Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Once that goes live stream, I just have to figure out which thing to close out of. I think I keep zoom open and just close out of the other thing.

Once that goes live stream, I just have to figure out which thing to close out of. I think I keep zoom open and just close out of the other thing. Once that goes live stream, I just have to figure out which thing to close out of. How's that?

Is that good?

I don't hear an echo. Usually you see. Can you hear me? Yes. All right, cool. Oh, is that thing?

Oh, it's not. This isn't the owl. Let me turn it on.

I plugged it in. Yeah, it did. Maybe it was doing its thing. Let me just unplug it and plug it back in again and it'll do its thing.

This is in this is in making sure all the attachments are good. For. This. Well, would be it.

Thank you. See you now. That's just me. I don't want to be the one on camera. The owl is not doing its thing.

Probably because the video wasn't on before it was. There it goes.

There we go. Takes it a minute to warm up. There we go. How's Chicago doing?

Good. They're still alive.

Yeah, it's like 65, sunny and breezy today. It's pretty much a perfect day. Yeah. I'm just getting attendance today, so we're good. We have no public attendance. The meeting is all yours, Daniel. You should have May 6th planning board minutes. I can't email from this computer, Robin, or I would email them to you. I have my computer. Hold on. I can send those to you, Robin. It will take a minute. Let me just read them out loud. Everybody was in attendance. You were here remotely last week, weren't you, Robin?

No. No. Okay.

I'm taking the word remote off. You're just getting ready to leave. Okay. We talked about the ordinance progress that Daniel had no update and there was no word from the select board. No planning board members are invited to discuss at the select board workshop. We handed out LD 2173 information from Erica Buffkin, which is about the, I want to call them auxiliary housing. That's not it. The new housing, which we should be, should have reviewed it last week and we can discuss it this week. We updated work against the comp plan. We talked about possible consultant to help with these public charrettes. And there was a handout that went with that. And that was really all we did. And we were done at around 7.06.

Is there a motion to accept the meeting minutes?

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, Lynn moved, Don seconded, moved. I'll send you a copy, Robin, so you have a set. Okay, thanks. And I will take off the fact that you're here, but my brain is not.

All right.

Thank you very much for your action. I haven't heard of any.

No, but I have a question. At one point, we used to get the permit log was a public document. It was on the desk in the office, right? So if we came in at any time, we could see what permits were there. That's no longer there. He says he has it on his computer. But Kathy has no access to it. And I've asked to have it printed out like once a month and put in our mailbox, and I'm not seeing it.

Is that something that Aaron could be doing?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I would like to provide a format that we'd like to see a login. Because one of the things that I had seen was just a list of permit number 16, 17, 18. And it had maybe a name added, but it didn't say what it was, right? It didn't say this was for a garage or this was in the shoreline zone. It didn't say anything. It just was no useful information. So I'd like to have us discuss tonight a, what information do we want to see in that permit log? And then I could type that up and send that to Aaron.

I imagine it should have the name and the address of where the work is going to be.

And what they want.

Yeah.

And it should be typeable. It should really be by fiscal year, right? It was a running log at one point. Okay. Do you want it by fiscal year?

I don't know if it matters to us. I don't know.

Well, we definitely want to know what's current, at least, and what's going on.

Yep.

The last thing we heard about was the

Well, the only one that came to us was because I think somebody brought up a question that it was too close to the border, right?

And so- There was already a variance for the cops.

Right, right. And so the question is, I mean, many, many, many years ago, long before my time, they- the planning board used to review every single building permit and issue the building permits. And at some point they said, hey, we have a code enforcement officer, that person should be reviewing them. The only time they should come to the planning board is if it's in the shoreline zone, because that's mandatory by law. There's a couple of our ordinances that say, like solar, right? That say the planning board has to review it. Subdivision, the planning board has to review anything that's a potential variance, the planning board has to review initially. Um, I forget what else, um, but then we stopped hearing anything at all. Yeah. That's the problem. And people would say to you, say to me and other people on the board at the time, you know, Hey, did you hear about, you know, so-and-so got this permit for such and such a thing. And you're like, what? And several CEOs ago, somebody granted somebody a building permit in a floodplain. And we never saw that the planning board never saw it, didn't know about it until it was done.

Yeah.

So those kinds of things, it's helpful to be able to see them, I think in progress. So you would, yeah, put on, I mean. So permit number, name, the lot, the address, and maybe a short description? Yeah. All permits.

Maybe.

All the permits. Even the ones that we don't have to review. Right.

All permits, whether we have to review them or not. Yes. Okay. I mean, I just...

we see cooperation between all doing the same thing for the town canton you know how all good yeah can you turn that all around it's supposed to move with people's voices and it's not necessarily doing it but right now as you see it's showing the board it was showing um showing lynn's uh drink cup before i don't want to be in there oh we get lynn there we go well that's perfect Yeah, let's put you on there. You can slide it. If you slide it away to the other side of the table, it'll be a little better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. All right. Thank you.

There you go. All right.

Permit, log, permit. Did anybody have time to look at the LD 2173, which was the ancillary housing units? I think that's the word. I want to say auxiliary, adjacent, but I think it was ancillary.

It's almost like an in-law type apartment or housing.

Well, and it's because of the very real housing shortage across the state. People can't hire people to come work for them because they can't find a house, for example.

Like in Rangeley, people that own businesses are building apartments too because there's not enough places for their workers to live.

Right.

Same type of thing, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

so that's what that 2173 is. What we do need to talk about is whether that applies to any of our existing ordinances and do we need to have, do we need to make any adjustments to ordinances as a result of that state legislative action? And I think we have until the end of June to decide that, but that's only two meetings away. This is Let me see. Now, Erica Buffkin sent us that a few weeks ago, and she sent a link to that as well.

They should be similar to our cluster housing ordinance.

Well, cluster housing is really more for a brand new development that says, our current housing and minimum lot size ordinance has people on 40,000 square feet, just under an acre. The cluster housing says, oh, you can put things half that on a 20,000 square foot lot and put them closer together if you have some offsetting open space. Right. Which is different than these ancillary housing units. Let me just see if I can find Erica's email.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm not even sure I'm on the Wi-Fi. Oh, I am on the Wi-Fi. It should go.

So I want you to build additional housing like on your own lot. I'm sorry? This would allow you to build an additional housing on an existing lot.

Yes. What's the name of it again?

It doesn't necessarily have to be connected to your house either.

So like if I want to build a cabin for my mom, you know, I could build that on my own existing lot. But what you're saying is we need to look at the regulations to see if anything needs to to accommodate that. So what is that like?

LD 2173. And you look that up. You can just type in Maine LD 2173. It'll take you right to the 132nd legislature and you can get a copy of it. She sent that to us and I forwarded that to everybody. I know. I hit search in my inbox and And I hit buffkin, I don't get anything even for error there.

That main 2526 legislation.

Yes, it's in there. Because I didn't shut down my computer, I just popped it off its docking station. It doesn't like that. So, I mean, this is why I don't like the Wi-Fi here. I'm just getting spinning, spinning, spinning. And I don't know if I can get anything on this computer. Maybe I can get Google here.

Well, this is... Is it coming over some way? Sorry.

Accessory.

Accessory. That's what the A stands for. Thank you. I knew it. Accessory.

Right. Right.

Passively enacted. Passively engrossed. Trying to get to the actual content. That's the whole history. Work sessions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. Would it be under the summary? Help them. Some of the main sources. That would be two or three. Would that summarize what it's... Sure. Sure it would. Oh, that one right there.

Oh, sorry. I just want to see the most recent one. Is this it here? April 16th. All right, so here's the document. It's only nine pages, which is relatively short for a state document. So it says, acts and resolves of the legislature do not become effective until 90 days after adjournment unless enacted as emergencies. The majority of these changes will become applicable to municipalities on July 1st. Whereas this legislation modifies recently enacted... Oh, you actually can see this. Enacted provisions of law... It's a grace period for certain municipalities to delay compliance with the recently enacted provisions of the law making a filing with the municipality's county register of deeds prior to July 1st, 2026. So I don't see anything about 2027.

Implementation timeline. It means that it was grace period requiring all zoning and land use ordinances to fully comply with the law by July 1st, 2027. Okay.

I don't know.

Okay, so definitions. For this purpose of the section, common scheme of development means a plan or process of development that takes place on contiguous parcels or lots in the same immediate vicinity. And Exhibits characteristics of a unified approach, method, or effect. Okay. So differential ordinance. And sometimes I've discovered that certain regulations don't apply to really small towns. And I don't know why. I was looking up a building code the other day. Oh, this has got still stuff crossed out of it. So this may not be the final final. Okay. So we can't, a municipality may enact a rate of growth ordinances that set differential limits on the number of building or development permits that are permitted in designated rural areas. Municipality may not enact or enforce rate of growth ordinances that limit residential development in designated growth areas as defined. So we don't currently have designated growth areas. We have nothing. So that's part of what

restricting permits either.

No, we don't. We have no way to restrict anything. So they're saying you can't do that. Whereas like Portland and Kennebunk have may have said, Hey, these areas, we don't want development going on out here in the, in the boonies, right? We want to keep it all concentrated in a city center. So that applies to them. We don't, I don't think we need a rate of growth ordinance. So some ordinance, okay. No, but we could, as part of our comp plan and creating designated growth areas, be able to say, hey, here's municipal incentives to build your housing in this area.

This might help more people on the town sewer and water.

By designating growth areas in the sewer.

Where it exists.

Either existing or adjacent to it, yeah.

So the smaller building lots that they have now could have accessory units on.

Well, right now we don't have any areas where there's tiny lots, except for some of the older houses right on Main Street.

I think that's a minimum lot size.

40,000 square feet.

Another interesting thing is the height and density limit mandates in this valley up to a 55 foot can. So in those areas where we have town water and sewer, you can build up to two and a half times the base density of what we allow now.

Right. Okay.

So that's, I mean, that's stuff that they're asking us to do. Here's a way to do it. without getting more customers on the town hall. It's making it really hard to actually fund it.

So I hear a lot of this does not limit, this does not limit, this does not limit. So this is the one that said summary, but it's still got a lot of stuff, strikeouts in it and stuff. So I don't know that this is the final one. in your email, Dawn, there's a, I forwarded something from Erica Buffkin before. That should have the final one in it. We, other than our cluster housing ordinance, we don't have any density requirements at this point.

Well, it's just the building law size.

Right, right. K-I-N-S. I think it's an S at the end. So apparently there's some towns where municipal officers without further action or approval by the voters of the municipality can enact this ordinance. They don't have to take a town vote on it because it's state-led mandated. And July 27 for all other municipalities. I don't know that we have anything that says municipal officers can enact an ordinance without a town vote. So you're right. We have another year to do that. I'd have to read this again to see. I didn't see anything in there about community size. I know I have found a couple of things on the state documents that say towns less than 4,000 people are exempt from certain things like I don't know if that says that here or not. So this, this feels like it's a lot of you cannot require this, this and this, right, which may have been things that towns who didn't want all these accessory dwelling units we're putting up as barriers, right? So you couldn't, like under Section 7, it says a municipal ordinance may not require minimum standards for subsurface wastewater disposal systems other than what is required by the Department of Health and Human Services, right? So it sounds like some municipalities were saying, oh, you can't put these accessory dwelling units because now you're going to have too many sewer pipes or wastewater pipes coming out of your house or whatever. I don't know that this necessarily affects us, but it might mean our housing and minimum lot size ordinance. We may want to put something in there about a paragraph about accessory dwelling units. Yeah. So let's go back to the emails that were sent.

What it's basically saying is that where we require just under an acre, you can put multiple dwellings on like three quarters of an acre.

So I'm looking down, I'm down to like section 17, 16 or 17. Attached to or sharing a wall with a single family dwelling unit or multi-unit residential structure.

You may have sent one.

It would have been like two or three weeks ago.

Okay, what would it be called under it?

I'm sure it has LD 2173, I think, in the title. At least one accessory dwelling unit must be allowed on any lot where the principal structure is a single family dwelling unit or a two or three unit residential structure. And a municipal ordinance may not require minimum standards for subsurface wastewater treatment other than that which is required. A child care facility or a family child care provider must be a permitted use in a municipal area that is zoned for residential purposes.

Is that an LD 1711? That's not right. It's 1713.

Did I forward that to you? Yeah. 1711? Maybe I got the wrong thing.

Let me look again. Right here it says... Finally, an active version of LD1711. Huh? Okay. Is that not good? That's probably fine.

What? Oh, 1711 is solar.

Yeah, that's the only one I have. The only one I have.

All right, I'll find it and make sure I've got that out to you guys. I don't know why my email is acting so weird down here.

It's really strange.

All right, so we'll take one more look at that at the next meeting. I'll move it over and see what we can have any specific ordinances we think might need to be impacted by that.

Okay.

Let me jump back to the ordinance progress for a second. I don't know, Robin, if you knew that at last week's select board meeting, the We asked a question about where the select people. That's right. So I have a couple of questions. I'm thinking at town meeting that's coming up. We might want to look very carefully when the warrant is available to get, which once it's shortly, we should be able to see the warrant, which also has all the numbers in it. I'd like to double check how much is in there for legal fees and make sure that that's allocated for ordinances. Cause if we have to update our, we still have a cluster housing still has to go through the process. If we have to update housing and minimum lot size to accommodate 2173, that's at least two more. So now we have four that that'd be four plus six that need legal review and The comp plan has to go through legal review as well as state review, I believe. So that's a total of seven. So I just want to make sure that what they budgeted for the next fiscal year for legal review of ordinances is going to be sufficient for all the ordinances that we have coming down the pike.

Where do you see those warrants? Where do you get them?

They should be... Will they be on the town website? I don't know if she puts them on the website. You can get a copy by calling the town asking for it and coming in and getting it. So ordinances.

One? Yeah. And when should that be out?

It's supposed to be two weeks before the town meeting. And the town meeting is the 10th, 9th?

It's on the 11th.

And our next planning board meeting is on the 4th. So maybe we can have an agenda item to review the warrant at our next planning board meeting on June 4th.

Yep. Okay. Because I don't know, Lynn, I don't remember if I've ever seen you at a town meeting. Have you been to a town meeting before? When they vote on the budget for the next year, like line item by line item.

No, I don't. Okay. No.

Because one of the things that happens at that meeting is the budget committee in the time being warrant, which there might be an older one over here. The budget committee has a budget recommendation for next year. The select board has a budget recommendation. Most of 99% of the time, they're the same. Sometimes they're different and they have to explain why they're different. But that's the place when people say article 43 to approve the budgets for blah, blah, blah, blah, where somebody could say, we want to, we believe the line item for legal fees for this and this needs to be increased, right? But you have to do it in the right timing because if somebody moves to vote on the article as presented, Right. And somebody seconds that. Then you either have to vote that down and then bring up a new article with a new budget. And then that has to get, you know, it's complicated. Right. So it's kind of behooves us if we think we should be something different. Somebody should jump on that right away and say, I motion this. Article 14 should read blah, blah, blah, blah. And then if somebody else seconds it, now that's on the floor for vote and discussion. And they may vote it down and go back to the original one. You don't know, but right. But otherwise it's harder to get yours added. You should be at the meeting on the 11th. Yes.

That's the budget meeting.

That is town meetings. Town meetings are fun. Everybody should go.

Yeah.

It's a lot of fun.

It's great fun. June 11th.

They are fun. Oh, the ballot's up on the wall right now. I don't see the one. Well, they were discussing a week ago. They were discussing the warrant, and there were still a lot of changes at M-6. Kathy just got back on Monday, and so we don't know if that's fixed yet. Awesome.

So this is exactly what you'll see. Is it time to report like this one last year?

Right. And you know, these are, I see these are articles. We vote at every single one of those articles individually. It goes pretty fast, actually. Really? Somebody else had told me their time meeting took two days because at 11 p.m. they called it and they had to come back the next day and pick up where they left off.

There wasn't that many people last year. I was on the budget committee last year. There was maybe 20 people. People, yeah. Maybe. Any more?

And I'm saying we need two things from the town office for our next planning board meeting. Permit list and a copy of the warrant.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So this is what you're following up on that. I can go in and do it. I can go in and ask them.

Okay, cool. Thanks, Don.

Yeah. So I'll go in and ask. Kathy's in, right? I'll just go in and ask them if I can. Get a copy. If not, then I'll have it ready. I'm going to sign up. I need it by the planning board meeting on the 4th for the email. Can they email it?

I don't know. I don't know what format she's got it in. I don't know what.

I don't have it ready. I can go in that week of the 1st. So let me know.

Yeah, that's fine. I'll find out tomorrow. I can email you 11. Cool. Yeah.

All right. So I will make sure we have an updated copy of 2173. So Robin, tonight I'll send you my comments on the draft of the comp plan format. Because I started typing them all in and then I got pulled into like three other things and I didn't finish it. But I will finish that tonight.

Yeah, I feel like that's more of like an executive summary. And I don't even know if the data points are right in the summary. Yeah.

Kind of what I looked at, it was like a summary of everything.

I think we need another version where all of that detail that we have in the Word documents is behind those summary pages. So I'm going to leave out there what we have right now and start working on a second version that'll pull in some of that detail that we already have. All the pretty pictures went away, too. Yeah, there were no... Oh, there was some pictures there before? Yes. I asked Claude to leave room. Claude's my new boyfriend. I asked him to leave room.

Yeah, I thought they were coming. When I looked through it, I thought, okay, pictures will be coming.

Well, I didn't, the way it was spread out, I'm like, where are they going to put, where are we going to put the pictures? Like, I couldn't see where they were going to put them in. I'm like, we lost them.

Yeah, there was only like one page in each chapter. that he left room for a picture right but I think I agree there needs to be more but I'll work on that part you know when I start making the bigger version that's got all of that includes all of that detail very cool and yeah I had to get just a couple other questions so I'll shoot that back to you tonight

But excellent job. Thank you so much for taking that on. I'm so excited. Somebody brought me one.

I really actually enjoyed learning Claude. I took a class and it was very interesting. I'm going to go see if he can make maps next.

Yep. Yep. What in the work on there is it that you have the list of who's doing what? I can't seem to find it. I don't know that we do have that in there.

Well, it was on the... It's in an Excel document. When you go into the comp plan folder, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, there's an Excel document. And it's got two tabs. One tab is the who's doing what tab. And the second tab is the requirements from the state of Maine by chapter. Okay.

Yeah, that had the names on it. Boy, it does work slowly. I know.

I just, my computer. My phone works right here.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

We just got, Spectrum sent me all new modem and stuff the other day. I had it for about 10 days and it kept sending me notes, activate your new system, activate, activate. So I did it last night. So hopefully that will, I don't, I don't have any problems at home, but.

I don't have any problems at home. Oh, okay.

I feel like we're doing very well. Somebody on the Lake Association called me the day and he was working on theirs for a town in Massachusetts and he sent me their last one. And it was really like, it was very dry, like our old one. He's like, can you send me yours? I'm like, not the new one because I don't, we don't want that getting out, but I'll send you the model, the one that we were using kind of as a model. But what else? Do we, I don't know that we need, well, what do you guys think about work sessions over the next months?

When do you want the public meeting?

Well, we can do them anytime. I'd like to try to do those charrettes like in the later in the summer, like maybe July or August. Okay. I can print it out.

No, it's just because I'm here, I think.

I haven't had any problem before. I don't know that I can do anything between now and the 4th other than stuff I'm just doing at home at night because we've got out-of-town guests showing up.

Oh, sure. Yeah, I think I'm getting more done without that Wi-Fi there.

Yes, yes.

You know, because I'm having I'm having a I help me with a lot of this stuff and it needs to kerchunk, you know, so. So let's just keep update on the next meeting. Yeah, I think we should keep talking about it and looking at it at every meeting so we're making ourselves make progress every meeting. Okay.

And I think you guys saw the note. I sent a note to Erica who was supposed to be updating our transportation chapter. And then she's apparently got access to print out all kinds of maps. So first she said, I will get you that chapter shortly on transportation. And I had another meeting with a lady who's happens to be her boss the other day.

And she said, I saw your note to Erica. I'm like, good.

So, cause I was thinking, should I loop her in or not? Cause it's been taking, she promised it in January and it's now May. Now it's taken us five years to get this thing. So I'm not really complaining, but I just, anyway, she said she should have sent, I'm going to talk about that in a second. She should send that shortly. Also, when I asked her about maps, I said, do you know where we can get? She said these beginning with habitat maps that the guy was going to send us. She somehow had those first. She said, oh, I'm going to come to your meeting in January. I'll bring them. And then she didn't come and we snowed out or whatever, or we didn't have it. And then she said, oh, I'll mail these to you. And I said, did you mail them? Because if they're in the town office somewhere, I'll go look for them. But I just need to know that you, in fact, mail them and they're here. And she's like, no, I still have them. And then I said, well, and then she said she can print more if we need more. And I said, can you print us on transparencies like on film so that we can overlay them? And how can you connect those to the lot maps that the county assessor has? She said, I think I can do that, but I don't know. So I did send her a note that said, hey, when you think you're going to try it, let's pick a day and I'll come to your office and we can try it together and try printing those out. So let's see if we get that done, because I think we would need those and you need them printed big. You know what I mean? If you're going to have a public meeting and six or eight people are going to sit around a room and look at them, you can't have little eight and a half by 11s. They got to be big. And to...

But they didn't have the old projector screen thing.

That's right. That's right. With transparencies. I was remembering in my childhood when they made the blue, the cup, the thing that you printed that thing and you ran the little cylinder and it made the chunked out the little purple. Yeah.

That's how we made poppers.

Somebody brought that up the other day, and I was thinking, oh, yeah, there's a unique smell to that. I can't remember that. Anyway, so hopefully we'll get those maps. To that point, I did talk again to the guy's name is Daniel Miller, who is an architect in the state of Maine. He's got a camp on the lake. He grew up in Canton. And he's got other properties around the state, but he was talking about, he remembers paddling across the lake and coming over to Tabor's and getting ice cream and blah, blah, blah, blah. He remembered the drugstore and the Ralph's cash market. I mean, so he grew up here. So he's got that feel and he still owns property here and he's here all the time. So he kind of has a feel for the town. He's agreed to help facilitate that meeting at no cost. which is like, yay. He also said he can help us plan and organize it so that we can basically do it ourselves or that we can figure out how to, you know, organize it and delegate it. Maybe a select person leads one of the sessions and somebody else leads a session. So you're kind of building engagement and credibility across all the different departments. but we don't know yet what we need I don't know we can't really ask him for anything quite yet but he knows it's coming and he said he'd be willing to help what does he need he's got multiple properties around the state I don't know which one is his primary residence so he may not have to travel too far no he's got a camper here yeah his office I think is in Bangor outside of near Bangor but he's got also an office in southern Maine so I don't know I don't know exactly

I need to start familiarising with them a bit more.

Yeah, he seemed very, on top of it, he knows things like building regulations. He knows where other people are doing interesting things around the state, like for housing and business development and repurposing old buildings. I mean, he just seemed to be really knowledgeable about a lot of the stuff that we want to do. And also not, he knew ways to get things done that were not necessarily, he would never, oh, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this. It was like, if you want to do that, here's three ways you could get that done. I'm like, yeah, that's the kind of guy we'd like to work with. How'd you meet him? He knows Cindy Witas.

Okay, Cindy. Yeah. And

Somebody else knows him. Well, and I brought up in a conversation with him, I brought up the other lady from that consulting company that said, hey, we'll help you because that's what we do is run these charrettes, the ones who are running the one for Rumford. She did send me a draft plan for Gardner, which I will forward to you guys. In there, she didn't have a total cost to do this same kind of community facilitation for Gardner, but the hourly rates were in there.

Okay, but he's willing to do it.

Yes, yes. Now, the last time we rented the upstairs at the Historical Society, the town did pay them to rent that room, whatever the going rate is. But now that, I don't know, Robin... is the president of the historical society. And she's the chairman there. And she's also on the select board. Like they held a retirement party for somebody there. I don't know if they paid for that room or not. I don't know. But for town purposes, maybe they got it at a discount. I don't know. But we can ask. But there's always refreshments. There's always stuff to print big. Like I've printed big things at Kinko's before for meetings like this. And they charge you a lot for those big sheets of print. So there may be costs associated with the meeting. I brought that up to the select board at the last meeting, and they're like, basically, when you have a process plan and you know what the costs are going to be, let us know. We don't know if we need to use the community development fund or not for that, but they seem to be open to that.

That community development kind of fits right into what we're doing. Very much so. Yes.

So I don't think there's going to be a roadblock there. I think we just don't know enough to know exactly what we're asking for yet.

All right.

So that was cool. What else? So I did not email it to you. Robin, but I will. I just gave you guys a copy of this thing called the Canton Development Corporation. The Select Board got this also today, and there's gonna be a presentation next week's Select Board meeting by the Canton Development Corp. And this is a group that got formed. They've been talking about it for about six months. They got formed a month or so ago. It's a nonprofit in the town of Canton that their goal or mission is specifically to help implement things like the strategic plan for the town. And because they're a not-for-profit, they can do things that the town can't do necessarily. There's certain grants the town's not eligible for that a nonprofit is eligible for. It's a nonprofit. They can hold property. They can do all kinds of different things. One of the projects the town's been trying to do for about five years now is tear down the old elementary school. Right? Because it got kind of discombobulated during the bioprocess.

I was in the town office a couple months ago and somehow I got discussing with Aaron about tearing the old school down. He said they have tried several different ways. They actually cannot do it because of all the toxic.

Not true. Yeah. So the Canton Development Corp can do that process in conjunction with the town. They've already gotten partway down the process of doing that, the town did, and it stopped because the town took possession of that property before they did a brownfield study, which is understanding what the contamination is. You have to then then it becomes a question of liability. Who is responsible for that contamination? Right. Because they took control of it before they knew exactly what the problem was. So they tried to say, well, can we get the water district now? So the town did a brownfield study several years ago, which now they know exactly now what the contamination is. That's done. So they know that. Might have to be redone because it was several years ago. May have to redo it.

Yeah, but the contaminants don't change.

Well, they could spread.

They could, whatever.

And if the building is deteriorating because of like holes in the roof, that's actually good. So, but that's because of that situation. That could also warrant why you want to do it again. But there's grants available for that. But Canton Development Corp, if the town redoes the brownfield, but you can get the Canton Development Corp can redo that brownfield study on behalf of the town and get a grant to do that. With that information, they can then create a mitigation plan. Also on behalf of the town, but the nonprofit can do it. At that point, if there's an agreed to plan, the select board could then transfer the ownership of that property to Canton Development Corp. And then they can apply it for the actual work to get it done. They can do it. So there is a way to do it.

So it wouldn't be expensive.

Well, it's going to cost money, but you can get grants to do it.

You can do it by grants.

Right. So I think the Canton Development Corp is hoping that that project will kind of kickstart potential future work with the town. So that's going to be the select board has that document that you have in front of you, and they're going to be talking about it next week, Thursday. Just so you know, that's going on. But I think the development corp could be a huge asset in exactly what we're doing with the comp plan, right? So once you develop the comp plan and then say, okay, now we have to do all these things that we think we want to do, right? How do you get it done? They can help out with that. That's just information FYI. Robin, do you have any questions at this point? Nope, I'll forward you that same document. I'm sorry, I didn't email that beforehand. Are there other topics for discussion tonight? I will update. I'm almost done. I should, in about an hour, I should be able to finish the housing section as far as I'm going to get on that. So I will finish that and get that done tonight as well. And then I'll take a stab at what we've got for some of the other sections.

We kind of went over the permit log format. Yep.

Yep.

Does that go along with the permit process and documentation? Yes. That's all that's been together. Yeah.

Well, that one that says permit process and documentation, that was more about when somebody applies for a permit. I'll find a document that Brad Sika did. It was really a question of which applications needed do we have an application format for everything that needs one? Or do we have, you know, and do we have actual permit formats? Because some permits, yeah, you give someone a permit that says, okay, your permit number 22, right? But sometimes there's stipulations, right? And there's, I don't know where there's, where you find those. And Brad did a good job of laying out a great outline and starting with what we had. Let me find that document for Brad. And I think I kept that on there because he gave us a great framework before he left the planning board and then there was more work that had to be done on his framework, but I don't remember. And also we had. When I come up for air on all my other stuff we had. um. We talked through cluster housing and it sits with me. So I need to take all those things we discussed and put that into the updated ordinance and get that back to everybody for review. Okay. That's on my plate.

Yeah, I thought that was one that we'd already sent to the site board. Okay.

No, they had the four that were in that document we sent them about a month ago. So we have solar. Cemetery. Sewer. Cemetery. Solar. Sewer. Cemetery. Planning board.

Those were the four.

Right, so cluster housing didn't even get in that mix. We did cluster housing. We've talked about it and all the changes are written in notes and then it sits with me to make a clean copy of that and get it back to you guys for one final review.

So that's...

Well, and I think, well, we'll probably have to put something about the accessory housing into our housing and minimum lot size ordinance. So that'll be another one. Complaint will be another one. So now we're up to like seven. So.

There. So I think that's it, right?

Yeah.

So, one can do a generous. Six will be five.

I'll second.

I'll favor.

So let me stop the. Hi, Robin. Okay. See you later. Bye. Have a good evening. Hope you had fun last night at your event.

Yes, I did. Thank you. Oh, good.

Great.

We'll see you later.

Yeah. Ciao.