Planning Board - Regular Meeting

so let's call to order the July 13th 2026 meaning of the graph and planning board we begin as always with public input so if anybody in the room or online has something that they want to bring before us that's not on the agenda please let us know now I don't see anyone in the room I don't see anyone putting their hand up online so I think we can move into our action items And just before that, I'd like to welcome our new associate member, Marlon Mahendra. Welcome, Marlon. Marlon Mahendra. Welcome, Marlon.

Thank you.

With the public meeting law, you kind of just hop right into these things. There's not a lot of training or talking outside of it. So, you know, just feel free to ask questions as you go. And I think it serves a nice function when you're curious or you want clarity on something. It helps, you know, us talk it out, and it helps the folks looking on from home, you know, understand things. So don't be afraid to chime in.

Actually, as time goes on, There are some training opportunities that come along and hopefully he won't miss the notices of them. Some of the organizations run, I forgot who it is, but a couple of them run.

CPTC runs this. Citizen Planner Training Collaborative is the main one.

I think that's it. Just to call it out, some of those are, are paid, but the planning department does have a budget that allows us to attend some of them directly. I forget how that works. I honestly forget if I ever used the planning budget for any, but that is there.

Got it. Most of them are not prohibitively expensive.

Yeah, so if the question, if they come up, they usually, the town planner and folks in that office usually let us know. So yeah, please let us know. Awesome. So let's move on to the first action item. We have a draft decision for the ADU at 189 Brigham Hill Road.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd send up the draft decision for the protected use ADU at 189 Brigham Hill Road. If you have any questions on that, we can go through that. But otherwise, it's ready to be voted on for deliberation.

Anybody see anything or have any questions? I had no issues with it.

I'll move that the board find favorably on all the findings, grant all the requested waivers, and grant the site plan approval with the conditions all as drafted with any changes that might be noted during discussion of the motion. Second. Second. All right, motion and seconded.

Any discussion of the motion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. okay and then the next action item is selecting a representative for the Grafton common traffic study committee this was a new committee that was the charge I think was approved at the meeting that we were at for the select board yes and so I guess we can throw it up into discussion if there are any folks that are particularly interested in it I've been

Reminding, getting reappointed to our committee that I created back 25 years ago for the Grafton Common and I guess I'm available with.

I'm also open to being on it. And I guess we're seeking just somebody to make a nomination and anyone else who's interested can speak up before we pause for that.

Although I was part of the group that worked on creating that study, I am not interested in being on the committee. There you go.

I live near the center. I'm very interested in the outcomes of that committee, but I don't think I have the time to have another one right now.

Do we understand how often it will meet, or is it just the charge doesn't really say? It just says that there's to be two public hearings, right?

Yeah. I don't know exactly what the cadence will look like. That may be decided. once it gets set up, stood up.

There'll be a lot of reading for that, too, though.

Yeah. So I don't know what the time commitment is.

OK. All right. Well, in the absence of anyone else expressing interest, I guess we're just looking for a nomination.

I move to nominate Robert Hatzinger. Bob? Expressed interest? has some experience in the area.

Do we have a second? Second. All right. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Bob is appointed unanimously. Thank you, Bob.

I'm just shocked that you'd be interested. Shocked.

Round up all the usual volunteers.

All right. That's the end of the action items. So moving on to our discussions, I think we have a couple of presentations tonight, the first of which is from CMRPC. So if you'll come forward, this is about flexible development. And you are Michael, correct?

That's correct.

All right. Good to see you. Welcome.

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. I think it'll be easiest if I can share a presentation. I think everybody has it, but it's probably easiest if I can share it. Yeah, you should be able to share it. All right. I see it on a screen there. Yeah, we've got it all. I presume that we're good. All right. Mr Chair, thanks very much for the opportunity to talk to you again about this. What I have done is very substantially reduced the presentation that I did last year to really focus on what I think the key talking points around this subject are so that we can look at moving forward. The background for those people who haven't been involved, was that during the discussion of the master plan, it was identified that where flexible development applications had been submitted and approved, they had proved very successful in creating open space for the town. but that they hadn't been used as much as could have been used. So the master plan steering committee was keen to look at how the flexible development part of the bylaw could be more widely used. And that discussion started off with a conversation which goes back to the previous master plan where it was recommended that flexible development should be made mandatory. We had a conversation around that and I'll own up directly to this. I advised the committee that I believed that it was not legally possible to make flexible development mandatory. The committee therefore said, okay, well, let's make an action item to look at how it can be better incentivised. So that was the action item that went in, and the initial request to CMRPC for funding to look at this was made to look at how to incentivise, how to better incentivise I'm sorry, I've got the wrong... I have two presentations here and I've got the wrong one. This is going to be the longer one, so if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to unshare that and try to share the other one. It should be that. What we did was we put forward a whole argument which discussed, first of all, the content of the current by-law and went through a whole lot of possibilities. It was decided that we should pause the process for a couple of reasons, one of them being that there was information still to be obtained about whether an Acton by-law was legal or not. So we paused the study and we have paused it through the first half of this year really because we felt it was something that the planning director should be involved in. So the next steps from Phase 1 were listed here and the options were either to decide that this wasn't a priority for Grafton and effectively do nothing, to revise the current by-law to eliminate the special permit for either conventional development or for the flexible development because the current situation is that for any development bigger than six units, I think it is, five units, there's a requirement for a special permit. To look at B or C plus changes to incentives and then to look at one or other of the draft by-law processes. To simplify that down, I suggest that what your board needs to do is to decide between, A, doing nothing, shelving the flexible development for the moment. Secondly, what to do about special permits. Thirdly, whether we want to look in more detail at incentives, and in that case, what we want to do about them. And finally, whether you want to look again at the issue of mandating special developments, flexible developments. Okay, so in relation to special permits, at the moment there is, as we've just said, a requirement for a special permit for all major developments. Our analysis that we did in the first report suggests that there may be a legal issue around that, but that is really something for you as a board to discuss with your council. I don't think we need to look further at that in terms of this project. Noting, though, that if your council should recommend what the status is with most towns, which is that a conventional development can happen without a special permit, but a flexible development requires a special permit, that that change would be retrogressive in terms of what we set out to do. What we would strongly recommend against moving in a direction which requires a special permit for flexible development but not for conventional development. Having said that, it would be possible to remove the requirement for a special permit from either conventional development or flexible development and substitute site plan review in either case. If you draft your site plan review criteria very precisely, that can still give you a fair amount of control. It simply means that you can't say no on the basis that you don't want the development. You can say no if the development doesn't look the way that you believe it should look, or you can require it to look that way, but you can't deny it because it becomes a by-right use. So that is a possibility, and we could look at helping you to draft site development plan criteria for that. But as I say, that's not really going to increase that that may make flexible development more attractive in grafton than it is somewhere else but it's not going to make in itself it's not going to make flexible development more attractive than conventional development in grafton so it's not going to achieve what the master plan steering committee was hoping would be achieved so if we go on to looking at incentives which was what our task was in the first place. The thing about incentivizing flexible development is that you already do it about as well as any town in Massachusetts, at least, does it? Your incentives are very strong. The one thing that you don't do, and to be fair, I don't believe, I haven't seen an example of it being done, but there's no reason why you shouldn't do it, is to have an automatic density bonus for choosing flexible development. In other words, you have bonuses if people do certain things within the flexible development, but you could simply give a density bonus for choosing flexible development. So you could say if you go the flexible development route rather than the conventional development route, you will automatically be allowed an extra, for instance, 10% density. And then you could decide that currently your incentives go to a maximum of 25% and they build up depending on how the development looks. So you could either change the steps that you give for design. And for instance, I haven't got a list of exactly what you have to do to get those incentives in front of me. But for instance, if you increase the quantity of open space provided, you get an additional allowance, which at the moment I believe is 10%. So you could give an automatic 10% and then reduce the incremental benefits, bonuses attached to specific actions to 15% so that you still have a maximum of 25% benefit overall. Or you could increase the overall benefit that's permitted. The state's model by-law suggests a total additional incentive of 50%. Nobody in the state has 50%. The highest is 40%. And there's only one town that I've found that has 40%. You could consider that, or you could say 35%, so you could have an automatic 10%, and then the additional 25% that you would have had according to your existing formula. So I'm not suggesting that you necessarily need to make a decision on that now, but that is a route that we could go. We could talk more about that and make proposals in relation to that. If we're talking incentivizing flexible development, I believe that that is probably the most effective way of doing it, is to insert that automatic percentage. It doesn't have to be 10%. It could be 5%. It could be whatever you like. There is another way of incentivizing, but I had the impression when I presented last time that that wasn't very favorably viewed. You could reduce or eliminate application fees. Frankly, that's not a huge deal for a developer. You could look at a tax rebate, something like a TIF, which you normally use for economic development purposes. There's no reason why it shouldn't be used, but it hasn't been used for this purpose. Or probably the most effective non-density incentive would be to either buy the conservation land or to enter into some agreement in relation to the conservation land it's very difficult to to establish why flexible development, which is referred to as open space residential development in many other places. Why it is not more popular? Because it is cheaper for developers to do. And it is used much less in other places than it is in Grafton. Developers are reluctant to go that route. Now, there isn't data which says why they're not interested in going that route and developers are extremely cagey about this sort of thing. One suggestion is that they are worried about marketing the units that come out of flexible development because those units carry a responsibility for the open space. So if you buy into a flexible development, you generally buy into a body corporate of some sort that is responsible for the management of the land. And that has financial responsibility associated with it. And the suggestion that has been made to us is that The developers are concerned about being able to market the units because buyers don't want to take on a responsibility for the management of a piece of land that isn't their own. So if the town had an interest or were open to the possibility of either buying the the development land or taking it over at no cost potentially, that might prove to be an attractive incentive for developers. I can't state categorically that it would, but it might be something worth trying if you're interested in going that route.

very briefly speak to the point, most if not all of the flexible developments in Grafton, the developer has turned over the open space to town ownership. So that's basically been our practice. I think we allow four different destinations.

There are four different ways that the open space can go, and it's at the choice of the developer.

Right. So that may be one of the reasons why you've been more successful than others. It could be. Yeah.

Because I think we've had most of the models, but most of the who owns, the developer still owns the open space in the middle of the one going up the other side of the bridge on 122, up towards the barn.

Anyway. so those and you may want to come back mr chair to to discuss that but but perhaps i should just look firstly at at the last option and this is the option of mandating flexible development now the background to this and the reason that we thought it wasn't legally possible was that that was very strongly the conventional wisdom in in massachusetts and and i was um effectively wrapped over the knuckles by one of the senior legal land use experts for suggesting that such a thing was possible. But it turns out it has been the case in Amherst where this gentleman had been the town planner for many years. But I don't think we need to worry about Amherst because it is now the case in Acton. Acton has mandated flexible development throughout their town and the by-law which did so was approved with no comment whatsoever by the Attorney General. So if you wish to do a subdivision anywhere in Acton, you now have to use the equivalent of a flexible development scheme unless you submit a special permit and you may submit a special permit to do a conventional development by special permit. The only exceptions are commercial areas. So it is clearly possible to do that. It obviously wouldn't be necessary to do it throughout the town. We would suggest that possibly The way to start would be to look at the agriculture zone and the R40 zone. And just to clarify, the way that Acton did it was they used a table that looks roughly like that. and they had a minimum land area per dwelling unit, so they set a density permitted on a property, and then they set a requirement for a percentage of open space, and then they have distances rather than work-like setbacks. but they are distances from the street or from adjacent development and distances between houses so that you can design individual lots provided they comply with these rules. To get over the pre-existing non-conforming use problem, they simply had a cut-off date. they said anything that was any application that was submitted or anything that was approved up to a particular date, I believe it was something like the 5th of May last year, had to comply with the previous standard restrictions and anything subsequent to that date has to comply with the new restrictions. So the old restrictions are not things developed under the old restrictions are not non-conforming they are conforming according to the old restrictions and they they can be changed according to the old restrictions because they were developed under those old restrictions but any new subdivision has to be done under the new regulations so that is now as I say, very much a possibility that would have obviously a very much stronger impact than any incentivization you could do. And we would be able to draft a bylaw to that effect relatively easily if that is the route that you would want to go. So I think, Mr. Chair, that's That's really the question that I'm putting to you. Do you want to abandon this thing, stay where you are, but look at changing to site plans, look at incentives, or look at going for some degree of mandating flexible development? Or if we're going to try and do a combination, How should that look?

MR. Sure. And just a couple of clarifying questions. So, as you said at the top, this would apply to any development over five units?

MR. In Grafton, this applies to any development. They have simply changed their subdivision rules altogether. If you don't go the mandatory way, it would apply to developments over five units.

MR. Okay. I don't know these things off the top of my head, but in terms of having a special permit or not, the... And I'm asking this question because I'm wondering about if you require the special permit for the conventional development, what is the additional cost and process time, and how much of a deterrent is that for any kind of development versus if you don't have it?

The thing about special permits... And I know that I'm talking to a very experienced group of people here, so I don't want to assume that you're not completely aware of this. But the issue that we find lay people struggle with with special permits that it's not so much the cost or the time but the uncertainty itself that is the problem and to understand that it's a matter of understanding the way that developers structure finance because if you have a project that you know that you're going to do and The planning costs for that project are a small proportion of the total cost of the project. So if it's a bit more or a bit less, it doesn't really matter. If you don't have any certainty about the project and if the project doesn't get approved, then those planning costs all get rolled into overheads. And that is a big issue for developers. So developers... if they're given a choice between having a special permit and not having a special permit, or applying where there is a special permit and where there is not a special permit, they are very strongly motivated to apply where there is no special permit. So having a special permit does add time and it does add costs, but it in particular adds that degree of uncertainty. So if you simply say that you can do flexible development without a special permit, that makes it that much more attractive immediately.

Got it. Bob.

Yeah. I've been involved with our flexible development since the name was shifted from, what is it, cluster development, which was a more popular name. spent my time with the planning board as I was running for my first term and interacting on the development of the bylaw that we passed the week before or after I was elected. So I've been here for all of them. We require special permits but our special permits already require site plans, so we're giving up something without getting anything. I think we have as much, we think we have as much in our site plan requirements as will stand up to test. Okay. Talking about allowing more houses, If you have more open space, when you have more open space, you have less space for houses. So I'm not sure how you know if it's a one acre per lot subdivision. It's kind of complicated to think that through. Big percentage. Yeah, so anyway, those two things are working against each other when you're trying to work this down. As you say, we have one of the, when it became the flexible development, we got a pretty good list of incentives, and we've added a couple since, and people use them. One of the problems with a lot of this is in particular in the early days, was the quality of the open space. People would just come in and put a strip around the edge of the subdivision, call it open space, and that was the end of it. Not necessarily having access, not necessarily being in places that were worth it. I think you have to do everything you can to make the get open space that is worth doing, connected with adjacent open space, accessible, interesting. And because we're doing a special permit, we have a pretty good handle on that now. I think we changed some of the rules a bit to upgrade what the open space had to consist of. I'm not too sure that we may already be doing as well as anybody can with this. The special permit on the subdivisions has proven to be very important over all my years.

Any other thoughts, questions? I have a question for the rest of the board and to our delegate from the CMRPC. Christian, you probably know about this. Flexible development projects, I'm trying to wrap my head around the set of incentives for developers. Who typically owns and pays property tax on the open space? Is it like an HO, or condominiums where the owners, or is it?

There are four ways the open space can go, and it's different in different situations. The developer can keep it, and I guess he pays taxes on it. Town can get it, hopefully conservation. I don't remember exactly, but sometimes they build a golf course out of the open space.

In most cases in Grafton to date, in most cases the developer has donated the land to the town, and in most cases the town has remembered to place it under control of the Conservation Commission. Speaking with a different hat, I can tell you that there are several cases where the land was never technically placed under CONCOM control, but I'd have to look through my data. I've got the data and all that, but I know of one case where the open space is under control of an HOA. Another case, there's a golf course, which ultimately will be considered, well, is considered open space after a fashion There are a number of subdivisions where the open space doesn't get handed over to the town until the subdivision is complete. But again, in almost all cases, the town ends up owning the land. The developer basically hands the land, the open space, over to the town at the same time they hand over the roadways and utilities. It doesn't have to be that way. Bob noted there are four distinct alternatives given to the developer. But in most cases to date, they've chosen to donate the land to the town.

I think that a couple of the things that developers we've always thought would look at very favorably was when you're developing in the flexible development mode, your roads are shorter or can be significantly shorter and narrower I'm not too sure how good that is, but I think we have that still on the rules, that we can go along with them being there. So those are savings that are real.

One thing, we haven't really spent any time on that tonight, and I don't propose that we do, But I think it would be worth our while to engage town council on the question of whether our existing special permit structure is really legal. Oh. Because the way we do it is for every subdivision, you have to get a major residential special permit. And courts have found that placing a special permit by right use, subdivisions, conventional development, unless we change anything, it's a by-right use, and we have a special permit requirement for that.

Where's the by-right?

Subdivisions, by definition, are by-right.

Where? In the state law. No. Well, the thing is that the use is subdivision, not the use of the land. I went through this CMRPC when I started and I was told it's not legal by the then director and that was 30 some years ago and it hasn't turned out to not be legal no one's even challenged it so if we could look at just for a moment if we could look at the next steps that have been proposed here for a moment I think in terms of special permits it seems like we need to check

We need advice from council.

In terms of the total coverage of the special permit, and then that would be a preceding factor in whether or not flexible does or doesn't happen.

I would want a reading from town council to make sure we're up to date on our understanding of it, because I think that would influence other decisions about how to go forward with this.

So, Christian, can you take that as an item to... you know, connect with town council about the special permit issue at large, and I think that whenever we get clarity on that would determine how that impacts any kind of development, conventional or not.

I think there are two court cases. Wall Street is the name of one. I forget the name of the other one, but relatively recent court decisions that call into question the legality technically of the way we do it.

So that's special permits, which we need to get some more information on, and I would say that's connected to any kind of mandate. well right so then there's kind of do-nothing and incentives and I'll just say in listening to this conversation it seems like even with the special permit issue aside that there are there are ways to leave open space that's not really desirable or usable and so you know for me it's kind of landing that incentives you know, coupled with some kind of engagement with the board would be the way to ensure that the open space is something that is actually what the town of Grafton wants, which is usable open space. That's going to be something, you know, that's additive to the development and not just the scraps of the parcel that meet the paper requirements. Maybe we want to have a conversation a little bit more about incentives right now and let the other things wait for more information unless other people have. Yeah, Justin.

Will you complete, Dave?

I just want to put in that I'm real interested in understanding the way Acton does things. Because as a model, one of the things I would like to see, if we can make it work, is to make flex mandatory. Acton has done it, but how they did it and exactly what that involves and whether that seems to make sense for Grafton, I couldn't say. But I'm certainly interested in looking at that as well as incentives and maybe some other things, but that's really one of the keys for me. What would that say?

Well, Justin's waiting. What do you got?

That was kind of where I was going with it. I'm confused on how we might not be able to do the special permit for everything, but acting can... The question is not conventional, in a way, for us, but the active one does FECS first, but that's more for town council, not for you.

I can clarify that. The issue is that... An applicant has to be allowed to do something by right. So if you have your conventional development by right, then you can have your flexible development by special permit. If you have your flexible development by right, then you can have your conventional development by special permit. The situation in which you have everything by special permit, I agree with David. There is, the legal cases do seem to suggest there's a problem with that.

And do you know, in the Acton situation, are they using the site plan requirements to manage the specifications around the open space? Is that a possibility in terms of if you don't have a special permit, can the site plan requirement, you know, dictate that it not be this, you know, kind of unusable edge?

Yes. Yes, they do have site plan requirements. And one can draft the bylaw to further push in that direction, to set up exactly what the criteria for site plan approval would be in relation to that. You can also use the definition of the open space The way in which you define the open space can ensure that it's usable in some way. You can play with the definition to make sure that you are not getting, you know, slam.

Okay, so, yeah, that was exactly what I was going to get to, is that if we do allow, I want to make sure we have some mechanism that they don't just throw a... tenth of an acre strip around the outside of their lots that you can't really use, that kind of thing.

We would have requirements around that.

We'd figure that out. The only other kind of point I have off the top of my head is in your incentives, you list TIF as one potential option that no town has done, at least in Grafton, for every TIF I've been here for. Our town meeting has had to vote to accept a TIF. So the idea of us saying you can get a TIF if you do a thing feels like it's going to be problematic at best.

I don't think it's a I think it is a very difficult route to go to make it work. I agree.

I think for further thoughts I definitely want to hear what the town council says is probably where I'm at.

I just have a quick question. So under the Acton model, just to clarify, you said that the AG hadn't ruled on it yet, but that means that eventually they will, right? Like they haven't actually said yes or no.

The AG has approved the Acton by law.

The AG has approved it. They have approved it. We waited a long time for them to approve it. Got it.

Yeah.

And we almost missed it because they had extensive comment on one small element not to do with the whole change. But the overall change was just approved, one word.

Yeah, when you read the AG approvals decision, they typically are dealing with several warrant articles, bylaw changes. And they'll start out by saying we approve 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9. Sometimes we have comments on some of the ones we had approved. In some cases they're saying, well, we approve this in part, but we disapprove certain parts. So the AG's letter on Acton, it just listed this particular change in the ones that approved and had no further comments on it.

That surprised me. I should probably say it surprised you too. I was completely astonished because it potentially, it's an absolute game changer.

Yeah, but I hesitate to comment too much on the details of the Acton thing. Well, on the surface, it sounds attractive. I haven't read through it, so I don't know any of the details. And as I said before, for me, I need to understand it a lot better exactly how they accomplished what they accomplished and is that something we could make work here.

I mean, Christian had something.

Just from the planning department's perspective, while Mike's here, I can definitely get the special permit insights from town council. This project, I believe, will end with our contract on 1231, so there's no reason to rush this meeting, but from here, I can put another discussion item on the agenda once I get response from town council. And is there anything else that the board would require from Mike, additional information, a drafting of anything you'd want to look at to bring back at a subsequent meeting?

I can't think of anything. I think it's... Very, very important for council to weigh in on the special permit question. I need to study the Acton thing for myself.

I think subsequent meeting, yes, but prior to us discussing what town council comes back with, probably no.

Yeah. Yeah, I think town council's guidance will help us to understand what our possible directions from here are going to be. I mean... Hypothetically, for the moment, if we have to modify our major residential special permits somehow, then we start thinking about how do we do that. Do we further pursue the mandatory model to the extent that that makes sense? If we decide the mandatory model is not right for us, then we find a way to structure things so that we continue to use our flex. we may find we want to improve the incentives. Yeah.

What happens if you make flex development mandatory and the site is not suitable for flexible development?

That's one of the questions we need to figure out. Well, that's an obvious question. Yeah. I don't know off the top of my head if a site is suitable for conventional, it's almost certainly suitable for some form of flex.

Well, I think, you know, when you talk about, there's mandatory, then there's also whatever, you know, adding or removing incentives or, you know, requirements, right? So I think probably need to hear from Council are we allowed to leave things as is to do we needed to remove the special permit from at least one of them and then there's a choice to be made about how to do that so I don't know I think this is this has been you know very informative I think we have a nice baseline but I think let's maybe pause and get the feedback from Town Council and then have another discussion and then we're either looking at do we need to make any changes on the special permit side of things and then based on what's going to happen there, are there incentives, changes, or anything that you want to have?

I don't know if there's anything more we can accomplish by discussing any more this evening. We've identified a couple of key questions to be answered.

Yeah, I think we're good tonight, unless you have any final thoughts.

Well, Mr Chair, I suggest that it may be helpful for me in the interim. I've got a note of the key questions to begin to work around what some of those answers might be so that we can move quickly. Once you've heard from council and decided how to go forward, I'm in a better position to answer some of those key questions.

That would be great. Good. Just as a procedural kind of quick question, is Michael's time tied to a set number of hours for this contract at the end of the year? Because I think if it is, spending the time before the board knows our legal direction may be futile and more of a waste of those hours we do have. If it's not and it's just not necessarily tied to that, then you there's no, no harm in investigating, but I figured I'd just ask that explicitly.

I can work with Mike on if there's any issues with the amount of remaining hours and budget on what's what we're doing now. But I know Mike has a good handle on that. And we can determine that.

I don't have any specific concerns on that was just a general thought that I know tends to typically like a lawyer, the hours get built.

Okay, yeah, I think we can count on Christian and Mike to manage that so we don't run out before we're ready. All right, if we can, thank you very much. Good, thank you. And let's move on to the next discussion item, which is the clean energy siting with DOER. Now, is that going to be an online presentation?

We have Ron. Ron's here in the meeting room, and if he can go ahead and introduce himself and share the presentation. Thanks Mike. Thank you.

Hi, good evening. My name is Ron Barron. I'm the Director of Land Use and Zoning at Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission. I have a short presentation to go over with you all tonight. Just so you know, this is more of just an introduction into the project that we currently are doing with many of our communities. Let me go ahead and share that. One second. Which screen am I sure? Are you all seeing the presentation? Okay. Is it showing me the my other desktop for some reason? That's fine.

We're looking at your title slide.

Okay, great. Um, so This is, as you stated, about the solar energy facilities permitting issue that has come up. I'm here to talk tonight about technical assistance that we are able to offer to all of our communities. So just to get started, I just wanted to talk very quickly for, I'm sure all of you are aware of this, but just for the general audience, why it is that we're doing this. In 2024, the state passed the Climate Act, which performed state siting and permitting processes for solar and battery storage projects. It did a number of things. The first important bit was its split jurisdiction for permitting between the municipal boards such as yourself and the Energy Facilities Siting Board or the EFSB. The way that they divided that was everything under 25 megawatts is still the jurisdiction of the communities. Everything above that is now under the jurisdiction of the EFSB. In addition, that also applies to battery storage energy systems or BESS, which It has a cutoff of 100 megawatts. Everything 100 megawatts or greater is under the FSB. Everything below that is still under the jurisdiction of the communities. It also created a new optional consolidated permitting pathway, which is going into effect right now. I'll talk a little bit about the timing of that in a second. I mean, it also created a new appeals process for all solar permitting, meaning that if there's a new appeals for a decision issued by the board, it would first go to the EFSB who would review it essentially as a new application. And then if there were further appeals, then they would go to the normal superior court pathway. So about the expedited permitting and how that affects local zoning, the law does require that municipalities offer an optional expedited permit that would consolidate all of the normal permits that you would issue for a solar facility and would put a 12 month deadline to issue a single decision. It's essentially the same process. The only difference is that you have a shorter timeline or a more definitive timeline that you have to operate under. And instead of having multiple permits issued, from various boards. There's a single decision that's issued at the end of it, and there would be a new portal that the state is putting up. As of right now, it's optional. It opened as an option for communities on July 1st, but as of October 1st, it will be mandatory for all communities to offer this. All proposals do need to comply with local zoning, and there is no requirement that communities change their current zoning. However, because many towns have, their current zoning is not necessarily compliant with the most recent rulings of COVID-19, particularly with what they call the Dover Amendment, which is chapter 48, section three, and that many communities don't have any regulations at all regarding battery storage. We're generally recommending that towns take a look at their current zoning provisions and use this as an opportunity to make sure that your current zoning is compliant and you'll be able to handle these new processes. Just a quick overview of what the Dover Amendment is. This comes up a lot. All of these, I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to go to some of the DEOER webinars, but this one is something that gets mentioned a lot. Essentially what they're talking about is a section of Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 40A. It's section three that puts limits on what zoning can do. And solar facilities were included way back when and as a protected use. And the way it's worded is that they cannot be prohibited nor unreasonably regulated. Fairly recently, it was determined by the courts that battery storage also applies as a solar facility under that section. So the same standard now applies to battery storage And it also applies to battery storage that is standalone, which you may or may not have read about in the news recently. And just so we were clear, the unreasonable regulation essentially means any limitations that are so strict that it acts as a de facto ban, it effectively bans it in town. So what we are offering our communities, we are working with all 40 of our communities. We are able to provide a review of our solar bylaws. We are helping several communities with technical assistance, trying to figure out what they need to do in order to navigate this new process. And we're also assisting with revisions to the solar bylaw if you choose to go through that path. We have a grant that was from our regional energy planning assistance program at the state level. It's completely funded. There's no town match requirement. There's no application. We just have been given a grant to work with any of our communities that are interested in this review. What we're doing is we are looking at several towns right now. I'm working with about eight or nine communities to review their solar provisions, making sure that they have adequate solar and battery storage provisions, suggesting edits if necessary and providing draft language to them. We're also holding multiple regional meetings. We've done two already. We did one in May and a second one in June. and we are in the works planning one for early fall, probably September at this point. We have a grant. The grant funds are available now. We are able to work with any community that is interested in working with us. It runs through the end of May, 2027. There's the possibility, depending on how much assistance different RPA communities need, it may get extended. And so we're assuming that we're going to be working with towns. If they want to do any changes to their bylaws, we will help you try to get that for either a spring or a summer town meeting. So that is a quick overview of what it is that we are doing. And I'm here to answer any questions you all may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, Bob.

I keep having trouble getting my head around this one a little bit. I keep seeing that we're required to adopt an optional permitting process where there's more or less you submit one application. But we don't have to change any of the approval process. So all of the information that all of the approving boards and committees require now continues to be required, and it must continue to be confirmed as adequate by those separate boards. So that just seems like an administrative thing to set up a process. But then somehow we change over into regulation. And that's a separate thing. That's like, are we trying to, or is it telling us we can't say no battery storage and that sort of thing? It seems like a whole separate question. And those rules don't necessarily go in parallel, or what that's saying doesn't go in parallel with the timeline for the application process. Am I right about that?

I feel like they're two separate issues. Yeah, I feel like they're two separate.

That keeps giving me, I get stuck at the starting line. Yeah, let's go ahead and develop a process right now that somehow avoids submitting all the same information to all the same boards in one envelope instead of in a bunch of envelopes. and I don't see, right now I don't anticipate any problem with that. It's a whole different thing and I want to know about talking about a whole different thing. Do we have any agendas regarding battery storage or whatever all these subjects are? We have tried to do things with solar before

maybe not as well as i would have liked i'll lean on ron's expertise on navigating the new process and how he's been seeing that with other towns part of it is administrative within the department that we'll be doing and that's one reason why ron is here there's some assistance for that as part of the whole process they have the the funding available to do those other tasks that are related in some ways, not part of the requirement to offer the optional permanent process, but they're bundled under the same funding assistance from DOER. So, Ron, I don't know if you have anything else to speak to that.

Yeah, so the way that it's been explained, to me is that if you did nothing right now and you followed exactly the same processes that you have in place and you've had in place for years, then the only thing that would change instead of going to one board and getting an approval, going to another board and getting an approval, going to another board and getting approval, you would get a review and a yes or no from each of those same boards, and you would only issue a single decision at the end of it. So if you need five boards to approve a solar installation right now, you still need five reviews. You need five different groups to say yes. If one of them says no, the decision is no. the only so you so that process doesn't change the main thing that changes is that with the consolidated application there's a single portal where all of the information goes into there's a single decision that's issued by the permitting board and there's a timeline for completing it And if you don't finish it, if you don't complete it within that window, there's now a constructive approval process where if the only thing that didn't let it qualify is that the board didn't issue that one decision within 12 months, it could get a permit from the EFSB.

So if it currently requires a special permit from the planning board, it still requires a special permit from the planning board. And the planning board still goes through exactly its same process. There is one difficulty, I think, and that is that we often find people wanting to... Conservation and planning, for example, may have different requirements so they come they get their permit from us conservation says no you got to do that then they have to come back here um i think that's still in the process that's still still in yes what's going to happen so ron with the folks you're already working with what is the starting point for the expedited permit process with those towns who's the first who's the receiver of the first

you know, interaction.

So the body that ends up, whoever the special permitting authority is, that is where it gets started with.

But the packages...

Sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, I was going to say that the... But then the information is also disseminated to all of the other boards or committees that require an approval as part of your normal process.

Right. So just one second. So... He said the special permit granting body. So in that case, that would be us.

Across the whole project.

Would be the first point of interaction.

The big envelope would be sent to Christian.

Right. Yeah, that's exactly my question. And I think what I'm understanding here is that the requirement that's being put in front of us is essentially administrative. it's an expedited, permanent process, and we have a 12-month window, right? So, and if you're also saying to us that the grant funds are already available for the technical assistance for, essentially for Christian to get CMRP's help on creating this administrative process, you know, I think, and I agree that there are other issues here that have been brought up aligning to the Dover Amendment, all these other things, but it seems like the, The first question tonight is, do we want help in developing this expedited permitting process and leveraging the experience of what other towns are doing? It seems like this is going to begin with you, Christian. So what's helpful to you in terms of

That is the first piece, and I think I had planned on working with CMRPC to do that, but as part of that, there's the other assistance involved with that to review existing bylaws that would expire at this point in May 2027, so it would be a good time to initiate that conversation potentially, but if that was something the board was interested in doing.

Thank you.

I think we would be, I guess, if it's all covered under that, I don't know.

Yeah, and clearly Grafton needs to be able to accept the consolidated applications, process them as of October 1st. We have to be able to accept those. And that's, as everybody has said, that's an administrative procedure that ends up with the planning board getting the portion of the application that applies to the special permit we would be issuing, other boards getting their information. It's all coming in through a consolidated portal, but then it comes here, the big envelope, and then it all gets distributed. That's something that we have to be able to do starting October 1st. There's no question that In my mind, at least, there's no question that I think we want Christian to work with CMRPC and whoever else may need to be involved in setting up this process. The other part of this is, do our zoning bylaws need to be revised to accommodate the current rules around solar and battery energy storage systems? Currently, our zoning bylaw does not explicitly touch on BESS at all, and it touches only minimally on solar. And today, we found that to be adequate. We processed a number of solar special permit approvals, and up to now, we haven't felt a need to change the zoning bylaw to cover it. But any advice that CMRPC can give us as to what kind of zoning by-law changes would be helpful for us to make. I'd love to hear that.

I would enjoy that as well. Justin? Oh, sorry, go ahead. I would enjoy that as well. One quick comment. For the consolidated application, the state both provides and requires the form. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it certainly simplifies things, and the response is also through the state-mandated form, so...

Yeah, my one minor issue with that is we need to make sure that the consolidated application includes all the information that we would need, that would normally be supplied with a special permit application.

If it does not, it would have a remedy.

Wouldn't it say, wouldn't we say, You have all that stuff you were going to send to the planning board, you got to put in the envelope. All that stuff you were going to send to CONCOM, you're going to put in the envelope so that we don't have to really get to any of that. And as far as I can tell, you and the rest of the folks in this building can just make that happen without

Well, the October 1st compliance piece was one more informative. I know that we need to work to comply with that. I would need some technical assistance to do that, so Ron's here to help me. So that's that one piece. And then, again, the other piece was to just discuss the possibility of the extra assistance.

Yeah, well, if anybody identifies anything, we can talk about it.

Yeah.

So I definitely think we want to use Ron's help for reviewing our bylaws and figuring that out. One kind of question I do have from this presentation, and I just want to see if I understand it better. Some members of the board, including myself, have had some dealings with Dover amendment applications in town that we've had to deal with. We've also had many encounters with eligible facilities requests for wireless carriers. for basically the things that are must-approves, shall not deny, except for very, very tight criteria. From reading this, the EFSB, it sounds like if it's over 25 megawatts, so like a 90 megawatt battery storage place, would be outside of local jurisdiction entirely. That's what I thought I was reading.

I'm

What sort of controls, if any, do we have to limit this to what the town or residents or neighbors would think is appropriate for that type of scenario? Do neighbors of a property get notices of some hearing somewhere to...

So just quickly, if you go to slide two, it's over 25 megawatts for the solar facility, but it's over 100. With commutative capacity. With battery. Yeah.

So just to answer that question quickly, the process is – It is part of, there is a hearing that's involved. It is subject to the open meetings law. Where the, and the town does have a, what they're calling a local representative that is allowed to, that is a part of the review process for these large sites. And even with EFSP jurisdiction, the applicant still has to conform with all of the requirements of local zoning. So if, for instance, you have particular, you have spelled out setbacks, you have screening requirements, you have, you know, buffer zones around your site that are generally considered reasonable by the AOG, then those would still have to be adhered to, even if it's under the jurisdiction of the EFSB. Where it gets a little tricky is in your situation where a lot of this is just by special permit and a lot of it is discretionary right now. I'm not 100% sure how that would play out in an EFSB case since there's no existing guidelines to go from. I'm not sure how much discretion they would put into it. I'm not exactly sure how that would work.

Okay. That was one of my concerns at the town. I didn't know if we had any levers at all or if it was entirely like a state mandated, here's the conditions and that's it. The other piece that does, I want to know the answer to, I don't need to know it tonight, but is... One thing that a lot of residents have had issues with in general is just an idea that they may not get a notification as an abutter. Some people have been outside of the abutter range, but still along the same dead end road or a road that's really close to the property and they're concerned they didn't get an abutter notice, though they don't legally need to. But the idea is in these situations, if it's outside of local permitting authority, do they still get an abutter notice of when, where, and how to participate in this open process? There's open process for a lot of things in government, like our water district, for example, has that, but people don't tend to know about those open meetings and availability to participate. So it's a concern I have, and... it would be good to if this if it's not part of the state law, we get to know, can we require that for these type of process projects, even when we're not under local authority?

That is a very good question. And my understanding, I do not know, I'll have to look into see what the AFSB process is going to be for that. But I do know that there is no state law requiring communities to have a standard of butter notice, but it can be included in your bylaws. So... That could be another thing to consider when looking at the bylaw. Is that something you would like to include, is making sure that there is a notification of some kind for all butters? I'm not sure if you already have something in your general bylaws that require that or not, but that's definitely something we can look into.

Awesome. All right. Yeah, so I think for the purposes of tonight, we would like the help. i think christian could use the help it seems like the funds are available without us having to do anything else from the town side so i guess the one thing that's kind of come out of this conversation as well is just organizing it so that the administrative part of it is clearly in one bucket and then any other things about the bylaws or dover amendment etc is organized in another section so when we talk about it it doesn't get sort of coming but um i don't know unless there are any other final questions, or Ron, you had any other thoughts, I think that's what I'm hearing, is that we'd like to move forward.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time tonight.

Thank you. All right. The next discussion item is a continuation of the data center bylaw discussion that we started with the select board. And I want to put out sort of, now that I've had time to kind of digest it, what I think the discrete steps are in front of us as a path, and then I want to hear from the board, you know, your thoughts on this as well. But as I mentioned, I think, during that meeting, agreeing on some kind of a definition of what is of sort of needs special attention in terms of a data center and what is sort of a regular, you know, server array that's for a local business and whatnot, you know, kind of, Understanding what's the definition of the thing that we think needs special attention as a group is kind of, in my view, the immediate next step. And then once we've sort of landed on a definition, then I think we're looking at either, based on everyone's comments, and I think just the general understanding across us in the select board, for fall meeting, either thinking about a moratorium of some length, to get us to the next town meeting or essentially doing nothing because I don't think anybody has confidence that we can write a full on bylaw by that time. And so that's how the progression's going in my head. Talk about and agree upon a definition and then based on that definition decide do we want to do a moratorium or wait. Those seem to be our options but I'll kind of open it up to whatever other things, yeah.

You know, I was reluctant on moratorium. On the other hand, the maximum moratorium that we lift as soon as we solve the problem, maybe. As I've been thinking through this, there's a lot of things going on that we can't fully understand yet. The governor's put out what she wants and she's changed some rules for a while. that make a difference, and the legislature may or may not be looking at some laws sometime real soon, maybe, to address some of this. What happens if they put in 100 megawatt backup generating capability running off of probably diesel, maybe gas. And when the data center isn't shut down because of lack of commercial power, they sell the power they can generate to the power company. And they run their generators as much as they want. They could, in theory, they could run their generators to provide some of the peaking power that might be, I don't know how long it takes to fire them up.

Well, yeah, that's a hypothetical situation.

My point is that there's so many things spinning around that maybe the best thing to do is to say stop a year and a half, two years, whatever, and plan on coming back with Rescinding up when we know what we're doing when we know what the state is doing.

Yes Let me just ask this one question though. Does anybody does anybody disagree that? focusing questions comments right now are fine, but That getting a definition so that we know kind of what we're talking about. Is it kind of a critical part to deciding? That's what's gonna be covered in the moratorium or not Yeah, so As I've been thinking this through since our

last discussion. I started thinking more. Bob, you had hinted at this at the second meeting. Is our current zoning bylaw adequate to handle the essentials of reviewing a potential future data center application? Special permit? I mean, Chris had identified the likely place for this to fit into the existing use table. It's not a perfect fit, but it's good enough, I think, until at some point we may want to refine it. But what power, what discretion does this special permit give us to handle the potential harms that a data center could bring to us? I see four major issues that arise with data centers. And these issues are not all unique to data centers either. One is the amount of power it consumes, which has the potential to adversely affect the electrical grid within Grafton. One is the consumption and discharge of water, which, depending on what cooling approach they take, may be big or may be small. One is the noise that is generated. You would kind of expect this data center building to have a roof absolutely covered with HVAC units running 24-7. And then the fourth potential issue I see of significance is on-site power generation may produce air pollution. So then those were the four major issues that come to my mind about data centers. And then there's the question of, do the special permit criteria adequately cover those? And for the most part, I think particularly if you look at, where did I write this down?

1.5.5.

1.5.5.K. K is the key one here.

K says we consider...

the detrimental impacts which outweigh the benefits to the neighborhood, the town, or the zoning district. Now, those detrimental impacts can include all of the above. In addition, we have a section of 1.5.5 that specifically covers water supply. So I might argue or suggest that 1.5.5.k gives us the power to review and approve or deny based on adverse impact on the electrical grid, adverse impact on the water supplies, noise impacts, and emissions from on-site power. I think we could cover all that within the existing by-law. That was exactly what I was talking about. The only reservation I have about that is that 1.5.5.k includes a trade-off. The detrimental impacts, are they outweighed by the benefits to the town? And someone can make an argument, well, the property tax revenue that this is going to bring in is a benefit that far outweighs all these environmental impacts. So that's the one place where I think we could have some difficulty. But I think in general, we're on pretty solid ground. We would be on more solid ground if we had some performance criteria in the zoning bylaw regarding noise. We had, I think... A good example of how noise could be evaluated in a somewhat similar situation was our permit for UPS. They did a noise study. It involved HVAC units, lots of HVAC units on the roof of the UPS building. I suspect our hypothetical dinner center would have even more. But they're measuring the impact of noise on all the property lines, the sensitive receptors, going by the state standard of no more than a 10 dBA increase over ambient. So it could be helpful for us to be more explicit in the zoning bylaw about the criteria that we would apply regarding noise impacts, water, air pollution, and so on. But there are some reasonably well-understood industry standards here. So I'm almost convinced that our existing bylaw could handle a data center application and it would allow us to protect the town against all the adverse impacts that people typically associate with these data centers if we apply them properly. The only, well, enough said for the moment. That's kind of where I landed up to this point in thinking about it. Not to say we couldn't do something more in zoning, but I think our zoning would allow us to sufficiently regulate the use today. Thank you.

I'll try and be quick. So 1.5.5.k is good. the impact on the community around it using our existing zoning bylaws, either the standards are unquantified or could use some refinement I would like to draw our attention to the Mansfield zoning bylaw which I thought it is not perfect there are things that I would change about it but I think that it would be a great source of inspiration for how to quantify some of those impacts to the neighbors you know decibels it talks about infrastructure I think that it would be a good use of our time to look at the Mansfield guidelines together.

The thing is, the words you said about the things we're allowed, there's always a little something. I got a check, but it's like, oh, that category isn't actually mentioned. It's like properties in the district, whether it's the same zoning district or there are butters. There's a little thing there that I've always thought might get covered a little better but if we don't put numbers in then we get to judge in each case um and this is going to be that we're only talking about until the world begins to get a clear picture about this yeah i mean so i i agree it's it's not just an open run to uh to put one of these things in but i also acknowledge that there

there are numbers or easy ways to quantify. And so the case I'm thinking of is that you land up trying to make an argument against somebody that has a lot of resources and lawyers and engineers and so on that can put together a pretty compelling case that the benefits are gonna outweigh the detriments and put us in a spot of trying to push back against that case. So I think having some sense of what we feel needs special attention and what we don't or enhancing some of these things like not just relying on the state for the noise or having some sort of way to quantify the power or the water usage because the effect on the neighborhood is hard to project necessarily. On paper, it could look great, and then you're gonna have these things happen, and once you've got this thing built, there's no real ripping it out, right?

The Mansfield document does a good job of addressing many of those. There are some holes that we could address, but I think that it would be worthwhile.

But I would like to, you know, keep us on the idea of what can be done for fall meeting, right? So if we can get an agreement on what the definition of a to be examined closer data center is, then we could decide whether there needs to be the moratorium or not. Go ahead, Justin.

So a few kind of brief thoughts on this. Number one, in addition to Dave's four points on what we might want to mitigate, one thing that comes to mind, like I said at the psych board, is the parking, our current bylaws, would require a lot more parking. than a data set would typically need. And that's a lot of impervious surface that also would add to the effects of some of these other issues like water. It's a lot because the water is not penetrating the ground, the normal rainfall, as well as it's a lot more clear cut open area that may not need to be that affects noise, travel, et cetera. The other concern I have in my head is are 1.5.5.k and such, it's hard to say it has these negative effects if we don't have data that's counter to what the applicant was proposing, similar to like our traffic studies where applicants always say, hey, it's good, but then we need something that says, no, it's not, and here's why. So that's a concern I have on just trying to leave it under our current bylaw that said, my current feeling and idea of our next steps after tonight is to see if town staff can get a draft of what a moratorium language would look like as well as a few options for us to talk about around the definition of the data center That's, you know, and then we can see like a few, maybe other towns have some examples already, maybe they don't. Maybe there's things in the works we can, from the planner list that can help us get that.

Christian and I talked a little bit about that. I mean, I think there are some examples. Obviously, one was included in the, you know, in the packet last time, right? Yeah. And so, you know, looking at some examples, I think are good. And then, so it's, in my mind, first you have to decide what's being covered by the moratorium. Then you decide if you want a moratorium, or you know, what is of concern, and then should it be a moratorium or not? But if we don't have the definition, and I'm gonna get stuck on this, every single one of us has a different idea of what a data center is in our head right now. So, and I wanna actually give Marlon a chance, and then Bob. Yeah. You go, Bob.

You go. We currently can, require an applicant to fund our peer reviews of certain things? Can we, with the current law, require payment to support peer reviews of the issues that come up in this kind of application? If we can, then we can have our own, the same as we do with cell towers. for example, I think that that would be really good. That would strengthen what we, where we are, because none of us are enough into the engineering of this stuff as it takes. But likewise, we don't know how to make, we don't know how good any of the, you know, 63.7 dB A, Maybe not DBA, maybe DB something else. I worked for a long time for someone who was in the business of noise measurement, hearing protection in workplaces and whatnot. And I know that it's not as simple as we'd like to think. And in any case, the standard in different places really can be different. Across the street, from a fruit and vegetable stand that's having music. It's a different story from across the street from Up at One and Gordon.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Marlon, did you have something? Yeah, just real quick. I agree on the definition because I had the same thought. I feel like we're all probably thinking of all different things when we say data center. And I was thinking about, like, the four points that you brought up in terms of, like, here are the risks. And something that came to mind is, like, I think there's also the risk of just what does the town think about having a data center. Right. And, like, I think that if you poll the town, they're also all thinking different things. And I guess something that I was wondering if we can do is, like, I forget, last week someone said this about how the town is pretty good at taking the polls. And if we were to come up with a definition and say minimum viability of this is what this could be, could we send that out to the town and say, what do you guys think about this? If a company came and did that.

Yeah, I think you'd have to... my view is you'd have to have a pretty specific question to ask because i think data center the term right is kind of in the news and you know it's associated with things so i think the the main question is what would the impact be on the neighborhoods and i'll bring us back to the idea that i think all the things that have you know the factors that are of concern i agree with um but i also want to bring us into the practical task of what do we do for fall right we're not going to have i think a definition that could be related to if we chose a moratorium or some kind of action by the fall is gonna be more about, I don't know how to say it, like the form factor of what the facility is versus the performance of the facility. There are certain things you can anticipate ahead of time, but we're not gonna have necessarily ways to not out the noise or the pollution from the generators as much as facility of this footprint with this kind of power demand and this much equipment in it is kind of above the line for us right now and we would like more time to understand how to create a coherent bylaw for this because you know the other thing I didn't hear in the conversation was no one was saying you know there there's there are zero scenarios where this makes sense for the town I think it's just we want to be in control of making sure it's in the right spot and that the benefits are there for the town Right, which, yes, the bylaws give us some mechanisms for that, but I think to the point about it being hard to quantify these things, that's the scenario where I would say a good definition, and then a discussion about a moratorium or not, is how to give yourself some more time and not get in a situation where you're up against the strength of each other's argument and somebody's coming in with a lot of resources.

I think that makes sense. And also something that I was going to say was that we also don't know what this is going to look like even two years from now.

The governor might have done a lot of work for us in terms of scaring people away anyway with taking away the tax credit. It's like how many calories do you want to burn on it? I think we want to think about getting aligned on what is of concern and then think about what action we can take given the time we have.

To Marlon's point about the survey, the town has generally been pretty good compared to neighboring towns on actually responding to surveys, but that said, the ones that have been successful have had lead time to prepare them Basically, our free advertising, we call it Facebook groups, town, repeated mentions at different meetings, and even then, we still generally get less responses than most of our town meetings.

I feel like this one will get a healthy response.

It probably would, but my main point is we also only have so long, probably about a month now before we have to have a bylaw final language written that would go to town meeting if we had anything.

If you ask people, should we allow data centers, they're going to say, I've just read 43 things on Facebook that say, aha! And they haven't seen anything that says they're good. Unfortunately, the EDC hasn't had any opinion on this because they're the ones, they and the select board, I suppose, would be the ones that would speak for economic benefit. There's a good bit of money in there, and there might be some pretty good taxes, like better than a warehouse that might go up there.

So if we could, what would be, oh yeah, one more. I once again would like to draw us back to the Mansfield language. It is a zoning bylaw that they did all this work on already. They have defined what counts as a data center. They've classified them. They've talked about impact on local infrastructure, water, electric, heat, noise, vibration. They've done all the work. We can use that as a starting point. I would like to direct us to look at that.

Yeah, so is the process to look at a few examples, potentially have Christian draft something for review in advance of a meeting and then to have a discussion around refining that draft?

Along those lines of suggestion, Bob doesn't like my suggestion.

Go ahead. I think that was directed at me.

In terms of the work done, Mansfield is really the only town that has a robust, refined language. So based on the feedback, what I would suggest, and we can go off of this and change it, but I can reach out to town council and ask for an opinion on both the current existing condition on 1.5.5k, what that would look like. At the same time, present possibilities of going towards moratorium language with that would include definition of what we want a data center to be defined as so I would be able to present that those draft language added an upcoming meeting but I would want to initiate the process to Irish Town Council basically immediately and bring back information but it would include I would lean heavily on Mansfield's language on what a definition is there may be some definition in moratorium language but be less refined I would I would think

Would you also be able to ask or find out where we stand on getting funding, making applicants fund?

Peer review? Peer review? Peer review, yes.

For additional attributes, you mean, outside of what they normally have to fund now?

Right. Well, I know that they have to fund cell towers and subdivisions, right? Well, yeah. We've had it for traffic studies particularly.

I believe there's a condition along these lines, but I would send that condition and see what they would say that covers or if there's anything else beyond that condition, but I believe there's condition languages typically included.

Yeah, so I would say just your opinion after digging into it and town council's opinion in regards to some of the attributes that were talked about tonight, so power use, water use, noise, which we do have something from the state, but the instance of... from large backup generating systems and then you know noted Justin is this parking requirement that can cause them to have a massive parking lot for no reason you know but that is that's outside of the moratorium that's the bylaw that's for the bylaw exactly and it does make sense that we be given give ourselves the flexibility to roll that away if it's gonna be in you know low staffs facility you don't think that you should

have the people that want to develop the 200-acre facility have to get town meeting to help them with the parking requirement, which lets, you know, it's happened, we've tried before.

So put something in, okay.

You know, reduce the parking requirement on this project, and then we'll find out how the town feels.

Yeah. well that would be a deterrent but anyway I come back to I think like we said we have one live example that's it's one but it's it seems when we read it you know kind of the reasonable attributes I think we got to look at the fuller context having Town Council have some input and then a draft of our own that we can sort of poke at you know and I think it would be great you know if you can whether it's for the next meeting or if we need a little bit more time, the following, I think it would be good for everyone to have seen it before the meeting.

Yeah, if we can email that out to everyone and then talk about what we like, what we don't like, what we would change, what we would add, what we would take away.

Yeah, I think we need to talk about a specific... And I don't think the definition needs to be crazy long, but, you know...

The only thing I would mention up front is that the definition that I have seen defines data centers by... Use power usage levels as opposed to size of the building. Okay in three or four tiers and

That's fine. If that's the convention that I'm, I was just more getting at that, you know, all of the effects and the outputs are harder than a few key things that you would, that would be on the paper when they dropped the spec originally, right? So if it's by power usage, then that's fine.

I don't, you know. And they're regulated by that power usage in most municipalities. So if they want to, you know, if they want to put in more computers and that puts them over their power usage, that's a problem for the building inspector.

Yeah.

Why do we need to control their power usage?

We don't, but it is the best proxy that we have for scale and impact.

I think if I'm extrapolating what Bob's thinking, which is also kind of what I'm thinking, I'm generally less concerned about specific power uses because what is a 100 megawatt facility today might be a thousand megawatt facility in 10 years and there'll be no difference in any of the other impacts you know that's just a right an example megawatts of power but it needs cooling yeah but um depending on how efficient the equipment is it may not need as much cooling in 10 years but anyway my my main point is i think if we have a definition something that says hey let's say 100 megawatts or you know this you know like size kind of in addition you know like a you know it must be you know under let's say you know a thousand square feet or whatever the number is or and also look this low power uses you know kind of a range thing where If you're higher on one but not the other, then you're still the higher level. But if you're not, then if you're lower than both, it gets to be a lower level. That kind of an idea. I don't know how well that will play out, but that's a thought I have.

Yeah. I think we need the criteria to set the line. So I think for tonight, we're kind of at the next step, which is to include town council, look at the Mansfield language, draft something for us to start playing around with, and get it to us before the next meeting where this is on the agenda.

Yeah, that makes sense. I can have something drafted. I'm not sure how far vetted it will be by town council, but it will at least be something that's drafted to look at.

And I think that's fine, too, unless somebody agrees. I mean, what I'm just getting at is I think the conversation is more productive when we're kind of standing over it.

and that there are aspects of the language in what Mansfield came up with, and I'm not fanning out over Mansfield, but there are aspects of what they did that I think would be useful for the rest of our zoning bylaw, regardless if it's data center or OLI or heavy industry, that there was some elegance to what they did, or maybe not elegance, but specificity. Whereas a lot of our current zoning bylaws far as impacts on abutters are either absolute or undefined Or what undecided undefined or absolutely zero it the churchmen of an elected board Which they get elected to make That's that's special permit is very important yeah the discretion is important for a special permit but I think that some of the places in our zoning bylaw where we have attempted to quantify things the limit is either zero or poorly defined that does not diminish the discretion of the special permit granting authority

OK, we have to talk about what you're particularly getting to. Moratoriums have time limits. I'm not sure we would want to be talking about how long a time limit we want. And so part of what you're doing, I guess, is to figure out how to figure out how long a moratorium we can put in. and just write this up and put it in as long as possible because we can always go back you know, once we are satisfied with more control.

Well, I think if we're going to do it, the minimum would be to get to spring meeting, and the maximum would be whatever the maximum is allowed. Yes. And then you decide.

I want him to find out what the maximum is so that I can say let's do that if I feel like it. All right. So, yes, I guess come with that.

Off the top of my head, no. But I will get that answer.

Yeah, just come with that range of time horizon. All right. We still have a couple other things in general business, so I think if we have our next steps, unless there's another question or anything, we can kind of move forward. All right. Thanks, everybody. All right. General business. There are some bills.

I move we authorize payment of the bills.

Second. All right. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Passes unanimously. I think we had two minutes of previous meetings. I move we...

vote to approve the meeting minutes for June 10th, 2026 and June 22nd, 2026 with any edits as noted in discussion.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Unanimously passes. Staff report.

I'll keep it brief but it's grant reporting season so we have About $2 million with the grants that we're administrating right now or are close to coming into the pipeline. We're reporting on that. There's been some progress on a lot of work being done on those projects. FEMA flood zone updates are anticipated to be finalized by the end of the year. That's the information I've gotten from However, if they don't do that, they'll wait a little bit longer to make sure everyone can update the bylaw by their next meeting. So they're aware of the timelines, but that will be coming up. And DCR has been doing proactive reviews of all floodplain bylaws, giving insights or recommendations on what should be updated. So they're doing that now. send those recommendations to the board for review, but there will be an update that needs to be made when the floodplains are updated. There's a number of other things, but I'll leave it at that for today.

Great. Any questions from anybody? All right, let's move on to correspondence. We've got a couple things in there. Anybody have any questions, comments, things that popped out in the correspondence?

The only thing I think I'll mention is we did get several from residents about data centers that I'm sure everyone has read. And the only thing I think we might want to consider, and this is more for your office, Christian, is do we want to create some sort of like a project page for the data center stuff we're doing? And if we do, we probably want to at least include copies of those correspondence, at least on a per meeting basis, here's correspondence for this meeting, you know, that kind of thing. So we can have it in one easily viewable place for things about data centers. But the comments were, I think, completely people that had concerns. I don't think anyone was in favor directly, but valid concerns. Yeah, valid concerns.

Yeah. We have someplace between planning department and planning board we have sections like things being developed things that have been developed and yeah there might be might be good to have some other places that where like projects get consolidated these subjects get consolidated with you know they're not exhibits in a hearing but they're information so there's a way to find all this stuff other than just in a our meeting yeah we can create a project page there's a number of those and we can create another one for data center specifically for data center well i was thinking more than just data centers we're looking at any number of things and each of those go over into a section and then each of them has a

page at least for the purposes of this next meeting i think data centers is probably the bigger i think for the purposes of our upcoming immediate meetings data centers is probably the bigger one to do and i think that one probably can outlast whatever we do for fall town meeting if anything because we will be keeping at this until we have a bylaw for it yeah um

As soon as we start asking people what they think about data centers, it'll be a big market for this page I'm talking about. You can see it from the comments. Oh, I think. Yes.

All right. And then we move on to any reports from representatives on town committees and CMRPC.

I'll just start by saying I had an EDC meeting scheduled for this week. That one has been canceled. I guess there's not enough members planning to attend. So the next meeting is likely to be August 19th or August 26th, so late next month, which would probably be too early to have any EDC comment on data center benefits.

Please do bring it up that if yeah, there's interest there to quantify somehow what the possible upside is That yeah that they share that with us.

Yes Other updates Brief update on the open space and recreation committee We're meeting Wednesday We've invited Christian to the meeting so we can discuss how we're going to go about doing the required update of the Open Space and Recreation Plan.

Is that our job? I think we got parts of our daily dose of CMRPC tonight, unless there's anything else. Otherwise, we'll move on to any other items that could legally come before us. Pretty quiet out there three question for the rest of the board.

I was interested in hosting a outreach session community just a chance for residents to come and Tell me how they feel about data centers correspondence. I feel I have a pretty good idea on how they feel Does anybody object to me doing that any thoughts just host ask me anything talk to me about your concerns about a data center at the library or something like that you're not speaking on behalf of the rest of you not getting sucked into trying to give a point of view other than the fact that you know we are paying attention to it and share what our process is which I think is I think that's that's the most important thing for me is you know hear them hear their concerns and then say like these are the things we can do these are the things we can't do yeah you know this is how the Planning Board works

Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing is just how accurate the information that people have, you know, could be a question, right? So I don't know how you want to deal with that in live, but getting their concerns or their inputs or the sentiment of people and sharing with us is fine with me.

So the only thing I'll just briefly say on that is, number one, whatever time you end up picking, I'd probably see if I'm available and might try to join if there would be a quorum by me joining, I'm going to leave because I think that makes sense. The second piece to that is I strongly feel that that type of activity is any member's prerogative to do and host and approach it however they want. They can provide their own opinions. Apologists do that all the time. It's just a matter of when it is a quorum.

It's a matter of it's yourself, not the board, that kind of a thing. Yeah, I don't represent the rest of you or our planning department or the town of government or the government.

Yeah, I mean, just in getting to know you, I'm sure you'll be clear about that, but I guess it's important to be clear about that.

I appreciate that. I can't think of many examples of an individual officer of the town having their own meeting.

Select Board does it pretty frequently.

Well, no, they do ask me anything. That's different than come talk to me about a subject that we're working on. You know, people come and they say, the trash wasn't collected. What did we do about that?

This would be closer to an ask me anything. This would be much closer to the tone of an ask me anything. It's just that there's only one thing that people are communicating strongly to us about at the moment. So it functionally becomes...

I don't know, is there anything to consider from your side on doing something like that?

Like, I think it's your prerogative to do it. I don't think you need to frame it as, if it's more planning board, planning department topics, it would be open to anything, obviously, but there's a topic of the day, typically. So, if you want to... have the planning department send out an email to the board, letting them know when it will happen, and then I can get responses on who will like to come. Then we can make sure it's, we can let you all know so that it's not a quorum.

Okay. Anything else? I move we adjourn.

Second.

Second. Not debatable. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Unanimous. We are adjourned.