Plan & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Thursday, May 21st, 2026 at 7.01 p.m. Town Planning and Zoning Quarterly Planning Meeting. First item on the agenda is a call to order.

Byron Lester.

Here.

Renee James.

Here. Here.

Dwight Bolton, absent. Leon Peters, absent. Stephen Millett, absent. Jennifer Marshall-Neely, here. Kevin Goff, here. Roger O'Brien, here. Eunice Medwinter, absent. Desiree Cotton, here. You have a quorum.

Okay. Will both alternates be sitting? Yep. Okay. Desiree?

Yes.

Okay. You'll be sitting in as a regular member tonight instead of an alternate. So when it comes to voting, well, you probably have to abstain from minutes and stuff anyway, but you'll be seated.

Okay.

Okay. First item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from February 19th, 2026. Is there a motion to approve? Yes.

Mr. Chairman, I'll motion to approve the minutes from February 19th.

Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Any corrections? Yes, Mr. Chair. Just one minor one in the roll call.

It's

sort of written right, it has in-person, but it says Kevin Goff via Zoom, so that should be moved to the end after the in-person ones and separated as, you know, via Zoom. Thank you. All right, thank you.

Duly noted. It's been moved and seconded. Any further corrections? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye.

Abstain.

Oppose? One abstention and the chair votes aye. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the March 26th, 2026 minutes. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second. Second. Any corrections?

Mr. Chairman, on page two, I gave the secretary a minor change at the top of the page. It says that I offered to do something by the next meeting. I'm not quite that speedy. I think I said at a future meeting. So other than that, I'm good. Okay, thank you. Duly noted.

It's been moved and seconded. Mr. Chair.

Just one other, again, minor change I've given to the clerk. The second paragraph under old business, it has the things I asked about, and I just suggested that she strike out race questions about ground-mounted solar canopies and balcony solar systems. He also, so if you strike all that out, it just says Commissioner Goff asks about balcony solar and the and the canopies, so you don't need that extra first sentence. Thank you.

We kind of enjoy that extra verbiage.

Okay. Duly noted. Any further corrections? Seeing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Oppose? Abstention? Chair votes aye.

in order to officially welcome our new alternate.

Hold on. Next item on the agenda is under new business. And there's a presentation from the partnership for strong communities. Is anyone here for that?

She's up there.

Good evening, Amy. Yes. Okay.

Yes.

Did you want me just to go ahead and get started?

Yes, please.

Okay. Sorry. I lost. I was in and then I got promoted as a panelist. So I went out and I came back in. So maybe I missed something for a second. Okay. I have a presentation that I would like to share. Is there a way for me to share my screen?

Yes.

Okay, great. Mr. Chair, may I add a comment? I'm very grateful to Amy and the Partnership for Strong Communities. I reached out to the organization. to provide some context on the research that they do in the state of Connecticut and just housing overall. Everyone knows housing is a very near and dear issue to me, and I thought that reading articles and seeing the great work and research that they do, if they could come to us for 10 or so minutes and tell us about the work that they do and any learnings that we can have as a commission during our planning meeting tonight. My idea in inviting them was to provide more context to our commission, and for all of the work that we do around housing in town.

But thank you very much, Commissioner James. We appreciate that.

So I have about 10 minutes, or what's my time frame? I wasn't sure about that.

I mean, you don't have a 10-minute limit. We'll let you present.

I heard you say you like extra verbiage, so... I'm just joking.

It was a joke.

I'm joking. I'm joking back. Well, thank you all so much for having me. Can you see my presentation on your screen now? Yes. Okay. Just let me know if you can't, because I can't fully see everything with my presentation and my notes. So I just wanted to make sure. So just let me know. My name is Amy Peltier. I'm the Coalition and Advocacy Director at the Partnership for Strong Communities I'm not sure if folks are familiar with the partnership. I'm just going to move this over here. Sorry, I'm getting my windows correct. But our vision is that everyone in Connecticut has a safe, stable home that's affordable to them in a community of their choice. And we effectively implement that vision through promoting strong housing research and policy. and coordinating advocacy in these four buckets that you see here, affordability, creation, choice, and stability. I wanted to also share a brief overview of the housing landscape that we work and live within from over on the left side being completely unsheltered and sleeping in a car or outdoors to more affordable, stable housing. And that could be in a subsidized rental or supportive housing or the private housing market or home ownership. I did want to share, we released the state of housing in Connecticut report in January of this year. It was written last year. Our staff actually writes it and there's a QR code here for you to scan it. It's a complete desktop reference of all things housing organized into our four buckets of creation, stability, affordability, and choice. but it also includes sections on emerging trends as well as other resources and references. I use it all the time in my work. I imagine it would be helpful to a commission such as yourselves. It talks about zoning and I'll go into a little bit of the legislation that we talk about, but it's really a great resource. Moving into affordable housing in Connecticut, when we talk about what is affordable housing, there's really two types of affordable housing. There's Big A and Little A housing. Big A refers to the affordability threshold being that an individual's housing is unaffordable when their housing costs burdened, which means they're paying more than 30% of household costs. is spent on their housing. And it's also typically a more restricted or subsidized housing. So that's big A affordable is when you think of kind of government deed restricted. Then little a is more often referred to as naturally occurring affordable housing, which may be less expensive rental housing, poor quality housing, or without usual renter protections or accountability. And most often in affluent towns, there's not a large supply of naturally occurring affordable housing or that little a affordable housing. Here is a, well, I should say one type of affordability is rental assistance by voucher. Our website includes an interactive map of the distribution of households receiving state rental assistance program benefits. So those are vouchers that operate much like the federal HCV or housing choice vouchers, Section 8 vouchers. We have our own state rental assistance program that operates very similarly. And this interactive map we have, shows the benefits across Connecticut towns as of October 2024. RAP really provides critical support to low-income households by helping them afford safe and stable housing in their communities. And you can see here that Bloomfield holds 28 RAP vouchers. The shading on the map indicates The intensity represents the number of households benefiting from RAP in each town, with darker shades indicating a higher concentration of recipients, such as Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport. And that reflects a greater demand for rental assistance. And then the lighter shading is often in the more suburban and rural areas, suggesting fewer households are accessing RAP, and there's potentially less availability of affordable units as well. Oops. So you can, this is really talking about it. I'm sure, you know, in your roles, um, uh, for the town, you're not unfamiliar with some of these statements, but, um, at both the federal and state level, only one out of every four households that qualifies for rental assistance, either section eight or a wrap receives it. The, the, um, The, I guess, qualification is the same both statewide and in our country. Connecticut's poorest families continue to struggle to find an adequate affordable homes and of the lowest income renters, the highest populations being low wage earners and seniors on fixed incomes, but it's also folks on disability, students, and our younger population. And then this kind of last statement, for every 100 extreme low income households in Connecticut, there are only 34 rental homes available to them. And then the populations in need include I was just talking about that. Some of our low wage earners and seniors on fixed incomes are the largest population. This is a slide showing Connecticut's housing wage. And if you're not familiar with the housing wage, that is the amount that a worker would need to earn to afford a two-bedroom or a one-bedroom apartment in a particular community. So much like the RAP map that I was showing earlier, we also have the housing data profile of every town and city in Connecticut, including Bloomfield, So Bloomfield's housing wage is $31.81. The average hourly wage of a Connecticut renter is $22.69. And this graph shows some typical jobs of a Connecticut renter and how they line up with the housing wage. So the wage needed for a typical two-bedroom apartment in a particular area It's $34.42 for the state of Connecticut. And like I said, it's $31.81 for Bloomfield in particular. But these are showing the most common jobs of folks that are earning an hourly wage and most often likely to rent. Additionally, 50% of the 20 most commonplace occupations in Connecticut coming from our Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Alice Report, they pay less than $20 an hour. So that's half of the 20 most common occupations. So finally, just kind of thinking about employment and the housing wage, to spend no more than 30% of their income on housing, which is that sort of cost burden affordability state, a full-time worker at Connecticut's minimum wage would only be able to afford an apartment priced at $815 a month. So as you imagine, that might be kind of hard to find. Moving into, and I don't know how much y'all want me to talk about recent legislation. I can go over it fairly quickly. I know we just ended our legislative session and that's a space where we do a lot of our work. But 8002, I'm sure you're also all familiar with. It kind of lays out a framework for how Connecticut will plan for and support housing growth in the years ahead. It was passed in the special session last fall. We continue, the state continues to face a deep housing shortage and widening disparities, and the bill recognizes that housing central to Connecticut's long-term affordability, economic strength, and community wellbeing. Connecticut's Office of Policy and Management has put together guidance on the timelines created in 8002. Excuse me one second. And those timelines kicked off in March of this year. I will say this summer, I know us as researchers and policy folks are really looking forward to the inventory of developable land, finding that will be an amazing tool, I think, for municipalities, builders, advocates, and it's something that we haven't had in the past. All municipalities now are going to be required, and I'm sure you know this, to create their own housing growth plan. or participate in a COG or Council of Government-Directed Regional Housing Growth Plan that will provide detailed information on how your town will increase its number of affordable or restricted units. And feel free to interrupt me also if you have any questions. I can't see you all with what I have open on my screen, but just please say we have a question. question yeah that developable land resource is that a state resource or is that something each town is doing the state is responsible for pulling it together but I imagine it would be done by municipality or at the very least within the regional COGS but I would imagine it's well ideally it would be by municipality but I would Imagine that the cogs are going to be a part of working on that with OPM and they would break it down by municipality. But we'll know in this summer, I think things are kicking off a little bit slower than expected with 8002. It is really a long term plan. So there'll be more to come on that. And I'm sure once that information is out, if you follow us at the partnership, we'll be diving into that and analyzing that with community.

Renee, this is John. It's our interpretation at this point that that's the town's responsibility to gather that data and make it available to both the region and the state.

Thank you.

Thank you for that. I'm sure you all... Oops, my slides are advancing. I'm sure you all are familiar with and hear about 830G, and you probably often deal with it in deliberations, maybe not often, but have dealt with it in the past. But it is the Affordable Housing Appeals Act, and... It really allows developers to appeal local zoning denials unless your town already qualifies for either an exemption or a moratorium. I kind of put some distinctions between the exemption list and being able to apply for a temporary exemption, which is a moratorium. I'm sure you all are familiar with this. 8002 kind of went in and... was looking at changing some of the hue or the housing unit equivalents and kind of what might go towards qualifying under the law to measure and track the inventory of affordable housing for a particular municipality. And again, I'm not going to go too deep into this stuff, but I'm happy to, I would imagine you all are familiar with this. And I'm happy to try to answer any questions. This is a little bit more of how 8002 talked about 830G. One of the new pieces of it really talked about streamlining housing development, in particular as it relates to middle housing development as a right. Middle housing development meaning developments with two to nine units are now allowed by summary process, which is similar to as of right development on any area zone for commercial or mixed use developments. So that's for folks that want to see more housing being built and especially kind of multi-unit dwellings, that's a good policy moving forward. Another one is the modification to protest petitions, limiting the ability of protest petitions to prevent housing developments by requiring changes to be opposed by at least half of the impacted residents and neighbors. It used to be 20%. So now half of the folks that are affected will have to petition against a particular development. And a study will be initiated as well to... sort of calculate and look at the methodology of calculating exemptions. So there's a lot of new work that will be happening over time as a result of 8002.

Amy, this is John again. Bloomfield is an exempt municipality. Oh, great. On 830G, we presently have an 11.7 percentage of exemptions.

qualified affordable housing um so we are we have been for for a long time and remain as an exempt municipality thank you for um letting me know that i should have i should have known that uh before starting but um that's um that's great it it shows that um y'all are contributing and doing your part.

I think as, um, we also have now a, um, a minimum requirement of 12% affordable housing in any new residential development. Um, and, um, that applies to both multifamily and single family developments.

Oh, wow. It's not, it's not after a particular number of units, five or more units.

no it's straight you know it's a it's a it's a percentage applied to if they build five units one of them's got to be affordable no we do have a minimum of 10 units say again we have a minimum of 10 units in that inclusionary zoning regulation is it 10 okay so 10 or more requires more units amy yeah yeah thank you renee yeah that's great um

I think some of the concern around 8002 is that, you know, we find it to be one of the most effective tools for creating affordable housing, especially in high opportunity towns. But many communities with restrictive zoning would otherwise be able to sort of maintain that sort of pattern. but it has enabled thousands of affordable homes that likely would have otherwise not have been built. So, you know, I'll get into it in a minute, but in this last legislative session, there were attempts to whittle away at 830G that actually came out of the majority leader's roundtable on affordable housing, which was really challenging for us to sort of manages advocates, but I'll get there in a minute. I just wanted to share some very specific data for you all in Bloomfield. I'm just going to shrink this back up. These are, so again, on our website, we have a really great website. We have housing data profiles for every town and municipality in the state of Connecticut. where you can find all kinds of demographics and data on your town from some of the things I'm gonna cover here, but also much more widely on building permits that are taken out, on racial classifications, on how many bedrooms you're more likely to see. So some of that is really useful. I know I'm on my town's, I live in Canton, I'm on my town's POCD and I'm a housing commissioner and I refer to them all the time for the work that I do there as part of my town, but also regularly for the work that I do at the partnership. So I just wanted to share that as a resource. So one of the parts that we talk about in or that we sort of show in our housing data profiles is the number of subsidized homes in each community. In Bloomfield, it's almost 11%. What you can see is a little bit under the rate in the capital region as well as the state. Your percentage of renters is really on par with the state. One out of every three residents is a renter. And then the number of single family detached units is actually fairly high in Bloomfield at 63.4%, higher than the capital region and the state as a whole. Regarding affordability, the percentage of households spending between 30 and 50% of their income, so that's that cost burdened if you're spending between 30 and 50%. of your home um renters 20 of your renters are cost burden and 23 of homeowners which is actually pretty high almost a quarter of your homeowners are cost burdened um which you as you can see it's higher than um the capital region and the state. Your renter cost burden is just a little bit under, but that's fairly typical. And then the percentage of households that spend more than half of their income on Rent, renters, that's 24%. And for homeowners, it's 12%. Your renters, again, is pretty close to the state average as it is for your homeowners right now. And then your median gross rent is actually also fairly high compared to the capital region and to the state overall at $1,620. And this is 2024 data. We should have... And this comes from, we get these profiles from census data and we work with the Connecticut Data Collaborative in developing them. And then we refresh the data every two years. So we'll have next year, our next round of housing data profiles will come out. This is median household income and average home value. Your median household income is fairly high for renters at 63,000. It's still not enough on the affordability scale, but it's fairly high. But for homeowners, it's actually a little bit lower than the state and the capital region, which is kind of an interesting juxtaposition, but perhaps why your percentage of homeowners are more cost burdened. And then your average home value at $291,000 is kind of certainly lower than the state average, but just a little bit higher than the capital region. Any questions on any of this data? There's a lot more that you can see in the data profiles, but just thought I would kind of pick at some of the ones around affordability for now.

Yeah. I would add one comment on the homeowners, median household income. I think that stat is interesting. And I wonder if it's because we have in Bloomfield, our age distribution, we have a lot of seniors and as you mentioned, likely to be on fixed incomes. I think that is, I think one of the driving factors of that limitation and why a lot of the homeowners may be cost like paying a lot of their housing, a lot of their income to housing.

Yeah. I just looked at really quickly. Your median age is almost 47, about 47 years old. So I don't know. I can see how that compares with the state, but that might be about average. But yeah, that's a really good point. Um, because you have, oops, sorry. Um, what was your, who rent their homes? Right. Because you have, um, you have a lot of single family homes. So that all of those things make sense to your point. But I encourage you to use those housing data profiles to dive a little bit further into this data. So we just wrapped up the legislative session. I figured I would share just a little bit of what did and what mostly did not happen this session with respect to housing, our overall kind of broad take on housing, the last session is that it really fell short of meeting our housing needs. If you're interested in receiving our bill tracker, we have a really strong, amazing research team that tracks all the bills as they're proposed in relation to housing, the housing committee, but also any other bills that talk about like, stairwell reform and tax credits. So if you're interested in that, you can use this QR code to sign up to receive our bill tracker directly once it's complete, and it'll be done within the next, I think, two weeks. But okay, let me move things around here again. Sorry. So I spoke about RAP a little bit earlier, but due to the rising rental costs, the state needs to spend more per voucher to keep the same number of people housed, which has been difficult as appropriations have not regularly kept pace with the increased cost. So the 2025 biennial budget made a huge step in that direction. with $8.8 million in each year to keep up with rising housing costs. They also appropriated $6.7 million last year that was due to begin this year to expand the program with 600 new vouchers. Of those 600 new vouchers, 250 were going to be going to a program called Head Start on Housing, which go to families utilizing the Head Start program 250 were for elderly and disabled vouchers, and 75 were for adults with developmental disabilities. The good news is that we received an additional $27 million for WRAP this past session, but the sort of flip side of that is that none of that new money is going to go to new vouchers, apart from those I just mentioned from last year. it's going to cover the costs of the program's rising rents. So it's really challenging because often the Department of Housing underfunds that program because rents in the private market just keep going up. And so when it seems like we're getting more money put into the program, budget for rental assistance, it doesn't always equate to additional vouchers. It's just to keep pace with rising rents. The other good thing about this session is that RAP will receive additional housing inspectors, which can speed up the placement process of an individual receiving a voucher. And much like the Section 8 program, the homes have to be inspected. And that can really take a significant amount of time that sometimes neither landlords or renters are prepared to stick with that long. And overall, 40%, actually nationally, 40% of people who receive a voucher aren't able to use that voucher. And one of the main reasons is because of kind of the bureaucracy of the program and in meeting rent reasonableness standards, as well as the length of time it can take to get and meet and make any alterations for inspections. So it might not seem like more inspectors is anything big, but it can really help to cut down on the time to place people into their homes. Let's see. Oh, and then lastly, RAP received its own line item in the budget, which for budget nerds is a really great thing because it was previously lumped into housing and homeless services line item, and it's been really hard to track. So we think that this will help us help make the program a little bit more kind of accountable and being able to track how that money is being used. Um, I just wanted to see if I wanted to mention anything else on rap. Um, I think that's it. Um, Very few housing bills actually passed this session. There was the legislature's omnibus budget bill in that, which is mostly appropriations. There's a homestead property exemption. There was a pause on the revenue going to the housing trust fund. There were included aging in place. Aging in place is a program that was codified in 2025, but the details were finally outlined in that bill. It expands bonding eligibility for high poverty tracts and 14 million was put into health care workforce housing and sort of offers kind of details about working with at least one municipality in creating housing for health care workers in that community. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. There was another House Bill 5003 was around down payment assistance for first responders. House Bill 5464 was around homeless encampment removal reform and made a mandate for the Department of Transportation to provide 14 days of notice before removing belongings from homeless encampments, and also created a mandate to have a study on what the removal of encampments does and how people and if people are offered supports to get into housing after that. Senate Bill 335 states, was around tenant utility metering. And then House Bill 5259 was a codification of the McKinney-Vento Assistance Act into state law. That's a federal law that ensures students experiencing homelessness have equal access to public education, including the right to enrollment transportation in a stable school environment. And once school children become displaced or homeless, sometimes it's hard to track them but they do have a right to transportation from shelter to their school district where they were already attending school when they became unhoused. So I will go, I talked a little bit about rental assistance, rental assistance expanding, but rental assistance does remain one of the most direct ways the state can help close the gap between household income and housing costs. It prevents evictions and homelessness and supports housing stability. There were many missed opportunities in the legislature. It was a short session, which is not typically when new substantive housing legislation is passed, but that's been changing more and more, and there was a lot of substantive housing legislation that was proposed. Senate Bill 151 proposed minimum lot size reform, and I wanted to talk about lot size just for a moment with you all. I'm sure maybe that's relevant to your work. But Connecticut has the fourth largest median lot size of any state in the country. And for such a small state, I've always thought that that was just like so ironic. But Senate Bill 151 would have capped minimum lot sizes at 5,000 square feet and allow townhomes anywhere single-family homes were built. Again, this did not pass. And a further note on, you know, just a couple bits on lot sizes, 76% of Connecticut's residential land requires at least 40,000 square feet for each home, really the size of roughly the size of a football field. 50% require double that size, which is 80,000 square feet for nearly two acres. And 97% of all residential land is zoned for single-family detached housing as of right in Connecticut, where only 30% is zoned for duplexes and 3% zoned for triplexes. Nationally and in Connecticut, people are asking for smaller lot sizes. Texas cut minimum lot sizes to 3,000 square feet. California, Maine, Oregon, and Rhode Island all legalized duplexes, triplexes, and quads in single-family housing zones. Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington have loosened their regulations. Maine is prohibiting municipalities from establishing or enforcing minimum lot sizes greater than 5,000 square feet. And Vermont legalized duplexes statewide and triplexes quads anywhere served by water and sewer, which I know water and sewer infrastructure is a challenge in Connecticut. But that minimum lot size reform is one that we will probably continue to focus on. because it really indicates where and how people can build and contributes to our housing stock overall, which if you think back to that spectrum from unhoused to stable housing really makes a difference. Just a couple other missed opportunities. The proposed YGB bill, and I don't know if anyone's ever heard the term YIMBY, which is yes in my backyard, or NIMBY, which is no in my backyard. YGB is a sort of take on that, those acronyms standing for yes in God's backyard, and it would have offered religious institutions of any denomination to have streamlined review for building on their property with very specific qualifications of affordability and income. HB 5114, the renter's tax credit, was not passed, but it proposed up to $2,500 for individuals making less than $75,000 or couples making less than $150,000. You all may be familiar with the governor's budget that ultimately came out, includes a one-time $100 million in aid to towns for property tax relief. So that's not to each town, of course. That will be split up to towns based on qualifications that the state will come up with. Senate Bill 339, which was known as the Golden Girls Bill, would have allowed homeowners to rent up to three rooms to individuals. This is something that we all know already happens, but it would have codified and made that sort of a legal cost or home sharing model. HB 5362 would have required towns to report on 830G decisions. That's one thing that's really hard to track and gather data around because there aren't many mandates to keep that in place, to keep that all in one place that's easily utilized by folks who want to sort of track that information. And Senate Bill 274 would have increased penalties for repeat violations. of building and fire codes and required non-residential landlords to register their personal identifying information. So none of those items passed. And then, as I mentioned before, several bills were raised that would have weakened 830 . And again, without 830 , many towns would just continue with their exclusionary zoning. through density limits, large lot requirements, and really onerous public approval processes. So our policy director does a lot of work on that, and I support him in those meetings, bringing together advocates that really helped to kind of try to rewrite that, but certainly were part of writing the original 833, So we were able to maintain it as it is with very few changes, but it is one way that legislators are thinking about weakening that system. So our advocacy work doesn't just happen during the legislative session. These are things that I can, myself or other staff can come out and do. Apart from the legislative session and we share the resources and reports that I did today, we have fact sheets on all kinds of policies and priorities that we promote and are happy to work with local people and local communities, local towns that want to be able to pull data or do research on a particular area. So we're available to support that. And we can participate in local meetings like we are today. This is a QR code. We have all these QR codes now that make meetings easier for people if they want to sign up just to be in our mailing list. So you can see any opportunities for advocacy, but also like events and things that We have upcoming. Our next event is, excuse me, and we call them their iForums. They're kind of half day events that take a deeper dive into a particular issue and the issue that we're focusing on next month, Wednesday, June 3rd, at the Mattituck Museum in Waterbury is around tenant power and organizing for stability. We have three really great panels with experts ranging from national tenant advocates. We have Mayor Mamdani from New York City, his housing staff are coming to speak with us, but then we have folks from tribal lands in Connecticut, and then we have legislators that are going to come and talk a little bit about what we have to do next, as well as um, tenant union organizers. So what, and it's free breakfast and it's a beautiful museum and we would love to see you. So, um, please come and join us. Um, we always put it in a plug. We hold an annual affordable housing conference in November. It's entirely virtual and it's entirely free. So it's two days of panels that you can join, um, you know, at your leisure, whatever interests you. And we cover, kind of any topic that you could think of that relates to housing at our conference. So that's something to think about long-term. If you wouldn't mind, if you are able, this is a final QR code I will offer today. And this is just to tell me how I did on this presentation. If you'd like to know more or see more or covered too much or too little, would love to hear from you. through that. And that's how we gather information from our communities. I think that's it. I can stop sharing.

Yes. Well, thank you very much, Amy. That was a very informative presentation. And I think that information will be highly used by this commission. I wanted to know if you could make that presentation available to the commissioners. Sure.

I'd be happy to share that. And I will say we also work with your I know you all have a fair rent commission. And that's another project that I'm closely involved with coordinating all the fair rent commissions to be part of a statewide fair rent commission network. So wanted to thank you for your participation and your supporting a fair rent commission and in the town. So thank you.

Thank you. And I want to say thank you to Commissioner James for extending that invitation to her to present in front of us. Thank you. And hopefully in the future when there's other changes that this made on the state level, you're welcome to come back and share that information with us.

I'd be happy to.

Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Thank you.

Okay. The next item on the agenda. Under old business is a review of the PLCD and discussion. At this particular time, I don't think we're quite ready to have that discussion yet. So I'm going to ask the commission if we can table this item and come back and review it shortly in the future.

Mr. Chairman, I make a motion to table the item.

Second that. It's been moved in second. Any further discussion on tabling this item? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Chair votes aye. Before we adjourn, I want to introduce our newest member to the Planning and Zoning Commission. I'd like to introduce Desiree Cotton. She's just been recently appointed as an alternate on TPZ, and this is her first meeting attended. Desiree, if you'd like to say anything or introduce yourself, you're welcome to it.

Thank you, Chairman. Yeah, I'm Desiree Cotton. I'm very excited to be part of TPZ. Just also want to thank the person who did the presentation today from Partnership for Strong Communications. That was really amazing. I also wanted to share that I am born and raised in Bloomfield. I love Bloomfield. I see the impact that you guys as a community and TPC has done for the town with the new Prosser Library and McCann Libraries. Those are amazing. I see a lot of development. I know that there's still more work ahead and I'm hearing talks about other future possible developments and I'm eager to learn more about the process that TPC as a whole does as this is my first time being here. So thanks for welcoming me And I'm just eager, excited to learn.

Well, thank you very much, Desiree. At this time, the chair will entertain. Mr. Chairman, can I just? Oh, absolutely. I'm sorry.

Yes. One comment about, I think most of you have recently become aware there's a great deal of misinformation circulating among the community about data centers.

Oh.

And I want to make it perfectly clear that there is no application for or discussion with any potential data center for any location within Bloomfield. Thank you for that. Unfortunately, there is information out there that suggests otherwise. But again, we have no application before us. We're not in any conversations with any applicant. And as far as I know, There are no data centers proposed in any location in the town of Bloomfield.

And I would just like to second that sentiment by the director. About a year, year and a half ago, we had a presentation from a company that wanted to come to Bloomfield and build a data center. We did listen to the presentation, but since that time, they haven't contacted us again. We haven't contacted them. There are no discussions at all on any sort of data center. So I thank you for sharing that misinformation. This commission has no intention on entertaining a data center in the town of Bloomfield. Thank you. Yes. So with that said, the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Second. What is that?

Second. Okay, it's been moved and second. Any further discussion? All those in favor?