Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Chelsea Eaton.

Bob Hayes.

Riley Bergeron.

Bilal Hussain.

Ed Barra.

Maureen Hopkins.

Tim DeRoche.

Andrea Westby.

Any new business other than what's listed on our agenda? Anything we need to?

So no new business. We were given a reminder that sometimes the audio is a little funky. So if you can just remind yourself to speak directly into the mic. And I'm guilty of it as well. Somebody may come out of the back and just, yeah, and direct me to speak more in the mic. So don't be alarmed if someone comes out. They're just reminding us about the audio. Oh, there is one. Just this afternoon, we were given the draft comprehensive plan, and so we're gonna be sending that out to you sometime tonight, so you can start reading on that.

i was i was looking through my papers i don't have the um list of our meetings so our next meeting is with the council is the joint meeting with the council is that what we do next no so our next meeting is on the 27th is a workshop here um that you all will be starting to talk about the comprehensive plan all right when's the meeting with the council

The meeting, there's a joint meeting. I don't have my schedule before us, but I can.

It's September 14th.

Thank you. The next one's the 27th of August. Correct, yes. Got it, okay. Okay, and no applications in the pipeline?

We do have some applications in the pipeline. They just aren't ready. Yeah, they aren't ready for a presentation before you all, of course, completeness or anything.

Any idea whether there'll be anything on the August 27th agenda other than the comprehensive plan then?

No, not at this time. They haven't met the deadline, so we don't have an application.

Okay, all right. Well, I've often heard it said by planning board members that we never get to plan. I guess we're gonna get our opportunities over the next few months, and this is probably the beginning of that tonight. We're gonna start going through our ordinance and discussing proposed changes that will bring us into compliance with recent legislative changes and along the way any obvious need for amendment to our ordinance we'll try to sweep up anything that is apparent or obvious to and if if anything comes up you want to discuss that isn't listed as a proposed amendment to our agenda for any reason feel free to make your issues known Okay, so moving on then, New Business 2A, Chapter 60, Zoning Amendments, LD 1829 and 2173. This is a workshop discussion of proposed changes to Article 2, general provisions and proposed changes to definitions, Section 60-2.

The agenda kind of says that it got cut off, but it was a much longer, not only definitions, but all the other sections that you've seen before you. I'm not exactly sure what happened to the agenda online, but the first section is our definition section. So as a reminder, these draft provisions that you have before you are a very early, very rough draft that they're currently going through legal review as we speak. The reason why we're putting it before you already is that we need some feedback on the concepts of this is how this would actually restructure our land use ordinances to prepare us to make sure that we are taking into account all the effects of density as they come along in our growth areas. and outside, to make sure that we're consistent with that. So we're going to start with the definition section. That's the whole idea. The things in red, in general, the things that you see in red are the additions. You might see some strikethroughs, which eliminate some words and replace them with others. And I'll have it on the screen, too. Not sure what's going on with that screen. A little bit of darkness there. But my first question to you all is, It doesn't need to be bigger as we work through this. I want to make sure that everyone can see the words as we're working through them. I know you all have your packets, but I want to make sure that everyone's comfortable with them. OK. With that being said, I'm going to go to our first change. As we go down, you'll see our first change. Ah, and our first change is in childcare. This change is because small childcare facilities by state law have to be treated as single family homes. In our definition section, they made references to other things that are not related to the state law and a classification of uses. And so this is one of the situations where our own classifications of uses are getting in our way to be compliant, and so we have to change them up a little bit. Where in our original wording, we had child daycare home, and that was our name for a small child care facility. We've just made it consistent with our other definition, child care center, small, and we let that apply to the ones that are under a certain size amount. And that's completely consistent with the amount of children for small childcare facilities in state law. And so that's why you see that change before you hear.

Can I make a quick comment on that one? Sure. Sure. I just noticed in the child daycare center small, it looks like the word home has been held over a couple of times. And that should probably be struck.

Yes, thank you. Are you looking at the last sentence? It's a couple times.

Third line down, and then the second to last line.

Yep. Yeah, good catch, thank you. And so as you can see, these are very, very rough, but does anybody have any questions or concerns about altering this definition to cover our basis about small childcare facilities as is referred to in state law? To be small childcare center, be consistent with our other definition.

And your earlier comment was that With these changes, we are aligning ourselves with recent amendments to the state law, or is this something that's been around for a while that we are catching up with?

Combination of both, but specifically LD 2173, and there's another one, but LD 2173 corrects a loophole in state law as it refers to childcare centers. childcare facilities, and we're trying to make sure that we're going to be consistent with that. Yes.

What would you like us to do? You want us to, we're not going to make any motions tonight, but you just want to get our feedback on this. Yep, absolutely. Just any feedback that you might have. With everyone's indulgence, I'd like to go back and ask a couple of questions about other definitions that you're not proposing to amend right now. Absolutely. If I could. Is that all right? Anybody should feel free. I actually spent most of the afternoon just reading the definitions, which is kind of embarrassing to admit to, but that's what I did this afternoon. The very first one, accessory dwelling unit. Are we able to bracket the size of an ADU now? I thought that we couldn't do that.

We can. Yes, we can. Okay. However, now that you bring this up, Accessory dwelling unit here has a size of 1,500. However, if you were paying attention in our other section, accessory structures have a limit of 1,000 square feet in certain zones. And so that is an inconsistency that we probably should be addressing.

Is it an inconsistency or is it if that accessory structure is a dwelling unit, it can be 1,500 square feet?

Under the other section, any accessory structure has a limit of 1,000 square feet if the property is under two acres. You can make an argument that if the accessory dwelling unit is a part of the structure that has a primary dwelling in it, and so a part of that, then that can go to the size of 1,500 square feet. But if you had a standalone accessory dwelling unit, you would not be able to make that structure because the structure has a limit of 1,000 square feet in the other section. Well, I'll let you figure out how we should address that. Well, the question will be, Do you want the accessory structures limit to be raised to be consistent with this 1,500 square feet?

No, I don't. Not necessarily. OK. And I think we can have it both ways. You can, yes.

OK.

Hold on, one thought on that. I'm reading the next definition is the accessory structure. I don't see where it says the 1,000 foot square feet limit.

Correct. So it's not in the definition section. It's actually in the regular sections that apply to accessory structures. And so that's going to be in, I think, section 6054. Yeah, I think section 6054 that only deals with accessory structures. And so a lot of times, and best practice is not to have the limitations in the accessory dwelling unit definitions itself and have those limitations in the actual provisions. The definitions really should relate only to the definition of the thing that you're talking about.

So should we perhaps then amend our accessory dwelling unit definition to take out the parameters?

Yeah, it would be best practice to relocate the structure limitations on the size limitations on accessory dwelling units into the actual accessory dwelling unit section that we've created that you'll see later on tonight. Okay. Yeah. So we'll mark that down.

I guess I'm just gonna be looking for nods and consensus or grunts tonight. We're not taking votes, so feel free to speak up if anything comes up that you want to comment on.

I guess in that regard, I guess it'd be a question, if somebody's looking for a definition, To me, you almost need to speak to, if they're going to go to a definition of accessory dwelling unit, one of the first questions is, how big? So to me, it might be good, it's an easy difference with respect to dwelling versus structure for whatever, so that they immediately see there's a size difference.

Is it?

know a description only by words but then somebody's got to go and say okay what size can it be they've got to go to another section it's going to be dependent on what area in town you are though and how big your property is um so to give an example if you were just in one of our regular zones um 42 t42 and your property size is uh half an acre Accessory structures have a limit of 1,000 square feet. However, if you are on the same zone, but your property size is over two acres, your accessory structure can be larger than 1,000 square feet.

Enough said. Yeah. Convinced that we should not have it here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

That's why it gets complicated to have it.

I'm still on the first page, actually. That's fine. Under accessory structures or building, the last sentence of that definition says no accessory building shall house a home occupation, a professional office, or be used as a sales outlet in a residential district.

Mm-hm.

an accessory building is by definition something that is separate from the principal structure. So if I have an attached garage, I can use that for a home occupation, professional office, or sales outlet. If my garage is detached, five feet from my house, I can't.

Correct. And that also is mirrored in the home occupation section of the ordinance. that it states that home occupations are strictly regulated to the structure which houses the primary. Do we know why? It's a choice of how to limit home occupations on, it's another proxy regulation. A lot of people want to limit the size and the scope and the impact of of home occupations and one way to do so and to not fall into the mixed use wonkiness is to have it as a part of the primary dwelling and a primary structure. It's not a clear cut good one and I would recommend going to just some type of size. Other places have just strict limitations on size. If it's a part of the primary structure, it can't be more than 15 to 20% of the primary structure. If it's an accessory structure, it can't be over a square footage. The home occupation can't occupy more than 1,000 square feet or 1,500 square feet. It's very subjective, but it does limit the size that way. And so this is a proxy regulation that says, well, we don't really want to regulate you on what you do on your private land, but we do. And so it's kind of trying to have your cake and eat it too. So that's why I think it'll be a little bit more clear if you just had a size limitation. This is one that we haven't, I'm going to be completely honest, haven't looked directly at as changing because we've been concentrating on changing provisions for 2173. But it is one that we should, it should be on the priority list for us to go back and deal with. Could you do that? We don't need to address it in this round. Yeah, we can definitely add it. We have a list, and the list is, it grows every day.

Good job.

Yeah.

All right. Thank you.

I guess just a question, as we go along, if there's alphabetically, if we feel there's maybe a question as to an addition, should we bring it up alphabetically or just wait to the end to see if there's additional terms that should be defined?

So this one, it's always a question of when do you go to your definitions, because we're going to be going back and forth to definitions as we're going through the sections. Since we're going alphabetically right now, if you see something that you want to add, you can just bring that up as a workshop. There are no rules and the points are made up. And so just please feel free to add it in or just talk about it and we can start to discuss it or mark it on our list.

I guess it follows the A's and the B's with a whole page with respect to blocks. Somehow coming up with a definition of what do we mean by block? Mm-hm, sure, yeah.

You're harkening back to the discussion we had at the last meeting about districts where you have a vision of block.

Mm-hm, yes. Yes. And traditionally, a shorthand to what we mean by blocks is a piece of land on all sides bound by streets that creates blocks. And so sometimes your blocks are really large, sometimes they're small. They're bound by streets.

We're going to be reviewing a whole section 60.55. So right up front, if we can at least We will have a definition simply, as you just stated, seems quite simple and straightforward.

Any other ones before child care center, small? All right. Okay, so our next one is civic use, active recreation. The reason why it's listed like this is what the first thing I want to bring up is civic use is a classification that's in planning language that's directly related to form-based codes, and you have form-based code districts when you're talking about civic use. I'm not convinced that we need it right now because we don't have it in our current set of regulations. It was an earlier version, but it's been marked out. So this would be one that we're not currently using it, so we're just going to use active recreation instead of civic use.

Is that an activity that is listed as a use somewhere in our ordinance?

It was, and then I went back, and it was a new addition because you have form-based codes, and civic use is usually a whole section on civic use and allowing those type of uses. And I started to make you more compliant with a regular form-based code and adding that in because one is missing, but I've... I've deleted it for now because I've really just tried to concentrate and pull myself back on just the absolute necessities needed to support the new density for 2173. And then at a later time, then we can discuss maybe adding it and when we're talking about more uses and things like that. But the concept is still the same. It means activities, uses, purposes, and organizations were dedicated to arts, culture, education, recreation, government, transit, gardening, horticulture, public gathering, assembly, or meeting. All civic and institutional uses must serve and be open to the public and operate as a nonprofit or otherwise be tax exempt. It's a normal, it's a regular provision to have in form-based codes because they often have civic use active recreation requirements, percentages of when you're doing mixed use, developments over a certain size, like over a size of 20 acres or 25 acres or something like that. And this actually harkens back from times that people are doing much bigger developments where there is a scale that if you're putting in a number of units that you have to actually make schools for all those dwelling units. We don't really do that today. here in Auburn, but if you're having a substantial amount of dwelling units, there's usually a calculation of, okay, we're gonna need a new school, and then a fair share is actually, okay, you're gonna have to contribute. This new expansive construction is gonna have to contribute to that new school, so that number of kids' units that are coming in will have something local to them. That's a much bigger scale. You're at the 25,000 people scale, Once you start growing, that does become a concern. And you start having something that's called school seats. And that's a limiting factor, the amount of dwelling units you can put up. So just, the next one is civic space, means outdoor open space designed to support civic use. social and recreational activities. Civic space may be owned, maintained, and administered by a private entity provided on the same lot as a building or on a lot associated with a building group for the purposes of adding publicly accessible amenity space to a development project. We need this concept. I have to look into the provisions themselves because this does get into the concept of active recreational requirements and amenities, and that's a concept that is really key to the other provisions. So I'll take another look at that. But the idea of when you're making a number of units, at some point you need to start taking into account the amenities to provide to those people that you're making units for.

So does our current ordinance in any zone, civic use or active recreation as a use?

Not at this moment. You go much more detailed into the exact uses that we would consider.

So would including handicapped access be something that this should define as well?

That's another definition, handicap access. So that is something that you would include, that the civic space must be accessible for all patrons that might use those amenities, including handicap facilities. And so you would want to add in that detail you would want to add into that detail into your provisions themselves. There are other ways to do it, and you'll see as we go forward that accessibility does become a key point in making sure that all types of people can use active recreation spaces and those type of things. And that actually came up in our review pretty recently.

Are you all ready for the next one? I wonder if in the definition of civic space, the second line after the word provided, it seems like there ought to be something between provided on the same lot, such as provided it is located on the same lot, or is that what you're trying to say?

yeah and so this one actually these two definitions were directly taken from what's called smart code and so this is another reason why I want to put it through legal review to make sure we're using the appropriate terminology for our locality yeah but the idea is that it's provided in the same parent parcel that the development is going on. And so you can already see some wonkiness provided on the same lot. What happens when you do subdivision? How does that provide it on the same lot? All right, so we're moving along to connectivity. Connectivity and land use. And so you have to make a distinction between, you're talking about internet, what are you talking about when connectivity? We're in the zoning ordinance, so when we refer into connectivity, we're saying that remains as a system of streets with multiple routes and connections serving the same origins and destination.

Excuse me, that was my thought on that. Is there no other, is it like the proper now connectivity, like with a capital C? Because is there no other place, I didn't control fine, where connectivity is used in another sense in our ordinances?

Yeah, not in the zoning ordinance. When we're referring to connectivity in the zoning ordinance, we're directly referring to land use. And so this would be for just connectivity of streets or what have you. We did a quick search. But we didn't see any linking ones for connectivity currently, and we know that we're using connectivity in our new sections, and so we needed to add some definition of just straight connectivity to make sure that it's addressed properly.

Why are we limiting it to streets? Why don't we include sidewalks?

That's a good point. So we should expand connectivity to mean sidewalks and those type of things. I do want to make sure that I am making a distinction between connectivity index, though, and connectivity index does refer only to streets because of because of the types of design it's actually trying to accomplish. When you start breaking out into pedestrian paths and sidewalks and adding those into your connectivity index, it completely changes the design of the actual development. And so you'll be able to, in a normal sense, if connectivity index only refers to streets. First, that's what traditionally is meant by all the legislative and all laws that have been passed. But second, if you refer to a sidewalk or pedestrian path in your connectivity index, So essentially you're saying that they can do the developments that they've always done as long as they provide sidewalks. And that's not what's intended. What's intended is making sure that you have the interconnectivity to the site traditionally by cars to other sites. And that's what a connectivity index actually measures. And so by adding in pedestrian paths and sidewalks to that connectivity index, you are then changing your, you're allowing a developer to make what they always have, and you won't have any actual change in the development types. It's a lot to think about.

Do we have a connectivity index now?

Not today, but that's in the provisions in our block standards. And so you can do either block standards or connectivity index. And so if I'm going to use connectivity index, you have to define it. Should you have it today? Yes, absolutely. We did not have a definition of development. So we've added one in. It probably needs some work. But this actually is pulled from, we often take definitions directly from what's called the Planner's Dictionary, which is a full list of what planners in other jurisdictions all around the United States use. And this is one that I found really is a little bit more appropriate for our circumstances. Development means the construction, reconstruction, alteration, expansion, extension, or relocation of any building or structure, excavation, earth filling, grading, or mining, any use or change in use of any building or structure or land, any change in building type, or any expansion in the use of land. We do use development a lot of times in zoning ordinance already, and there's no actual definition development so this pretty much covers all your paces do we consider tree clearing to be development under our ordinance or is that dealt with separately we do but we don't regulate we in general we don't regulate we don't have an upper boundary we don't have like a Forest Conservation Ordinance or anything like that. We have Soil Water Management requirements that if you're clearing over an acre, then you have requirements that you have to fulfill, but we don't have direct regulations that regulate how many trees that you can cut down or clear before something else happens, yeah. With this definition, would that be? No, it doesn't, because you'll see, when you're seeing development later on, it directly says any development over an acre shall do X, Y, and Z. And so if you're doing, and normally you'll see that tie in directly with stormwater management, and that's where you mostly see that, is that when you develop over an acre, you have to do stormwater management. State law anyway, and this is just covering our bases that that's actually going to occur and somebody can't play word games It's actually it's not development. It's actually Just tree clearing actually. No, you're disturbing the land. It's development This is what and the state already says we're not gonna play that game, but this gives us local coverage as well These aren't in stone. These can be changed, and so as we're going through the provisions, if we see some problems, please point them out so we can start addressing them. Drive-through facilities. Okay, so this one is a little bit near and dear to my heart. We did not have a definition of drive-throughs and drive-through facilities, and it's extremely important that you do. We actually do regulate drive-throughs right now in some zones, and in some zones they are not allowed. But then it begs the question, what do you mean by drive-thru? So this is a definition, a standard definition of drive-thru facilities. It means a facility that provides or dispenses products or services through a service window or by an automated machine, ATMs, allowing customers to remain in vehicles that are in designated stacking lanes as a drive-thru.

Can we delete the definition of dump?

We will definitely look into that. I want to say yes, but before I review and see any links, we'll definitely look into being able to delete that. We found an issue with the definition of dwelling unit. specifically in when it refers to boarding houses and lodging units. And this really just, it doesn't actually define what a dwelling unit is. and that's why we've marked it out dwelling units available for rent occupancy for less than one week shall be considered boarding houses units and if that's the case then that should be in those definitions that has nothing directly to do with the dwelling unit I did add in rooms within a boarding lodging house shall not be considered dwelling units which if you read the definition dwelling unit you could make an argument that they would be dwelling units and so this is a clarification that i'm just looking through prior approvals and the individual sros single room occupancies haven't been considered dwelling units in your jurisdiction at least recently and i wanted to ensure that that's consistent with your You guys can change that. I've looked in state law. They actually do not define dwelling units. So that's actually a local designation, which was concerning to me because they regulate dwelling units now, but they don't define it.

In the general category of dwellings, can we go back to dwelling and dwelling multifamily? I'm just curious as if you know why a dwelling means a building or portion thereof arranged or designed to provide living facilities for one or more families. Dwelling multifamily means a residence designed for or occupied by three or more families with separate cooking and separate housekeeping and cooking facilities for each. Why wouldn't it just say living facilities for each, like the definition of dwelling? Why are the two defined differently as opposed to just by their number?

I'm not sure. I don't like these definitions. Either. Usually a dwelling is defined as a building a portion thereof arranged that's independent. It provides independent living facilities and the separation of those living facilities from other areas. That's usually how you define a dwelling. I don't love these definitions, but I didn't alter them because It just seemed like regular practice. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, and then you get into the argument about families and defining families, and there's been many cases on definite defining families, and there's a whole thing about that.

I will not get into that right now.

Okay. Can I ask about encroachment? Sure. Definition of encroachment means any architectural feature, structure, or structural element such as a gallery, fence, garden wall, porch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that breaks the plane of a vertical or horizontal regulatory limit. It says exceeding. That probably should say extending into a setback. How does a garden, what's a garden wall? First of all, I don't know if you disagree, but I think exceeding should probably be extended.

Yeah, I have to look into that, but in general, I would agree. Ed, I think we're having some audio difficulties. With me? Yeah, go closer. Cross-eyed, if I get any closer to that. Sorry about that. Okay. But we can mark it down and for review. Absolutely. Garden wall is an old term. I can definitely understand that in this encroachment, it reads more from provisions of form-based code. And so I can look into this. because some form-based codes regulate and actually define what a garden wall is, and it has to do with your build out of the frontage over the garden. But yeah, I'll take a look into this. Any additional before our next edit for frontage? Okay, so frontage. This is a part of, you all have said that you want to allow development on private roads and streets. So we have to define some terms a little bit differently as they have been defined to allow that. As before, frontiers meaning the length of a lot extending between the side lot lines of a lot which borders an accepted portion of a street. There's some contention on what does that mean, the accepted portions of a street. Um, but then it goes on main turnpike frontage does not apply to the definition. Um, what we've added is a private street, a portion of a street, a private street constructed to the city of Auburn standards or designated open space approved by the plan. And the reason why you see open space there is that, uh, we want, uh, there's going to be some certain situations where you're they're gonna be fronting onto an open space, because it is best practice to have dwellings front on and eyes on the open space. And some situations where you're gonna have some type of access easement, but not directly road frontage, or they're gonna have a little bit of access way to a street, but most of their frontage is gonna be oriented towards the open space. So you wanna encourage that type of design. And so that's why we've included a designated open space approved by the planning board for that one. Same thing with frontage line. Again, we have the public way. So we added a private way, constructed to the city of Auburn standards or designated open space approved by the planning board. So if you're going to change one, you have to change the other one as well. These are going through legal review. As a reminder, I am not a land use attorney. And so our job is to put really good concepts up and some good things and then work with our attorney to tighten these up.

DeCarlo, I'd like to discuss something else on page seven. Absolutely. Near the bottom, habitable space.

Yes.

I actually want to refer also back to page three where it talks about seller the interconnection of those two terms We look at seller Seller means a portion of a building below the first four joys having at least one half of its clear ceiling height below the mean level of adjacent ground the last sentence is what I'm getting at a seller shall not be used for habitation and We don't have a definition for habitation. We only have habitable space. The argument or the question could come up, what does not using a cellar as habitable space mean? Does that mean you can't eat in it? Does that mean you can't do laundry in it? Does that mean you can't sleep in it? If so and why, I think of daylight basements, which is also a cellar, Does that rule exist for fire code, where if people are sleeping there, they need means of egress more than one? Yeah, I kind of think that's a loose definition, and since we don't have, and basically this is a glossary of terms, and we don't have something that covers cannot be habitated in, we don't have habitable space. And there's just a disconnect there. And I can see down the road where that might be contested or asked for a little bit more clarity. So I'm just reaching out to the other board members and to you. Am I barking up a tree, or does that kind of make sense?

No, it makes sense. Some of these definitions are really old. And so this is going to be a part of cleaning some of that up. finished basement is a relatively recent thing, and so this is a part of that cleanup that you're going to have to do. I want to go back to the habitable space where that actually is mirroring some building standards, right? And that's why it directly reads about the seven feet. But that's a good point between the two, and we should mark it for review and alteration. All right, so I'm gonna move to the next page. My next edit is in industrial use. Some might be asking why am I altering industrial use when we're talking about housing and regulations? It's because it's in LD 997. It says that anywhere that you have commercial uses, you must also allow residential uses, so you can't have commercial-only zones, except for those areas that allow industrial uses. So you restrict housing in basically two areas right now, in your industrial zone, but also in your ag. Your ag zone was flagged. directly about housing and This clarifies that some of those uses that you would find or one of those uses that you would find in the AG zone Sawmills is an industrial use and so that's why you'll see Some clarification that industrial uses include but are not limited to automobile manufacturing foundries It adds just a little bit of clarification there. What it also does is that this definition was industrial use heavy for some reason, and you didn't have just a straight definition of industrial uses. You had an industrial use heavy, industrial use light, and so this altered it to have to just have a regular industrial use definition. And then I didn't alter what industrial use light meant. You have a definition there. But mutually separated definitions, you say anything that's not industrial use light is classified as industrial use heavy. That's where you cover all your bases on those type of definitions. Ed, you might bring up, well, what do we use industrial use light? And so we'll go through and review to make sure that we're actually using industrial use light somewhere. And so we may not even need to use industrial use light.

DeCarlo? I would personally like to see rail yards and rail transloading somehow incorporated into the heavy industrial or industrial use. Okay. I think that's important. Yeah, absolutely.

I would agree with that, and maybe you could replace automobile manufacturing. I don't know if we've ever had that in the city of Auburn, but you could replace it with rail yards as an example.

Okay, sure. And rail trans-loading.

And rail trans-loading.

Yeah, that's the process of loading or unloading freight cars.

Automobile manufacturing is usually the first example when you get industrial uses, but I get the point. Now, when Ford comes to town, We'll have a special meeting. Okay. We'll amend the ordinance.

They can have half the town.

Okay. Okay. So my next one is in lot. Does anyone have anything before lot? So again, when they restricted it to public streets, they really restricted it. You saw in multiple definitions, this is another definition that needed to be altered because of the public street issue. And we've added in, such lots shall have frontage on an accepted public street, private street, or open space having, oh, sorry, typo, having deeded legal access to a public street. It may consist of, and I left the list alone, single lot of record, portion of the lot of record, combination of complete lots of record, parcel of land described by meets and bounds, provided that in no case of division or combination shall any residential lot or parcel be created which does not meet departments of this chapter. A lot shown on the plan approved by the Planning Board of the City of Auburn. This reads like a court case was lost. Just gonna be honest there.

In the additional language that you've inserted, you've added the phrase, the term, I guess, private street. In the earlier, you used the term private way constructed to the city of Auburn standards. Was there a reason that we're not saying that here? Is this an existing private way? That's a good point. What are your thoughts? There are certainly a number of existing private ways. Correct. that were never constructed to city standards that someone might want to build on someday.

Yeah, and that's actually probably one of the reasons why I said I excluded the difference between a publicly, you know, built to our standards or not built to the standards. But there's a discrepancy between the two. Here's a question. You have a lot of streets, you have some private, you don't have a lot, but you do have some private streets. And some of them are gonna be in your growth area. This is gonna be a policy question. Do you want to allow the build out of those areas that are gonna be just on private ways? Existing private streets not built to the standard of the city. I know it's a loaded question, but it is a question that you're gonna have to address.

This brings another thing to light that I've been thinking of. Is staff aware, I'm not sure, different municipalities use different terms. Is staff aware of any paper roads in Auburn?

Absolutely, yes.

How are those handled? How should we, how are they, how could we handle paper roads in regards to lots and parcels?

That is a question that is so deep. Yeah. There's a statutory process for vacating paper streets, and there were sunset provisions that went along with that statutory scheme. So to answer the question, it'll be road by road, paper street by paper street.

A case-by-case consideration. Because as Auburn grows and expands, at some point in time, we're going to have a paper road issue and some kind of transaction or development. And I think having a grip on that before we get to there is probably a good idea.

It becomes even more complicated. Because there was recent legislation that said any street needs to remain clear and that the city has to actually maintain it being clear. And so then you get into, well, was this Paper Street ever abandoned? It's gonna be a loaded one by one type of deal as we go forward.

Fair enough. Honestly, I think that's probably the best policy anyway, because then you're taking all of the circumstances for each individual case one by one.

To answer your question to us, I would want an individual who owns land on an existing road, whether it meets city standards or not, to be able to build on his land.

Okay.

Okay.

We'll deal as it, you know, we'll deal as it comes, because you already have the power for existing streets to, if necessary, and something comes before you, you do have the power as a planning board. to require them to bring it up to a certain standard. This one has bothered me since I've arrived here. The lot frontage slash width. I've read it more times than not, over and over and over again, and it never made sense to me. It didn't make sense because of a couple different provisions later on, and there's been a drawing of equivalence between road frontage requirements and lot width, and those are not the same thing at all in your ordinance. And reading this over and over again, I have to put this to legal review, but you'll see this, is that if you change out the words lot frontage width with lot line front, as you see below is lot line rear, it reads actually to make sense. And so this is one thing that I'm going to be asking our attorney about, is that this is actually meant lot frontage width, or is this actually really supposed to be lot line front? So I'll ask the attorney about that. Any thoughts or move on? Hearing none. OK.

All right.

Yeah, that was just like something that I could not get out of my head, yeah.

Use your mic, Palau.

Oh yeah, my bad. So I have something on page nine, earlier on page nine. So landscape services and then lawn maintenance service. So I don't know where, within these definitions, the city requires people to maintain or encourages certain native species of types, whether that's plants or grass or whatever they have, and to discourage invasive species like the emerald warren.

The emerald warren, yeah.

Is that something that can apply in this definition, per se?

You would put that in your provisions. I would not put it in your definitions. You can. It's home rule. Do whatever you want. But I like regulating things where they should be regulated. And you do have some sections that that encourage landscaping and planting and those type of things, I would say it's a great addition. And I would say the majority of amendments are going that way in the state of Maine and East Coast and where planning is, is encouraging native species because of invasive nature, those type of things. And a lot of people are adding those provisions, so it's not out of the norm at all. But I would add those in the provisions

your provision sections rather than your definitions and i think what you're defining here is is a use in other words if we go to the land use ordinance we ought to find the word or the use landscape services listed somewhere in one of our districts you should One of the things I've asked staff to do is to, if they can readily do so, if we're defining things that don't exist in our ordinance, we can have a discussion about why. Yeah. Whether it's wise that they be in the ordinance or not. What they're defining if they're not in the ordinance.

Absolutely. Could I just, since we're on page nine, getting back there. Another term that came up was just lane, was used somewhere, and I'm wondering if we need to define what we mean by lane.

So lane is actually defined in your traffic ordinance, Chapter 46. And that's a different chapter altogether. If we're using lane in our zoning ordinance, you want to define it. But I've also added in your packet amendments to Chapter 46, which is not under your direct amendment powers, but I added it in because it's so critical to what you're doing. But yeah, if we're using it in zoning orders, it should be defined, period.

Well, I was going to address it later. Even with respect to streets, we talk about different arterial or collective streets and so forth. I know it's defined later, but again, it seems like if people, again, are looking at the ordinance, they've got to do something that's specified with respect to one of those specific streets that, again, it would be easier if it were defined right up front with definitions.

Yeah, and so that's, again, with our check, is that we need to check if we're using those direct terms in the zoning ordinance or in Chapter 46, because Chapter 46 is going to have its own section for definitions. But yeah, if we're using it, it should be defined, at the least as defined in Chapter 46, and then you can go to Chapter 46, and you're not making separate definitions.

Yeah.

I absolutely understand that this is a lot, and definition sections that right out of the gate is not the most interesting thing to do, but you'll see the importance as we go forward, and then it'll actually help with going back and forth. Next. Ah, P, pedestrian network. Pedestrian network means an interconnected system of walkways, sidewalks, crosswalks, pedestrian-oriented infrastructure designed to facilitate safe, efficient and enjoyable walk-in experiences. This is one of our standard definitions from the planning definitions, but we're just going to have to go the legal way. Just because it's okay in other places doesn't mean it's okay for us.

I should have brought this up back on page 10. Page 10. All right. Yep. We'll go back. In the lot types, there are one, two, three, four. For whatever reason, and this is, I don't mean to be persnickety, but this is the way it is, the corner lot defined as, interior lot defined as, everywhere else in this ordinance, you have the item such as lot line as means. Take out defined as and be consistent.

This one is directly, you'll see the AD and the BD diagram. You can tell that that was from form-based code. All right, so we did pedestrian network. Ah, okay, next one is sensitive environmental features. We're working on this one, but it is a important topic. Sensitive environmental features, right now we say means, mean, typo, sorry. Natural resources including but not limited to wetlands, vernal pools, threatened and endangered species, and wildlife habitat blocks. You'll see that come up when you're starting talking about design with block standards and those type of things and pedestrian networks and waivers on when to allow people to get out of these type of things when it's not, we wanna avoid sensitive environmental features or those types of stuff. So it's important to have that in here because we are gonna be using it.

This has come up before with other projects that we've done. So I know wetlands are easy to map and we have those accessible to us when we review applications. Bernal pools, do we know where in the city those form? Because I know those are temporary, seasonal based. Do you have a list of areas?

You do have a general mapping that's coming from the state. And then it is best practice is that if there's a question of a vernal pool that's gonna be on site or wetland be on site, to require a wetland delineation. And that way you would actually know what you have on that site as far as vernal pools. Especially now that vernal pools are extra protected by the state and you have an even bigger setback. and there's sometimes the good actors and the bad actors, and you do have sometimes that people fill in stuff before they try to do a delineation, and so it's making sure that you have that correct.

We can certainly require an ordinance if we wish to that the soil scientists, the wetland scientists, verify that there are unvernal weeds. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And the problem, it's a timing issue. It can only be checked in late April and May. So you've got to do it before you present your plan. Yep.

So we do have that power. You don't use a lot of other powers that I've seen in other jurisdictions. And there's many reasons why you do or why you don't. But you do have these tools available to you if you'd like to use them. And that's why we're here. Hey, you have this tool that you can use if you wanted to.

Sorry, I had one more thought on that. When I read it, and I don't have a solution to this, it's just how I'm reading it, it says sensitive environmental features mean natural resources. And the natural resources from then on, that could all just be defined as natural resources. And the sensitive qualifier at the beginning, I feel like there should be something between mean and natural, like potentially impacted or something like that, because it And that's, it might just be how I'm reading it, but sensitive environmental features mean natural resources, including, like, I could just say natural resources, from natural resources on, it doesn't, it's not different than, like, other natural resources, is how I'm reading it.

Like, all of it, like, it's, the sensitive isn't, isn't redefined in the... Yeah, that there are, that may be impacted by development and would cause adverse consequences to... natural systems something a qualifier yeah yeah i just made that up that's not the definition that we're using that sounded practice it's the environmental science background environmental planning background sorry um so the next one we have our street system um you need a definition of street system we're going to be using it Local street system means the interconnected system of collector and local streets providing access to a development from an arterial street. Very specific meaning. You want to make sure that you have a definition of street system. This might be altered. This is probably definitely going to be altered, this definition, but the concept of you needing a definition of street system is what I'm getting at. And just as we're going to rework the sensitive environmental features definition, we're probably going to rework this a couple times as well.

I thought I saw it somewhere. Do we define what an arterial street is?

We do, which is strange, because that's just one of Bob's things. We define arterial street here, but that really should point us to a single direction so we're not changing the definition in the zoning ordinance and meaning something completely different in our traffic ordinance and our street ordinance. And that's where those terms are really defined in our street and traffic ordinance 46. Yeah, we do. So that's something that's going to be addressed as well. It's a Pandora's box. As soon as you open it up, you're going to find all of these interconnected problems. One thing I'll say is that if you try to fix every problem, you'll never get to the end. It works better if you create a system of improvement that will correct as many problems as we see today. We continue to correct them as we go forward until we have a much better system from when we started. The definition of subdivision. This is one near and dear to my heart because it only referred to land as defined in state statute and I needed to make sure it also referred to dwelling units as it sees in state statute 38. The definition section of 30-A is in 4401, and that's the section that lays out all the statutory requirements, definitions that you're going to need when it applies to. I do like how this is done because your alternate of doing this is having the long definition subdivision by the state, and I don't know if you've seen that. It is expansive. That's the only way to describe it.

DeCarlo yes, absolutely if I may staying on page 17 17 under transmission towers Personally, I think maybe we could benefit from an additional definition Something like unfit for use or unfit for current use having to do with PFAS contamination or things like that I think maybe having something defined for looking down the road for the future, any lands or soils that are known to be contaminated, we have a definition to describe them in regards to any kind of development or how they're treated or how they're carried. Just my thought, I'm open to other opinions.

Yeah, and that's gonna be helpful, especially when we're dealing with brownfields and redevelopment of those sites, or what are we gonna do with those sites? fire and capping, where are we as a city gonna require that?

As with over the past couple years, the realization of how broad that problem really is, having a way to define it within the municipality, I think it's probably a responsible idea.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

And we've made it to the end of definitions. Any other, just general comments, general reactions to the definition section? Not the most exciting section, but it gives us a start. It's necessary, very necessary. All right, so let's get on to the next one. General provisions. This is where the fireworks start. OK, so the first section is buildings per lot. You originally set up a system, and it's a regular land use system, sorry, Mike. It's a regular land use system where you either only allow one principal structure, one principal use per lot, and that makes a lot better, not lot better, a lot easier organization of classifications of what's going on. But just because it's easy doesn't mean it reflects real life. It's one of those things that you've created a system and it simplifies it past the point of recognition and past what people actually use land for. And then state law started coming in and you start tweaking that provision over and over again and tweaking it over and over again. It formed something that it never was meant to be. And so it's time, I feel, it's time to take that out. It is time to take out that restriction and allow more uses and more principal uses on lots, because we're now in a time that we're going back towards having the mixes of uses on lots. And so this section takes out all the caveats, and that's what you're seeing there, and just Very directly says more than one principal building may be erected on any lot provided that the lot has available building area for more than one dwelling in accordance with the applicable zoning district or overlay. That's one of the one caveats we wanna make sure that we're still consistent with subdivision and all the standards of density that you have citywide. In all zoning districts, the minimum distance of 10 feet shall be required between primary structures. It has to do with fire and fire code. Any structure sharing party walls are not subject to this distance requirement. So that's the separation that happens in building code. And then the additional building shall share a driveway curb cut or access to the public street through an internal street with a pre-existing building unless it is determined that another driveway location could provide safer access than the existing driveway or street. This comes up with condos a lot. When you're talking about an existing street, a lot of times they want individual curb cuts on the same lot. And so you're getting a pattern of development that you never intended when you're talking about distances between driveways on that existing street. This is a tool. You can take it. You can leave it. You can take it out. But it's kind of best practice that if you're developing on the same lot, then you want to have one access point for those structures on that lot. Have them share a driveway. Have them share a street. But don't create more than curb cuts in what are necessary, basically.

can there be any restrictions around ownership meaning that we require that all of the buildings are owned by the lot owner just envisioning a scenario where somebody builds a house behind their house and attempts to sell it then you can't do condos excluding condos see so then we get into the that's where that's the trick it's that then you get into

condos and you can or here's another situation commercial properties where you're leasing the land but the structure belongs to a different owner so you can you can do it but I just I'm pointing out maybe some of the difficulties you'll run into if

Yeah, I think with the condos, I mean, there's a state statutory scheme that deals with condos and all owners have some ownership interest in the common land. I'm concerned with literally a single family home on a single lot, somebody building a house on that property and then attempting to sell that house to somebody that has no ownership. the ground I mean obviously they'd never get a loan for something like that but just as a practical matter I could see some very messy things coming from multiple structure ownership on a single lot yeah you can make that restriction if you if you if you want to make that restriction it will

I don't know what are the third order effects of making that restriction. I'll ask, what problem are you trying to solve?

I'm trying to solve the problem of someone owning a two-acre lot with a single-family home on it, building another single-family home, and selling just the structure to a second party. And then that person owns the home, but not the land under it. And with no... operating agreement no no common land rights um you have you have a problem if you own a immovable structure on land that you don't own okay so then you would get even more specific because the structure has to be immovable because then you get into what about sure mobile home parks are are completely different right and that was one of the issues we had with a project that we reviewed multiple times where someone was trying to sell homes on land that they had no ownership in whatsoever and you can't pick up your home and leave if you have an issue yeah i mean that's going to be a policy decision between you all and the council i mean

Usually I haven't seen that restriction in zoning ordinances.

So I am going to be very honest with you because of the condo problem and the Interaction with no problem others There's a statutory scheme and a statutory definition of a condominium and condominium owners all have a collective agreement and common ownership Yeah, I'm talking about someone that doesn't have any common ownership. They have maybe an easement of

right of access to get to their building on someone else's property I mean so you all can make that I mean I'm okay with you putting it in and I just don't know the third order effects of putting a provision like that I'm if you like I would like to ask legal about it getting a little bit of land use attorney on me um so i would like to a little bit more guidance on that i know enough that i don't know enough and so that's what i'm trying to say to you yeah yeah dwellings or dwelling units yes on a lot yes um

When does our review even kick in? Because, I mean, you can have five dwelling units on a lot, right? Under the new statute?

You can do four in a single structure without it being subdivision. However, if they want to do two duplexes, it is under your review because that actually is subdivision. It's... less than five in a single structure, that's when it's not subdivision. So you're gonna see a lot of these.

So if it's two, to Maureen's point, if it's two structures, make it simple, just two single family homes on a minimum size lot, that wouldn't come to us?

No, it doesn't come to you today. It didn't come to you for years. because it's just one construction of one more dwelling on a single property.

But it would be regulated by the section of the ordinance.

Correct. It is regulated by the zoning ordinance. It's more of you just won't see it before a planning board. So this is one of the situations where I like that you're bringing this up because you regulate more than the provisions that you're going to directly be seeing. And so this is one of those examples. Would you all like me to look into this? Because I'm interested in it now. Yes. Yes. And we want legal to give you a prompt response. OK. Absolutely. And so that is that section of just the buildings per lot. Conversion of one-family dwellings. I've read this section, and I kind of got a gist of what it was trying to accomplish. And so I tried to stick to the spirit of what it was trying to do. In some areas, you don't want multifamilies looking like a multifamily apartment building. We see them all the time in Maine and other places. You have a Victorian house. And it's been converted into multiple dwelling units, and it's fine. No one bats an eye at it. It seems that when the design changes, right, then it becomes an issue. It's not fitting in. It's not conducive to the neighborhood. And then you have some type of issues. And so in noticing that this is the spirit of what was going on in these provisions, I've named... I've named some of these zones where I was kind of get the opinion of like the gist of you want these to look more like single family homes and not like the traditional apartment buildings as when we talk about apartment buildings. Correct me if I'm wrong, because this is just me reading the ordinance and going, I think this is what this was actually trying to do. rather than doing this. Or we can take it out. I'm okay with it. But I wanted to bring this up and bring you all an option that stays a little bit true to the provisions as they were trying to do. Because some of the stuff you couldn't keep in regardless. One accessible off-street parking space because you have the dwelling stuff.

Are fire escapes necessary if a building is sprinkled?

That's a building code question. I can get you the answer to that. It depends. It depends. And I kind of get your gist that if the whole thing is sprinkled, are we going to have to have a Firescape? I know in some codes, 2021 or 20 you have to have a second means of egress even if you have a sprinkler system um but i don't know under our direct provisions if that's going to be required under our current um building code of this year it is the biggest eyesore i think converted buildings is the pressure treated ratty fire escapes that get slapped on the side of all of The question is how much you want to regulate that. You can say, well, those fire escapes can only be on the rear of the building or the side of the building instead of the facade. These are subjective. This is straight up subjective now. But these are preferences. I will say that some of these zones are going away. So that's a part of the discussion. Like you have only one place that's a MFS zone and that zone's not gonna be a thing anymore because of the new state standards. And you only have a couple more zones that are urban residents around Taylor Pond and those are gonna be altered as well. Any other comments, any thoughts about this? Do you like it? Do you not like it? This was specifically brought up because I need some feedback.

I think you're right with your interpretation of what was trying to be defined aesthetically.

OK. So when is the next change? Nonconforming lots. Nonconforming lots, something was added just in. Abutting undeveloped nonconforming lots under one ownership shall be considered as one lot and shall not be again divided. And that was a period there. And I thought you might want to add in without full compliance of the standards of this ordinance to allow those lots to be divided again because technically under this provision, we were saying that you could never divide those lots again. So added that in. Untoward lots was taken out previously, so it's just reflective of that. Here we are. This wasn't really changed, and I'm thinking of just taking out uses again. I changed this a couple times to have accessory use provisions in this section, but I took them out and made them put their own section. Here's the restriction right here that I was talking about before. The maximum forest place of an accessory building on lots under two acres is 1,000 square feet. On lots that's over two acres, there's no maximum size. That's your current provisions. Think about if you want to change that or if you like it.

When you say no maximum size, it still has to be held to setbacks?

Yes, yes. And so this has to do with the structure itself, not the location of the structure.

But it still has to be customarily incidental to the principal structure. Correct, yes. Which would suggest you couldn't have a 1,000 square foot house and a 3,000 square foot. Yeah, no.

So this is a question. Well, it's more of, I know, and Dustin, I need to check the definition that actually says that here. I had a question about sizes, and when we get to ag, some of those accessory structures are bigger than the home. They're bigger than, you know, and so how do you want to deal with those type of situations?

Maybe the barn is the principal structure. There you go. It is ag. The farmer lives. Yeah.

I think it's important, going even back to our original definitions, when we talk about ADUs and we're talking about 1,000 square feet, 1,500 square feet, I think it could end up being helpful not just for staff or planning board members, but more so for the general public and potential developers, people that want to do ADUs. To understand if and what the difference is between a footprint versus the actual living space. Correct. Is it a thousand square foot footprint, but they can go up and up and have X amount of square feet of livable space? Yes. I think that is an important distinction to have in here somewhere.

Yes. And that matters more to the design of what people live. C then does this definition because this is the first floor space. This is not even footprint. And so. Footprint becomes really, really important when we're talking about design of spaces. It's one of the most important things, and it really determines how you are going to interact with that structure.

And what I'm getting at is I think it might be important to make that determination, maybe abridge some of the definitions we've gone over earlier tonight to make that clarification that we're talking footprint or we're talking livable space. I think that... difference is important for people to understand.

And when you do not specify what you mean by it, when we talk about space, it's not even, it doesn't even refer to livable space, it refers to the gross space of it. And that's a completely different thing altogether. So you can have space and it's not livable space, and it's gonna count against you in the size of the structure in certain situations, especially in that 1,500 square feet. Another consideration. Here's a question. Do you guys want me to change this into footprint instead of first floor space? How much section are we on? So this is 6043. I haven't altered this. This is just me reading this live and going, should this be footprint?

I think footprint is helpful and a little more clarifying term for people to visualize and wrap their heads around.

Sure, absolutely, yeah.

I would agree, but I think if we're going to use it in one place, we ought to use it everywhere.

YES, EXACTLY. WHERE THE FOOTPRINT IS APPLICABLE, IT SHOULD BE VERY CLEARLY STATED FOOTPRINT. YEAH. UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED AS LIVING AREA.

YEAH, ABSOLUTELY. TAKE THE ADU, FOR EXAMPLE, 1500 SQUARE FEET.

NO, I WOULD SAY THAT'S GROSS AREA. SO IN READING THAT.

COULD BE THREE STORIES OF A 500 FOOTPRINT.

YES.

And that's what I'm saying. I think we need to have that clarification. Yes, you need to have that discussion. You really do need to have that discussion.

What do you want to do?

I guess the question comes to my mind is, we talked about the first floor. Does the accessory building possibly have two or three floors? It could. think it gets back to the question original question we may have a residential house but all of a sudden you've got an accessory building confined to so many square feet footprint or for first floor but that doesn't preclude having additional space second or third floor

Well, the accessory dwelling definition only gives an overall limitation of 1,500. And so it's inclusive of footprint, livable space. Everything has to be within that 1,500. This one is only regulating the first floor space of accessory structure. And so technically, you have to be compliant with both, because this is the first floor space, and you have a limitation of 1,000 square feet on the first floor. But you have an overall limitation of 1,500 when it comes to ADUs.

It gets it gets complicated and you could you could have a 500 square foot footprint with a 1500 square foot second floor, correct?

it would it's one of those wonky ones where you have a small and it flares out but Technically, yes, technically.

Yes Is there any limit on number of floors? I?

No, not in all zones. And you have some form-based code zones, and those have limitations on stories in those districts. In other zones, you have minimums, minimum setbacks or whatever have you, and you say, hey, hands off.

And no height restriction?

You do have height restrictions, but it's not in stories. It's a height restriction. Yeah. And it goes on how you're going to measure that height and average distance around the footprint or whatever have you. But because you're averaging, if you're on slopes, it becomes a lot different.

Is there a limit to the number of accessory buildings you can have on a lot?

Not that I've seen. Not that I've seen. And then it goes to the question, well, you've generally left it alone. Because I'm under the understanding you don't want to get into the argument, well, what do you mean how many sheds I can have on my property?

You could put a lot of sheds on your property. You could. You know, a 10 by 12 shed, and you can back it right up to your neighbor's line. There's no setback.

line right up in certain zones in certain zones certain zones so there are limits in other zones and in certain zones you do have setback requirements that apply

For residential accessory use, it says in the definition, it says here, there's no setback. Oh, give me a second. Zero rear and side setback.

Oh, you mean for the 120 square feet? Yeah, there's no setbacks for those. So yes, if you wanted to line up 10 120 square feet accessory structures on your lot line, you could. Okay, so this gets into the conversation, this is gonna get into the conversation on control over the ordinance. When is the line too much to regulating versus over-regulating? Where's your line gonna be? And the line is different from a lot of people in different areas. You'll see a lot of regulation where you see a lot of places that are closer by each other, because you have to have some rules when people are really close to each other. And when people are farther apart, you sometimes see a lot less regulation. It's just like, what does it matter? I have five acres between me and my neighbor Bob. He's been there for 20 years. I don't care what he does. He doesn't care what I do. But you're going to have to make a decision as a body of, you know, where's your line of regulation?

Talking about this reminds me of something that I don't think we ever finalized that came up maybe a year or so ago when we were talking about the shipping containers and Whether or not those could be placed on properties in certain zones and whether or not they were excess accessory uses Did we ever finalize that I forgot all about that.

I

I've looked into this, and my understanding, and I'll look more into this, I was not going to bring this up, that it was sent back to the planning board with some questions to answer. I have never read what was sent back or what was sent between the two bodies, but I will go and look into this and give you a review. Basically, not a report, because you guys know if I'm doing a report, I'll do an actual report, but an update on where that landed so you can have a discussion or make a decision of where you want to go next with that. That's going to be not primary for this one, but it's going to be interrelated. You've had a case recently that had dealt with those, and there's some outstanding questions. It's like, okay, well, you can't place them, you can't use them as accessory structures on your lot or primary structures on your lot. Can you sell them? As products, they are a product to sell. Can you sell those? So those are outstanding questions that you probably want to think about. Okay.

Are you referring to the one on Center Street? Is that what you're talking about, or is this...

wasn't talking about anyone in particular just conceptually something that the board had addressed a while ago and we never resolved it that makes sense the one on park avenue is gone it was my understanding that you all put forward amendment language to the actual ordinance and so this is not in reference to any piece of property but you all you literally put ordinance language together um and that was sent back for questioning I wasn't here, so that's just my third party hearing about this. Here is home occupations, where you spoke about before, 6046. So I want to just bring this up as we're going through it. Establishment of a home occupation shall be permitted in all residential zoning districts, provided the use is consistent with the definition of home occupation, as per that definition. and approval is secure from the Department of Community Development and Planning in accordance with Article 9 of this chapter. And there's other sections that have to do with home occupations that are hidden. Yeah. Yes, another place. There's another place. Sam will probably bring it up. I haven't altered any of these provisions. Again, yes, they are going to need work, but they haven't been directly altered and then we have additional dwellings permitted to increase housing opportunity this section Not written well. And so we're deleting a large portion of it. Some of it was inconsistent with your underlying zoning area requirements of the lot. And a lot of it's duplicative of the actual information that's in the sections themselves and not needed. And then you had a whole column of accessory dwelling units and it just not organized. as well as I would like it and so I've just added in more than one dwelling unit may be erected on a single lot provided that the minimum dimensional and building placement requirements a schooling lot width and depth shall be met for each additional dwelling unit and so this goes directly on in those zones you're going to have minimum requirements for dwelling units and density requirements I need to work on this language because of the shall be met for each additional dwelling unit portion and so making sure that it won't conflict with okay well we need you to get more of this area that area and not be intended to do so additional dwelling units allowed under this section are subject to more stringent lot size requirements per unit if located in an applicable overlay this is just it already is but this is just a clarification that no you need to Certain overlays, you're gonna have more restrictions. Shoreland is one example.

Can you have an ADU in shoreland?

You can, yes. As long as the underlying density requirements are met per state law. There's size requirements for the lot, for un-sewered lots in shoreland. That needs to be, I believe it's either 20K or 10K. I'll have to look directly into that.

What if they're sewered?

If there's sewer, then you go into underlying. Then what? Underlying zoning. Sorry?

Didn't we just delete unsewered lots from our definitions?

Yes, but you still have state regulations. Yeah, and you still have shoreland regulations as well. And so that's what I'm saying is that then you had these regulations on top of that, and you already have underlying requirements for dwelling units when it refers to shoreland and those over overlays. So you were doing way more, and then they were conflicting. So a lot of the section has been deleted. When it refers to minimum lot area, this is directly from your sections themselves when you're going to these zones. Same thing with the minimum lot width, same thing with the zones and the accessory dwelling units. You didn't have a section, and so if you see below, I've actually added a section. So all of this has been deleted. I didn't have to worry about the affordable housing density bonus because it actually did it already. Height has been added in. Affordable housing height bonus. And this matches the language from state, new state rules. And then we have a section for accessory dwelling units directly. So an accessory dwelling unit shall be allowed on any lot having or permitting a residential use, provided that the first accessory dwelling unit is exempt from the calculation of density for the lot, parcel, or tract upon which it is located. Subsequent dwelling units shall not be considered accessory dwelling units. So that means that you can have one accessory dwelling unit, and then all the other units are not considered that accessory dwelling unit. it gets really wonky. All lot line setback requirements for accessory dwelling units are the same as other accessory structures for the zoning district in which the lot parcel attract is located. First feedback point. The accessory dwelling unit, it can be located in accessory structures. There is an underlying lower limit for dwelling units in the state of Maine Right now, 190. Technically, if it's located in an accessory structure, an accessory dwelling unit can be located in an accessory structure. And they have lower setbacks in each of the zones. A lot of the zones, not every zone, but a lot of the zones. So just be aware of that. And I didn't know what you guys wanted to do with that. State law does permit us to regulate the location of sexual assault units. And so my first question point is, is that okay? Are you guys hands off right now? It's not been a problem, so we're not going to make it a problem. Or we want a little bit more certainty on what we're doing here, so we want to regulate it a little bit.

I'm just looking at the definitions. Is there any, are there any minimum requirements for a dwelling unit as far as plumbing and cooking facilities?

There is for, um, and you will get to that section of, um, we've added in for any dwelling, new dwelling unit, they have to show that, uh, first you have building code and any constructed new dwelling unit has to meet building code, which means that they have to have potable water and sewer facilities. But state law requires us, if they're gonna be connected to public water and public sewer system, to get a capacity letter, some capacity demonstration from the water and sewer districts. And you'll see when we get to that section, That section is the verbatim what came from MOCA of their information of what information they need to provide for us and what counts as proof of adequate sewer and water.

Okay.

Just making sure that we don't throw up bunk houses and start calling them accessory dwelling units.

Yeah. Any dwelling unit by building code needs to have potable water, potable sewer, electric. You don't get out of it. If it's a dwelling unit, you must have those facilities. And if you don't have the facilities, you're actually condemned. That's today. That's health code. That's not anything that the planners are doing. I just want to make that certain. That's actually state law. Fire suppression sprinklers shall be required on accessory dwelling units within or attached to a structure of more than two dwelling units. Also, this is from the state standards. A lot of this is state language. The construction of accessory dwelling units is preceded by the construction of a primary. This is not state language. So... So this ensures that your primary unit is constructed first, and people aren't just calling it an ADU and putting it on the lot, and you get into the legal argument. No, it's not an ADU. It's not accessory to anything. It's a primary use. It's a primary structure. That's your house first, and that's the primary structure. This is just the timing. I don't know if you want to have this or not, but I wanted to bring that up for discussion.

Do we have the authority to stipulate that an ADU not exceed the size of the original home on the lot?

You need to then define what is the original home on the lot. So what about tear down rebuilds?

Well, right here in number six, it says the construction of the accessory unit is preceded by the construction of the primary dwelling unit.

Yeah, I'm sorry, you said original.

Well, can we have language restricting that an ADU be no larger than the primary dwelling unit on that lot?

So you already have a definition of accessory uses in there is that if the accessory dwelling unit is larger than the primary, by definition it becomes the primary. And so that is the switch between that and normally why you don't have that language. If you wanna regulate the size, you can do percentages of the primary unit and then that can be, can be no larger than 50%. It does get a little bit wonky there. I just want to give you some information. But you guys have, as a city, you've decided we're just going to give a straight-up limit to everybody. This is a size limitation, but you can. So to directly answer your question, yes, you can, if you wanted to.

So we could replace the 1,500 square foot maximum that we presently have in our ADU definition with 75% of the principal structure.

Or 1,500, but not to exceed the size of the principal structure.

You could. You could. With the new density requirements, I'm just going to talk about practicalities. I can just say, this is another dwelling unit then. It's not an ADU. When we're talking about the size requirements, because we're talking about four units per 5,000 square feet, ADUs really become less relevant in that sense, except when you're outside of the growth area. When you're outside of the growth area, then you will have some of those concerns. Inside the growth area, though, you'd be hard-pressed to find a lot in the growth area that you can at least put two units on. And that's one of the.

Yeah, that's a good point.

So in my opinion as a planner, they kind of made ADUs kind of irrelevant in growth areas because you have all this base density to begin with. It's a market thing rather than anything. Why would I bother? ADU that has a size restriction, I could just make another primary dwelling on my lot. Best goes to the questions of regulating versus over-regulating. Okay, I won't bother. Any other comments on this ADU section? Again, this is the first hit at it. You're going to come up with some questions after we look at this. We're expecting comments that you're going to send us. OK. Adequate water and sewer facilities. This is directly from the state in their language. Basically, owner of a proposed dwelling unit shall provide written verification to the city of Auburn that each proposed structure is to be serviced by adequate water and wastewater services prior to certification and development for occupancy or similar type of approval process. The following shall constitute as written verification. And then it goes down the list. And these are directly from the state language, and some of them were even more wonky, so even though the state gave this to us, we're still gonna go through a legal review, because I'm pretty sure that each proposed structure is supposed to be each proposed dwelling, because that is what the actual law was referring to. And that ends our first real section.

I had a question, subsection two of that, provision 60-57. Yes. I had the same question when I read the law. This is the state law. Yeah, yeah. That provides that the septic system must be verified as adequate by a local plumbing inspector. It doesn't say it has to be the city of Auburn's plumbing inspector.

It's a good point.

I don't know if we do or not, but it could be anything.

Yeah. I'll repeat what I've heard about the new state law. There's a lot of good case law that's going to be written from this thing. Do we want to specify? We can specify city, local. I mean, it's the intent, so I'm okay with it.

I think it's the intent.

Yeah.

Otherwise, you will have people shopping.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say that.

Because this is a local, and then how do you define local? It's a nightmare. Right. Yeah. Okay. So we'll add some language in there. Yep. OK, so this ends this section. We're in the third one, which is blocks. Yes, we're in blocks. So something happened with formatting. It's not coming up red, but this whole section is new. It's nothing that's existing. You never had a block section. Form-based code, it's based on blocks. It is actually quite unusual that you have a form-based code and you have no block standards. because that form-based code is based on blocks. It's the essential piece of any type of that, like that type of land use organization. So we talked about it a bunch of times before. These are the actual provisions. The first requirement is all developable land within a proposed development must be divided into blocks. after your exception, except land consisting only of infrastructure or recreational corridors, sensitive environmental features, that's why you have that definition, land used for agricultural, land directly abutting an interstate highway, and state roadways where access is limited. I would like to say I am great enough to make this up, but I've been looking at other places, and that's where this first provision came from. Block perimeters shall be marked by street to right of way. Block perimeters are limited to 1,600 feet in length, except that blocks containing only industrial structures, civic space, ah, that's where civic space is, open space may exceed this limit. The length of any individual side of a block shall not exceed 500 feet in length. That goes with, if you're doing 1,600, you're going to get wonky, so some people will say, well, 100 feet wide, and then the breasts are going to be long, and that really It's not in the spirit of what you are trying to make a block from. This is setting up your regular standards and then you'll see the waivers from this section and how, okay, it's not gonna be good for every type of thing. And block perimeters exceeding 1600 feet in length, the board shall require the reservation of a 20 foot wide easement through the block to provide for the crossing of underground utilities and pedestrian traffic and shall require a paved six foot wide path, paved footpath be included. The board shall require the developer to provide for the proper maintenance of any such easement. And so this is an eventuality that you have bigger blocks that you want to make sure that you have some way for a pedestrian to get through that block. You'll see why.

Can we consider also giving them the option of having it be concrete, not just paved? That seems, by saying paved, that's very limiting. Yeah. Our sidewalks are concrete.

I can look into that, like the legal wording of that, because usually when you're saying paved, you also are referring to concrete. But that's a good catch. So I can ask about that. Yeah. A proposed development shall provide multiple direct connections in its local street system to and between local destinations, such as parks, schools, and shopping, without requiring the use of arterial streets. Each development shall incorporate and continue all collector or local streets stubbed to the boundary of the development plan by previously approved but unbuilt development or existing development. What this provision is doing, wordy, legal language already um this this will come into play where you are developing or redeveloping in areas that you want more connection to be um for instance you're going to have some redevelopment um you may possibly have redevelopment on center street but you want to keep the connection of the main arterial through center street but you want to require um other other streets off of those local streets and so it's slow traffic and walkable uh boulevard right slow traffic on those are those those access ones when you have fast traffic on the main ones um this allows that to happen you're going you have plans and you have a lot of lot plans that i've seen in development that and and um that envisions local streets next to these large arterials, you're gonna need a provision to actually do that. Without any provision to do that, you're gonna find yourself in a state where, well, how do we ask for that interconnection? And this is kinda how you ask for those interconnections. So it's a connectivity standard. To ensure future streets connections to adjacent developable parcels, this one is, only going to apply to bigger parcels you'll see why to ensure future street connections to adjacent development parcels our proposed development shall provide a local street connection space at intervals not to exceed 660 feet along each boundary that abuts potential developable or redevelopable land this is not a standard that i created This is a regular standard for larger developments and to ensure that you're not creating dead ends for larger developments and developments that are right next to developable land. Next one is the following types of development are exempt from the requirements of A to D above. Existing lots with less than five acres, so a lot of that is gonna be exempt. and will or currently has a total of less than 10 dwellings. An existing developed lot seeking to construct accessory structures. Hey, those are not gonna be involved in that, in the blocks. An existing undeveloped lot seeking to construct a single building having a footprint less than 3,000 square feet. Now that we get into footprints, right? 3,000 square feet is a big, really big structure. A proposed development located outside the designated growth area, which will provide a local street system with a connectivity index greater than 1.4. This is when we get into connectivity indexes. So outside of the growth area, you're not going to be making blocks, but you are going to be requiring connectivity. And so this is, you're going to have those big subdivisions, possibly big subdivisions in some areas, and so we're not going to tell them you need to, you're not going to have that density that you have to be concerned with out there. and then buildings constructed solely for agricultural or industrial purposes on lots greater than five acres. This exemption shall not be construed to apply to residential or other types of development, even if occurring on land primarily devoted to agricultural or industrial purposes. So this is important because you have, in your industrial area right now, you allow dwellings to exist in certain circumstances. This is saying, hey, just because you're on industrial land, if you start creating what we considered a subdivision, you don't get out of block standards for that. For industrial purposes, OK, fine. Yeah, OK, we don't need you to do block standards. But if you also start to constructing some residential structures and development, you do need to follow the block standards. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the performance standards contained in the subsection A through D of this section may be waived by the Planning Board upon a finding that the property is to be developed is unsuitable for block style design as otherwise required. In the instance a waiver is granted, the Planning Board may require conditions such as a required connectivity index above 1.4, which increase the connectivity of the proposed development. Directly, hey, we have standards, but you can give a waiver for it if this is not, those instances that this is not, we don't think that this is adequate. But then it also gives you the power to say, well, you still need to be connected in a certain way. An exempted subdivision per 6055G located within the growth area shall provide a pedestrian path uninterrupted by vehicle traffic. All structures containing dwellings shall have entrances oriented towards this pedestrian path. So this is in the case where you're an exempted subdivision and you're doing a bunch of, you are having some density. As we know, you're 32 units an acre now in your growth area, right? And so in the instance that you are not putting it in blocks, we are saying that you need to still do something for the pedestrian and not just for cars. But a lot of times what you'll see with these, apartment buildings is that apartment building will be right up against the parking lot and there'll be no way for pedestrian to actually even get to the building without actually walking through the parking lot and some of the parking lots are extremely large with no pedestrian facilities what this is saying is that you need to provide those pedestrian facilities for those people living there and it needs the building needs to be oriented towards there so you can actually access the building And then you have one walkability standard. Drive-through facilities shall be prohibited in T6, T5, T5, T4, and 42B. MFS and UR, but those are really just going away. So this is controlling where you want car-oriented design. This is going to be extremely important in your most urban areas or places that people are most closest together. An example. If you have a drive-through, you have way less walkability. And so this is something that you really want to pay attention to. For instance, we have a Chick-fil-A coming in right now. Yeah, Turner Street. Turner Street is thought to, in the future, be designed as a walkable area. but you have a Chick-fil-A driving right there. So how are those two things are going to be consistent with each other? So now you have to think, because we're talking about 20 years, 40 years in advance, there's going to be a lot of years before that Chick-fil-A is gone, that it's locked in. But you need to start thinking about other development in those type of areas.

Whew.

All right, so this is the first look at our block section. Very rough draft. I wanted to know any feedback, any comments. Have I done too much? Have I not done enough?

Well, I'll just go ahead and say I love a lot of the pedestrian-centered topics that we're dealing with when it comes to blocks. I don't think it goes far enough, but hopefully we can, you know, this is a nice first step. But I'll just step aside and say I love everything that I'm hearing.

I'm confused. Sure. I think I really need to see a section of the city that might be subjected to these standards. I need you to come in with a proposal that shows me how this works. Because I don't know how we measure 1600 feet. I truly don't see how it works.

Sure.

I'm not missing it in any way. I'm all in favor of slowing things down, more of a community feel, pedestrian friendly, all of that, but I just need to understand how that fits on in downtown Auburn or Center Street.

Sure, no, absolutely. That's extremely fair.

Let me say this. Especially if you're going to empower the planning board to waive all of this because the developer comes in and says, I can't do it. I want to be able to push back and say, well, no, I think you can, but I don't understand it right now, so I wouldn't be able to do that.

Absolutely. It's a little late in the game, but I asked Sam to look up some examples. Did you have any examples of block standards or other standards?

Yeah.

Oh, just images of development today in Auburn that is counter to this, but not blocks.

OK. I'm going to show you one place in town where this would be, you need to start thinking about redevelopment. Maine doesn't like to think about redevelopment. For some reason, you guys are just like, oh, no, we've already been built out. It's never going to change, and we're done. We're done here. Not exactly the case. And one area I'll bring up directly is this mall. There's a concept called sprawl repair. And what sprawl repair does is that it takes areas. This is called a... fried egg where you have a development and it's centered around a sea of parking. And you go, well, how are we ever going to fix that? How is that ever going to turn into anything else? Well, turns out that the parking lot itself, it's already in blocks. And so it becomes a lot easier to do so. When you start to see the drive aisles, one of the aisles starts to become a road or a lane, and this becomes a block. It's centered, I'm sorry, it's surrounded by all sides of the area that's going to be developed by streets, and then streets actually bisect the area, making a block system. This becomes, it literally becomes a block. And don't have to take my word for it, I'm actually gonna bring examples that things have been done in the past, and it's exactly these type of this. And this is just redevelopment, right? And so when we're talking about greenfield development, or land that has never been developed before, it becomes a lot easier. This is just an example on, a place that can be redeveloped and how they still can be doing those things. And then eventually what happens, though, is that the mall gets surrounded by new development and new blocks, and then they start cutting up or making alleys through where you see actual structures. And then the mall itself becomes blocks as well. And so this is just a really broad example of somewhere I can see immediately turning into blocks. And if a case like this can be divided into blocks, then you can start to see how it starts to be easier for other places to be done as well. But I'll bring in more examples. And then I'll also bring in

Shaker Heights, Ohio.

It's not us. It's not us. It's never going to be us. Shaker Heights is a famous example of interconnected greenways and kind of block structures. You'll see as you zoom in more and more of... of how development is done. And this is just single family homes, right? And how design starts to work when structures get closer and closer together. And I bring this up as a way of showing you an example of when you're looking from the sky downwards, you can see a block structure start to develop. But then when you get on the ground itself, you start to see, and these are large houses, right? You see to see the driveway gets all the way to the back where the garage usually is and Pedestrian facilities always all the way through which makes allows you to get a much stronger shorter street And so this is a straight-up example We're not talking about apartment buildings, but we're just talking about single-family homes and how this is able to be done anywhere And what happens when you do this is actually the price of the homes drop because there's a lot more of them in a much smaller space. And it becomes a lot more walkable. And one of the big things that happens is that because you have so many different ways to get through the development, through traffic actually doesn't concentrate on any one street. And so all of the streets actually become a lot more walkable as well. And so I bring this up as, oh, look, someone's walking. of what you may get in this situation, but this is the higher end type of situation where the houses are massive, right? And then you can start to see some type of design where even if this is one house, you can imagine, you know, you have certain zones that you want it to look like single family dwellings, but it's actually multifamily parking in the rear, and you can actually have that going. This is a straight-up example of how this works other places and how it could work here if you have the provisions in place. But unless you ask for it, it will not happen. So that's just a good example. But I'll get more. So what would you all like to do next? Would you like to go on to the next section? Chair?

I think following up this last, I get confused. I kind of appreciated this block concept because it really comes out of what we, I think, originally started with foreign base coding downtown where we're truly talking about blocks. And I think the first examples were the established blocks that were already with roads and alleys and so forth. So now we're talking blocks, but we've been talking zones, land use zones, and we have these districts, these form-based code districts, and I guess I've had trouble, I guess I've been in trouble, because I think we've used this block concept which is form-based downtown, but we've taken some of the coding that we did and we're trying to put it into areas, wide swaths of areas, which I think can be broken up in blocks, but it seems like we've tried to use the district as one large block, so I think a good discussion of where land use zones have been appropriate, where truly block type, and then through designations as districts, but then to me there's been a misplacement of some of this form-based, it's almost like form-based overriding zoning.

Well, form-based is a type of zoning. So it's Euclidean zoning, where you don't have basically saying, we're only going to regulate the use. And we're going to give you amount of area per lot. And we are hands off on everything else. And then you have form-based code, which is more location-based. What is the actual structure relationship with the public type? It's a lot more regulation. You can definitely see that. You guys have witnessed that. It can be a lot more regulation. Your form of form-based codes is actually extremely light on regulation. It doesn't regulate all the things that form-based codes usually regulate. I'll say about that. Appropriateness. What I'll say about blocks is that you all have blocks. There's no area that is in Maine that doesn't have blocks because it is defined by the road system being able to circle on itself. How big the block size is is something that you haven't regulated ever before. but you've done so anyway. It's just naturally formed. It becomes an issue when you're getting more and more people that's around. And so that's why I've only applied it inside the growth area and not outside of the growth area. Outside of the growth area, you want a lot more flexibility on how big your block size is. And so you really don't actually directly regulate it. But you still are going to have block sizes. And I'll zoom in here. This is your current city. And you still have block sizes. This is a block. And this is a much smaller block than you saw in Ohio. Or I'll go out. this is a different block size here. And the farther you go out, the bigger your blocks start to be. So even though this is huge, right, you'll see this. This is still a block. It's just a massive block. You still would be able to measure it because it's the length of the land that's directly connected to a street that encompasses a piece of land. It's just your block sizes are, it's massive. is massive in certain places and other places it's not massive. This is near the mall here. You already have block sizes here. And this is kind of similar to the Ohio example that I just showed you with the elongated sides. And then if you go out, you'll see You'll start to see still a block size, but it will be informal. A lot of these streets aren't going to come up on Google. And you'll have lines, shapes, and whatever have you. But this is more rural and scape. And so if you actually wanted to have more rural places, you would demand larger block sizes. Actually, you need a lot more block sizes if you want a rural place. It shall not be smaller than x, y, and z.

Could you pull up on the map, like out by the exit where the comp plan has the high growth zone out there?

Absolutely. A little farther south, I think. What did I just do? Messed that up. Oh, there it is. There we go.

Oh, boy.

Here it is.

All right, so the reason I was thinking about this is the THIS IS GOING TO BE DESIGNATED FOR A HIGH GROWTH ZONE. I DON'T REALLY HAVE THE SCALE IN MY MIND, BUT TO MAKE A 1600-FOOT PERIMETER BLOCK WOULD NEED THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOME STREETS, WHICH WE'RE NOT TRYING TO TAKE ON, SO IT WOULD BE PROBABLY THE CONSTRUCTION OF A LOT OF PRIVATE STREETS. CORRECT.

And so it would be the construction of private streets. Where that comes in is that it's a disincentive for sprawl. Right? Because the whole reason we would have block sizes in a growth area is that we know streets can be expensive to construct. And so in order to construct those streets, you have to create a number of dwelling units for them to make sense. And so if the private parties are going to take up that land and develop that land, is saying that it needs to be worth their while to do so. And so that's why in certain high-growth areas, you don't have a density limit, but you have form-based code. So what happens if you don't have block requirements? In this situation where you're making this an urban place, you have nothing that actually is is dictating on how that area is going to be made. You're only saying where the structure is in relation to how far away from the street it's going to be. No actual regulations on how your street network is going to actually turn out to be. And that can be a really big issue very quickly.

That's like I guess kind of where my thought was is that it's gonna act as its own natural prevention and I wondered to what extent that's gonna Make designating that as a high growth zone Superfluous

No, that's how high growth zones are actually created. And so I'll go directly to your downtown area.

For the record, I like this block. I'm just thinking about how that is going to be one of our high growth zones and would require a lot of construction of roads.

Yeah. I mean, so if it's going to be one of your high growth zones and you... have to construct the number of roads. And so to look at your downtown, to have a downtown, you must have small block sizes. You can't get a downtown without small block sizes. Literally, it doesn't work, and you can't walk it. And so if one of your provisions is, one of your aims is to create a walkable area, you have to have small block sizes. It's not a way to get out of that. And so this is your downtown and how it's actually blocked up into, it's divided up into blocks, and then you'll start to see issues of when you don't have small block sizes, and what areas that you naturally will not walk between and walk to, because it's difficult to walk, because you have these these unwelcoming block sizes. You're not going to walk there. You're just not going to do it because it's too long. It's not at a scale of the human. It's a concept. And this is the reason why this is on the agenda today for workshop. It's going to take you time for these concepts to get comfortable with. so you can then develop an opinion on the provisions themselves. So this is why I don't bring it to you to say, hey, can you schedule a public hearing today or anything like that? No, that's completely not the way to go. It's introduce the concept, let's interact with the concept, it's a tool, see if we wanna use the tool, see if we wanna alter the provisions of the tool. Like, okay, I haven't heard anybody ask what happens when you, increase or decrease the perimeter size or the size of the length, the maximum size of a length of a side, right? So all of those are different parts of the tool.

We give thought to having some of the stakeholders weigh in on this before we get too far down the road. I'm in my mind's eye, I'm seeing that area down near the interstate that's going to be designated or we expect it will be designated high growth. And I'm having a hard time think that we would just impose this block concept on that area and say to thereby the owners of land out there, this is what you have to do, this is how you have to do it.

I mean, I... I would argue that's what zoning is.

Well, you can argue that, and I'll just go back to my original thought. I think we ought to find out what the stakeholders might think, because what if they just said, well, throw their hands up, and we're at loggerheads, we've imposed this,

I think you can predict what they're going to, I think we're predicting what they're going to think, right?

I'm expecting that they're not going to be excited, but I'd rather have that conversation before we make it important.

So what I'll say is who are the stakeholders? I don't know. So more than just the owners of the land, who are the stakeholders? Like what is the vision of the area? If the area is to be redeveloped, and you leave it to the means of the developer of doing the lease that they can do, what are you going to get? And so that's the question of if you don't ask for it, what are you going to get? If you don't ask for that, then you might not get a downtown. You might not get an urban core. You're just going to get suburban sprawl if you leave it to just the devices of the developer. Because that's what's profitable to make. What's profitable to make right now is single family homes. But if you were intending to make an urban core, then you must put provisions in there to ensure that that's created. And so that's one of the things is that it's a hard decision because you're always making decisions on other people's land. But that's why you guys were appointed, right?

I, if I can, I see your point clear as day, Ed. I also see what DeCarlo's saying. It's almost, what I envision is if we, if the town gives a backbone to the developers, a structure, a basic structure, developers are very good at being creative and using a space and making the proceeds they need to make. It's a little bit of the creativity, you give them the opportunity, they're gonna find a way to make it work as long as we give them the structure we want them to work with. I can see both of your points, but I think it's, anyway.

I'm behind, yeah, as I was when you showed me the possibilities of redeveloping the mall area. I'm in support of it, but I mean, I'm not gonna ignore Yeah, fair, it's fair. The wall that we're facing. Yeah. Well, let's focus for a moment on this concept, then on a more urban area. I got this request to fill out a survey, which I did because the city of Auburn wants to develop Minot Avenue over here. Let's plop down the block situation there. What's that gonna look like?

On Minot?

Yeah, Union Street and Minot.

Oh, Union Street and Minot, okay. Right here? Block size, already there. Already there. In a block. This is already in a block. The structure is already there.

The streets have already. The proposed area for redevelopment goes from Union Street down to Washington. Yes.

Yeah. And so you already have a block street here. And this is the most intense intersection in the city. And so generally, you would think these areas would be developed first. And if you keep going down, the geography does not land itself for any type of development here because of the slope, the high slope there. So this is one area that you say, okay, well, this can't be developed into, there's no development that can't be there unless you go San Francisco style down the hill. Then you go Washington, right? So here you have the rotary where a lot of businesses are It's not an active place to be. And another reason that is is people can't walk here. Literally, you cannot walk here. I tried it, and a couple of us have tried it like two or three times, but it is dangerous because of the speeds. And it's dangerous because of speeds because there's only one way to really get in it. And so it's a high, so redeveloping here would be into a block fashion, which makes with this a lot more walkable. There's already a paper street here off of Pierce, right here, but then that will cut this up here. A large portion of this will have to do with how the rotary is redeveloped, and that has to do with NDOT and everything like that, with traffic standards. But as you go down, you'll start to see these blocks start to develop. So you have an entrance here, you have like a road here, and as you go down, this is again, this is a natural area that would not be really developed, but you already have blocks over here. It's already here. And so really you're matching what has already been there. So Washington Street, Down, you already have, again, street systems here that are cutting it up, because it's natural to do that when you're talking development. You have to have a way in. What this is saying, though, is that you have to have some connectivity to those other pieces of land. And as you, I'm gonna zoom out a little bit, because it'll take me forever to go there. Here, right, there is a plan set, $100 million, so I don't know where in the future this is gonna be. is that one portion is going to be the expressway, and then one is more local. And so when you start to talk about more local, then you start to get more development off of one of the streets, and you start developing into a block fashion. Again, you're going to have, naturally, people are going to develop these roads that are coming off of this local street. It's going to create blocks. It's just saying that when you're creating them, you need to have some thought in the overall size of them. So look, Miami Avenue, right there, they're developing naturally. It's a natural occurrence when you're talking about any type of density. And then you get to some certain situations where you're near the water, and again, sensitive environmental features, and where sometimes you're going to have to have just cul-de-sacs. And that's okay, but you have that backbone to rely on. So a lot of this stuff, right, you're gonna continue down, and it's not really until you get to really develop an area that you start to develop more into blocks. This is what happens when you don't have blocks. How close is this cul-de-sac to this cul-de-sac? And if you were a person living here and you wanted to get to this house, you have to go all the way around. And so that's one of the reasons why you have connectivity standards and block standards. And then as you go down to Washington Street again, develop area, you have the same situations. And then you start to get, what's interesting is that when you start to get industrial development, they already start developing in blocks because it's more efficient to do so. because they have to have access around the location. So that's another reason why you get that fried egg. It's because they want access. They need access for the trucks and everything like that. But they're exempt from the block standards. They just do it naturally. But for some reason, when we talk about residential development, we have some pause on making them, doing type of things. And so you have some developable area here, it's just more saying that when you start to do that, you need to do it in a fashion that's gonna be consistent with what we're talking about. So, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a ton, There's a ton of land that could be developed here. And so we're only having some pause in this undeveloped space, but really it's an open canvas. And so you're just making sure that you're doing so. And let's take in a case where maybe there's wetlands here. There are, you can see them. But it's getting in the way and you can't do, you can't be consistent already with a block system where you have connectivity index. And that remains, it's like, okay, we're gonna give you a waiver from the block system, but we're gonna require a connectivity index of 1.4, and that will still require it to be really connected. So I mean, these are areas that are already really primed to do this. It's more of just saying, hey, when you're developing it, do it in a little smart way. What areas, what else areas would you like to look at?

I was focusing more on .

Oh, OK. OK. It's kind of already here. You guys want to take a five minute break? Can we take a five minute break?

Candidly, I wouldn't mind if we adjourned.

I'm OK with that. Can we briefly go over open space, but not in depth as we're going into blocks? And what I'll say about these provisions.

Let's take a five minute break.

Okay, thank you, yeah.

I guess not the block part, but not particularly. It's going to take a couple of times.

Yeah.

But there's...

I'd like to throw those in there every now and then.

it's it's

Thank you.

All right, we're going to get started again. Our plan for the evening will be to cover open space, and we're going to plow ahead with the rest of these materials and any thoughts that Carlo takes back to his office at our next meeting. So let's cover the open space issues if we can. Carlo, is that OK?

Yep, absolutely. All right, thank you. So if nothing else, the core of preparing you all for the additional density in the growth area are the block standards and open space standards. If nothing else, and if you just are consistent with state law with everything else, as long as you put block standards in and open space standards in, you're gonna be okay. But that's why I bring that up, and that's why I've discussed them so much. Now we're in open space standards. Your open space standards needs a little work. That's all I'll say about that. And it needs a little work.

I'm sorry. I didn't hear what you just said.

Sure. So it's... Basically, I was just stating how your setup standards for additional density where the state's coming in are the block standards and open space standards. If... Those are the core. Everything else allows you to set up for that or... It's good to have, but the open space standards and the block standards are really key to allowing more density in a way that's going to be beneficial to you instead of being adverse to the city in certain areas. All the provisions are based off of, hey, I would like to say, hey, you only need a perimeter of 1,600 square feet and let it ride, but there's all In law, there's always an exception, and you have to do a specification after specification after specification. Same thing that we're seeing right now is open space. You've done it the way of, hey, we just want open space, and now you've seen what results in that. The three pillars of development are your road standards and how your roads are laid out, and that's what it relates to open space, where the buildings are on your lot, and the actual open space. And when we talk about roads, we have no concerns over the amount of provisions that you have on road construction. You have a whole chapter on road construction. But when it comes to, you have a whole chapter on the location of structures. But when it comes to open space, you are hesitant to having any direction of what people should be doing when it comes to open space, where open space is one of those things that relates to the community in total. There's a difference where open space does within the growth area and outside of the growth area. Outside of the growth area in ag areas, Basically, you leave them alone, right? It's for conservation and enjoyment of the natural beauty and things like that. You're not going to have a lot of standards there. Where you're going to have standards are where more people are. So again, we see the theme, more people are around. And so more regulations are kind of required to have good outcomes. And so these open space standards, big lead in, so I'm sorry about that, but these open space standards are based on inside the growth area because we're expecting additional density. So first we alter the waiver provisions of subdivision because that's when open space standards are really gonna come into play is through the subdivision process. And that's what you're seeing up here. So first, we give waivers. If the board determines that the reservation of land for parks or recreational purposes will be inappropriate, the board may waive the requirement of land reservation upon making the findings that such a waiver complies with section this and the following requirements. The reason being is that now we put some guardrails on why people would get out of actually providing open space on their lot or in their development. The planning board finds that there is no suitable location for open space on the parcel or the subdivision is located within a quarter mile walk of public active recreation space of a size of two acres or more. So you're making development. They're close to open space standards. Okay. which can be safely accessed by existing pedestrian ways or paths from the proposed buildings within the subdivision. So if you're making a 12-unit or 48-unit apartment building, and you are close in a quarter mile of an open space, but people can't get there, should we count that as being within that distance? Or we can do that, but that means that you have to provide pedestrian facilities, right?

They have to be existing.

For the waiver, so this is just waiver provisions. You get into some powers, this is a good question. You can provide a waiver if you're creating those pedestrian facilities. That'd be a good addition to these things. This determination shall be based on the topographic features of the lot, size and quality of nearby public open space, and shall not take into account the proposed lot configuration by the subdivider. This is one of the things that you can't just make a subdivision say, oh, I can't get there. Oh, I'm so sorry. Like this is, it has to come into place of actual things. Upon waiving the requirement of land reservation and in lieu of providing such reserve open space, the subdivider applicant shall deposit a cash payment equal to the current assessed value. So this is your fee in lieu. This section needs help. And this is gonna be under legal review because you do your fee in lieu a little bit differently. And I'm gonna need some, I'm gonna need some feedback on which way you wanna go with that. So I'm just very straightforward with that. So that's waivers. Recreation open space standards. You only required open space when it had to do with single family residential subdivision. So we correct that immediately. And then we actually, your calculation was dissuading small subdivisions from happening. Any subdivision that happened in your jurisdiction, you said that immediately they needed an acre of open space. No matter if it's three dwellings or four dwellings or five dwellings, they needed an acre until they got up to 10 dwellings. And then each additional dwelling was 5,000 square feet. So think about on smaller parcels where you're making multiple dwellings and you are demanding that they pay you at an equal rate of an acre. or like to create a subdivision of four. This has been altered to say a percentage of the lot, 10% of the lot. So we're making it a little bit more equitable for those smaller subdivisions. This was incentive to make larger subdivisions, right? And an intense incentive for the smaller subdivisions from happening. So I put in just a number, it's a regular number, industry standard of 10%. You can change that, you can up it, you can lower it. But right now I just put it in 10%. I'm gonna continue through because we don't have a lot of time and I'll take questions and comments after. Within the ag, and we're saying that in the growth area, that that open space shall be active recreation open space. So you actually have to provide the amenities that people would be using. And then we describe what that is. Now with an AG, the low density country residential and rural residential zoning districts, active recreation may be substituted for passive recreation, which just means that you can do conservation or you can do whatever have you. And so that is the out of, if you are in a rural area, you don't have to do active recreation because you that's an area that we don't want a bunch of density in so that's one of the things the following standards shall apply to design form and function of any required open spaces so this is general standards for all open spaces shall be easily accessible by pedestrian traffic from all lots within the subdivision right The open space is for the people in subdivision, they need to be able to get there. Open space shall be located within 800 feet walking distance of a dwelling or non-residential building entrances within the proposed subdivision. So it has to be in a walking distance, right? Land reserved for park or recreational purposes shall be of a character configuration and location suitable for the particular use intended. You can't say it's a park or a playground for children, and I actually have playground things. You can't say that it's a pool and actually put a blow-up pool there and say, this is our pool. So this is your standard. Where the proposed subdivision is located on a lake, pond, river, or stream, a portion of the waterfront area, when feasible, shall be included in a reserved land. The land so reserved shall be at least 200 feet wide, measured perpendicularly from the normal high watermark. And so this is putting a, hey, if we're going to have access to these actual features, you have to actually give access to those features. This is subjective. So you can change this, whatever have you, but it's one of those things that If we have water access, then you really have to have water access. This is one of the types that you can ensure that happens in a subdivision. The following standards shall apply to design, form, and function of active recreation open spaces. And this we get into the real details. A site to be used for active recreation purposes such as playgrounds, community gardens, or a play field shall be relatively level and dry. So again, you can't say that a soil and water management pond is open space and get away with it. It needs to be level and dry. Active recreation open spaces shall include sufficient recreation amenities to support residents or patients within the development. Objective, but you are the deciders on this. Active recreation open spaces shall have a total contiguous frontage on one or more streets of at least 50 feet or the smallest amount of required minimum lot width, whichever is greater. So if we're saying that this is going to be accessible, it actually has to be accessible to people. And not behind every lot and people literally can't get to it. Um, Active recreation open spaces shall have no major dimensions more than the ratio length of width of 3 to 1 and a maximum length of 300 feet. Once you get over 300 feet away, you can't see people. It's a physical limitation of our human bodies. And so if we're saying an active recreation open space is going to be of a certain size, then you have to keep in mind this is the interaction between people. Over that size, you can have multiple, but we're saying each individual one shouldn't be over that size. If proposing multiple open spaces, the design of such areas shall be for the benefit of the residents rather than the accommodation of a proposed lot configuration. Multiple open spaces shall be in the form of interconnected series of open spaces. You gotta make them connect some way so I can get here to there. If a playground is all the way on the side and there's another playground or whatever have you, they have to be able to get between those parties safely, right? Because if not, we know that they're still gonna go, but they're not gonna do that safely. The areas of porches. This is an interesting one that has come up, but it has to do with the interconnection of people to other people. The area of porches may be used to satisfy active recreation requirements if a fronting and within 15 feet of a street or trail are open on at least one side, have a width of at least eight feet from the face of the structure, and are within 20 feet of another porch. This is directly for social infrastructure. Once you get farther than 20 feet, you cannot have a conversation with another person. You can't hear them. Sorry, Kathy. You know, it gets harder. And so this is saying that if we're going to count these areas as open space, porches, which means better design and better connection with the community, then it needs to be in a distance that's actually you can have conversations with your neighbor. What is a gimme, you know? And then we give another gimme. The area of pedestrian alleys may be used to satisfy active recreation requirements. Pedestrian alleys. A pedestrian alley shall be subject to the following minimum standards. A minimum width of 20 feet, an enclosure ratio, which I'll explain, of one to one to one to three, seating provided at a maximum distance of 300 feet along the alley, And it does not allow regular vehicle traffic. So this is for a pedestrian alley. And pedestrian alleys, it's not designed for cars. It's designed for people to walk from one side to the other. So again, this is for the social infrastructure. Like, hey, we're going to give you another get me, right? And so we're not saying it has to be an open field, but you can use these other things to kind of qualify for these things. The length of active recreation open spaces shall be bordered on at least two sides by dwellings or regularly used buildings. This is a design concern that planning staff has, is that once it's too open, it starts being active. People stop using it. It starts being actually a usable space, even if it has the amenities. It can have a playground over there and people will not go because other people aren't nearby. You don't feel safe when you're bringing your kid there or allow your kid to go there by themselves. It's one of those things where you're in a developed area. Abutting dwellings or structures have dwellings oriented towards the open space. This is another design concern. When open spaces do not have eyes on them, they become a nuisance. And so it's important to know that if you are going to have open spaces, They need to be some casual eyes on the space, and it keeps it safe. And then seating shall be provided every 300 linear feet around the perimeter of open space. This is one of those things that when you are walking and when you are young or older, you need places to sit. And that's one of the designs of open space is that you need places to sit. And so those are the standards of active recreation open spaces. Passive open spaces. Sites selected primarily for the scenic or passive recreation of purposes shall have access as the board may deem suitable and shall have no less than 200 feet of road frontage. So you can't just say this is our open spaces and no one can access it. Basic standard standards. The configuration of such sites shall be deemed adequate by the board with regard to the scenic attributes to be preserved together with sufficient areas for trails, lookouts, where necessary and appropriate. Right? Trails may be used to satisfy a maximum of, trails itself may be satisfied a maximum of 25% of the total required passive open space under the following conditions. This is in here because I've been a planner at a lot of other different places and what people do is that they say this is our open space and then they put a trail through it diagonally and want to count the entire area and so you might say okay now it's 14 acres. And we're getting we're getting a credit of 14 acre to open space. And then they want to come back and then use it for other purposes. For for whatever your stormwater management, etc, etc. Um, so this is, this is a condition for trails. We can work on this. This, uh, first, uh, first go at it. Only the width of the trail should be counted towards a required open space. Trails should have a width of at least 10 feet and have a destination to an active recreation area of at least one acre. Uh, trails connecting to other trails offsite may be counted if the ultimate destination is an active recreation area of at least one acre in size. So this allows that if you are in a property and it has some natural area and it connects to other trails that we're going to count that. Where feasible, shall connect with existing trail networks and to existing active and passive open space recreation areas. And trails functioning primarily for standard transportation, such as bordering or right-of-way, are excluded from recreation open space quotas. This is important when you have those walker-biker trails, and they really are designed for It's designed for transportation for the pedestrians, but not for open space. And you're going to see this in Minot Avenue, Court Street. Those type of places are going to start to have these type of trails, these walker-biker trails. You want to make sure that those public facilities aren't really counted towards it because they're doing double duty as a sidewalk and a trail. Again, subjective. You can change it. I'm not to marry to one or the other. These are incentives and dense incentives. And then we go on to the sections that are already there, right? These sections need a lot of work because this is your first fee-in-lieu section. Right now you're saying that a person may pay a fee-in-lieu. And then that money that's supposed to go to the public can be then given to the homeowners association. I am very concerned with that. I'm very, very concerned with that. The next one was the requested waiver of open spaces. The board shall review the accuracy of, so this is in reviewing the requested waiver of open spaces instead of just the amount of open spaces. The board shall review existing facilities, et cetera, et cetera. So this again should be reviewed more in line with the waiver section above that needs more legal review. Developer may choose to use both the land dedication provision and fee in lieu of land dedication provision in conjunction with each other. This is one against the double dipping. Any fee in lieu amount of money used within the land dedication shall be used to develop a large enhances recreation facility. You're already supposed to be giving those facilities. And then why are we then allowing them to get a waiver from the open space and then do fee in lieu to create facilities that they already should be providing for the development? I've deleted this section. where the developer may choose to request what uses the equipment the money will be used for. So if you're doing fee-in-lieu, that money is going to the public, and the public, it's in the public's best interest should be in mind, not the developers. And so this is one of those redirecting of what the fee-in-lieu actually really is supposed to be doing. And then the next one is that unfortunately, guys, It's supposed to be the city council made decline to accept a proposed dedication of rights. So this is land dedications to the city and the jurisdiction is in the council, not the planning board. And so I've corrected that to say the city council. And again, there's some language in here that's a little bit, it was flagged for review, for legal review. And then this is matches again with the quarter mile properties boundary and the parks and... and what to allocate those funds to, there's a map that's referred a couple times in these provisions of an open space recreation map, which is not in our records in the planning department. And so we're getting those provisions out of there. Technically, we're supposed to be looking at that map and seeing where those fee and lose should be applied to. And because the map isn't in our records currently, I'm taking it out. And I believe that's it. So, end it before nine.

This is important. Yeah. So we will be ending at nine. How do you, how would you like to proceed with our continued review? This was a workshop. I think that we need time to digest this and to discuss this. I suspect there will be other things coming our way.

Yes. And so we have more sections to do, but first the next workshop we're going to go back to this. This is a fire hose of information and new standards and procedures. And I want enough time for us to actually you know, really work with them. And so the next workshop that we have available, we're gonna come back to these provisions and talk more about the details of how you guys have picked out stuff, like when the definition section, so we're gonna start picking through these sections as well. I believe there's one more section that we'll probably have to review before then. Well, two more, but they're small. General requirements in the subdivision, which really just fixes the public streets issue. That's the other places it's warrant. And then I wanted you guys to also review the standards for streets as in chapter 46. And you can see how those are gonna go together with blocks and everything like that and walkability. But we should dive right back into this and not give you new information until we have a really good handle on your support provisions. And then where we're going with this, spoiler alert, where we're going with this is that we're probably going to develop a new form-based code district, a T3 district that's a little bit more flexible in nature. And then we're also going to have to talk about areas to rezone in the growth area. You have some low density areas that are in the growth area. And by state law, they're gonna have to drop to the, the lot sizes. And so that work is upcoming, but I want to set up your provisions first, and then actually you'll start to see that just individual zoning provisions and dimensional requirements are going to become less and less important because you have all these other supports. So it's going to give you flexibility to do a lot of other stuff in the actual zones when you have these support provisions.

So we're gathering again on the 27th? Yes. Okay, before we, we are going to adjourn very shortly. I will take public comment, but I will shut it down if it gets a minute, second beyond the limitation. Is there anything you'd like to say?

One minute. Steven Beal, 575 Johnson Road. I urge you not to fall under the trap when you're considering the definitions, which you discussed way back at the beginning of this meeting, of attempting to incorporate regulations into definitions. There are several places in the proposals that came forth tonight which really describe the size of something rather than the essential use or function or nature of something. Keep those things separate. You should have size regulations, but they shouldn't be in definitions because two or three years from now, you may need that same definition of a type of use or structure for an entirely different purpose, and you may be hampered by these size regulations. 1,000 versus 1,500 square feet for an ADU is a good example.

thank you thank you anything else from staff last portion i just want to remind you that i'm sending out this uh copy of the uh the draft comprehensive plan on the 27th the the portion that we will want to really hone in on is that future land use map and any any major concerns or issues or comments, positive comments about it, that's where I want to concentrate that conversation as it refers to the comprehensive plan. On the 27th?

On the 27th. When do you expect to send it out to us? I was going to say tonight, but it's probably going to be in the morning. All right.

Very good. Yeah. For tonight.

Comments from anybody before we adjourn? Motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Seconded. We're adjourned. Thank you.