Planning Board - Regular Meeting

July 27, 2026, meeting of the Grafting Planning Board. As always, we start with public input. Anything that can come before us that's not on the agenda tonight. I don't see anybody in the audience here, and I don't see anybody other than us on Zoom. Yeah, we do have two Zoom attendees. Oh, we do? Okay. So if you are on Zoom and you have something that's not on the agenda, please raise your hand now. All right, seeing none. I think we'll move to our discussion items. So master plan implementation committee, uh, Christian, do you want to tee us up on that?

Yes. Um, so this initiative was something that had started, uh, prior to when I came on board, there's some work done to plan for this committee to be initiated. Um, I incorporated a lot of the work and research that was done into this, uh, draft proposal. Um, What I'm looking to do is incorporate any feedback the planning board has, primarily because the master plan is something that's adopted by law by the planning board, but also is best practice to include select board consensus and interaction when possible. So this would be a joint committee. between the select board and the planning board that's approved by then. So this language would incorporate any feedback from the planning board, be approved, and then go to the select board to finalize that and begin recruiting for members. So if you were able to take a look at it, have any comments or suggestions, I can incorporate that. But ultimately, again, I'd be looking to take this to the select board when it's ready to go. I thought it looked pretty good.

Yep.

I thought it was pretty good, Elijah.

Oh, there wasn't any behind the... We've had some conversations about it. And it got to where you think it is right. Yep, I think we've kind of, Christian's kind of listed out here the things we had, you know, we had spent some time talking about some of the initial work that the implementation committee is going to have to do because, regrettably, In the preparation of the master plan itself, the master plan working group spent a lot of time on the master plan chapters and on the listing some action items, but spent basically no time at all, no useful time on actually reviewing the action plan and nailing down details on that. So we have to take what we have for an action plan, and that's that implementation matrix that was posted in the meeting materials. But we have to review that and refine it. There are one or two duplicate action items in there that escaped my notice when I was reviewing for duplicates before we finished the plan. Some other action items are not duplicates, but they're very closely related. The assignment of action items to responsible parties, responsible agencies, boards, committees, departments, etc. That has to be reviewed. That was sort of a first cut that we made at that. And they included some priorities and timing. We'll want to review that to make sure that all makes sense. The master plan is connected to, some of the action items are connected to the open space and rec plan action items and to the housing production plan action items. So we have to kind of reconcile those connections and make sure that there's no duplication of effort anywhere. So there's some work to be done before we have an action plan that we can really move forward with. But we've got to start somewhere.

The only thing I sort of wondered a little bit about was when it got to, at the end of 10 years, recommending about, I guess, a new plan. That'll put us beyond, allegedly, plans are supposed to be done every 10 years. So you'll already be out to 11 or more years. And then there'll be the seven years to get the money to do it. That's the only thing that caught my eye. I have to say that it's miles and miles ahead of the last master plan.

Not to prolong the conversation too much, but the previous master plan listed 195 recommendations. Actually, more than that. Some of them were duplicates. Unique recommendations were 195 of them. We had no plan whatsoever for implementing it. Nevertheless, about half of the action items from the previous plan did get at least partially done. When I compiled those statistics, I was somewhat surprised that as many as half of them had some movement on them. That was over about 25 years, though. Yes, that was 25 years ago that that plan was completed.

And when you have a 10-year time horizon, are the appointments It's conceivably that long, or?

You're talking committee members?

Yeah.

Well, it says appointed for one year and can be. Okay. Yes. Can be re-upped if they are still.

I will note that the proposed Minister Plan Implementation Committee is somewhat larger than our typical boards and committees. It's... including the two ex-officio members, it's 11 people, which is sort of on the edge of becoming unwieldy, but not completely unwieldy. My master plan working group, I started out with, not mine only, but I happen to be chair of it, we started with 27 members. And by the time we were done, we had 11. But we managed to get things done.

span of control up to 11. you know there's a thing about something like in the army they told me there was something like that all right um it um so i think if if the board's open to it there's some edits i can make to soften the language on just tracking the renewal and making sure it's renewed when it's supposed to things like that but if the board is interested there could be not required there could be a motion to direct me to bring this to the select board when it's ready to go. So moved. Second.

All right, moved and seconded. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Carries unanimously.

Thanks, Christian.

All right, and then our second discussion item is a continuation of the data center bylaws. Christian was good enough to share some info with us. I hope everybody got a chance to look at it. I don't know, Christian, if you want to just give kind of a 60-second background on what you pulled together. I think it's pretty self-evident, but still, I think you just kind of putting it in context, and then we can sort of discuss as a group and just think for the purposes of this conversation as we try to move in discrete steps here is really how how will we choose to define what a data center is um and then kind of beyond that definition is what do you do with it is it going into a moratorium you know that's also connected here but maybe we just stick with the definition for starts can everybody read the correspondence one person read the correspondence yes which which piece of course ah

There's a message. About the citizens petition? Citizens petition. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that is going to, well, actually, I thought a lot of it looked pretty good. That's going to come.

Well, I think you can give some context there because you've had some contact with them, right?

Um, minimal, but I did receive that. And, but what I can say is what what's happened between, um, the last meeting and now is I did some additional research to pull together this, um, draft. which includes a draft definition of data centers, um, based off of several examples that I sort of combined what I thought would, would work, but, um, as well as draft moratorium language. Um, and this is really a starting place for the board to look at and make re make recommendations. I did, uh, receive a review from town council and receive some information. Um, also based on some of the questions that were asked at the last meeting, but, um, Yeah, I think the other important point to make is the timeline that's been discussed previously is definitely tight. So whatever is recommended by the board, and we can talk through this however is best, but to focus on the definition, I think, the board will have to decide what to do first. Next meeting would be ideal, but the following meeting after that would also work to be able to, if there's anything that's recommended to go to town meeting, that would be the preferred timeline. So one of the meetings next month to decide on what to move forward, if that's a recommendation.

I'm unclear. There's a pretty well-developed citizen's petition message. Now, are we comparing that against... I'm not sure whether I got that. Because other than supposedly, sometimes you have to have a specific duration. And I don't think that citizen's petition had that. Otherwise, I would say, let's just do it.

Now, Christian, was that, am I misremembering, but wasn't there some sense of that the Whoever put forth the citizen's petition was going to wait to see if the planning board, us, was going to move forward with the moratorium, and if we were, then they would allow that to happen rather than the citizen's petition.

That's my understanding, yes. That's the impression I get. That's my understanding, and a couple notes I would say based off of that is – Whatever the planning board comes up with would definitely go through town council review. So there's that caveat, I guess. Some of the details and timelines that I've clarified with town council is that there's not necessarily a time, specific time limitation. There's no hard number that's required or limited to be put on the moratorium. to meet the AG's requirements, I should say. And the detail of what's involved in there may be, it's not clear exactly, there's no requirement what the AG would require to approve that's defined. So those types of details could go through town council review to be fleshed out on what they would recommend to go to town meeting.

So the two things on that briefly is the citizens petition. They can, even if they file it, and it's certified and everything, they can always withdraw even up to the town meeting floor. So even if that goes in there, they may choose to just withdraw it and they can keep it in and have make it more complicated, but it's possible. The I am as a whole in favor of Moving forward the moratorium as you drafted the part the biggest question I have in in your draft was the call out for small data centers. I agree, we should have something that protects those uses if possible. But the phrasing of small data center is unqualified. So the the idea of what we might consider small what we're meeting here could be very different than what someone else thinks is small and that could send us down a unfortunate path yeah the way i read it it's it's it's defined by use and then the only distinction is that it's

solely for the purpose of being a data center not as a accessory to some other business that's not their primary function but I agree with you I guess that's one of my questions is you know by use versus some kind of other metric like consumption you know is that it's just the use enough for a moratorium or do we want to have some kind of sizing like quantifiable size though we draw the line

Why would we want to do that?

So one of the concerns that I had, and I love this document. I think it's a great place to start, and I appreciate all the hard work that went into this. Under this, a telecom switch house or a mobile telephone tower has a little building associated with it. That would be classified as a data center under these rules.

Well, we have other laws.

laws yes but still I think that qualifying a call out for small would be good you know putting a quantified you know anything over and how we want to measure this is up to the board and our collective decision could be square feet could be power consumption for the scope of the moratorium there's potential call out to exempt

telecom primary uses thoughts I guess the question is you know in the in the list of definitions that are in the spreadsheet you know there's one having capacity in excess of 20 megavolt Empress MBA that's that's that's massive that's 20 megawatts right So that's the only, unless I missed it, the others are classified. I mean, there's also this language in the first one, what is this, in Mansfield about, shall we classify based on maximum electrical demand expressed in megawatts? So I don't know if they go on to tier them out with certain numbers.

Mansfield does go to tier them out. They say two and below is accepted. Two to ten is considered medium demand. to large, those are not permitted. And over 10 is definitely not permitted. Well, just as not permitted as 2 to 10, but they cap it at 2. So they put them into tiers and then they...

Yes, and I guess where I'm landing is if this group has enough know-how to say, okay, we can ballpark what the threshold is for something that needs additional consideration and what is below that line shouldn't be affected, But part of the moratorium, or if we choose to do one, right, is to get more time to talk to the water utilities, the power utilities, based on our specific local infrastructure to understand what is disruptive or not, what is considerable in size or not for that. And, you know, they could tell us that through the process of somebody applying, but I think what needs to be covered in the moratorium so that we have more time to get specific in an actual bylaw, whether it's in the spring or later?

Yeah, I would say that a moratorium would not need to invoke a number of tiers as Mansfield did. I do think that once we go, you know, complete the study that the moratorium has given us time to do, we might well refine that and decide that, similar to what Mansfield did, that anything with a power consumption less than two megawatts is okay. If we're not trying to classify them to the degree we might ultimately want to, we do have to be cognizant of I think we need to set some kind of a threshold. And part of it here is expressed in the draft moratorium is that anything that's associated, it's a part of another business in relatively small size, however one wants to characterize that, that's not what we're trying to put a moratorium on. But if there is something that's more or less of a standalone business that could arguably be classified as a data center, but the kind of thing that we wouldn't want to place under the moratorium, that's where we need to have a clear enough definition or regulation here to make sure that that's... A telephone switching center, for example, is... If you stretch the definition, you might want to say that it's included, but for the most part, it's certainly not the kind of thing that we're thinking of.

Right. I think among the board, we would all look at that and say that is not a data center. But if we look solely at the language of the moratorium.

Yeah. That's where we would want to be. just precise enough to make sure that it's covering only that which we want it to cover?

Only a local exchange, yeah. But the phone company has bigger and bigger and bigger places that do the same kind of stuff. And how much power does our local exchange use? There's going to be, my point is, there's going to be, there's just too many moving pieces, either, except that we're probably safe. There aren't many places this is going to happen anyway. And we have 1.5.5.whatever, which we could strengthen a little bit. Or we just say anything that the broadest possible definition for as long as they'll let us. And just go. There's just way too many unknowns when you take one step into it. You start to, at least as an engineer, I understand about it. watts, kilowatts. Not so much kilovolt amps, but OK. Are we getting into reactive power? Is that the problem? That's correct.

There's a technical distinction that, for most purposes, is irrelevant.

Yes. But that's the first time I've seen it expressed that way.

So I hear some Some support for the draft definition. I hear Michael saying there needs to be some language for telephone utility type operation. Is that solved by adding a sentence or do people feel... Couldn't you just say whatever is currently technically a data center,

Like under your example, just let it be. That covers everything that could fall into that category. But then anything new would have to, we would just say no to.

So I think the goal is to protect against something large scale kind of coming here while there's no specific bylaw and kind of charging towards a specific build out that we wouldn't have a lot of control over. The other side of it is the moratorium stops something that's smaller scale that's needed locally, right? So how do you kind of balance that?

To your point, it is tradition that whenever we enact a new part of the zoning bylaw, anything that exists and is nonconforming gets to stay that way. So if we were to say no yellow houses, that means no new yellow houses, all the existing yellow houses get to stay. So it's not retroactive or punitive in that manner. The yellow houses. i was just reading about the new zoning and they've thrown a lot of little curves into some of even that but so christian you had sent out a list of some of the languages uh as an excel spreadsheet many of those are good starts some of them have great ideas of language that i think could be useful a lot of that has made it into the draft and i appreciate all that

So how close are we with what we're looking at in terms of the definition? I think Michael's brought up a very specific concern. I think I'm open to the group's opinion about whether small scale is descriptive enough for the carve out.

It doesn't have numbers.

Yeah, I would love to add a number. I think for the scope of the moratorium, we can do much anything and you know the duration is going to be a year maybe two years um i don't think the long-term impact on the community will be a problem when we get to a zoning bylaw change we will need to be incredibly specific and well thought out but for the scope of a moratorium um i think it would be safe to say you know one megawatt or a thousand volts amps

what did you say a thousand volt amps or sorry one megawatt sorry yeah one one megawatt one thousand kva sorry kva kva christian my mistake thank you just as a random thought decide which way you want to specify that if um

if there is a small scale that generally fits the intent of what we're thinking, but it doesn't, like, if we don't put a, you know, leave small scale out, is that something that, with a moratorium, they could still go to, like, ZBA and say, you know, as a variance, say they think they qualify to do it, or is that basically a no because of the criteria of variances?

I don't know. Well, I... Under the scope of a moratorium, it's a no, not a special permit.

Right? Yes, sir. Which essentially is, that's how it exists now, technically, because...

If it's not defined, etc. Explain exactly what you're saying.

Um, the, the way the bylaw reads the literal reading and the guidance that was sent to me by town council was that because there's a data center as being defined is not currently defined. It's not an allowed use.

Well, I think our bylaws says, uh, tested against the best match.

If you could reasonably find that data center fits into one of the existing categories in the use table, then it's allowed as per the use table. If it doesn't, and the bylaw is explicit about that, and if you can't reasonably fit it into the use table, then it is prohibited. And no amount of ZBA action can get around that. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just was double-checking.

so other than i mean i guess the i kind of come back to like what are the potential harms to the town or to our infrastructure right like are we gonna with the moratorium stop us from getting some kind of service upgrade that we need um you know but otherwise in terms of i don't think we're actively trying to court data centers to come to this town the actions at the state level probably dissuaded people from coming to massachusetts in general so I don't know that we need, you know. It's more about the idea of covering ourselves in order to get to a point where we can put a bylaw in that is, you know, coherent.

I mean, the definition that we're talking about here, and with whatever variations we want to put in, is basically focused on stand-alone data sets. It's not focused on, it's not intended to include any sort of a, to use an old term, data processing operation, that's part of a larger business. So the question, going back to Mike's point, I think is that if that's defined without regard to size, then a small thing whose primary purpose is something that falls within the data center definition, then would fall within the scope of the moratorium. But anything that's an ancillary part or an accessory part of a broader operation is not what we're trying to put a moratorium on.

I notice, I think I'm looking at the right text. The building commissioner shall determine whether a proposed use constitutes a data center for purposes of this bylaw. You get a judgment cycle. If the phone company comes in and says, I want to put another rack back there, he's probably a pretty good chance that he's going to say that's not a data center. And so I think that's covered.

So this is the citizens petition as submitted, right?

Or is this Christians? Temporary moratorium on data centers, 5.14.1. Look, that's Christians.

Well, that language was in the citizens petition, but that's already language in the bylaw. Okay. So it's included, but it's – Well, it's good to – Thank you. It doesn't hurt.

Yes. I mean, it's great language either way.

support yeah just to make that clear yeah so I think if if there are you know shades of operations that on paper could look like a data center but are really something that you know is service needed to benefit the town then the building inspector could make that distinction that this is not a solely for the purpose of generating compute and delivering it to something outside of Grafton So, I don't know. I would think we're covered there. I mean, you know, it seems like we may want to add, so we may want to add a floor, like one megawatt or less to small. Ceiling? I'm sorry, ceiling. Sorry for interrupting. Yeah, no, no, you're right. Sort of a ceiling. Or we just leave it at the discretion of the building inspector.

Discretion.

For the scope and the moratorium, I'm happy with discretion of the BI, or building inspector.

Okay.

I'm good with that.

When we get to the zoning bylaw modification, I feel strongly that we must call that out.

And that's something to keep in mind, too, that as we're discussing a moratorium, what we're discussing is basically to prohibit the development of data centers in Grafton until such time as we work out all the details for zoning. And there's a number of details that we would want to work out. I think we've been discussing some of that. When you get down to actually amending the zoning by-law such that it, in principle, could permit the construction of certain data centers, that's when you start worrying more about the details. We talked about some of the major concerns being power consumption, water consumption, noise, and air pollution. Those are kind of the major potentially deleterious effects of data centers. There are other issues. Justin has mentioned more than once the fact that A data center is an unusual use in that the parking requirements really should be based on the number of employees there, whereas our typical, and arguably it's kind of an industrial application, light industrial if you want, but those applications typically involve a fairly substantial number of employees, so we calculate parking based on floor area. It's not appropriate for a data center or for any other light industrial or light industrial operation that might have few employees say a a largely roboticized factory would it would kind of run into the same thing so now we start some things that we start to think about are really strictly beyond just data centers even things like noise and resource consumption and pollution generation those don't those concerns don't just apply to data centers but they certainly do apply to data centers. And so there's all this that a moratorium gives us time to analyze and work through and get the details nailed down in a way that we're comfortable, that we're protecting the interests of the town without unnecessarily precluding some businesses that might want to come in and down.

Yeah, and those details, again, are all important, but those would be for the bylaw. So I guess I'll come back to now looking at the definition that Christian put together and the language in the moratorium that gives a discretion to the building inspector, are we closer to something that we can work with as a group here? Is everybody feeling good about that?

Make it so. Yeah, I'm getting the sense that... that the board is... Will we make it so? The board seems to be in favor of a moratorium with the definitions tweaked to whatever extent we think we really need to. But all to... Basically, in doing that, we're also committing to a longer-term project of working out all the details that ultimately we would need to see in the zoning bylaws. But it sounds like we're all... We're all saying, like Bob just said, make it so.

One question before we move to vote. One discrepancy between the citizen's petition and the language that we have before us is the duration.

There's nothing in the law that specifically says. And counsel will tell you, I suppose, if he hasn't, Supposedly, I think the citizen's petition was taken looking at the previous, the cannabis one, and I haven't looked back to see if we said something, whether we said anything about the duration and it.

So, Michael, were you pointing out just that they're different or that you had an opinion on one way or the other?

Are we happy with the duration as a group? So the language that we have from the planning office says... will remain in effect until the regularly scheduled 2027 fall town meeting or until such time as we adopt a new ZPL.

Yeah. Until such time as we adopt. Yeah. And if council tells Christian to do something else. You will.

Well, and I guess the one thing there is if you go an entire year without the bylaw, then you have to go back to town meeting to extend the moratorium, right? Whereas if you go for a two-year moratorium, you can end it at any time with a bylaw. So... I don't see the harm in having two years.

I would go for two years. Well, I would not say. If you don't have to say at all, good. Because who knows? The federal end is juggling all this, and the state end is juggling all this, and 360 cities and towns are juggling all this.

So just for clarification, you're saying that it's possible to not put a time box on the moratorium and just say until such time that we come up with the bylaw?

No, I think the AG will disapprove an open-ended moratorium.

Well, that's why I said Christian is going to talk to them and put as long, if there has to be an end on it, put as long an end as we can.

Those are all correct options. In addition to that, I could also propose language that would be approved by council that allows for an extension to be approved after a certain period of time. If it's two years with an extension, if we feel that we're not ready to pass the bylaw for an additional period of time.

I thought extensions got voted down the line when you were closing in on the initial, but I don't care. Let council take it. They know more than we do.

For the record, I am happy with the 2027 fall town meeting as written by planning department, and if we cannot get something together by then, we can impose another moratorium or extend the moratorium. But I think that having a...

If we give ourselves a deadline that's not too far into the future, that should motivate us to actually get the work done. If we did a five-year moratorium, we'd say, well, we don't have to work on it now. We can wait four years and then try to do it.

At year four and three months, we'd start really thinking about it. So I'm happy with the 2027 fall town meeting, but I wanted to float that to the rest of you.

The state doesn't let anybody go past two years. Right. So leave the language the way it is unless council says put something specific in. What is wrong with that and getting us over this hump?

No, I agree. If the one year, if we do the one year, provided the council gives us some degree of confidence that we can extend it for a finite period of time, I'd be good with that.

No. I'm not talking about one year. I'm talking about until, whatever it said, until town meeting does something. Town. A year from fall town meeting. No. Where was it? Christian, where was it? It was.

5.14.0 in Christian's version.

I think what you're proposing is not including a finite time and saying it will be removed when something is passed a town meeting unless I Consult with town council and they say they do not recommend that and then it should be a minimum of whatever years they say And that's what I that's what your that's your proposal yes, you said the two years was the max well It's soft.

I've done some research for any number of years and I It's whatever the mood on Capitol Hill is on any given afternoon as far as I can tell. Or who leans on whom.

Let's put the duration on the side for a second. So it seems like we've kind of discussed our way to being happy with the definition and the moratorium language other than the duration. Is that true? I think that's right. OK. then we just need the last bit of council's opinion on what durations are allowable yes so maybe we can we can say thank you christian and good job on all the language that you put together for the the definition of the moratorium language and then next meeting all we have to do or you know is just confirm the duration and you should be ready to take that

I do have one question that's probably through, will be through council, I'm guessing, is if we end up being at one year and that's what we come to for the town meeting, if a citizen wants to change it to two years or because of discussion at our town meeting itself, is that something that's allowable to be amended in those?

in our open questions i think so but i just once the warrant is sealed i don't believe you can modify something you could stand up and say i moved to a man yeah on town meeting floor it can be amended any way anybody proposes on the floor within within the scope within the scope as determined by the moderator um okay yeah all right so yeah go ahead one year came back again

I was just saying as a question for that, just to know the answer for next meeting.

I think Christian knows what I want to say. There's a thing about, it's not going to come up, but there is a thing about any application submitted before the first date of publication of a proposed article. They get grandfathered. so moving forward like vote to advertise at the next meeting i don't think we can we you have to bring back the completed uh article okay uh with whatever council said and that's what i so moved and said make it so i just want to clarify one i think i think the only uh addition is to add in the building uh

Inspector enforcement language is that correct?

I thought that I thought I saw that was in here that I think that's in the citizen petition But I can just know I thought strictly in the citizens petition. Well, then I'm looking at 5.14.2 Definition in what I think you said that that is um, that's the correspondent citizens petition

I think that the bottom line is we do want to add the building inspector's discretion.

Put that in. In the definition.

So we're defining by use the building inspector has discretion to anything that's on the line.

I move to amend my motion to include that. Okay.

All right, we have a motion. Please restate your motion because it was a while ago.

bring forward this language with the change we just talked about and any adjustment that council says we have to do, but otherwise leaving the duration open as long as we can. I think that's my motion. Sure, second.

Moved and seconded. Any discussion on the motion?

One nit that has nothing to do with what we've all been talking about. But in Christian's proposed moratorium ZBL amendment, the end of the first paragraph under temporary moratorium, He's got a severability clause in there. If any provision of this bylaw is held invalid, the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect. That's actually redundant because the zoning bylaw in Section 1.7 has a severability clause that covers the entire zoning bylaw.

But is there any harm in leaving it?

It's redundant, but no harm.

I'm thinking about the people who will be voting at a town meeting.

they won't be reading the whole bylaw. We spent some time on the bylaw review committee looking at severability clauses. And there was kind of a mix in there. Some bylaw articles had their own severability clause. Others didn't. We discussed it with counsel and determined that a single severability clause covering the entire general bylaws was satisfactory and appropriate.

I think Bob has a point that for a moratorium and something that's going to go in front of town meeting, maybe it's nice to have it with it.

I mean, it doesn't hurt. Like I said, it's redundant. It's not necessary, but it doesn't do any harm.

Getting passage is what's important. Assuming that we want to block.

I do not anticipate resistance to this at town meeting if we were to strike that language for a harmonized zoning by-law and not having severability clauses sprinkled throughout.

Although, as I said, I went through the entire general by-laws looking at severability clauses. I've not done the same exercise with the zoning by-law, so I have no idea off the top of my head how many severability clauses exist in the zoning by-law. And it's not a big deal, but I'm just basing this on my experience with the general by-law.

Well, I think since it's a temporary thing, maybe we can just keep it the way it is. That's fine.

Can I move the question?

Yes. Any other comments? All right. So we wanted to add the building inspector language. Justin, did you second? I did.

I heard Justin second it.

All right. Any final comments? Moving the question. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

opposed now now address the question do we moving on to general business bills I did not see any bills on the agenda on the materials no bills this week move minutes of previous meetings move we approve the drafts of the previous meetings that are in our meeting materials with any corrections that may be discussed.

Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Passes unanimously. All right, Christian, staff report.

uh... yes there's one item on here that there's moving parts on this uh... up to the end of the day on friday so it's it's really just an update on to fifteen worcester street that project uh... where it's moving forward and getting close to commencing work on that so there's one on part of the pre construction conditions we're looking at in the meeting materials there's an addition to the plan to add uh... Concrete barriers around the amenity space of the brewery. That was part of working with the peer review engineer on what we would do about that, and that was ultimately what was decided. So beyond that, the project's moving forward smoothly and should commence soon.

Okay. So there's nothing required of us?

No.

Because I thought we had a special cycle to talk about that.

there everything ended up being resolved so it's just an update at this point yeah that staff report beyond that nothing else to add but there's a of course a lot going on as always nice have it been any building permits pulled for 1727 Upton or anything any permits at all pulled for brigatti village 1727 Upton I know they've done demolition.

They're doing something. I don't know exactly what permits they pulled, but they've met all the pre-construction conditions of the special permit. So that's been met. Brigatti, no. We're about to start working on working through all of those pre-construction conditions and have the pre-construction meeting, but that's not scheduled yet, but we're corresponding on that.

And To your knowledge, is there any new information on what I believe is going to be a McDonald's at the old Pepperoni Express, Burger King, placed right next to Savers Bank?

No, I'm aware of that potential, but since I've been here, I have not had any correspondence with anyone on that site for any updates. You know they came in and talked with us. Yes.

They have to do a lot of work.

All right. Any other questions for Christian? All right, moving on to correspondence. Other than that, I think we already discussed the citizen's petition. Anything else pop out in correspondence for people?

Now that we've done what we've done, or maybe when we do what we think we're going to do next meeting, then there needs to be some sort of a message back to the citizen's petition people telling them what's happening.

Sure, I can reach back out to them and inform them that we discussed what we discussed, and they can review the recording and what we're planning on doing moving forward. So I'll make that confirmation.

And there'll be a public hearing on the warrant article language anyway will happen that they can always come to and discuss any concerns that they have.

Yeah.

Great.

Anything else in correspondence?

All right. Minor observation. The correspondence included a memo from town council about the recent changes the legislature made to 40A. The only one that was sort of, there's some other stuff that a lot of it applies to the ZBA and ultimately may affect us, but. It's interesting to note that they amended the law to allow legal notices to be sent by electronic mail. Once someone figures out how to do that. Yeah. But they don't require it. They just allow it. So maybe someday we will have sufficient records to be able to send legal notices out by email. But, for example, that would require all the property owners to include in their information with the assessor an email address. I'm not holding my breath for us to actually have to do that, but I just thought it was sort of interesting to see.

It's allowed, but the mechanisms to do so and what mechanisms would be allowed is still quite an uncertain question.

If you were a voter who wasn't really happy with everything and just a regular old email user, how would you feel being told, no, you've got to give us You're not going to get your notices unless you give us an address or else tell the clerk, you've got to figure out some way to split up the ones we have addresses for and send it electronically and then use paper for the other ones.

Until postage gets very expensive and we have a definitive way of proving that an email was received, I think that paper will still be there.

I don't think that's going to change. Return receipts as far as I can tell.

All right, let's move on to reports from planning board representatives on town committees and CMRPC. Any updates? I don't think so.

A very minor update. Since our last meeting, the open space and rec committee met, and we've begun discussions about updating the open space and recreation plan, which is due relatively soon, like next year. So Christian's been working with CMRPC to get their support for doing that. The Open Space and Rec Committee will be involved in that. Other than that, it's hard to believe it's already time to update that plan. I was going to say, didn't we just approve it? Well, fortunately for the master plan, we don't have a defined expiration date for it. But for the open space and rec plan, yes. Do I remember you, Christian, saying that they've changed that now to 10 years? Yeah, this next version will be good for 10 years instead of seven. Yeah, but we're due for a seven-year update on the plan we have. Yet another plan, which actually... could make things a little bit more complex for the master plan implementation, since a number of master plan action items are also open space and rec plan action items, and how are those gonna change? I'll worry about that some other time. Maybe someone else will worry about it, not me, I don't know.

All right, any other updates? Committees, anything like that? All right, any other items that could lawfully come before us?

Move to adjourn.

Move we adjourn. second oh movie seconded as bob says not debatable all in favor aye aye all opposed we are adjourned thanks everybody