm using my background in understanding the structure of land use law in Maine to give you my best version of that. We are based on certain resources, and even if I brought something to you and it hasn't received a legal review, That's because I'm confident that it may not be in the exact wording that I'm giving you, but it will get a legal review before it goes to a council to get the heart of what we're trying to do and bring it back for you. I'm a little bit antsy about waiting for legal review for every piece of wording. Like as you saw tonight, sawmills did not get a legal review because we're removing an employee limit, but I think that that will be okay. And I'm going to use my professional judgment on that.

And I ask the question, we are looking at a pretty stacked number of meetings over the next few months. Yes. A lot of time and effort. Correct. Yep.

Your presentation is actually kind of concerning. When I look at our population, we've stagnated at best, if not atrophying. And that, to me, screams huge problem. And I don't know what the answer is, I got pieces of what the answer might be from your presentation. Thing is we have nine different opinions on this board as to what is Auburn's future. Is it grow, grow, grow? Or is it keep, keep, keep? There's trade-offs to both. And it's gonna take other members of city government as well as the planning board to listen to the people of the city of what the people want. not our own agendas, and to work collectively forward. Because if that rate continues, You know, we have the same number of people, but look at housing prices, look at taxes. It's gonna compile and get worse and worse and worse. There's no real legitimate good paying jobs in Auburn, really, none of the big money jobs that attract people. And I think a lot of that can look at just our business climate. Our business climate is mediocre, in my opinion. in regards to having employers. Yeah, that's concerning. I didn't know that statistic, and that's a big deal.

Let me help out just a little bit. Something happened after 1960, had a drastic decline in population, and then you've been working your way up since post-industrial collapse of your enter cities happened, basically. lost a whole lot of population because your employers were no longer here. The mills went out of business. So people left. They were going to follow the jobs. And now you're just now coming up to that same level, but without those larger centralized employers now.

Right, but Auburn's largest centralized employer now is Walmart. Am I wrong? If Auburn wants to be successful and Auburn wants to have the amenities for its people, it needs the tax base which comes from the people working for employers that pay good rates and a diversity of employers for a diversity of people. And it's a concern that we don't have that. And that's something that as a father of two children myself, I'm thinking to myself, there's not much in this town to get my kids here. And that's part of why I came on the planning board is to try to make a difference. But that's, anyway, I've said enough.

No, it's great. Part of your role is to create the conditions where those can exist. And that's the whole point of the presentation, creating the

I guess, of course, I think the community is speaking now, has been working to listen and put together at least a view through the comprehensive planning process. So I think that we need to be aware fully of what's in that document and what the group that's been working so long and diligently and that's what really the council is going to be looking at for whatever we bring forward we've got to ensure that we're supporting what's coming out of the comprehensive planning effort for one And I guess I'm hoping that we don't start diving in too early in making suggestions for ordinance changes until we fully understand and we have that full document in front of us and have had time to digest it. I think there's a real balancing act. We've got federal rules and regulations. We've got the state with these LDs. What we do is going to have to reflect the comp plan.

And in fact, any change you make has to be consistent with the comprehensive plan. And you're in luck. August 11th, you will be sent the first draft of the new comprehensive plan the same day that the comprehensive plan committee will get theirs. And I'm doing so intentionally so you have enough time. Your official recommendations to the council don't happen until after the handoff of the comprehensive plan to you all in, I believe, in October. In October. And so you'll have enough time to not only review the document, but provide comments on the document from your own point of view. And so you're going to have that ramp up. And that's also a reason why I'm doing this presentation today, is because you're heading into that time period of where you will have a heading and a comprehensive plan. and state standards have changed, and so you can make appropriate decisions with all the information provided.

And we take that actually to public hearing ourselves before it goes up to the council. So I think again, the public will have a chance again to come forward and they too have access to this plan to look at themselves. So it's important for the community as a whole to fully understand it.

Essential. Yes.

And I guess the other, and what we did tonight in improving the application for Procter and Gamble, that's the type of anchor of employment that it's thankful that we were able to attract that to Auburn years ago and glad that we continue to see expansion of that facility. Because that, again, is balancing the tax burden from resident, you know, there needs to be a balance between what we receive for tax revenues between industrial, commercial, and residential. Because we can't rely upon residential tax base to sustain this community.

I think this is a discussion that's being had in just about every sizable community in Maine, except for you telling me that there was a dip after 60 and we've built our way back up. The population of Bangor is the same as it was 50 years ago. The population of Waterville is the same as it was. Portland is literally the same as it was. It's the bedroom communities that have grown. It's the areas around us that have grown.

I'm sure Turner's population has probably doubled in minus

But they're still coming here for whatever services they need and we're bearing the expense of providing those services without any direct economic benefit.

But I think is a very good point.

We're very fortunate to have here and fortunate to have a number of other sizable I don't pay a decent wage and we need to find more of it. But we need to find more of that and we need to balance those risks and find out where they should be located. It's a lot of fun. I try to make it a little bit of fun. So we're going to talk with the water district sometime soon. Another thing that I would like to know from the district is what they might know, the sewer district side of things, about the spreading of sludge and PFAS contamination in our community. You and I had a conversation earlier this week about this because I'm kind of curious to know because I've gotten property, and I'm sure that there's a lot of it in this town. We may be looking at land banks that aren't really as useful as we might think. And it would be, I think, I don't know what coordination there is between the state, which is conducting these examinations, and the cities. I don't know what you know about it or what you don't know about it.

I don't know what the district knows about the extent of the contamination, but I think a lot of our ag land

probably not as ready for development.

So I'll make those inquiries on your behalf.

Is that it for item A? That's it for today. All right. I noticed that This, I could see a fellow board member watching earlier in the meeting. That's available on our website, I assume.

Yes, for our materials in our, on the online materials, yes. In the future, would you like me to print those off for you? I would, but I don't think that.

Sure.

Absolutely.

I would also like it printed.

Do you want to move on or do you need a break? I'm okay. Do you all? That would probably come up around a planning board item.

Do we want to give anyone an opportunity for a public comment before we move on with this? Maybe go out of order like we did last week?

Would you like to do that, Steve? You want to do the public comment in case you all don't want to?

It's not like neither one of you to say anything.

Don't go that way. If you get a public comment, we're going to skip item 4B and move right to item 5.

Hopefully not. Steven Beale, 575 Johnson Road. I do want to make comments on both your Chapter 60 zoning amendment with regard to the number of people employed at a sawmill and then with respect to the Lake Auburn watershed issue, just to provide a little additional context. Three years ago, Chelsea, Kathy, John and I and about 50 other people were members of a very large group of people with agricultural and forestry interests who wanted to do a substantial revision of the Ag Resource Protection Zone Ordinance, which was very distorted in the way that it was created and applied. We held a number of meetings. And then that very, very large group was reduced to a drafting group of three people, John, Chris Carson, and myself, who then met and provided our proposals to the much larger group for their review and approval. We then met with the city staff people at the time, the whole planning and permitting department, of eric cousins john blaine catherine cook and had meetings with them made our proposals they accepted most of them but not all we tried again with some others and they accepted a few more and eventually the ordinance was approved we made hundreds of changes to the previous ordinance Among the things that didn't get changed was that reference to the four-person limit in the sawmill area. Sawmills were a special exception anyway, so they have to come before this group for approval. They can't just automatically receive a permit. And the four-person limit was with regard to rather an old style of sawmill operation. Sawmills have changed probably more than almost any other industry that I can think of in the last 60 or 70 years. And now one person can run a computerized rig and run off an awful lot of lumber. The mill up in Dixfield runs a million board feet a week, almost all by computers. So the number of people to run a mill is really not relevant anymore regarding the size of the whole operation or the volume of product it produces. whether it's board feet of lumber or firewood or wood pellets. Those are all forest products which are permitted under our ordinance. So I would be in accord with DeCarlo's conclusion that the four-person limit is not really relevant these days. The other factor that entered into that is that because we didn't fine tune that ordinance language, it referred to four people employed at the mill or by the mill. Well, that could include the person in the office or the truck driver or a scaler. not necessarily people actually running a mill, which these days, again, takes very few people to run. So that's another reason why that four-person limitation is no longer really relevant in the present day and age. Unlike when I was a kid and there was a gentleman on Center Street near where W.D. Matthews is now, Mr. Wilkins, who ran a sawmill there and actually twitched his own logs with a horse in the yard to move the wood from one part of the yard to another. Things have come a long way. With regard to the watershed report, I was very, very pleased to see this report, which is required by the ordinance that was enacted two years ago. And the building permit data underwent a lot of discussion in the committee. I was on that committee as well, as was John, and three people from the public who were John Blay, the Assistant Director of Planning and Permitting, and Mike Broadbent, the chief engineer of the water and sewage districts, and Erica Kidd, who at that time was the water quality manager of the Watershed Protection Commission. We discussed the number of permits to be issued every year and how to measure them at great length, finally decided that we would not put an absolute number, total number of permits to be issued cumulatively but that we would authorize three per year with the idea that that was the number that permitted evaluation of water quality by the Watershed Protection Commission people who do water testing in the lake every week at various stations, assigned stations around the lake. And if some area that had recently had a subdivision created near the shore would suddenly show a large bloom of bacteria or other pathogens, then that could easily be brought to attention and any further development or restricted or the ordinance changed again. So the limit of three per year has not even been met in the couple of years that the program has been in practice. And the year is measured from July 1 to June 30, like the city's fiscal year. So it's an easy thing to track. uh... so far there's been no effect on water quality from the very very limited number of residences that have been built and again just perhaps a refresher uh... residential construction is permitted in only approximately 27% of the watershed that is not in the agriculture and resource protection zone. In that 73%, no residential construction is permitted, no new construction is permitted. That may seem like a very stiff standard. Some parts of the watershed are quite a long way away from the lake, but this is drinking water quality, and it's subject to very strict state review, and we're one of a very limited number of places in the country where surface bodies of water, lakes, are the permitted source of public drinking water without a very expensive filtration plant water district has recently taken a look at the cost of filtration plants which if they had to construct one is now estimated to cost between 100 and 200 million dollars So that's why we have very tight controls. The controls are working. And I urge you to consider any of your reports as being very totally in conformity with the ordinance that was restructured a couple of years ago.

Oh, and I think .

You owe me time, buddy. Good evening. John Cleveland, 183 Davis Avenue. I want to just take a few moments because I'm the chair of the Comprehensive Planning Committee. It's a group of 18 citizens and representatives from your planning board as well as the city council. And DeCarlo's been doing a great job assisting us in that program. It's been about 18 months, and as you've heard, we're very close next month to provide you a draft. We want to get it to you sooner rather than later so that you can look at it and comment on it. We do want your comments on it. We conducted a very extensive outreach for public input, more than we've ever done in any kind of a comprehensive plan in this city since we've been doing them. Because we want the public input. And we're trying to listen to the public interest in what they see for the future of this community and trying to integrate that into the comprehensive plan. Two major parts of the comprehensive plan that you'll be seeing. One is the lane use categories. They're not zones, they're not zoning, but they're the characteristics of the kind of development in different areas, industrial, your downtown, your residential areas, that kind of thing. So that you will see those, and those will be the basis on which, once adopted, that will provide a platform on which zoning, which you will be intimately involved with, to be adjusted so that the zoning is consistent with the land use categories. The two of them legally have to be consistent, otherwise you will run into some serious problems. So those will help guide, based on citizen input in the citizens committee, how the city moves forward in the vision that the community has said that they would like to go forward. I'd also like to just note that in our process, and I wish you would have had that presentation when we started, We looked exactly at these kinds of risks and balances. Where does the city grow? What are the impacts? What is the effect in the community? What's the effect on the cost of the taxpayers? And very much aware that we want to promote growth in this community, promote population increase in the community. Housing will be a key part of that in the plan and you'll see it. The other part that I want to bring to your attention when you see the plan is a section called Policies and Actions sections. We have spent a great deal of time on that section because it is critical on making this not a plan that winds up sitting on the Carlos desk that he has to look at once in a while, but it's a plan that each one of you and every CELD counselor is going to use regularly and the administration. And in that policy, it sets out eight areas eight policy areas or goals, the economy, population, education, and so forth. And in each one of those, it identifies a specific policy and objective. And for each one of those, it outlines a specific action item. The city will do this in this time frame and will report back on how they've accomplished it and how much progress they made. So that it requires it to be an ongoing working document, but it provides some flexibility because over the next 10 or 15 years, we all don't know exactly all the changes, but we need to be resilient and adaptable to them. So it's important to take a look at this document as one that's going to be a living document and will be implemented. And I intend to live to the end of its life. I'm going to be here to see the end of it, to do that. So look it over, and we look forward to being here and being a resource to answer any questions that you may have in regards to the plan, how it was developed, and what the goals and objectives are going forward. And so thank you for your service as well.

Thank you, John.

Anyone else?

None. All right. We've taken care of public comment. We're back to item 4B. Presentation by staff. Planning board training. How to review applications. Staff provide guidance to the planning board on reviewing application materials.

Sam is going to take this presentation. I will be here for support. Questions? I'm going to switch. I'm going to get out of here.

So I did provide printouts of this for the last meeting. The presentation is also on the website and can be used as a reference. So I'll try not to take up too much time. I'm mindful that we have a few new members and members that have been on the board for a few years. So this presentation is really taking what you learned at the MMA training and distilling it down into our local rules and to our ordinance. So it's it's a resource. It's a tool you can look back on it's on the website as well So just the three things this will cover is getting familiar of the ordinance and our regulations How to review current codes. This is really where the information that you guys are voting on can be found and We'll go through findings of fact and conclusions of law, which is the information that you need to make a decision on an application. And then finally, we'll get into the application package itself. So every week you receive a big packet of information, and it's a lot to distill down and go through. This is really, it's like if you are... in a book club and we as staff are responsible for reading that book and we are giving you the cliff notes version so that way you get the general highlights and you don't have to read the whole book yourself. So there are three types of projects that trigger an application to go through planning board review as you know Site plan which is division two special exception division three and then subdivision review So site plan applies to all uses permitted by special exception and any other provisions as noted in the ordinance Subdivision is for creation of three lots within a five-year period or the creation of five dwelling units on a lot within five years was just recently changed. The state law also includes some exceptions to that which are if land was gifted by a relative, condemned lots, and if you have lived at the property for five or more years. So chapter 60 is really where the bulk of these requirements are found. I've noted review criteria for site plan special exception and subdivision. These, some towns call them conclusions of law. These are basically will or will not statements pertaining to different standards such as traffic, stormwater, environmental impacts. So this is really where the decisions are made. And if you reference the findings from Proctor and Gamble, this is where we're getting this information from. There also are other sections of the ordinance where certain standards can be found. What we try and do in the staff memos is reference things and be as clear as possible. There's district regulations. So for instance, in the memo that you saw from today, there's landscaping standards that can be found in the industrial zone under district standards. It's not under site plan review. These have different allowed uses. This is where you're going to find things like dimensional standard setbacks, standards for review. And then lastly, there are other sections outside of chapter 60 that may be relevant to a project. For example, our stormwater and traffic standards live in chapter 46, not in chapter 60. There also may be requirements for off-street parking, depending on the project. Access management standards, for example, for tonight, that pertains to driveway spacing and site distance. So we'll reference those as well. So next, getting into the steps to making a decision. Yes, go ahead. I'll pause for questions now, yeah.

So go back to the last slide. Is there a reason why stormwater and traffic standards are not in Chapter 60 as review standards?

Why are they in Chapter 46? And if they are applicable, do you think we ought to have them in our manual as opposed to just Chapter 60, which is all we have right now?

Do you know why?

I mean, I think that's a great point. I don't know why. Stormwater and traffic are supposed to be reviewed by engineering. Sometimes in certain towns, they'll say as a submission requirement to submit an engineered stormwater plan. But they're in Chapter 46 because my understanding is that we are deferring to engineering, our city engineering department to review those standards.

Yeah. So in addition to There's a number of reasons. Some towns have their stormwater... Is that a signal? I think that was their signal. Some towns or some cities have their stormwater management and traffic standards directly in their zoning ordinance, and some do not because they want to have different review criteria and different jurisdictions of who does what. That's a difference. It is best practice to have stormwater management in one section and separate from... zoning ordinance because there are certain situations that will occur that it has nothing to do with an approval of a site plan and they have requirements that are ongoing requirements every year. For instance, attached to our MS4 permit, which is a completely different topic to go down, they have to do yearly reviews and have to be done at certain time periods that the state regulates. so that structure doesn't easily fit into the zoning ordinance structure that relies on an application approval application approval these are more ongoing things um traffic standards as well um there's always a question of of public land in the right-of-way and does that Should that live in the zoning ordinance when we're regulating mostly private property or in between spaces of road standards? And again, different cities, different states, different towns, they have their own opinions on it. For our structure, we placed them in chapter 46 that are outside of that for jurisdictional reasons. The city has decided we want the city engineer to have jurisdiction streets and traffic and so they wanted to make sure that that jurisdiction was extremely clear in that case you'll see cross references on both sides between chapter 46 and 60 an appropriate time in order to approve something they want to make sure that it meets those standards or you know if a project is triggering a certain stormwater management requirement they also want to review by the planning board but essentially they are separate and then one other thing I'll bring up is that chapter six is our zoning ordinance but it doesn't include all of our land use standards right and so there are different other places in our codes that we do have separate land use standards and some are even in licensing themselves so that's a that's a All your land use standards are not just in Chapter 60, but should you have a copy of all of those of land use standards?

I would say yeah.

Yeah, that's something that should be provided to you. So at least we can get you Chapter 46 when it comes to street standards. It doesn't go through the same approval process to amend Chapter 46, and that's going to be a key provision in LD 21. is that we are proposing to change street standards as well. And that will go through a separate process than your regular zoning and things like that.

So are you suggesting that we don't have the final say on whether is a standard that has been met that we have ceded that to the city engineer? No, that's the opposite. You have jurisdiction over the site, but this is all.

Site and in relation to adjacent areas. Correct, and so we're also talking about I don't want to be specific, but if you have an approval on a site over here, but a mile down the road, we have different things that are happening that will also need to be reviewed as far as we're now going to reconstruct this entire road. Offsite improvements, fair share offsite improvements. the area that's on the site under your jurisdiction and seeing if the improvements on the site is going to have an adverse impact on the road and the right-of-way. However, that right-of-way, a mile down the road, I do not believe you have jurisdictional authority to approve that construction that mile away. And so for that, that will have to go through not only the engineering department, but actually the council themselves, really sign off on that change. That's another reason why they're separate is because you're looking at the improvements on the site and you can approve or deny a project because they're gonna have an adverse impact on the site. But we're also looking at the actual construction of the road down a mile away. And so that's why it's a little bit separate jurisdictions when we're covering those things. But you have absolute jurisdiction over the site. Deny, approve, it's all up to you. There was a button. It is a motion thing, but there's also a button.

Okay.

I thought John was doing a dance. I didn't know it was motion activated.

Sorry about that.

Does anyone have any other questions before I keep going?

I'm sorry, I just want to point out that in Chapter 60, Section 1313, the Planning Board will have the right to require the developer at the developer's expense to correct any offsite deficiencies either created or aggravated by the developer's proposed project.

It doesn't say within a mile.

using the parking you're ever out on hotel road traffic you have

Yeah, that they have to correct any deficiency that you're seeing, but then it goes on. Are they meeting the standards of Chapter 46, and who gives authority to say that they are meeting those standards of Chapter 46? That's more what I was referring to.

Okay. So this is the steps to getting to a decision. We as staff will review the application once we determine it's complete in accordance to our ordinance, I believe pursuant to section 601301, which is our Submission requirements for site plan then we schedule a public hearing Then we have a substantial review of the application Present findings and then we get to a decision and this is all based off of our current rules and regulations as written and So the information that you receive in your packet from the applicant is addressing those submission requirements in section 60 and also where appropriate chapter 46 for stormwater and traffic. They also are addressing other relevant standards as mentioned previously found in chapter 60. So the applicant or engineer, they bear the burden of proof in providing evidence that the standards are met And then, as you know, your role as the board is to review those standards and make a determination based on our current rules if those standards have been met. So this is an example of getting to a decision. We just happened to be talking about traffic. So a standard is on vehicular access, and there's a specific conclusion under special exception that says the special exception will neither create nor aggravate a traffic hazard, a fire hazard, or any other safety hazard. There are several conditions like this. So when you make a decision and approve something, you're voting on every single one of these conditions. This is just an example of one. So taking vehicular access in traffic, you have potential evidence. So the applicant has provided, say, a traffic study in compliance with chapter 46, 235. a traffic impact analysis. They have a letter from the fire chief stating that it's not going to impact emergency vehicles. And so our recommendation in the memo would say something like, based on that information, we believe this standard has been met. Now I highlighted the decision that you guys are going to make. And so you would say, yes, it's been met. It meets our standard. I made a note saying that in certain instances, I think some of what Ed maybe was alluding to is that It may be appropriate to request peer reviews to say this site is really going to have a lot of traffic impact and congestion, and as residents of this city, we really feel that a second opinion on this is warranted. Yes, go ahead.

Sorry, I just want to interject there, and our word is not gospel. You can disagree with our recommendations, and we're absolutely okay with the disagreement. We're going on the available data to us, and that's why we're making the recommendation. But you may know something about, like in your own histories, or just you live there, like hey, this is not actually safe for pedestrians. And even though it says there will not be adverse traffic impacts for vehicles, you would like something some improvements for pedestrian improvements. That's totally okay, and we actually are expecting you all to review this to your best ability of going like, hey, we think that this criteria has been met, or no, we don't have enough information that this has been met, or based on the information, we actually are certain that this has not been met, and we wanna see additional improvements from X, Y, and Z. There's a connection between the two. And so our role is just to give you our best information that we have. But if you want or need more information in order to make a decision, you have complete power to ask for additional information.

May I interject for a moment? Looking at your last bullet point, when it refers to aggravating, that's acknowledging a pre-existing condition. Would it be wise to have a radius stipulated? The reason I'm bringing that up, and it was a big talking point for the chair, and I understand and agree why, housing development on the backside of Washington Ave up behind the motel there with that hill going down to Washington Avenue, that will aggravate that, in retrospect, but we would need some kind of parameter into how far away from our project are we looking where something could be aggravated or created by our project, because then you have the argument of, well, three miles down the road, it's gonna make this light take a long time. At what point do we consider distance from our project to be null and void?

It's that one's going to be situational for you all. So intentionally, it does not include a hard number because based on the change, the actual level of change, it's going to take what level of aggravation or what distances.

It's really hard to approve subjective opinions.

What I'll say about this is that in the state of Maine, site plan, it's completely subjective. it's completely due to home rule. There are no, there aren't standards at the state level of like, hey, you must approve a site plan that follows X, Y, and Z. Subdivision, it's completely different. But site plan is completely in home rule. And so if you would like to change your criteria and it be more quantitative more than qualitative, you have the power to do so. It's more of, You want to prove that there's actual connection between your decisions and the facts that are received, the facts before you. And so that's the most important thing is that would a reasonable person come to this conclusion? And so when you're talking about the impact in the distance away, would a reasonable person come to the conclusion that this decision improvement is having an impact, I don't know, 500 feet away, a half a mile away, and so that's actually why they, that's why a planning board is full of residents, you all, and it's not just administrative, because if it was administrative, all we need is a number, and we can say, okay, based on the quantitative information, this is the impact, but that's not the structure of your and that's the reason why you have special exceptions, is because we're relying on your experience and your knowledge to make decisions for your community. So that's actually why it's subjective. Feel free, though, if you make quantitative, you can just, hey, we don't want to make decisions on these type of projects. These are our standards, and if they fit them, they are permitted by right, by law, and if they don't meet these standards, they're denied. You have that power. Or the council. You can recommend it to the council.

So there was a recent law court decision. I brought it to your attention. You're familiar with it because it's out of the town where you just came from. That should really be provided to the board members. It's really a good guide on taking on what the burden of proof really means for the applicant, what you can and can't rely on, what you don't have to rely on, you don't have to accept things without. I was moving to earlier this evening, I think it would be worthwhile if that could be made available to the board and at some point in your next presentation we could discuss it because I think that Merlin got shy about the challenges and things that we hear.

Absolutely. I can provide that, and actually I was the person who wrote the findings of fact on that case, so that's why I'm kind of confident in discussing things with you all. So, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah correct and that's actually why your findings of fact look the way they do is just because I was the person this is remanded back to the planning board for additional findings of fact I was told hey we need you to guide the planning board making a financial factor in this case.

Correct. It's a good read.

I'm also the policy guy, so I read almost every Supreme Judicial Court case about land use. There was another good one that came up, by the way, and that's another topic I did not bring before you, but the next one I will, and it has to do with variances in waivers. Sorry for interrupting.

So then lastly, just the review of the application package. So kind of we've broken this down into steps. So when you get your application package, we suggest to start with the staff memos. Again, like I said, it's like the cliff notes of a book. What we're trying to do with those is to distill the application to a project summary. We'll write in what district requirements are relevant. We'll give a project history. For example, with Proctor and Gamble, just because it was on for tonight, they had a previous approval. So we'll give information on that. And then we also go into some relevant, what we're calling relevant review criteria, which you'll see in the staff memo includes a list of things such as access, management, stormwater traffic, and bullet points. for how those have been addressed. And then what we're doing now is adding in our suggested findings of how we believe as staff certain standards are met and also the applicable sections that the planning board will be voting on. We try and reference everything to be as clear as possible with the ordinance section and with where you can find the information in the application packet itself so that we're not sifting through pages and pages of material. So we have citations and references of where you can find things. So we think if you're really time crunched, this is where you should start. The second piece of this is site plan, so visuals. This can include existing conditions, site plan, grading plan, utility plan, stormwater. An example, I think, was the approved public safety building. That was a very, very large packet of plan sets to sift through. So we suggest going through those, but looking at the memo to see what plans are relevant to look at. So it's helpful if you're a visual learner, you can take a plan set, mark it up. Yeah, go ahead, Tim.

I'm a visual learner.

Okay. Yeah, so you can take a plan set, mark it up. Always look back at the memo to see, oh, what stuff is referenced? What stuff might be a discussion point at the meeting? So it might be helpful for some people. And then lastly, it's the written information. So the applicant. is writing how they meet the standards and providing documentation such as financial capacity letter, a traffic study, stormwater report, waiver requests. So it's taking the written information from staff and reading through what's relevant to the planning board decision. And then this last thing is If there are any resources that people have found that have been helpful when reviewing these applications, and then if there are resources that we can provide to you as staff to make your job easier. Again, I bring up the findings of fact. We're doing things a little bit differently now than maybe we had in the past. So we're trying to be as thorough as possible, especially like with making citations and references in our staff memos. But I leave it open if people have found things that have been helpful to them or if they have requests for resources from us that we can provide. So that's it.

Can you go through for us the steps involved and the time frame during the time you receive an application and the time we get to our planning? I know that Carol and I have been trying to figure through the five-year ordinance that we had in the 16 days that we set the agenda. I'm interested in what those steps are. We have this committee that hasn't met in recent months for whatever reason.

It's supposed to be looking at our reviews of the planning board, procedures and policies. And part of the concerns that have come up in the meeting

You know, we'd like to get applications a little bit more. We'd like to have our application materials more quickly or with a longer review period than had been provided in the past.

And so in addition to those time frames for your review and how it's done internally, which I think would be informative for us, I am curious as to how you reach your decisions about recommending approval or not.

I can talk a little bit about that.

At a future meeting, we can go over the timelines. I'm going to go over some information now because they're two separate timelines. And they have to do what either it's a subdivision or a site plan process. And that has to do with home rule. Subdivision has very strict timelines that when an application comes in, you have 30 days to consider it complete. But we do not, staff does not have the power to consider it a complete application. Only the planning board. different for site plan. The city of Auburn has given the power to the planning department to consider what is a complete application or not at the site plan level. Those are already gonna be different right there. It gives us 10 days for a site plan of receipt to review the application and notify the applicant that either the application is not accepted for processing as it has not met the requirements of the submission requirements and shall enumerate the materials that are missing. And so this is gonna be in Article 16, administration enforcement. That's where we find our timelines. And so when we're looking at that, we're looking at the strict submission requirements, not the quality of the submission of the materials that they've submitted. Let's say it says a site plan and includes all these things and a stormwater management plan. And so we have to say yes or no. Have they provided a stormwater? has nothing to do if the stormwater management plan is sufficient or not, have they actually given us a plan to start reviewing? So that's one timeframe. Same thing on the subdivision, except you are the body who has to decide if they have a complete application or not. We can recommend to you that we believe that they have a complete application, but you have to make that decision. Then after you make that decision on the subdivision side, another clock is started. that's i believe is 60 days from the time period that it's considered a complete application where they have to be given a decision unless the applicant agrees to a different timeline so again we have a different timeline over here over here after we say that it's a complete application or not then we have a time period that we can send out to our other departments Director B, the director shall at the time of notification to the applicant that the application is accepted for processing, transmit copies of the application and the site plan to those city departments, and the director's opinion requires such information to provide recommendations regarding the application to the planning board. Send it to all the departments. So again, just as you're saying, I wanna know, I don't know the subject matter expertise of these other departments, so I'm gonna send it to every department to get all the information back. Departments receiving these copies shall have up to 15 business days, so three weeks, to provide their recommendations to the director. The director shall review the submitted site plan and accurate any recommendations made by the city departments and may request additional information from the applicant in order to assist the director to review the submitted site plan or make recommendations to the applicant for changes to the submitted site plan that in director's opinion will cause the site plan to conform to city regulations. So I am looking at the requirements, just the written requirements that are not subjective, only quantitative, and it's a yes or no, and seeing if they meet those requirements. And that's before it even hits you, right? And then after the director shall, upon completion of the director's review of the site plan, but not later than 60 days after notification to the applicant that the application is accepted for processing, request that the planning board chair to schedule a public hearing by the planning board at a regularly scheduled time. So basically for site plan, I have 70 days, you have 70 days before we can get, before it must be before you. That's at the latest. But essentially what happens though with all applications, they come in, we do a standard review of what we think is completeness and we tell them, hey, this isn't sufficient, you need to submit more things. You might wanna think about submitting more things if it's subdivision must submit more things in the site plan. And then they go back and they take months with their engineers to create those documents and bring them back and correct them. And then we start the process all over again. I am not shy about making a recommendation of this is an insufficient application or this does not meet our standards. Because I'm not shy about that, people take it pretty seriously and they go, we're not you're not ready to submit before the planning board. I have in the past, even here, I've only been here about three months, I said, you know, it is your right to continue on to the planning board, and I will press a public hearing before the planning board, but no, if you continue, I will recommend denial of this project. And so that's another reason why you don't get projects before you, because they want, an applicant wants to know that they have the recommendation of staff before they get to this point. And there's some questions that we're not going to be able to answer. They're subjective. And some of the things that you've gone over today, will it have an adverse effect on the neighborhood? We're going to give our best guess, but that's why you're here. And if the answer is, I don't know, I need more information, fully in your right to say, actually, we want more information about that topic before we make a decision. We do. We want this specific information before we want to go forward. And that's what staff were expecting from you. um we want to make sure that you have enough information to say yes this meets the standards that we've set as a as a community as a city or no it doesn't meet these standards and here's the reasons why our job is not to get you to approve every project it's that you're the quasi judicial body is to get you enough information that you can make a decision and that's the only thing that we're

Well, it's very helpful to have the staff memo and the recommendations and all. That's not required.

We are not required. We're an optional piece of the puzzle here. And I tell people all that time, I say, listen, I'm not in the ordinance a lot of the times. So this will go before the board, but you're at your own risk when you do so. I'm never going to stop somebody who has the right to come before.

But you're doing so at your own risk.

And it's like, we had a conversation earlier. What's your risk tolerance about that? And they'll tell you.

Thank you, that was very helpful for me.

All right, great. done public comment miscellaneous we have any miscellaneous otherwise we'll take up the planning board's schedule draft schedule seven nothing miscellaneous boards schedule of meetings It's on the back of this memo that we have. That draft schedule shows in regular print our regular monthly meetings and in bold print special meetings which are going to be added to our calendar um hopefully people have had a chance to look at those dates before coming tonight or not hopefully to look at it and we can settle on the meetings but they do involve other bodies such as the council or the conference of planning committee so i think that it's pretty hard to hurt all those cats we ought to try to stick to those dates if we can does anybody have a hard

I won't be here for October 28 the big one so I don't know what that means if I it doesn't necessarily mean

I'm about to facilitate if I just go through the dates and we can say, yeah, that one works for me. Sure, absolutely. Thank you. August 27th. Assuming all these are 6 PM. Yes. Yes, sir. I guess I'll expect somebody to say I can't be here.

September 14th.

I don't think I can do August 27.

OK. September 14. September 23. October 14th. October 28th.

We've had one member say that she can't be present for that meeting.

November 19th. December 17th. There you have it.

I think that although we have two board members who can't attend one of those meeting dates, I think that you'll have a majority of the board present for all of those meetings.

I don't know. Obviously, Rob. I just want to thank you all. This is a big ask. And staff understands that this is a big ask. We get paid to be here. You're doing so out of love of your community. So we really appreciate it.

We do get paid.

We'll reflect in your review to Carlo.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm used to volunteer-only planning boards. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's a comp plan committee. You guys are the entertainment, John.

They live here rent-free. They're not being paid. They're getting housing. At our meeting on the 16th of June, I think it was, you handed out a list of questions that said step three. You wanted some feedback. Correct. Yeah. Okay. I'm just reminding board members that they can take a look at that. If anyone doesn't have it, probably provide it to you. But I think feedback is an important part of our whole year, to the extent that you can give them any sort of feedback on those questions. Oh, that would be great.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Anything else on the planning board items for the session?

Yes. We can have. But I wasn't.

Planning.

Yep. You're referring to the subcommittee. When I was told that we were having additional meetings sooner in the summer, I didn't think . burden but I will All right, motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

All right. Thank you all.