Planning Board - Regular Meeting

I do. Okay.

Yeah.

The Zoom is working okay?

I think so.

Perfect. All right. We'll have to call the meeting to order. 606.

In your packet, you should have the meeting minutes from September 3rd. I want to thank Robert for taking care of that while I was gallivanting around the countryside.

I'd like a motion to accept the minutes.

Second.

All in favor?

All in favor, yes. I'm impressed.

We want to go through old business. We'd like to jump to the new business. Since we have somebody on the call, and then we can go back to the old business.

Yes, we can do that.

Make a motion we take something out of order. Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Everybody should have in front of them a copy of the correspondence received on September 16th from Mr. Laramie regarding the temporary test wells that were drilled at 36 Marine Drum Hill Road. Y'all had a chance to read that?

Mm-hmm.

I read the bullet statements. I haven't read the whole thing.

Mm-hmm.

So you also have a copy in front of you of the current Floodplain Management Ordinance, which is a 2009 ordinance, even though I've submitted another one to the point board, but that never came back. So question one here is, was a flood hazard development permit required for the drilling and installation of the temporary wells at 36 Ranger Mill Road? And you guys can all debate this, but my understanding from this ordinance and understanding the federal deed restrictions that are on the buyout properties, a permit would have been required once it got past the federal deed restrictions. I mean, my understanding, and I could be not correct, my understanding is the federal deed restrictions attached to those properties tells you what you can and can't do there. And if you've passed that hurdle, the next step would have been to get a permit from the town for that. So I would say yes, at some point it would have been required.

There's a couple of lines before that. It says the ordinance also specifically addresses water supply in Article 6 and Article 3 requires a flood hazard development permit application to include a site plan showing existing and or proposed development, including water supply facilities. Right. Okay, so the answer is yes, it should have required a permit.

Okay. Again, if it passed the federal deed restrictions, and that permit would have had all those requirements with it for all those facilities. Yes. If a permit was not required, what specific provision exempted the drilling operations? There was nothing that exempted the drilling operations.

Nope.

once it passed the federal deed restrictions. Was the planning board consulted or asked to make a determination regarding the permit requirement before the wells were drilled? I would say no, planning board was never included in any of the conversations around the wells. So that means question four, if the planning board did not review the project beforehand, who made the determination that a flood hazard development permit was not necessary?

We want to know that because we weren't consulted at all about it.

Correct. There's a planning board provided with the information concerning the wells that was subsequently reviewed by FEMA and the state of Maine. No, there's no information shared with the planning board. All news on us. So I would be happy to respond back. to Mr. Larrabee for those particular answers to those particular questions. If we have any other comments we want to include in that correspondence.

I'm still waiting to volunteer. You can still walk in the window.

I'm asking, sure, before you determine

So do we know if anybody was contacted before they drilled the wells?

The select board knew. The select board knew that there was a request in to drill the wells. There was some conversation between the select board and the water district about a potential lease on that land over time. And there was some conversation about whether those wells are or not allowed under the federal deed restrictions.

So was the CEO ever contacted? I don't know. Yeah, that's a major question, because I mean, he should have come directly to us if he was contacted about it.

Yeah, I don't know if the code enforcement officer was involved in any of those conversations, though.

I find it hard to believe that they would just go ahead and drill wells without asking anybody or getting any permission. You know, that's just hard for me to fathom, just going ahead and doing what you want, where it is a floodplain, you know. but they never came to us, so we don't know. Correct. Yeah.

All right.

Under the comprehensive plan, just a quick general debrief There is attached here in your notes a copy of the public workshop meeting record. It basically restates the objectives, the outcomes, the process plan, some of the closing comments, and a list of attendees. So that meeting record will be attached to our meeting minutes today as a .

Good.

And I know separately, Don, thank you for taking such good notes. There, we're going to include those. She said provided those already, like 24-hour turnaround.

You're setting a high standard here, of course.

As we continue to work on the comp plan, those notes will kind of be invaluable in helping shape the direction of those particular settings that we talked about last night. Do we have any general comments? I mean, I was happy with the outcome. I'm very happy with the participation.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

It was fun. So now I'm starting on the editing of the three chapters that are going to the one in two weeks. So hopefully we'll have a chance to look at that this week and just say, yeah, those chapters are ready to go to the select board. Okay. So you'll probably get another set of, uh, compliant chapters on the supported agenda before next week. I hope. Um, under this, I think tonight's last night's meeting was the biggest. We had four chapters that went into that. And there's three that go into the next session, which is like, um, housing people, population, and I forget the third one, but it's really understanding what's the population dynamics in the town or the housing dynamics in the town to start talking about what do we actually think we need for housing that month. That'll be exciting. The bottom of the old business list was the MOCA grant update with Josh, which I appreciate you sharing the September 11th correspondence. I'm just going to go ahead and attach that to the meeting minutes as well. So it'll be some part of our record.

So you guys all had an opportunity to read it. It's a good question. How do you guys feel about the deadline? I think it's going to be obtainable, but I believe so. Yeah. You guys done one workshop with one already. Is that something you guys are finishing up today?

We're going to look at all the ordinances that are affected by the housing legislation, and then we'll have all of them ready to go forward.

Yeah, so you've got two more. One is the commercial and cluster housing.

Well, I think tonight we're going to look at subdivision ordinances to make sure that there's nothing there that isn't I don't know, like commercial. Well, I mean, that's what we have to talk about them, right?

Yeah.

And cluster housing, I'll have for the next meeting because we already have a draft rewrite of that. Yes. Does not include anything for this housing legislation.

So I don't think it changes much, though, because cluster housing already reduces the loss.

It's good to go through and make.

Oh, absolutely.

And then that one has not gone through the next step of review either. So it'll be hopefully there's not many more changes that will be ready to do that process.

I'm guessing you have to submit them to the program at a certain time because everything has to be done by July 1st.

That has to be done more like the end of March in order to get on the warrant to go to June 10th.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess the July 1st I come up with is the program deadline. So now you're talking an even tighter deadline. Do you guys have more workshops planned to get the rest of them knocked out?

Yeah.

Yes, we do. Yeah, they're all planned out.

Well, these are comp plan workshops. Those are not the housing related ordinance workshops. Oh, okay. I do have on my list that we probably need to schedule a couple more. And we had, I think, one last schedule already.

Yeah, I think that was one long.

We have

Let's go through the calendar and see what we need to schedule. And we have on the 30th another comp plan public workshop. We have September 20th. So this coming Sunday is the final date for people to submit their calendar preferences for the October dates. So we'll know on Sunday what dates we need in October. So then we can schedule some additional ordinance workshops.

As far as the comp plan goes, so this is your workshop. Is there a hearing required afterwards?

Once the comp plan, this gives us direction to write the actual action plan portion of the comp plan. We're pretty well, we're probably 90% done with the inventory, which is all the background data. And then it's like, so now what are you going to do with that? Like, so what? We know all this crap about the town, so what? Yeah. So then we say, okay, these are the things that we think we want to do. Here's some starting priorities, right? And then that has, that comp plan has to also go through legal review and public hearing. Okay. And then it also has to go to town building. So yeah, everything's following the same process. Yeah. And it's going to be like. Yeah.

We live to write word and system. Yeah.

Getting pretty well practiced at it. Yeah.

So ordinance writing workshops. Let's, again, I can double check with Robin on her schedule after the meeting because she's sick tonight. But let's take a look at some rough dates. Do we want to do something on, I hate to say until we get the comp plan schedules on Sunday. So how about if we wait to get the final votes on the comp plan dates for the two dates in October, and then we can work a planning meeting around that. Yeah, we'll talk about that.

Yeah, somewhere in between those.

Yeah, okay. The next question I have is on the application, the legal line was decreased by 1,000 when it was added to the consultant fees. And on that, it said that consultant is in talk. Do you guys have that?

So we talked to two different people. who were potential consultants. I don't, at the end of the day, I think we decided they weren't really going to be all that useful.

Yeah.

And so...

I mean, you guys did a wonderful job last time.

So, yeah. So I think we can probably put that back in legal or figure out where else it's going to go. Yeah. I mean, I've never seen the legal bills. I'll have to ask again because I've asked a couple of times to see what we spend on ordinance review.

Yeah. No fluke because we're not shared.

So... Oh, yeah. And then I'll file for you if I don't get an answer.

Oh, I hope we can help you out with that. So, if you had to estimate, like, you think you guys feel comfortable with having everything submitted by March, or that

I mean, our plan is to have those before the end of the year to legal review. And then if that comes back, make some changes at the first of the year, it's got to be submitted to MOCA. Yeah. So early in the next year, we'll have all the public hearings around all these. Yeah. And revisions and then should be to the town by April.

There's a public hearings. Are those what we're on line five of the expense sheet for the mailing meetings and materials?

I could be included in that. I mean, the materials like for the meetings last night too, especially the one that's next week, which is exclusively around housing.

Yeah.

Those kind of costs can come into that as well.

Yeah. I guess like one of the points that she had returned back to us was that all the ordinance review has to be finished before we can use any of that money for that type of stuff.

Say that again. I don't think I'm reading something the same way you are.

So under number five of the questions was about public meeting. Then her response to that was, Monica needs to review the ordinance prior to adoption.

Right.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's not the right one.

Under comprehensive planning, yes, you can use funds for housing-related sections, but funding is first used for ordinance amendments related to the housing...

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we can prioritize. Yeah. Certainly the spending that goes to legal, the spending that goes to other things. And then if there's monies left, we can reimburse for the other pieces.

Yes. So you think that they'll be able to backdate it? I don't know what you're saying.

Yeah. Or I think that you can say these are prioritized to prioritize the legal expenses, public hearings, all the stuff that had to go there. and that ordinance writing for housing, there's funds left, we'll reimburse you with other pieces.

Okay. So maybe that's something we'll have to discuss down the road, but I kind of worry, you know, I don't want to see anybody put personal money into stuff and then, you know, find out it doesn't turn out or whatever. So do you guys... Well, I think the only challenge is if...

it's determined that, you know, legal review of like three ordinances and the comp plan takes all $10,000, right? And that nothing is left. That's a challenge. That would be a significant shift. But again, because we don't know what the book plots are, it'd be great to find out how much we're paying for ordinance review because we've asked and we've never been able to get that answer.

Kind of need to keep a tally on what's being spent and where it's going.

I just remember when we got our first ordinance back from the new attorney, the select board member at the time shared it with us and said, this was way more than we expected. Okay, but you're the client and you shouldn't be surprised by the bill at the end of the day.

You should be able to know what it's going to cost you ahead of time.

And it was probably overkill. I think it's a new attorney. They want to do a great job. Yeah.

Was that the solar ordinance?

I don't remember which one was the very first one.

That was pretty hefty.

Yeah, that's a whole different, it wasn't the solar, it was something else.

I can't remember. Wow. You know, in section two, when we talk about unused funds, it says most housing-related projects, things like educational setting, sessions, other related housing ordinances, data collection would likely satisfy the section of the grant, but please reach out to the program if you anticipate having leftover funds and want to use them for another housing related purpose. So does that mean that we have to get the comp plan expenses approved by them beforehand?

We put comprehensive planning in the grant application. One of the things we're going to use the funds for. And we talked about public meetings and workshops that we'll be using that relate around housing as things we're going to use the funds for. So I don't feel like it's out of the scope at all. I mean, I've administered millions of dollars with state and federal grants. I don't think it's going to be a problem. I think some of it's all in how you phrase it. And we're not trying to skirt anything. I think that these are all directly applicable when we're talking about determining where in the town we want growth areas. That is the precursor for housing. Where are you going to put your housing? And that's all part of that piece of it. So I feel like it's all connected. Now if we're talking about natural resources conservation in the town if that's a whole session and just without that then you're right that doesn't apply but i do think that there's all the stuff we were starting on last night is really the precursor like next week's session which is all about so the comp plan is like an outline for the housing basically where you want the housing to occur if you go to other towns they call it comprehensive land use plan And some of the towns, we got copies of their comp plan and they put every other ordinance in that one comp plan.

So it's a giant comp plan.

Housing and minimum lot sizes in there. Everything. Then their comprehensive land use plan. We keep it separate. But I know people have said, well, it's not really an ordinance. Like, okay, maybe if you do it all in one, then it becomes one.

I would imagine you can.

So there is a mandate there, certainly, to do something with that plan.

Yeah. For instance, some towns, they'll go to the comp plan and say, hey, the project you're proposing doesn't really fit our plan for the town. It's not necessarily an ordinance, but it's a guideline to go by.

Yes, and we have several ordinances that are written, there's a couple of loose things in there that say consistent with the intent of something for the town. Those are very vague. And that gives you as a board or the select board, it gives us some leeway to say. A little bit. Yeah, for certain things. Yeah. I forgot what the question was. What was the question?

I can probably answer my question. It was about how the comp plan and everything is related. But that's all I really had. I appreciate the answers and the information.

Did you find out yet if the check had showed up at the time?

No, I haven't. Okay. Yeah. Good to know.

Has anybody heard anything more on the town digital storage? So we kind of lost the limbo.

As you know, we already attacked your budget for the email. So, uh, trying to, to work with, uh, Aaron on getting like a, maybe a one drive that we can all share, uh, like a folder kind of, you have the same idea, your current ordinances. Cause the theory behind that is the, the deputy clerk's email kind of never disappeared. So it'll always be there. It was.

Can you tell us, have you given us anything that says exactly what you've taken out of our current budget to cover emails? Because I haven't seen anything.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we voted to take the emails out of the budget. I can't remember which one. I'd have to go back and look.

Yeah, it'd be great. If you're taking money out of the planning board budget, it'd be great to let us know that. We haven't heard any correspondence. For our emails? Yeah.

For the town emails. Okay.

whatever the cost is of that, which I don't know. I don't know what else that affects in our budget. I'll put that on the next agenda so we can discuss.

I hope I haven't misspoken, directed the wrong line, but I'm pretty sure we decided to take it out of that.

How much are they each email? I mean,

I don't know, but he'll have that information before the next meeting. And then we can look at our overall budget and figure out what else might need to shift as a result of that.

All right.

Ongoing file cleanup. Are we still awaiting boxes and labeling?

I think we're almost done. I think we just need to sit down with Kathy and maybe spend half an hour and box up the stuff that we've got.

Yeah.

The fall cabinet's done.

Oh, perfect.

I came in a few minutes early.

Nice. That's awesome. Thank you.

I need quiet time.

Yeah.

So maybe we can set half an hour with Kathy in the next week and just go through all this and get it in the right boxes, get it labeled the way she needs it labeled, and then check that off the list. Yeah. Perfect.

I mean, if it looks important, I put it in a pile. If it looks like junk, I put it in a pile.

Right. So now she's given us some boxes, I think. Well, we have to just check. But we have to box up, and then we want to label those boxes so that we can find them again.

I heard mention of like a cover letter inside the front cover or something. What's inside.

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you and I can figure out an hour in the next week to do that. Yeah. We'll get that done. Definitely.

Cool.

So solar, cemetery, planning board, and sewer, are they awaiting legal?

They're in all different stages, if you recall. The planning board ordinance, the select board said they were going to send that to the town warrant. There were one last-minute change on that. It was not clear. Kathy said she wasn't making the change, so I made it, and then the select board's like, we'll make it ourselves, but it's already been made. It doesn't matter, but they've got that one.

That was for the one drive, I believe. Oh, was it? Yeah, OK. That was what? Well, the one drive was the final edit on that.

Right, right. So I made that change because Kathy said she wasn't. And then I got a note saying, oh, the selector is going to make this change. And I'm like, well, it's already done. So what do you want to do with it? So that's everything else is sitting right now in our court.

In our court?

Yeah, yeah. Remember we had to talk at that working session about these? They all have some rewrites that we need to take a look at. Sewer was put on hold by the select board table because they didn't think there was enough changes to make a warrant. Right, I saw that. So we have solar and cemetery, and that's on one of our additional working sessions for the future.

Yeah, I thought we had already made most of the changes that we needed to them. So we just finalized that and sent it off to the select board. Is that where we're at?

Yes. Okay.

Okay.

So we did housing and minimum lot size at a working session last week. So I just need to get those revisions to you. We've already done cluster housing up to, but not yet including any of the housing legislation changes. So at our next working session, I'll have the updated cluster housing available. I just haven't finished all the typing in that. Um, so if we're interested tonight, I did pull up, um, subdivision ordinance.

Yeah.

I don't, well, I don't, you guys weren't, I don't know who was here the last time. It's relatively new.

Yeah. Put it to the other side so you can see what that is. Let me get the one, that's the one that's done. I can't edit that. One second.

A big steel chair? That's fine. It's way better than what I sit on at work. Is that what you sit down on? Occasionally. Depending on what I and everyone else is doing. What do you work for? I work for Peachy Builders in Augusta.

Oh, okay. I actually have a couple of IVs standing with... My workplace.

What do you work at? Yes, you do. You've got a lot of steel up there. You've got a lot of holes in your roof up there from blasting. Yes, you're welcome.

We've got a new blasting company in there now, so it hasn't happened since I've been there, but Oh, that was ridiculous what they did. Yeah, I'm kind of disappointed I never get to see the old blast.

They have chunks like this on the roof. On the roof. Yeah. And they had it covered with blasting mat too. Really? Oh, it was gone. They obliterated everything.

So this is not too long of an ordinance. It starts with it really has a lot about the process of what goes into a subdivision, like what plans people have to submit, um, what, how fast we have to turn around those plans, get them back to them. There's not a super lot of detail on the content. Right. Um, so the sections are, we define a subdivision, which I did print that out separately today. That was, that's a, The state definition, there's a subdivision, is a division or a tract of land that takes one parcel into three or more within any five-year period. Because what you didn't want people to do was like, well, this year I'll subdivide, and the next year I'll take up another plot of land. And you do one lot every year, and now you've got, effectively, we've got a subdivision, but there's no rules that govern that. Because if I want to take a lot of the hill and divide it, I can do that with no requirements whatsoever. So there was the five-year time limit, right? So we have had a couple of people over the years who've taken off a lot and six years later, they take off another lot and that's legal. Or the other requirement is splitting commercial or industrial structures into three or more dwelling units within five years. So if you're adding dwelling units, you need to have a subdivision permit if there's three or more. So now you've got the ADUs, you're only adding one, but if you're, let's say you're putting up a huge garage and you're making two apartments at the top of it, that's only two ADUs, they're still okay. But if you need three or more within five years, then it says, as well as placing or building three or more dwelling units on a single person. Right now, all the ADU stuff would not have to apply. I don't know that this really has any requirements. but we can run through it real quick.

Oh, the other thing- Should we make mention of ADUs in this ordinance somewhere?

Probably. MOCA is having another training specifically on ordinance writing. I signed up for it today and I don't know where it is. Oh, it's on the 23rd. So that's a, I just thought it would be useful to know. Oh, absolutely. So this is a lot of process information, right? So you have to file your subdivision within a certain amount of time after you've been approved. There's a pre-application intent to subdivide overall plan and vision, right? So that just gives people a chance.

A heads up.

Yeah, it's a heads up. It's coming. Here's what we want to do. We're thinking about this, blah, blah, blah. There's no real requirements of a pre-application. There's a preliminary plan that gives the, and then our obligation, this is kind of a summary at the front, and then there's more of a detail in the back. So the summary says the select word has a 30-day review to determine if that preliminary plan has all the required elements. Like are you, do you have a, like rows laid out, row widths, do you have the number of units? You don't have to have all your maps, like engineering, drawing for sewer and septic, all that stuff doesn't have to be done, but you have to have enough of a layout to be considered a pulmonite fund. So you have 30 days to determine if it has all the right elements. You have another 60 days to determine if all those elements are compliant with the town ordinances. The planning board could have a public hearing on the preliminary plan just to start to get public opinion if it's going to be something that's controversial. They don't have to at the preliminary plan schedules, but they could if they want to. And then that also gives information back to the developer that says, hey, you're missing this in your plan. We want to see more about this. Give us details on X, Y, Z, right? So then... the developer, within one year of the preliminary plan review, the developer has to submit a final plan. And the final plan has 60 days to be reviewed by the planning board. Or any other mutual agreeable times may be set. So if one, so let's say they get a preliminary plan, we tell them what they need to do, we need to fix this and this and this, and a year goes by and they haven't submitted a final plan, they have to go back and start for approval of a new preliminary plan. So you can't do any utility installations, ditching, grading, construction of roads, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, until the final plan has been approved. Makes sense, you know. So in your preliminary plan, you have to give it to us in digital format, but also bring some printed out big sheets. The old version of this had vellum and the things on gigantic sheets and stuff that nobody does anymore. You've got to have the title, the names and addresses, all the owners. Um, address all the abutting landowners, the location, you know, talk about roads, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm not going to read all the stuff that's in there. And you still need to lay out all the, where the water bodies, streams, springs, all like swamps, wetlands, stuff. If there's public water and sewer are not available. So this is where we have the minimum lot size, right? In the plan where public water and sewer systems are not available. Each lot that is to be offered for sale or sold shall contain a minimum of 1,000 square feet of land within the regulated 40,000 minimum square foot lot size. So this is where we should make a change, right? Just change it 1,000 minimum lot size. Yeah. So that became 20,000, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now, I think at the next meeting, we can compare this to cluster housing, which I think already has 20,000 square feet in it. Data?

No, I'm not sure we will need that.

Well, I mean, that ordinance talks about giving you permission to be tighter in your housing so that you can offset OpenSpace. Maybe we want to make that one even smaller. And that cluster has it.

Yeah. So if you're building on a hill,

You're putting a subdivision on a slope ground, you have to be able to show what those contours are so people get an idea of what that really looks like. So there's a lot of issues with water runoff and everything else on a hillside. I don't really know what happened with the development that's behind the cemetery. I know that there's a lot of lots of it. I think they're not sold. No, there's quite a few up there. Yeah, there's still, well, not quite a few, but there are lots up there. Yeah, I mean, if you looked at our map last night, I'm like, look at all those lots in there. I'm pretty sure most of those are not sold, but no, it's been quite a long time since I've been here. But who owns them now? Now we can look at the, we have the O'Donnell tax maps. We can look at that. It'll tell us. I haven't looked at it. Hmm. I know you get to name the streets. I think that's fun. That would be fun. They don't want you to duplicate streets. Like you can't have no streets in the same area.

You'll do it with the name change. It has to be there. Free Prince, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So anything submitted to the town has to come by certified mail, so we know exactly when that 30-day or 60-day box starts shaking, or it has to be stamped by the town clerk that it's been received. So preliminary plan submissions that have all of the information required should be considered within 30 days. We may decide it's not complete or maybe needs to be fixed. Nobody else was in the meeting.

Somebody's emailing something. It's talking to that, I think.

A message. So

Under number one there will be reviewed by the planning board within 30 days of determination completeness in relation to Canton good land development practice.

What is that? Good question. I think what happened is at one point. The I believe somewhere there's a checklist like we have for solar, right? We have for the marijuana, medical marijuana businesses. So if you're applying for a permit, your permit has to include this. We gave them a checklist because it made it easier for people to follow. I believe we have a subdivision checklist somewhere. It just tells you these are the elements that have to be in your plan.

Okay. So that term is probably in the checklist? I don't know.

I don't think so. I think that's a good question.

Okay.

Was there a column missing as well as?

I don't know.

So preliminary plan, once it's reviewed and examined, including any other studies that we asked for, If there are any changes by the subdivider, the planning board considers and votes by majority to approve, modify, or disapprove the preliminary plan. So we can give it, we can say, yep, this preliminary plan was good, bring it to the final, convert this into a final plan. We still need more information, et cetera. So there's a lot of rules here about communication and corresponding, making sure everything's documented.

Good.

So again, if we approve a preliminary plan, that does not constitute approval of the final plan. No. But it serves as approval of a general design submitted in the preliminary plan as a guide to the final plan. So once they get approved and a written approval of the preliminary plan, then they have to do a final plan. Now it's got actual lines of the streets, easements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is telling you all about subdivision plan still doesn't tell us anything other than 120,000 square foot for minimum lot size. Is there anything else here? One of the things, who would I look at? We were talking about small housing, EDU housing sizes the last night at that workshop. And I've seen plans for 800 square foot homes that are three people are living there and it's very comfortable. And, you know, so I think our assumption that it has to be bigger to figure us better isn't always.

No.

I do like that country.

It's way cheaper if you have a small space.

One of those things was an email from Mr. Larry to have me. about what was discussed, okay?

So this is where the comp plan is important, right?

Yeah.

So we look at subdivision standards. Is it in general harmony with the Canton comprehensive plan, which is a very loose determination?

It's very harmonious right now. Right.

Oh, we have a comp plan from 2004. That's the one we're operating under at this point. Does it have regard for natural features like large trees, roads? Are you clear cutting or are you leaving some natural features? This is all about subdivisions, not necessarily about ADUs.

The road frontage, was there anything changed with the new legislation about road frontage? Oh, that's river. That's going to work. Yeah. Hold on. Nothing about road frontage.

That's a river segment. Yeah. That's also on a lot of shore. Here we go. Street requirements. No single structure. Seasonal locations will be constricted Or move to a lot of less than 40,000 square feet. You know, that's gotta be 20,000. Right? Right.

And I thought the new legislation they had, they minimized the amount of road frontage you needed as well.

Number one, we just did the housing amendment plot size. Let me take a two second.

I think that's. What did we put in here for WordFrench?

Put it right out there.

Yeah. Oh, OK. Let me save it. Yeah, we took it out.

So maybe with that 200-foot road furniture, we could minimize it to 100 for a subdivision. I don't know if that falls in line with the new regulation or not, the new legislation.

I did not bring those documents with me today. That's okay.

We have the new

Any existing structure burns may be replaced, even in a lot of measures, less than.

Certainly that's right.

Yeah.

Well, do we have lots of measures of less than 20,000 square feet?

I mean, if there's an existing structure on a non-conforming lot, right? So there's a historic lot that's tiny.

It can be replaced.

You can replace it. Yeah, absolutely. Even if it's not even a non-conforming lot.

Yes.

Right.

But you're not supposed to build bigger than it was, if my understanding is correct.

Yes, unless you're in shoreline zoning, because then they're about to replace it. So I'm going to put a question mark here because I think we need to Concentration of proposed commercial housing structures. This is, I think, the only place that mentions commercial housing, which I'm guessing is like apartments or... Let's see what else is in here.

Okay, so definitions.

Yeah, where it said dwelling unit, that's probably where we should mention accessory dwelling units as well.

Okay, I guess we're commercial. Well, where were we? I'm sorry. We're kind of jumping around. A lot of this is kind of a patio. Why don't we do this? streets and approved subdivisions.

We have a separate street ordinance somewhere. We have a road width provision in one of the ordinances that might be in here. There's a separate roadway element somewhere in one of our other ordinances. We'll have to take a look at that.

I would imagine subdivision is a bit smaller than a regular road.

Well, what happened back in 2006 or 2007, 20 years ago, where the solar farm behind the nursing home is now, when the town was buying out houses on the floodplain, they were planning a subdivision to be able to put new houses in, to balance, put everybody back on water and sewer, make everybody happy. Right. And the, our road, the town's road with ordinance at that time, I forget how wide it is. And I don't know that it's been changed.

It was 17 feet or something.

No, no bigger, much bigger. You'd have to be one, like 108. And that's what they wanted in subdivision was a road that big. That's nuts. What happened was people went around, they actually physically measured, roads in Dixfield, Peru, Mexico, Hartford, and we came back and said, look, our ordinance says this. The reality is like, this is adequate. The fire department said it was fine for fire trucks to school, so it was fine for services. So they wrote an addendum in one of these ordinances that said, for the Village Ridge development, we will reduce the road with ordinance to this. And then that development ended up not happening. So that was the only place the road with ordinance was So I'll find those documents, and we should double-check in subdivision to see if it stays a regular building. Because we don't want to be overburdening subdivision people with the boulevard.

I mean, I would imagine it would want to be about two-thirds the size of a regular street, around about.

Yeah. That was an accomplishment at the moment, just to get it to save for that development.

Yeah. I'll do that.

Did we still have, did we change setbacks, right? I think so, yeah.

I think we had a set of either 25 or 20 feet.

Yeah, yeah, so we went to 20.

20 feet, okay. Okay.

We kept our setback from Jason Lott's 20 feet.

Yes. OK. Street drainage. Side slopes.

Streets are green. Face covers. So dead ends.

There it is. 26 feet.

The end of the street should not be parked in the same side of the street.

That's 38 feet wide. Sure.

The roadway's got to be 26 feet.

There's a car down sideways. Whoops.

Only everyone will be texting while driving. Good God.

I'll find another recommendation. Right-of-way? Well, right-of-way, that's a swath of land, right?

I think we changed the right-of-way in the housing and lot size before. So our land-bound lots didn't have those right-of-ways.

Yeah, I think we did, yeah. As we saw the same thing, 60 feet is just not.

Do we need a couple of these?

No.

What did we call that? Wasn't it right away? Give it a...

It had a different name.

It had another word.

Backflots. It was into that, wasn't it?

Oh, yeah. 20 foot right away. Yeah. Oh, it has hyphens in the word right away. That's right.

Oh, okay. Yeah. 20 foot. See, it sounds a lot more manageable.

Yeah. So if you're going to really build a big subdivision, you got to submit all kinds of bonds to the town. Basically that says until you're fully inspected by the town and you meet all these requirements, we're going to hold a lot of money and then you get it back again.

Right. Yeah.

So definitions. So this I think is interesting. The cluster housing ordinance that this one calls densely developed Any commercial, industrial, or compact residential area of 10 or more acres with an existing density of at least one principal structure per two acres? It sounds a bit dense than that.

That doesn't sound right now.

Isn't the cluster housing, though, where you have so much open space?

Yes.

OK.

Maybe that ordinance could go away completely.

The cluster housing? Yeah. Because of the accessory dwelling units?

I don't know. Maybe get rid of it. Maybe.

It doesn't seem like you really need both.

It doesn't seem like a law. So this is at least one feasible structure of two acres. So where else do we have densely developed? Just there.

So if we're not using the words densely developed anywhere else in the document, it should not be in the definition.

Right.

Right. Well, hold on. Hold on.

No, they're all right. This whole thing could probably go away. Yeah.

We're not specifically laying out density requirements or density development. Do we want to think about merging cluster housing in this one? Let's finish this one, and then we'll take a look at cluster housing at another workshop, and then we'll see if we can get the two together, subdivision and cluster housing. Yeah, because I don't see why anything in cluster housing wouldn't be under a subdivision requirement. They kind of go hand in hand.

If you're going to be putting... Well, subdivision doesn't have to have any common area. Each subdivision, each subdivided lot has its own common area, its own area. Right.

But I think, yeah, cluster housing, as we talked about it, was originally instituted because people want to develop lots, for example, near the coast that might have wetlands, right? And so people say, oh, you can't develop that. Well, they said, well, we could if we get allowed to put more houses closer together and offset by having these wetlands preserved over here.

Yeah, it's so that everybody doesn't have to get a variance, basically. Right. Yeah.

But in the cluster housing ordinance, don't you have to have a specific amount of land? designated as open space? Yeah. But would you combine that with this, with the same amount of open land for density housing?

I don't know. I think, let's go all the way through this. I think we're almost done. And then see, go back and take a look at it and see if it makes sense. And is there stuff here that's unclear?

I think you would definitely see the difference between the two, between a subdivision and a cluster housing. Because with a subdivision, like I said, all of them would have their own front lawn and all that. Whereas cluster housing, it's one lawn with like five houses. It's kind of how I'm seeing it. Well, it's more like lots are very tiny and you've got a community area. Whereas in a subdivision, everybody has their own area.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like a community lawn. They're still really close.

I mean, it can be really close together, but... So, one of the things... Hold on. What was that? When I went to the Build Maine conference, they showed lots and lots and lots of different plans of different kinds of development around the state. So, they could either be... I'm thinking of, like, the new housing they just put up in Rumford near the old Martins.

Yeah.

On the right-hand side. Yeah. That little... side street that comes out they built them to look like old-fashioned homes they look the houses look like they were old-fashioned yeah right but they have i think they have eight units in each of those little houses really yeah i toured them they're pretty small there's four on the first floor four on the second floor and they were modular homes they were built elsewhere and just kind of yeah put together well there's three of them were they modular or panelized uh well there's two different building techniques i could

modular is a box that you set somewhere, panelizes, every wall comes and you stand the walls. I don't know.

Yeah. But those three houses are very close together. But I don't know what Rumford's ordinance is on.

Right.

Right. And they worked with the select board to get all that. The new CEO would make all that happen. So I don't know. But if we think about, I don't, I have this drawing somewhere.

If you think about the things people could do, like, want to log in again? Hold on, I've got the pictures. I see those pictures. So here's one, for example. So this could be a subdivision where they put everybody's front portraits kind of facing each other.

Down the middle. And there's, I don't know if that's a garden in that little. I look like a flower box. I do. Yeah. But that could be a subdivision. Right. So like, what do we do with something like this? If somebody wants to do this.

Or is that more like a cluster housing? Cause everything in the middle is common.

So a cluster together. Maybe. Or do we call that commercial?

I don't know.

And we have not really, we have nothing here that designates apartment buildings. duplexes, something like this, and are these single-family homes that people own, or are these rentals? I don't know, but if it's a rental, does that make it a commercial property? If it's a single-family home, how would something like this fall under our ordinances? Because this is exactly what, they're not just talking about ADUs, they're talking about how do we get more housing in a smaller space?

Well, that's one way.

Right. But I'm saying, would this be precluded from being built in Canton, Because of our ordinances.

I don't think so.

Why would it? It should be allowed.

Right. But what's constituted there?

I think the number is too many for even cluster housing. I don't think they have enough.

Well, they're not in the same class, right? There's no.

Well, they're built together.

They're all connected.

Yeah. Okay.

But even if you sold those as, like, condos.

They must have parking behind.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, I guess it would be a subdivision then.

The only concern I have is if one house catches on fire, they're all going to go.

Well, I mean, there's all kinds of fire. Oh. If you want that in situations, especially in apartments down south, each connecting wall is cement. Right, right. There's building.

Oh, it doesn't have to be cement. You can have two layers of sheetrock on both sides of the wall. That's a one-hour firewall.

So if we are trying to open up the possibility of things like this, is this right now precluded in our ordinances?

We have nothing in ordinances that they can't be connected. Right. Correct. In any ordinance, right? So...

I mean, that's just one large home with a lot of rooms.

Whether you want to live there or not is something else. This can be all kinds of reasons why you want to do this. I'm not saying anybody I know wants to do this. I'm just offering it up as an option.

I don't think there's anything in our ordinances that would say you can't do that as long as you meet all the water and sewer requirements and everything.

There's no minimum lot size requirement. I mean, this... Yeah. This is completely different. We keep assuming that everything's going to be single-family homes, right? Yeah, but it's not. So we have, but that's all of our ordinances cover is lot sizes for single-family homes, yes. Right? We don't cover something like this. Or the ones that I always hate, which are the boxes, like you see in Ruffer, they sit in those things on the nine box. There's boxes, but they have those You know, porches all the way around, the outsides. To me, those are the ugliest things in the world. But we have nothing that really precludes that.

Right.

Other than we don't like the design.

Yeah.

But I don't know that we have anything that specifically allows it either because of our... I mean, we have nothing that talks about commercial space or something like this that are like tiny homes or condos. So would that be considered...

The difference depends on how they build them. If they build them for each of those to be like a condo, I always get confused between a townhome and a condo, but I think they're the same.

You sell it, and I own it.

Right, so even if they're attached, would that be considered like a condo situation or a townhome situation? And why would that be commercial, though?

No, they're not, because they're individually owned.

Okay, so now it becomes commercial when the person builds those and then wants to rent them, like the ones in Rumford. The woman owns those apartments, right, that build them over there by Martins?

I forget who owns them. I don't know who owns them.

One person owns them and rents all of them.

Right, that's what I'm saying. Okay, so with that commercial... I would assume so. Yeah, it would be commercial. Yeah. Right? That would be the difference, right?

And what if we had a business on the bottom and an apartment over the top?

That's a commercial residential. Yeah.

Yeah, but are those places that are on top of these, because you went to that conference, are those rentals usually when they're on top of businesses?

Oh, they can be both.

Well, there's apartments over top of Canton Variety. Those are rental. What I'm saying is could they be bought? You know what I'm saying? In other words, if they built...

Some of this we have to sort out before our next public workshop. This is exactly what we're going to be talking about in a public forum. What kind of housing do you want? The situation was right for this. Maybe you had starter homes for young families here. And you could afford it. Something affordable that you could then hopefully appraise over time. Increase in value over time. Maybe in five years you sell it and get something different. They could be starter homes. They could be a combination of things where you can offer a rental to a college student adjacent to a senior citizen. So you start to get intergenerational interaction in the community. There's all kinds of possibilities.

College students would be great because quite a commute from

To Romford?

Yeah.

Yeah, Romford's got full of classes. It's, I mean, it's not too, it's like a half an hour to Auburn from here.

Oh, yeah.

With us commuted to Central Major Community College.

Yeah. Anyway, just thinking about gas prices, people just don't like it.

No, I couldn't afford it. Do our ordinances currently preclude this kind of development?

I don't think so.

If I could start up at this kind of a development, How do we determine lot size? What are we setting?

Well, you'd have to- I'm taking a bigger lot.

I'm subdividing it into this. And maybe I'm putting a playground at the far end of this or something.

Yeah. It's a subdivision.

Right.

Yeah.

But we just said 20,000.

Okay. I just asked what the definition of commercial versus residential. And I will use that right up because it's interesting to me because it's residential properties are buildings- for people to live in, including senior family homes, apartments, condos, townhomes, senior living facilities that focus on convenience and amenities, kitchens, baths, blah, blah, blah. Commercial are designed for business purposes such as office retail. So basically, the bottom of the drugstore is commercial and the top is residential.

Yeah, commercial property.

It's a combination property.

Yeah, this would be a commercial property.

So how, well, it's residential, right? If it's apartments, condos, townhomes.

Yeah, but if they're all connected.

That would be residential.

If one person owns one unit in that, how does that work? Your unit's connected to somebody else's.

But the thing is, you know what? I mean, that's what a condo is.

It's what a townhouse is. My grandma had a townhouse. But see, if a person rents a townhouse or a condo, the person that's renting it actually owns it. So someone actually owns them and they can still rent it.

Well, I have friends who sold their big single family home because she did the math and said, if we move into this very nice new development of townhouses in their community, they can retire like eight years sooner with $500,000 more in their savings account.

Hmm.

And they had one kid, right? So they got out from under all the lawn mowing and the maintenance and all this stuff.

They have a townhouse.

But they own it. It's their own. I mean, they get equity built up in it. There are certain repairs they're responsible for, et cetera. But they don't have to plow the road in front of it.

But I think in a situation like that, it's either, like if those were, say, townhomes, then every unit would be a townhome. And yeah, it's not and or you can, Half of them could be leased. They could if one owner is an owner.

Someone has to own it. If your deed said that you could sublet, yeah, you can do that. If your deed doesn't allow you to sublet. But I think that would be residential then.

Yes. One owner has to build the whole thing. It's all connected.

But it would be residential because it's built for a developer builds the sublet.

But it's still residential. It becomes residential afterwards. Yeah, this is residential. Yeah.

But see, that's the difference right there.

It's residential. I mean, if somebody's building a new variety store, can we ask this question? Yes. And the use at the end of the day is commercial.

Right.

Anybody building it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the purpose is residential.

Right. Right.

Okay. Okay. Just checking.

But if they're buying that property to do that to it, it's commercial until they sell it.

Well, that's a developer's problem. But as a town, if we're permitting it, what we're permitting is a subdivision with 10 units of residential property.

Exactly.

A residential space.

Let me throw this one out at you. My grandmother, she lived in a duplex. She owned her portion.

Yeah.

The other piece was a rental, but not owned by her. Right. The bank owned that.

Right. Yeah. It's weird. I mean, there's a couple of older homes in town that are split up that way into either apartments or I think some of them might be duplexes where somebody owns half and somebody else owns the other half. All right.

So if we go back to... Okay, if you have...

Okay, it's classified as mixed use when you have both. Yeah, like the drugstore. Right. It's mixed-use. Commercial and residential. It's mixed-use.

Well, anyways, so here we define a dwelling unit as any part of a structure, whether it's sold to you when you own it or whether it's leased to you, if a human is going to live there, It includes single family, multifamily, condominiums, apartments, timeshare units. That's a dwelling unit.

So somewhere in here, we should mention accessory dwelling units, especially in where it's a subdivision. Each subdivision could potentially have an accessory dwelling unit with it.

If a single family home was in a subdivision and they wanted to have an ADU with it, yes.

Yeah.

Okay. So if I have an apartment building, my own apartment building, I'm probably not going to want to add.

An accessory dwelling unit.

No, that'd be a lot. Yeah. So let me think about it. If I build an old house and I made a duplex out of it, could I put, and I rent out those two units, could I build one more ADU off the back, another rental unit?

One or two.

Because it's a duplex. Doesn't it say you can have more than one unit, maybe a unit on the property if you have the space.

You could build one for each side of the duplex.

Okay. So do we want to put... Is it an auxiliary dwelling unit or accessory?

Accessory.

All right.

We'll put a definition here. We don't have to do that right this side.

Right. But we've got to find out where to put it in the Ordinance as well.

Yeah.

Probably under lot size somewhere.

It is automatic programs. All right, I'll fix the.

This is just to try and get it in line with the new legislation.

That's why I hate doing this as a group writing exercise. I don't know why these things are subdivisions. I think we'll just make them whole numbers. All right. Principal structure. Any building, any building or structure which the main use of the premises takes place. So that's your residential commercial mixed use. That's the principal structure. So we already know a subdivision is any extracted parts of land, three or more lots within five years. I don't know that we have to change any of the definition of a subdivision.

I don't know what this means. Yeah.

Well, I guess somebody may have a 100-acre lot, and they want to divide, and they want to give somebody 48 acres of it. That's kind of confusing.

Yeah, I don't understand either.

We can go look back at the state. The state has a more updated subdivision ordinance. See if it's built in that. Submission accomplished by device.

What is that?

So if somebody gets condemned, like let's say the house is condemned or the lot's condemned for some reason, somebody could come in and say, well, now.

Oh, no, I mean the one before that. Oh, the device? Yeah.

Yeah. We looked this up last time. Remember? We're talking about people who try to get around.

Device is a D, right?

Right. So people are trying to get around this.

The subdivision.

Yeah. Yeah. By saying, well, I'll knock off a lot and give it to my son. Right. And then maybe the son decides to subdivide. Well, he didn't, he wasn't part of the original. So people are trying to skirt the intent of the ordinance.

So what does this statement actually say?

Let me go back.

Well, you can find the notes on the original rewrite of this, which was 23. We do have notes on all this. Because we asked all the same questions.

Yeah, because it looks like BS to me.

I can't remember. These were legal terms.

Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me.

No.

Well, I think it was saying you could, I could deed, like I could take my 10-acre lot up the hill and deed three acres to my child. Right. Fine. That doesn't count as a subdivision.

Right. So it should say subdivision in there, not create a lot.

Well...

It doesn't create a subdivision just because you took off a portion of your land. That's not a subdivision. It's just for giving.

Well, it doesn't create a lot for the purposes of this definition, unless the intent is to avoid... And then it does? Yeah, yeah. So if you're trying to just get around the subdivision laws by dividing your land a certain way, then you get caught, basically. And you get caught with that.

All right. I think it's worded bad, but I get the idea.

Yeah, this is one. I loved having Brad Sika on the board because he was a lawyer. Yeah, he would find out all kinds of things. It was wonderful. He was really good. I asked him if he'd be an alternate. He was thinking about it. Oh, good. The lock gets condemned for something and a piece of that gets knocked off again. It's not creating a lot for the purposes of a subdivision unless you're intentionally trying to get around it. If you come back a year later and want to do some other subdivision thing.

The law is still condemned.

Well, you can't circumvent the law. You'll have to retroactively go back and get a subdivision permit. Same thing with gifting. Same thing with the court. Maybe you're divorcing or separating or whatever and the court orders you to give a portion of this lot to your ex-spouse for some reason. And then that person subdivides further, unless that behind the scenes intent was to get around the subdivision, you're fine, unless you're trying to be sneaky. Same thing with gifting, right? Has to be held for a continued period of five years before they could further divide them up that lot. So let's say I gave a lot to one of my kids. They then sold it to somebody else that is not related to the family. And that person then decided they want to subdivide the thing. It says you can do that because they're not related. So I decided to gift a portion of my lot to the town. They didn't like it. That did not trigger the subdivision orders. If this was all done prior to 1971, it doesn't matter. We don't care.

We wasn't around.

Yeah. So this whole thing cannot, the town could otherwise regulate land use. It just doesn't stop them.

Right, right.

So I think there were some towns that were trying to create a new definition of subdivision. And then we're like, eh, eh, eh, can't do that. Unless you have a conflict and you have to file that by June 2020. I had a question a couple of years ago about the Demers land, which is a lot up the hill from us. they own quite a bit of land and then Mrs. Demers finally passed away and her kids decided they were going to sell that land. So they created, I think four lots, but they never got a subdivision permit for it until after the fact, which I thought was interesting because they tried to sell us a lot between us and the Laramie's, which is just a bunch of runoff. We went down the hill and I'm like, I don't need any for a very high price. Yeah.

So did the land ever stop when a,

Oh yeah, the Laramie's got their lot. That's called the Castle House. The next people up the hill that built a new one a couple of years ago. And then the Huckins had already had their lot, but I think that might have been a piece of that. I don't remember if the next lot up where the Moissons are now. The who? Moissons, Paul Moisson and his wife. That might be a piece of that, all that demure chunk of land at one point. I think all those lots were sold, and then they got a subdivision permit, which didn't happen.

Whoops, did it all backwards.

Yes. So arterial roads, blah, blah, blah. So we talked here about adding a definition in of accessory dwelling units. And then being able to, or do you want to put, well, the definition would take from the other thing as well. Where in this document do we want to talk about accessibility?

Somewhere where it defines the loss size of the subdivisions. Minimal loss size, I guess.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, somewhere in there.

Well, that's all on setbacks. So that's all on street requirements.

And we want to say somewhere up front that we need to prevent that accessory dwelling units. I mean, right now, nobody's subdividing their lot to put one on, right? I'm keeping my lot, and I'm adding an apartment. I'm keeping my lot, and I'm adding an apartment. But I'm not breaking that off as a separate lot.

Right.

Right? Is that simply a new lot in the big house?

We'll go up to the top where they have it broken out of what's where. Maybe that might help.

This is just telling us what it is. It doesn't say that.

Oh, the table of contents?

Yeah, table of contents. I mean, we're at definitions. We do some guarantee and enforcement. subdivision standards? Could it be like section? Possibly. Seven.

Seven.

All right.

Five more minutes.

Yeah.

Let me set the timer. I get my eye on the clock.

So I think right up at the, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hey, Poe Subdivision Conflict. What are your dwelling units situated existing community facility? So in that section. Yeah. All right. So we add in here something about the intent of the dwelling units. I'm also going to go to this housing website and see if they have any recommended language.

Like English.

It's not Spanish.

Yeah. That it's encouraged a lot. Yeah. Okay. That's all right. All right.

So as we do work on these housing ordinances and we approve the drafts and stuff like that, Should we be looking to send them to where we got the grant from for their review of it? Well, it has to go to the lawyer and it has to go to them as well. I think it goes to them first.

They said they didn't care.

It's up to us to decide which one we want to get. I thought this was just in the note that you had. Wouldn't it be better to send it to them first and then the lawyer?

Because they know what they're doing with the ordinances, right? It would help maybe keep the cost down on the legal fees. That would be good. That might be a good idea.

Yeah. So the way I wrote it out, it goes to them first. And she just said the timeline aligned with Grant. And she said, I'll shoot Melody on that.

Yeah. As long as we get to the end goal, they don't care if they see it before or after. Or simultaneously. And you can send it to both people, get their feedback. Oh, that'd be perfect.

Yeah, but it sounded like they wanted to get it first. Yeah.

Cool.

All right. Maybe we could have two or three ready to go by October.

Yeah, send it right to them. Here, how was this?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's stop here for tonight. That's not going to

All in favor?

I'm sorry, did I motion?

Is that considered a motion?

I think so. I saw the motion.

There was a motion to get your stuff and get out.