Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Order the October 14th, 2025 Auburn Main Planning Board meeting. I will start with roll call to my left. Bob Hayes, Riley Bersron, Paul Jacques, Stacy Leblanc, Bill Jose, Tim D. Ro, Moren Hopkins. Excellent. So, we do have two members that are not present. Um, Ed Bear and Darren Finnegan. So, with that, um, I will be elevating Bal to, um, full voting status. Okay. The next item on the agenda are the meeting minutes. So I would seek a motion to approve or amend the meeting minutes. So moved.

Second. Second. Um do I have any conversation about the meeting minutes? If not, then all those in favor of approving the meeting minutes. All right. It passes. Okay. So public hearing. We do not have any public hearings, so we will move past item number three. Uh item number four is public comment. So if you are a member of the public and you would like to come forward, please state your name, your address, preferably your address in Auburn. Um and you have 5 minutes.

Steven Beal, 575 Johnson Road. Um the uh miscellaneous items for tonight include as item C uh to initiate an amendment to chapter 6 to 60 of the zoning ordinance to allow for development of lots under 20,000 square ft in specific instances. Uh there are three ways that such a proposal can come before the planning board. either as a result of an order from the council on the planning board's own initiative or as a result of a petition of 25 citizens. And last year the planning staff initiated the practice of identifying how an item like this was being presented to the planning board and I don't see that indication here. So I'm curious as to how this matter has come before the board. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Anyone else uh part of the public that would like to come forward for public comment? Okay, seeing none, um we can address public comment now. David, if you want. So, what Mr. Bale is referring to is that um there was a practice that was suggested that when um an item uh initiated an amendment to when an amendment was initiated that we would put kind of a little bit more line of sight into how it was brought forward. So as Mr. Beiel mentioned like you know was it from um you know city council etc. So maybe when we go over item C we can cover that. Sure. Okay. Okay. All right. So, the let's move into agenda item number five, miscellaneous a update on the Chick-fil-A restaurant.

Sure.

So, um as you recall, the board did approve this with a condition that um the final location design of a pedestrian connection to Turner Street sidewalk uh sidewalk network or Hobby Lobby. and then if no connection could be identified, the project shall return back to you folks. Um, we've been working with the applicant. The applicant's been working to find a solution and they did find a solution out there. They did provide connectivity to Turner Street. Um, given the amount of discussion that there was around that though, I thought that we would just bring it back to you folks kind of as an FYI as to what actually happened there. Um, I summarized a number of the changes that they ended up making there. The building is slightly larger by a couple hundred square feet and has two more seats in it. Um, but there's actually a little bit more stacking distance for vehicles out there as well. Um, they've changed the parking layout a little bit and the applicant can show you that on the plan if there's questions about that. But actually, I think it's going to result in cars actually traveling a little bit slower through the site, that area where you like kind of get to Starbucks now from like the Lamey Wellahan. It's kind of a free-for-all right now. And that's going to be narrowed considerably there. Um, there's actually going to be 4200 square feet less impervious area out there. So, there's actually going to be more green space out there. So from a storm water perspective, things are good as well. Um, so again, there's actually provisions in the ordinance that talks about like if a building is expanded by 10% or something like that, staff can review that internally. Um, but in this case, actually, it's well, it's certainly less than 10%, it's also a less impervious area, whatnot. Um, they made the conditions of approval. again bringing to you folks more as a courtesy just so um you know what's going on given that there was a lot of discussion um Jolie from Bola Engineering is here on behalf of the project if there's any questions or if you folks would like a quick summary of those changes

does anyone have any questions for staff or the applicant okay great I really appreciate you kind of closing the loop for us on that I know we didn't have to but I appreciate that you did do that all right so the next that. Oh, I guess because this is going to the public and I think the public might be interested and just could you review the the specific layout of the pedestrian connection.

Good evening everyone. Uh it's Joey Fona with Bowler. Nice to see everyone again. Um so yeah, the plans that are that are up on the screen here. So just just quickly as we were looking at the pedestrian layout with the original submitt, it really started to kind of pinch this or squeeze the site more than Chick-fil-A was comfortable with. They had to reduce their drive-thru their drive-through widths and all that. So the going back and looking at a different building prototype. This building kind of fits more on this parcel. They were able to keep really the stacking similar to what the original proposal was, even the stacking from the entrance to the order board. Um but what it did do was a few things. one reduce the total impervious, but it also allowed the existing sort of landing at Turner Street to remain where it is. We're showing a new ADA path from that landing um up to the parking area. So, there'll be, you know, 1 and 12 slope, there'll be handrails, there'll be level landings. um they'll kind of get you up to where uh the drive sort of levels off um at the at the top of the slope crosswalk over towards the site and then provides you know another uh concrete sidewalk over to the front door. Um this also allowed us to have parking on both sides of the entry drive. Um as David was just mentioning the existing width there is about 30 ft plus the parking which the parking isn't utilized so cars do fly down that that drive aisle. So, this will reduce it to 25 ft parking on both sides. It will act as as kind of a calming device there. So, it will slow traffic down. Um, and then we'll have parking kind of associated along the drive-thru there. And then again, just access to the front door. So, overall, it's it's it's an improvement from a from a pedestrian access point of view. It also, you know, allows Chick-fil-A to operate um, you know, under their sort of prototypical design limits out here as well and kind of keep everything per the the prior approval, albeit just a slightly different building um, uh, and and internal layout.

Perfect. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none, we will move on to the next agenda item, which is a comprehensive plan update.

Thank you everyone. Thank you for your help. Good evening. Hi, my name is Lauren Cafe. I'm a long-range planner for the city of Auburn. I'm here with John Cleveland, chair of the comprehensive plan committee and we will be presenting on a status update of the comprehensive plan. So our agenda for this evening, we have a short project team introduction, project overview and timeline, goals, a brief overview of the inventory analysis and our community engagement to date, some information on the vision statement and next steps. Uh good evening for the purposes of the public who may be watching now at later date. My name is John Cleveland. I'm the chair of the comprehensive plan committee. Um so you'll see on the diagram there that we have a pretty robust team. We have um Barry Dunn is a consultant. So you have a couple of subcontractors. We also have the staff who works on it in addition to Lauren David Hediger uh participates actively in our efforts as well. Um and also administrative staff for the city um department heads and that kind of thing at appropriate times also participate. And as you might remember our comprehensive plan committee includes 17 members plus municipal staff. So we've got pretty robust group.

So phase one of the comprehensive plan process was conducting an inventory analysis. And then we moved into phase two public engagement and visioning throughout the summer, early spring and early summer. And currently we are we are on action plan and future land use map development. And we're hoping to have a final plan by June 2026. Um so the project goals for the um comprehensive plan committee as we proceeded forward include five goals that are listed there. Uh the first was to have a very extensive outreach to the community get community members and have collaboration in this comprehensive planning process. Secondly, we wanted the uh vision statement to reflect the community's needs and goals and values and that's why reaching out to them in a very robust way was important which we did. We'll speak a little bit more to the efforts that we did on that. Um we also want this plan to have achievable strategies that can be realized over a 10-year period. Um, we don't want this just to be another one of those documents that sits on a shelf here. We really want it to be a active document that's annually and throughout the year is utilized with some real implementable strategies going forward. Um, and we also want the plan to have some clear guidance for implementation. We'll talk a little bit more about implementation when we get to the vision. But within this plan, it's not just a report. its recommendation and guidance to the community, both elected officials as well as administrative staff over a 10-year period, uh, on how to implement the strategies. Uh, and then, of course, we want the comprehensive plan to be consistent with the, uh, main growth

management act. Uh, so that'll be adopted and approved. So getting into some detail with our inventory and analysis that was conducted from March to August of this year. This included an inventory of current conditions in Auburn across a variety of subject areas. Those included population demographics, water, natural resources, agricultural and forestry, recreation, land use, housing, economy, transportation, historic resources, public and community services, and fiscal capacity. And so what we did here was we broke up the committee into three subcommittees and that included the natural environment, the built environment and people and city services. And we invited people from the community experts in these different subject matters as well as city um staff to attend these subcommittee meetings. There were two per subcommittee in the month of June to really deep dive and do a accurate inventory and analysis of Auburn's current condition so that the plan can be that's the foundation for the plan moving forward. And so also throughout the summer we conducted um quite a bit of community engagement. I'm going to read through what was done. There was a comprehensive survey of adult residents and workers, a youth survey of local middle school and high school students. a focus group event with 11 different focus areas that had an attendance of about 80 people from across the community. We tabled at community events including national night out, the PAL center backpack drive, and the Lewon farmers market. There were three open house events aimed at the general population and those were broken out with the natural environment, the built environment and people in city services. There were listening sessions at the drop-in center and a focus group with drop-in center staff. There's a youth forum. Poster and dot engagement were up at various locations in Auburn, including City Hall, the drop-in center, and New Beginnings in Lewon. And there was online engagement via a social pinpoint website, which you can see here.

And mailings were sent out to roughly 11,000 households to inform them of the project and the community survey. Roughly 1500 organizations, businesses, and individuals were invited to participate in the focus group event. and over 1500 organizations, businesses, and individuals were directly invited to participate in the openhouse events. And physical posters and social media posts were placed all over the city. And in total, we've had about 15,000 invites and mailing. So, total reachouts to the community with about 1,800 total engagement or inputs to date. And that's not the end of our community engagement. We'll be continuing to do more engagement throughout this fall as we've wrapped up our vision statement as well as create a draft future land use map policies and actions.

So I want to talk somewhat in this section um on really how the comprehensive plan is will be structured give some sense to both you and the community on how we'll proceed to do that. So the first thing in the structure is a vision statement. This is a broad statement that reflects the values and visions of the community. Um so that's the first basis of this plan. Underneath that will be four guiding principles. These guiding principles will be the lens by which members of the committee will look at each one of um of our goals and uh set um um more information about that in a moment. So those four areas are resilience uh for the community, being connected within the community, having a welcoming community, and having an intentional effort in the work that we do. So underneath each of those four will be eight goals. Um those goals are and you'll see them there to the right are uh fostering a sense of community um affordable housing for the community. uh promoting a resilient economy for urban um a vigorous transportation interconnected multimodal transportation system. A section on the natural environment uh sections on recreation and park facilities. The seventh is infrastructure for the communities. And the last is having a to promote a thoughtful land use planning. These particular goals are all driven by the responses that we got from the public.

Um and the committee divided into subcommittees and reviewed those and this is the consensus of what we got back from the community. Now for each one of these goals there will be specific policies for each one of these um that will be developed uh going forward and for each of the eight goals and there will also be for each of them an implementation and action plan and that's what I spoke about a little bit earlier is that we want this to be very clear very directed so that um it does specifically guide future polic policy makers and administrators in the implementation. Our expectation and hope and I think it will be reflected in our work is that there will be a direction to actually review this plan on an annual basis particularly as decisions are being made about infrastructure investments and the budget because those things sort of drive the ability to implement what you have in the plan. So that will be the structure that will be coming up uh going forward. Um we anticipate in October uh this 28th that we'll begin that work uh on the land use and policies and actions and also continue it into november and perhaps into December. And our hope is that we will wrap up this we'll have the structure of that completed um in that time frame and then begin to have a document that reflects these policies, goals, and implementations for public input beginning in January.

Just to reiterate what John said. So we will finalize our draft vision statement at the October meeting. We'll then move on to develop a draft future land use map policies and actions from October to December. In January will be our large community input month. We're hoping to have focus groups in multiple different openhouse sessions during that month on the draft map policies and actions and finalize the map policies and actions and develop a final comprehensive plan from January to July 2026. So future opportunities to participate include online engagement on our social pinpoint website, future land use policy and action feedback in January as I mentioned and attend a comprehensive plan committee on the last Tuesday of every month, fourth Tuesday I should say. Um, and I will say that our engagement summary can be found online. So if you're curious about the input that the community has has offered us up to this point, that can be found on our website as well. And uh we plan to come back again to the planning board um after we finish this next uh section of work and give you another update of what the outcome of that work has been so that you'll be familiar with it. Also give you an opportunity as a planning board if you wish to comment um on that section of the work as well.

Questions? Thank you. Any questions? Okay, perfect. Thank you. Oh, okay. Uh back to the implementation part uh that you mentioned, Mr. Cleveland. Uh do you see any vision of how like after the plan is being after the plan is finalized next year, what next steps would be happen? I mean I mean you mentioned the annual meeting. Would that involve like city council and stakeholders or how would you envision like the annual sort of upkeep of this plan to be continually visited?

Well, our expectation is in June and July of 2026 we will have completed the plan. Um, so as I had indicated before, I anticipate although it will be up to the committee that there will be specific recommendations for elected officials and administrators to report back on an annual basis. I suspect that a good time to do that would be when they're going through the budget um and as well as when they're overviewing the uh cap five-year capital improvement plan. So that would be the time to say what was the recommendations in regards to these major infrastructure. It's one of the goals that that are there. Um so that would be my expectation. Perhaps they might do it more frequently. I'm not sure to do that. Beyond that of course um there will then be a need to consider um what the product is in regards to the comprehensive plan and land use. Um, and there will have to be decisions made uh by elected officials on how to proceed uh to make sure that the comprehensive plan aligns uh properly with the uh zoning ordinances in the community. I'll also add I think one of our goals throughout the community engagement process was to bring in community leaders from different organizations across the city so they have a a say and know what's going on early on and so that when we get to the policies and actions and implementation of the plan we know which people to reach out to in the community to kind of be those stakeholders and and help us through implementing that plan. So it's kind of a more of a group effort that way. Um just having been at some of the committee meetings that was a perfect question below. Um I some of the committee members also asked a similar

question is yeah we get the document but how do we hold the city accountable and staff and

y consequently us as well uh for implementing it and making sure that it's happening. Um, I do want to say you guys have a lot of ways to get into this too now to make sure that some of the maybe some of the issues that we've been seeing or hearing from developers or the public um can get addressed in this document to maybe make things easier going forward. Um, and as for the regular reporting out, I that really hasn't been happening in the past, but I I almost think it needs to be a one of those like in June, the June meeting or something. Maybe David and um Lauren in this case, um, come and report out to us to see what's been done, whatever month it is, but that might be

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would sort of myself anticipate as a chair that we'd be back early in 2026, but again later towards the end as well, Mr. Jar. Yeah. If it's an annual thing or something, whatever. Oh, yes. Pick a regular. Oh, for the planning board. Yeah. Where we get an update. Yes. I think that would be uh consistent with what doing and you probably know that based on the charter already you have the administration come with their capital improvement plan on an annual basis. So that might be a good point on which to tie this comprehensive plan in with that as well.

Yes. I guess just a question with respect to how much uh state overview influence governance uh does a state have now in this process? You mentioned I guess like the growth policies for the state. How much does that influence and how does that impact you know thinking locally

in regards to the comprehensive plan approval? Yeah. So I guess in the past we've had a fairly robust, fairly large group as a planning office. Has the planning office uh I know it dwindowed and it's actually part of agriculture and forestry. U is there more of a growing interest in planning at the state level that seems to have dwindled over the last few years? um can answer this. Why don't go ahead?

I think from our perspective in the at the city and the planning office it there's a increased interest in planning in the state. I think we have the new uh mocha office, office of community affairs that's merging quite a few different organizations. They're very planning focused. I would say in regards to the state oversight into the comprehensive plan process, there are requirements laid out by the growth management act. So we have to designate a growth area for example and no growth area. Um but the state lends communities municipalities a lot of freedom to to navigate through the different nuances of their communities as long as they're having you they have inventory analysis they've shown community engagement. They've shown that they have a growth area and a future land use map. But in terms of the specificities of policies and actions, those are very tailored to Auburn. Um and the state's been so far from what I my understanding good to work with municipalities in the sense of you know approving the comprehensive plans. Um and Barry Dunn our consultant are following those guidelines closely. Um but I would say in our ability to me like mold the comprehensive plan to what Auburn needs. We have a lot of mobility with that.

Yeah. And I might just add that the state at one time had a very robust planning office. Um that's one person now. Um so not quite as robust but they as you also know the state particularly in addressing specific issues they see of critical importance. Housing the prime example have initiated and pass certain laws that direct communities in regards to housing issues and um zoning issues and regulations. So you've worked on some of those that had to be adjusted. Um so we know that there the legislature itself is promoting direction in specific areas that communities have to address.

Any other questions? Excellent. Seeing none, we will move on to the next agenda item.

Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you very much for your time. All right. So, this is one initiating an amendment to chapter 60, the Auburn zoning ordinance to allow for development of lots under 20,000 square feet in specific instances. Sure. So, I guess to uh there was a was a memo included in your packet that explained, I guess, why we need to do this or why staff would like to see this happen. Um maybe to Mr. Beiel's question as to the impetus of this maybe. Um we've had a couple questions about lots that are under 20,000 square feet and whether or not they could be developed. And in looking at the ordinance more closely, it seems as though that they can't be. Um, even though the state plumbing code would allow you to develop a lot under 20,000 if you um meet certain plumbing code requirements, you can get down to as little as 10,000. And then there's even instances where you can get down to a lot even smaller. Um, it's not necessarily a variance from from the board of appeals or whatnot, but it's a variance to the plumbing code requirements. Um it's not clear to me if um we've interpreted this consistently over the years. This language, this discrepancy between the two sections. Um zoom in on this. These two sections here are what's of concern to staff. Um where it talks about section 6039 lot area except as otherwise may be required. And that's the that's the catching language here. The lot area, lot width, and lot depth requirements of

this chapter shall not apply to any lot which was lawfully laid out in conformance with the zoning regulations. So if you just read that by yourself, you would say, "Hey, great. I have an existing lot of record that was lawfully laid out 1950, whatever. Life is good. Um, we don't have to worry about it. They can the the lot area requirements aren't necessary except as otherwise may be required." That's that's what's catching us here. And that's brings us to section 6042 where it talks about minimum lot size for residential districts. Um, no one sewered lots having less than 20,000 square feet shall be developed for residential purposes. It's kind of a hard stop. Can't do that. Um, plumbing code allows you to. We have a situation on Hotel Road. Bunch of non-conforming lots in that neighborhood. a bunch of them on septic systems. Um they may have predated this language. Um but they're all developed out there and they're all on lots of less than 20,000 square feet and there's a couple vacant lots out there that can't be developed. And that was one of the instances that came to our attention. So our thought was if the plumbing code allows for this to occur, we should come up with some language that would allow this to occur. Need to be thoughtful about it. I mentioned a couple things that we need to think about as far as um you know not allowing new undersized lots, right? So we don't want to start just allowing undersized lots. This is for existing lots of record that would be under 20,000 square feet. We need to think about how it meets the plumbing code requirements. Again, I I I know enough to be dangerous, but I would be looking to the plumbing um inspector to help um come up with some language there. um still need to be step back and buffer requirements um especially if we're in Taylor Pond and uh Lake Auburn wershed. We don't want to do anything to jeopardize the water quality in those areas there. So, as Mr. Bill um mentioned, we got three ways to initiate an amendment,

city council, planning board, or petition. And we're asking the board to initiate this that way we can start picking away at some language. Uh I have a couple questions. Um, so this is in zones that permit more like like rural residential only allows one unit per acre as it is. So that wouldn't be relevant to that, right? If you had an existing well rural residential, if you had a non-conforming lot, you could still potentially develop it. You don't have to have a new lot needs to be an acre. But if you had an existing lot of record that was under an acre, you'd be able to develop it, but not if it had less than

Oh, okay. So, if you if it's already a lot, right, I can build a house on it, whatever, and put a sewer in there. Exactly. Unless it's less than 20,000 ft. Exactly. This is This only applies to existing lots of record. This isn't going to creation of new lots. I had lot the same as um actually having something already on it, right? rather than Okay,

I have a question. Uh, is this the only ordinance provision that is preventing someone from building a residence on a non-conforming lot? Like I I own a uh previously approved established lot. I want to build a single family residence is the only thing that's preventing me from doing that is the fact that it's not sewarded.

I'm not sure off the top of my head. I wouldn't You haven't memorized the entire code yet.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's another section of the ordinance that I'm not thinking of that would potentially do that. Um there's language in our ordinance, pretty forgiving language as to the development of existing non-conforming lots now with respect to setbacks, lot sizes, things like that. Um even allowing existing non-conforming lots to be split, which is different um but is actually in a property owner's advantage to allow existing lots of record to actually be made smaller when there is city sewer available. So, um I I can't say for certain, Maren. Um but this one has come up in my short time here. It's come up a couple of times and then talking to staff that's been here. Um they're all like, "Oh, geez, that's that's a thing. We should probably clean that up."

I'm struck by the contradictory nature of those two sections. Do we have any idea which I'm not going to follow the 39 came before 42, but do we have an idea of which one was added or which is an addendum or just the genesis for the contradiction in terms

I might be able to look at the ordinance quickly and to see if there's an amendment. So, to answer to answer your question, Tim, I um the ordinance does track when amendments are made to each section. So, I could potentially see if either one of these are like relatively new language or not. Um I'm I'm just like I said, I'm struck by it. I I it's hard for me to understand that these section these revisions would have occurred through groups of people looking over this stuff and no one caught the contradictory nature of these until now and that baffles me. So I'm kind of curious as to what happened and when.

Yeah. Um I can certainly look into that. It's a good point. I think part of it might be um honestly part of this is new eyes just looking at the ordinance. Um you know between myself, Lauren, um when Natalie was here, there was just a lot of new people looking at the ordinance. You end up seeing things or interpreting things differently. And I I I recognize my point is is not conducive to the reason you brought it up to us today. And I totally agree. There needs to be a resolution to this and at least an elimin an elimination of the contradictory nature. And uh

yeah, I I I'm I'm going to totally guess here, but the section 42 that talks about 20,000 square feet, that is kind of a clear rule without the exceptions from a plumbing code perspective. Lots can't be less than 20,000 except and there's all this other language. So maybe there was at some time we were thinking, hey, that's it. It's only 20,000 square feet and the plumbing code may have changed. Um, I don't know that for a fact. I know that the plumbing code talks about lots I want to say 1971 or 1973, like lots that predate that. There are exceptions for, too. So this language may have been tied to some plumbing code requirements.

Yeah. And I really appreciate Morin's point. Um, this could open up a can of worms. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just things that need to be sorted out if there are other subsequent contradictory terms that could affect a 20,000 ft lot from being uh developed. I think we should probably have we should probably do our due diligence of making sure what other stuff we might encounter if we approve this before we discussed it in depth.

To totally agree. Uh, one of the my concerns is is that whenever we make an amendment to the zoning ordinance, um, we make sure that we are looking at the entire zoning ordinance because, um, I think there's situations probably like this where somebody made a change and it made sense for that particular section, but we didn't look in another section to see how it implicates it. So, um, totally agree. Thank you, Dave. So, Tim, good ideas are followed by action. Don't forget. Roger. I heard you're volunteering to do that, right? Yeah. If you want to review the ordinance, that'd be great, Tim. You know, all right. Any other questions?

Mr. Bill is pointing out to me for what it's worth uh 1973 uh appears to be the language where that 20,000 square foot language from a state perspective on lot size. So I was talking about in 1970 something that's when that language was as to the local ordinance. I'll I'll do a little digging see if I can figure that out. Thank you.

Okay. So, in your packet there is a suggested motion. I make a motion pursuant to section 60-1445 that staff be directed to prepare an an amendment to section 60-39, section 60-42, and other applicable sections as deemed necessary to align Auburn's ordinance with the main plumbing code, enable reasonable infill development on legally non-conforming lots, and protect critical watershed areas. Do I have a second?

Second. Do I have discussion of the motion? All right. Seeing none, all those in favor? All right. Motion carries. Do you have what you need from us, staff? Thank you. All right. Perfect. All right. The next and final agenda item is the November 11th meeting is on a has a holiday conflict. So, we propose to reschedu to the 10th or the 12th. I won't be able to make the 12th. Um, but I could do the 10th. So, let's just kind of query each other's calendars and see if people can do the 10th. I can do either one.

Same. Same. Same. Okay. So, do you guys want to shoot for the 10th then? Monday the 10th. Yeah. Okay. We We want you here. Second to the last one. All righty. Um, any other items for staff before I seek a motion to adjurnn? All right. At this moment, I would seek a motion to adjurnn. All those in favor? Oh, go ahead. Sorry. So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All those in favor? All right. Meeting is over. Take care. Thank you everyone.