Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, hello, and welcome to the Tuesday, May 19 2026 meeting of the Litchfield planning board. Will everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, next is roll call members present. I'm Jared O'Connell, chair. Travis Tucker, vice chair.

Russell Blanchett, member. Jesse Ngo, member.

We are joined by Jamie from NRPC and Joan McKibbin our planning board administrator So first up is public input on non-agenda items any items not on today's agenda that you would like to comment on I'm seeing none in the gallery So I will close public input on non-agenda items. First up is review and comment on stormwater regulator assessment. So I think I'll turn that over to Jay and Joan.

Kim said that it has to do with a lot of parking issues, pavements and parking, not parking, pavements.

We already made a big improvement to the number of required parking spaces.

I think I missed pavement.

Yeah, pavement's a biggie. So I went through the report that we received from the consultants, which is this. and attempted to make changes throughout the regulations. It was kind of a bear to do and to follow it. It's a little scattered. So I'm not going to bring it up on the screen. If you'd like, I thought it would just make sense to kind of walk through the comments and then how I address them. It tends to jump around, so it can be a little bit hard to follow. Basically, in all places where there were no recommendations, I didn't propose any changes. So that was really the first page. I am on now page four of their comments. If you're following those, I'm going to reference this. There was a comment that said, consider increasing stormwater design to accommodate for climate change. That was pretty vague. And so I kind of just put a question mark next to that one. Maybe that's further research because obviously we have to have a standard.

Yeah, and I think we made one change that kind of relates to that. I think a while ago we added the 100-year storm to the

We did make a change to the storm, and we had a lot of conversation around it. And so if there is something else out there that says projected storm events for whatever based on projection. So I'll do a little research to see if there is another standard, but I'm not sure that there is. So right now, I didn't propose any change. The next one, I think, I'm not quite sure they understood. They referenced section 410, parks and open spaces, and then talked about using low impact design techniques, and that's really not a section that has standards in it. It just says the planning board can require open space, so I didn't propose changes there. Where I did was in the zoning ordinance, so I'll come back to that. I think there was a misunderstanding that that related to open space developments, and that's not what that section is, so I'll come back to that change. And Then again, they talked about flexible, on page five, consider allowing flexible developments such as cluster open space. We do, we have that section, and I did propose some changes there. So the next real substantive change was to section 730.05, and that's the first page you see in the packet that I handed out. The comment was consider allowing the use of permeable materials such as porous pavers, et cetera. Oh, I'm sorry. That was the next one. This is the jumping back and forth. So I apologize. Turn your page. So it's page 17. And what I suggested was a new section 730.05.01. And basically, I took their language that the use of permeable pavements, porous, et cetera, are permitted, but then just noted that the use of conventional paving is required for travel lanes. So basically, that's their language put there. And that seemed reasonable to me. And because they jump around, it's kind of hard to figure the rational way to walk through this. I think I'll still kind of keep referring to this. And then I will kind of come back to it. yeah there's there is really I've just got to kind of jump around so I apologize for jumping around but that's what I am going to do so next time on page six the comment was consider allowing the use of open drainage that's now in the site plan regulations so I am I apologize but I'm trying to think again the best way to do it. So if you dig into your package a few pages until you see on the top of the page site plan review regulations, you'll see a small table. If you go down towards the bottom of the page, again, I took basically their language, open drainage systems along residential streets. And then just note that so I guess the way this is structured is under street edges. It's structured as basically you have to use essentially granite curbing or berms. And then there are the following exceptions. So I made the open drainage systems one of the exceptions. And then note that, again, I'm taking their language where the protection of the roadway age is a concern. You can do what they call curbs with openings or flush curbs, etc. So basically, that's their language. Now we would allow it. And then the next one, again, we will be jumping around. And this will be a big one. So they note that low impact developments recommend pavement widths of between 18 and 22 feet. I also looked at AASHTO standards. For those who are familiar with AASHTO standards, those are really kind of the recommended engineering standards. So for residential streets, lane widths, recommended lane widths vary between nine and 11 feet, depending on traffic, 10 being very typical. So, Now I'm going to ask you to go to your second page in. It says Appendix A on the top. And they're going to be a few changes in there, so right now we require for residential streets 12 foot wide lanes that's actually wider than the turnpike. So it's really exceptionally wide. One option is to say it's between nine and 11 based on the traffic we don't see traffic levels that would get to 11. I just chose 10. It seems easier to just pick one in the middle. And then that change kind of carries through as you move on down. Minimum roadway width would change from 24 to 20. And just kind of keep going down. Basically, I'm chopping two off of each of these. And needless to say, one of the reasons, a key reason behind this is less pavement. less drainage. That's where most of our drainage is coming from, roadways. So there is an emphasis on reducing pavement. I also went ahead and took some other liberties that are unrelated. We don't have to do these, but just again, kind of looking at AASHTO standards and what are best practices today. I suggested dropping the design speed on a collector road from 35 to 30 and on a local road from 30 to 25. You really don't want people going faster than that on small residential streets. So that's just a suggestion. They had suggested dropping our sidewalk width, the minimum width, to four feet. I didn't change the sidewalk width. you know adjacent to an arterial i mean really what we're talking about is our side path on albuquerque and uh we actually didn't have a minimum standard for other sidewalks i put in four um that is what they recommended so i just put it in there um and then what oh and then i should note This relates to another comment that they come up with later about the cul-de-sac widths, that we should reduce the width of our cul-de-sacs to not more than 70 feet. Our current requirement is 75. So I'm just going to jump the gun. And if you go on to the next three pages, we have in appendix A, there are three exhibits showing different types of cul-de-sacs. So I basically carried that recommendation of 70 feet. So at the very top of each one of these, you see a minimum. equals 75. So I did change that to 70. The math actually doesn't quite add up. But you that probably are more than one way you could get to it. You could also see I carried through the other change where it's 24 feet with minimum, it's now 20. And that's shown in three places. And I did that same change on all three exhibits.

Are there any places that allow you to just have one travel lane around the cul-de-sac? Because theoretically that's all you need and it would also potentially be easier for the road crew because then we'd just have to drive around once rather than once and then go backwards the other way.

That's a good point.

I did research and apparently parking can be a problem when that happens. Sure. We could require like non just pavers.

Yeah, I mean, outside of a party that doesn't happen very often. Yeah. That's I I'll definitely look around right now. We don't allow that. But that's certainly something we could look at.

Ask a question on the non arterial.

Yes.

OK. Are we going to, well, I will bring it up to the TRC committee, but does the fire department, we don't know if the fire department will have a problem with going to 20 feet versus 24. We don't. Not arterial, but I will bring that up at our next meeting. Sure.

I would hope that that would be okay because I know that they've mentioned their plow widths but theoretically the plow can be like it depends on if it's a curved road or not.

It depends on the storm too.

Because if it's a curved street If the road's 20 feet wide, then you'll have two feet of overlap into the other lane, which will leave eight feet for a car. If the plow is going by when there's a car, which could be tight, but how wide are normal cars?

Yeah, but you have to think fire truck, too. During a storm, especially. I see vehicles.

Yeah, they're pretty wide. So yeah, that the only place that that could cause problem is you just happen to have a really wide vehicle like a really wide fire truck and a plow at the same time.

What snow bank snow banks and that people shouldn't be parking during a storm. So snow banks may be an issue.

Yeah. possibly the right away doesn't change though. So you still have as much room to put the snow banks you show banks don't have to shrink.

Yeah, just maybe it's a little harder for them to move all the snow off the road because of that's OK for the right of way still be 24.

Right away still 50.

But actually 50. Yeah, 50.

And if they have trouble with this or concerns about this, we can always have the road agent visit the planning board.

Yeah, absolutely. I would expect that the road agent would want to weigh in, and I would expect the fire department would want to weigh in. And usually, they like roads to be as wide as possible.

It would be good to get information on how narrow you can have a fire truck go around a cul-de-sac, because that actually is probably the biggest limiting factor on the size of the cul-de-sac.

Yes.

I think I'd be OK with going even smaller than this as long as the emergency vehicles can go around it. Yep. So yeah, it'd be very good to get that information.

All right. So now where am I? I am on to their comments for those following page seven. And this is where we now go back to subdivision to the very first page. Their language again references low impact development practices. This is just a general comment where they recommend street layout considerations, including reducing street length and minimizing total paved area, with the goals of protecting hydrology, reducing cut and fill, protecting . That's really a very general statement, but I added it to the very general layout section that we already have. So that's the very first page that you see. Again, pretty much I took their language and adapted it for this section. And then once again, jumping around, now we don't have to again, the next comment is consider minimizing the required paved diameter of cul-de-sacs to 70 feet as encouraged in low impact development practices, et cetera, so that we already referenced. And then they just have a general comment about considering requiring or allowing more flexibility in providing sidewalks only where we need them. I think we do that. So I didn't feel we needed to address that. Next is site plan review regulation section 160.3. So if you go past all of the appendices, where you start to see site plan review regulations towards the top of the page and you're going to continue until the page that says 70 page 71 at the bottom of the page again i apologize for making everybody jump around So if we're there, so we have a general section now on buffer yard requirements with kind of an A and a B. I added a new C and basically took their language that low impact development storm water management practices such as tree boxes, et cetera, are permitted within required buffer yards. So that's just their comment. As I go through this and think about it, we should probably just include in the subdivision and site plan regulations a definition of low impact development so I don't have to keep repeating it. And I can just say LID. So that's something I will do. And then, again, you can see at the bottom of page 7 of 10 of their comments, consider lowering the sidewalk requirement width to four feet. So that I already addressed. And then, again, in the world of jumping around, so now we're going to go back to close to the beginning to subdivision regulations, Appendix A. And again, going back to that table, the table of geometric standards, their comment was consider allowing or requiring permeable surfaces for sidewalks. So I just did that. We have a notes section on the bottom of that table. And I just added another note that permeable pavement surfaces are permitted for sidewalks on non-arterial streets. I didn't figure we would really want that for our larger side paths.

Yeah, I do wonder how long those would last.

That's why, yeah, that would be my concern. And maintenance would be my concern.

Yeah, because the town might be required to maintain those. Right. And it's really unfortunate when sidewalks become unusable.

Right. So... That's just a note, and it's not a requirement. It's an allowance. And then next, we are referencing Site Plan Review Section 120, Off-Street Parking and Loading. And again, here, what they're looking for is, once again, low-impact development stormwater management practices. So once again, keep going. until you get to site plan review regulations. And this is section 120. Wait, where are we? 140. I lost myself already.

Well, there isn't a 140, there's a 103.

Yeah, that's, I found that a couple of times. Their references were off. Let me find. So that is on the page under site plan review regulations are on the top and page 34 is on the bottom The reference was wrong. It's actually section 120.12 and Again, I just took their language low-impact stormwater structures such as bioretention, etc Are permitted in buffer areas And parking spaces, they had a few that do not apply. I think they were looking at older parking requirements. So they had a suggestion that we should not require more than 4.5 off-street parking spaces for 1,000 square feet of gross floor area for shopping centers. We require four, so we already require less. They also said do not require more than two off-street parking spaces for single-family We changed our regulations last year. We only require one per residential unit as required by the state. But they have our requirement, do not require more than three off-street parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of gross flurry and professional office buildings. And we do require more than that. So if you turn the page, you're looking at site plan review regulations with page 40 on the bottom. And so I changed that from one space per 250 square feet, which is obviously four per 1,000 to three spaces per 1,000 square feet. So that aligns. Actually, I didn't do this and I did not get to driveways, but they do recommend requiring a driveway width of not more than nine feet for one way and 18 feet for two-way driveway. So I did not dive into the driveway regulations, but I will. And then the next comment was, I had a hard time finding what they meant, subdivision, regulation, appendix J. I actually couldn't find that. But I inserted that. Now if I can find where I inserted it. I forgot. I did insert it. I'll have to find it. I'll find it as I go along. Next, site plan review regulations again. Now we are referencing, let me find it, 120.12. I think that is another one. That is, yeah, page 34. I think we already hit on this. It was a comment that they had before. But if you go to the site plan review regulations with page 34 on the bottom, you'll see that comment was put in there. I think the comment's in here twice. Finally, not finally. Next, they had a comment in here. I'll just read it. It said, consider establishing limits on the extent of lawn area in residential lots, either by the area or percentage of the lot. I encourage property owners to plant native drought resistant species on lawn areas, et cetera, et cetera. We could certainly do that. My reluctance in that is that that just becomes something really hard to enforce. So I didn't put it in there just because I don't know how we would actually regulate that.

Which one was that again?

So what they're saying is considering establishing limits on the extent of lawn area on residential lots.

Yeah, that would be...

It would just be, I think, beyond what we could do. So I didn't suggest it.

I wouldn't support it if we did. Yeah, I mean, it's... You can't enforce that.

You can't. You just can't. You can do educational campaigns and plant native species, definitely, but... So the next one was consider allowing the placement of utilities on all roads under the paved section of the right of way so that the land adjacent could be used for swales. So that is subdivision section 400. Let's see if I can find it. And it did stick it in here. I think I forgot to print it. I did stick it in there, though. I forgot to print it. I apologize. I did make that change, though.

What was the approximate wording that you used?

I basically said that under our section on, let me find it, I'm sure I can find it in here. Under the section where we talk about underground utilities are required, I just put in there that they can be placed under pavement to allow for swales. I think I put a, My concern with that was, and this will be definitely where we want to get input from the road agent, is my concern is does it mean you have to dig up the street or you have to put in those boxes, which as I understand it, are very expensive because the OSHA requirements for digging in the road and working in a trench are significant. So I only say that because I have memories of having this conversation and Eversource really pushing back. But that could be just because it's expensive. Let me see if I can quickly find this, though, because I did have some language in there.

Because I do know that if a utility needs to add another utility and there isn't conduit they can use, then yeah, they're going to be digging up that road.

That's right.

And also, interestingly, Eversource actually requires... two like a power line ran on each side of the road now so they bet when you bury them they want them on both sides of the road so that if one line is compromised you can switch to the other um so i wonder what what would happen if it was under the road yeah because clearly this was intended for not under the road

Yeah, that was that was our assumption and it would be alongside the road and they want to you know, they're encouraging these open swales by the side of the road, though I suppose they could go back a little further.

The requirement for underground utilities decrease the prevalence of the open swells because yeah, most of the swells have seen this. I think all the swells I've seen in this community have been developments before the underground utilities were acquired in 2000.

I'm honestly not sure. It's never come up as an issue. So I am honestly not sure.

Is it possible to just bury them under the swales? I don't know.

That's also a good question.

Like, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to put the utility boxes in the swale, obviously, and that would get flooded.

It might be a challenge. And also, you're getting pretty deep, probably. I'll read you the language that we have now. I'm not going to go through all of it, but the section is underground utilities. It's section 14. And I'll just start this section with basically we say all major subdivisions that include New Road shall provide underground electric, telephone, television, and other communication lines. both made in service connections within easements or dedicated public rights away. And then it says underground utilities shall be installed in accordance with the prevailing standards and practices of the utility or other companies providing such services. And then here's the language I inserted. Underground utilities may be placed under the paved section of the right of way where possible so that the land adjacent to the roadway can be used for swales.

That makes it sound like it should always be done in there rather than if using swales.

Would you just be able to make the added language a little bigger for me?

Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. I can find where to zoom. There we go.

There we go.

Thank you. It does say may, so I kept that permissive.

We could change it to where possible so the land. We could always change that to if the land, Jason, is used for swales. or providing that if required to install swales because we obviously don't want this to be the standard I'll put if necessary yeah

Gotta wait for the silly thing to go away now. I hate this whole thing. There we go.

Are we able to use Control Z instead?

So yeah, I got this little thing that just, OK, so I'm going to place under pavement, under the paved section right away, if necessary. To use the. Oh, I was going to say for the land adjacent to the. What about that?

And then instead of can't be used. And then be just to be used. Right. Okay, underground utilities may be placed under the paved section of the right-of-way if necessary for the land adjacent to the roadway to be used for swales.

Good.

That seems okay.

Yeah. Okay.

It's definitely not preferred, but it's required. Yeah.

I think it's going to lead to more trouble if it's actually used. Probably.

I think that's probably true. OK. And next for section D, the comment is, consider requiring developers to limit clearing to the minimum necessary to construct roadway, drainage, sidewalk, and utilities. So I stuck that in as fluffy language. So if you go to right after the exhibits, the cul-de-sac exhibits, we have Appendix D. And the bottom of the page says 5 of 23. And so I just stuck in similar language, clearing should be limited to the minimum necessary to construct buildings, parking areas, roadways, sidewalks, drainage, septic systems, utilities, and other necessary facilities. I added a few things just because you do need buildings too. And that is... So I missed a couple of comments there. I'll come back to them. On page one, they noted that in Appendix D, we have no reference to green roofs and other green infrastructure. So if you're looking at appendix, the page that says Appendix D on the top and on the bottom, it's 10 of 23. I just added the language LID can include vegetated green roofs and the repurposing of stormwater as part of site design as acceptable techniques. And that actually addresses two comments that they had. And I'm just going to glance through these to make sure I did not miss something else. Oh yes, so the comment I was gonna come back to, they had the initial comment about allowing cluster and including LID. So your very last page is, this is out of the zoning ordinance. So obviously if we were to do this, this would be a town meeting thing. So, and I just, I basically took their language and I said, so conservation, open space subdivision shall be designed using low impact, a low impact development approach as defined in subdivision regulations, appendix D, blah, blah, blah. And noting that we did add a definition for a low impact development in the stormwater regs. incorporating the following design strategies. And then again, it's minimizing pavement, retaining natural paths, et cetera, directing runoff from roofs and pavements into natural implanted areas, areas A shouldn't be capitalized. maximize use of infiltration practices etc so that basically that is their language and I lifted it and I put it here that seems to be the way that made the most sense if we didn't want to deal with amending the zoning ordinance for this. We could just create a section in the subdivision regulations relative to open space developments. Why I didn't go that way is just because We tend to put the requirement, it's just whether they're specific to open space developments in the ordinance. I didn't want people to have to go back and forth.

Yeah, better in the ordinance.

Yeah, I think it's better in the ordinance. So that's what I suggested there. And then the other just kind of overall comment I would make is, as is obvious, these are These recommendations are scattered across a number of different sections of our regulations. It's always possible that we might want one way to just approach this is we're just going to focus on the stormwater regulations and And you could propose, you know, we'll hold a public hearing on amending the site plan, some of the regulations for the purpose of addressing the stormwater requirements, and that's all we do. Or we could look at some of these sections and say, gee, maybe there's some other things that we might want to fix as we're going along. Some of them we spent a lot of time on. So the stormwater, we've already spent a lot of time on that section. That's probably just fine. But if there are other sections, that opportunity is there. I know that we did have some conversation around the open space ordinance a couple of years ago. So there was ambiguity around some things, some questions around interpretation. So that might be an opportunity to just take a look at that section again and are there other things. That we have we've got a long window on that that if we wanted to if we're going to amend that section of the ordinance, maybe we just look at the whole thing and see if there's any well, the patient is open to whatever needs to be done to make it work for us. I think that's that's kind of what I was thinking would make sense. So that's this. It's a lot of stuff.

Thank you for pulling all this together for us.

Thank you. Absolutely, and obviously it'll take some time to look at and digest it. Then when we're ready, if we feel like going to hearings, we can.

And the comments on page four about the open space, that would be also addressed if we try to do what we want to do with zoning? On their page four? I kind of missed what we did with, yeah, on the regulatory assessment report, the consider requiring.

Yes, that's what I lifted and put on that last page. Almost verbatim. I just took it and put it in there. Okay. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Like, regarding the second bullet in C that you just added, the conservation of space development. Yes. Yeah, runoff from roofs is typically just, it just goes around in their lawn. It typically does, yes. Yeah. It's unlike a standard, like, a city where it might go into a stormwater drain.

This is true. Yeah, in fact, I can't imagine a scenario in which... Yeah, if you dump your gutters in your septic, you're doing it wrong. That would be so bad. So that's probably not necessary.

Yeah. And then directing... And realistically, the pavement part is just sloping not into the road, sloping into their own yard. That's the only thing I can imagine.

Or into a treatment system. Yeah. It's pretty simple to do. All those are pretty simple.

And three, it also seems to be worded in the context of a city that has a stormwater system. Because conveyed and treated, the only thing we have here is infiltration ponds is how it's being done with all the recent developments. That's right. That's almost always true. It doesn't seem like something that will make a big difference in

Probably not. It probably makes them happy to see it. Right? We can say we've checked that box. But practically, yeah, it's not going to really change what we do.

And why do they love surface-based stormwater management systems?

That was a question I had, too, after we've done curbing. We used to have surface runoff. you know, back when, the 1976 era, and then they went to curbing.

Right.

And now we're going back to, does DES look like the runoff idea?

Well, I'm not sure about DES. I mean, I think the idea is that it allows more opportunities for infiltration because you're going across ground. So that's really why. And I think they are trying to get away from curbing and from stormwater drainage systems to go with more natural systems. I think that's the idea.

I'm assuming surface-based ones are probably cheaper for the road agent to manage because it's just a ditch basically on the side of the road.

Not even. It's just runoff.

Going across the grass.

So you lose your lawn about this far. You know, four feet of lawn because of the salt.

Yep. Right.

But other than that, there's nothing really to maintain.

Yeah. And like the housing development that my parents' house is at, it was built in the 90s. And that's a swale. And there's no infiltration pond, just swales.

And then look at Tallarico, where we have this big infiltration pond.

That's a huge infiltration pond.

It's a huge infiltration pond.

and according for him to.

And I don't know enough to know whether or not if there was more of a low impact development approach taken we could have minimized. The structures. There's a lot of store water being channeled. It's for the culverts and

Because I would imagine the developers would want to minimize their own costs. Like if they can shrink those tubes and shrink that stormwater management area, I'm sure they would take any opportunity to do that just for their sake, not ignoring all the regulations.

And also, if we had 10 foot lanes instead of 12, it would have been less trouble.

Yeah.

Yeah, one advantage of

the uncurbed roads is you can go even narrower probably than a 20 foot road and if we're down to some like I think Gilchrist senior housing those are narrower streets but check those out because it's okay unless you have a car parked on the road then it's a problem

But yeah, that's why during the wintertime, we don't allow parking for the most part. But yeah, theoretically, if it's uncurbed and the plow has to pass something wide, the plow can... just be partially off the road.

Well, but there's an ordinance that says you can't park in the winter on the road.

Yeah. But like, if you're just going around a car that's driving, right, and they can just move over a bit, and not hit a curb or is it in the curb?

Yeah.

But the narrow roads with curbs on both sides, they're going to be really tight, real close to that curb. And that's probably going to make them a little wary of the proposal, because it's just going to require a lot more precision from the driver. right and we could also yeah definitely worth a talk with the road agent and oh for sure i wonder if it would make sense for us to have different width requirements for curb versus uncurbed for that reason it's possible if you were going to go with in the future uncurbed then you should be all set i mean because now the ones that are curved are wire

10 foot? 12 foot?

Right.

Well, one thing we have to consider if we narrow the cul-de-sac is we might need to have the radius of the inside area be designed such that a large vehicle like a fire truck can drive over the curb. Mm-hmm.

if they can't make that radius yep I'm guessing they can but obviously that's one of the things we want to look at yeah and we won't lose input too yeah for sure yeah we need input from fire department the road agent and our town engineer for this

Sticking with the cul-de-sacs for a moment, just considering long-term vegetation will infill that center portion of the cul-de-sac. So you really want to design the roadway around that cul-de-sac to support whatever fire apparatus you need to get in there. really emergency when they can bust through the center. 50 years from when it's built and there's mature trees filling the whole area.

I'm a church, he's a couple of pinecrest. There are great they are aggressive all treated in the middle.

Sometimes the drainage in the middle.

I like I like the idea of having trees in the cul-de-sac circles. Nice.

Definitely. Yeah, it's a nice, nice touch. Definitely a nice touch.

Yeah. Because theoretically, you can put the page paved cul-de-sac and then a few feet of like pavers with with that are like maybe raised a little bit to discourage cars to go on that but it can be used for a fire truck to get around.

Right. And they talk about that in here, too, outside of the travel way, using permeable surfaces, including papers, which could make sense. All right. So more to come on this, and we'll get some input. And I'll pass on this packet, but I'll add that one section that we missed if we want to send. I don't know. Has this gone to the technical review committee?

No.

OK. Maybe the whole thing would go as a packet. All right. That's all we have on this.

And the only things next time will just be like the little drive-by-with thing, right? And then just the definition of LID? Is that all that we missed?

Yeah. We need to add that. Yeah, I'll go ahead and add that. And then I'll also look into see if I can find a standard related to climate, you know, strong impacts from climate change. And just is there a number you can hit?

Perfect. Thank you.

I wonder if it would make sense to allow in the note where we allow permit permeable pavement surfaces, it may make sense for us to require submission of maintenance requirements in long term, like how long it's expected to last.

Yes. Are you thinking of the table of geometric standards?

Yes. So yeah, instead of just permeable surfaces are permitted for sidewalks on non-articulate material streets, it could be subject to review of maintenance and longevity data.

Yeah. Let me think of where best to put that, because I think we talk about permeable pavement in more than one location so that we might want that to be a general standard where it's included. So I'll probably insert that in the subdivision and cycling regulations in a logical location. So that makes sense.

Yeah. And then we can just reference that subject to non-permeable.

Right. Because it is a thing. Like it can require vacuuming for sand and stuff like that. So yes.

Yeah, because basically what's going to probably have to happen is we're going to have to submit it to the road agent to review and see, is this something you can maintain? And they're going to have to tell us, yes, I can maintain that, or no, I can't.

Right. We're at what cost? Because we might not have the equipment.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so we could even say subject to review and review of the maintenance requirements and practicality of Yeah, that is a good point.

Because usually where I've seen people putting permeable pavement into any extent, it's always been on private sites, and then it's been incorporated into their maintenance plan hasn't been public. That just it's just a, it's a thing.

Yeah.

They usually bring in an outside vendor, a company to come in and do that kind of maintenance.

Yeah, not something a road agent could probably do.

Probably not. At least not without getting additional equipment that we don't currently have. So that's a good point. I'll add that.

Sounds good. I think that would address at least part of the concerns about that. Right.

We don't want added burdens. We do want brownie points, though, for doing the things that they recommend to the extent possible. So I'll make these changes. And then we'll have an opportunity for I can reach out to Lou directly, just ask for his input on this. And then if we can get input from fire and road agent, then maybe we can have all that input and then schedule another workshop when we have the opportunity, probably not, I would guess not sooner than a month, but

I would definitely love to hear about if it's possible to have a paved road that's narrower if it doesn't have curves. Yeah. I guess that's probably the biggest concern right there is how plowable it is. Okay, any other comments on the draft changes to regulations and ordinances? Okay, thank you for the proposal. Absolutely. So next is natural resources.

So I don't know if everyone has had a chance to take a look. It has been a little while. I didn't print this out because I just double-checked. It's 85 pages.

It's really long. I quickly read it today.

Okay. So there's a lot in here, obviously. I'm just going to go to page width. A lot of this is... data, right? It's just a lot of information about the natural resources that are here. And, you know, and a lot of this hasn't changed. Uh, some things have, um, you know, just in clear in terms of standards. Um, but a lot of stuff, you know, has not changed needless to say over time, the soils are the soils. But we have different classifications now than we used to have. So I'm just kind of breezing through. So a lot of this is still the same. Again, a little bit of conversation around the changes in the categories that we have. And probably some of the bigger changes. So I kind of mentioned this the last time we looked at this. So I put a lot of emphasis on agriculture. This is clearly an area that's changed. There is significantly less land in agriculture than there used to be. Tried to include a, because this is such a high priority, your discussion on some of the principal farms where possible, I put hyperlinks. So if anybody wants a little bit of more information on them, we do have a discussion in here on the Jerusalem farm. And that purchase and talk about that as a potential model for the future. then of course we map farmland more drain stuff wetlands not nothing has really changed in terms of wetlands there's not a whole lot again we've got a lot of information here imagery we talked about the ordinance there's been a little bit of change in our setbacks since the last time this was updated And of course we talk about stormwater because that's another area that's changed. And in particular the changes that the town made over the past couple of years. And I'm just breezing through these. Floodplains, at this point, really nothing has changed. This is just a lot of information. This is changing with new mapping coming out, so that might make a difference. I haven't seen it yet, but I hear it. I've heard it's coming for years, so I don't really know. But one day we will get more. So there is, of course, a discussion on rivers and streams and surface waters. And again, a lot of this is really informational. There's not a whole lot that... has changed over time the one thing that has changed in here is water quality so we did include the most recent water quality information um you know and note we've got a couple of areas where we do have um you know impacted waters like ness and keg brook And Garrapon has another one.

What changes are you anticipating on the future mapping changes?

For Flood Place?

Yeah. And all the other ones you mentioned.

I don't... I really don't know how it's going to change. As I understand it, this has been in the works for years. And they have changed what are considered because of we have seen some pretty significant storm events. And the frequency of 100-year floods is greater now. What that's going to actually mean in terms of changed mapping for Litchfield, I'm not sure. We've not tended to have the kind of flooding that some other communities have. In part, I think that's because the banks are pretty steep for the Merrimack, for the most part. So I actually don't anticipate a lot of change here. It's possible there might be.

Is it going to be the federal FEMA that's updating their maps?

Yes. And so as I understand it on a more site specific right now, I believe it's happening on a more site specific basis. So when you are coming, you know, looking to get a permit to do work within a waterway, they're looking at. these updated standards that are based on projections of storm events. I just don't think that that's all been mapped yet. Um, I'm actually scooting back a little bit. Um, this is just a section I was referencing where we have more up to date. Information and you're on on water quality. I do wish they tested more frequently they I wish we had more testing. Then we do we don't some areas have lay lakes monitoring programs and other where they're really out there doing it a lot we're not. Um, but here you can see where we do have, um, issues. There are of course, continued issues in the Merrimack. Um, I mentioned this in Keck Brook, although the most recent data I have is 2004. Uh, for Dara pond, we have, um, more significant, um, You know, 2018, which is a little more recent, E. coli, cyanobacteria. That was something that we didn't talk about as much in the past, but that's an area that's much more of a concern. Of course, Colby Brook. And those are really the ones I think where you've got the biggest concern. And we do talk about limerillac. And moving along, not a whole lot though more there. We do talk about the fact that the, which is actually why we got the money for the grocery firm, but that now the lower Merrimack is a primary water supply. So that's definitely made a difference. Aquifers, there really has not been significant change. Probably really the biggie is the changes in actually what we're drawing out of the aquifer that has changed. Otherwise, not a whole lot there. I'm trying to zoom down to where we do have a lot. Probably the biggest... the conversation around water quality and groundwater relates to PFAS contamination. We talk about that down here under potential contamination sources. Obviously, this has grown enormously as an issue and it was not on the radar at all the last time we did this section. So here's our PFAS section, where again, pretty lengthy, and we talk about the number of homes that were impacted, et cetera. Household hazardous waste, Litchfield participates in the household hazardous waste program, so we've got more up-to-date data on that. And again, and now we map the PFAS contamination sites, all of the wells that tested. It's pretty amazing. how impactful that was. And then again, we talk about the rest of the, you know, the kind of the general threats to groundwater and surface water. And then here's our MS4 section. And that's a fairly robust section where we kind of get into the issues and the changes and why. And I guess it is, it's very long buffers. Really not a whole lot new. I think we know that they're good and important. And why they're good and important in the Shoreline Protection Act. So there's, again, a discussion around that. Then we get a little bit more into forests. Here, really the biggest changes when it comes to forests are some of the more recent invasive threats, like the ash borer beetle. So there's more conversation in here around invasives. And nice pretty pictures. And why forests are good. Keep your trees. And then the maps. And these are more up-to-date maps of what the forest's canopy really looks like in terms of habitat types. And then there's a lot more conversation about wildlife habitat and the key areas. So these are the impaired and vulnerable communities. And this is much more up-to-date information on what's imperiled, what's critically imperiled. where these areas are, and then those are the habitat types, and then all of the species. And that's very up-to-date data. Same things, the natural communities. And this is also very up-to-date. I want to say 2024. So a lot of information here. And... habitat types. Again, this is also very up to date. No longer clicking. Farm areas always rank high. And then the priority habitats. And again, this is also much more up to date. So these are the main priority ones that we see. I mentioned it before, but open land and farmland tends to rank high. I went too far. Too far, too fast. Although I like that turtle. So that's just something for us to think about in the future. So you can see almost all of the farmland that we have along 3A is all ranking very, very high. And in part, that's just because open land is really good habitat, including farmland for things like rabbits. Scoot on down. So that's 2020. That's pretty up to date as these things go. Endangered species. Nice conversation around that. Lots of animals. There's our bunny. I cannot distinguish a eastern cottontail from a New England, but some people might be able to. Rabbit. It's a rabbit. So keep going. Animal species. Audubon watch list. This is 2021. So this is specific obviously to birds. Plants, again the threatened species and we've got an up-to-date list on those and an up-to-date list on invasives and the species of concern. And then of course what's now prohibited, which is also an update list. And a lot, I think, it probably goes without saying, but a lot of what this chapter really does is serve as a reference just because there's so, it's so data heavy. And keep on scrolling through. Hopefully, I froze. Just list after list of stuff. I think it's good to have it somewhere, though. And this is a logical place to have it. And again, just so much habitat. Lots of habitat stuff, lots of animal stuff. A little fog, of course, final pools. And then finally, eventually, we will get to some recommendations. So now we're getting down to more recommendations and conclusions. And really there's a focus here on trying to protect wildlife corridors and priority habitats to the extent possible. For all the reasons that are probably pretty obvious. There's also a conversation around trail planning to try to design trails to minimize their impact to wildlife. And more data, more data, more data on the parks and the lands. And that's also, I think, Joan, you already went through these just to make sure that we're right. and our areas, our totals that should be up to date. Conservation lands, they're mapped, they're listed. This should be up to date, although these things change. 2021, actually, DeRocha Farm might not be on there. I might have to add that. I'll double check that. It's on here as ag land, it's not necessarily protected land, then we get into current use. So this would be our most recent list of all the properties in current use the in the categories. And then this is mapped. So this shows current use parcels overlaid on high priority habitat, just to give a sense of if the property is in current use, it means it's a larger property that's either woodland or farmland. And so these may be areas that would make sense to prioritize for conservation through acquisition, either in fee or through easements. And so this table here is showing the change in land use between 2001 and 19. It actually was less dramatic than I would have thought. And the percentage change in each category. Not surprisingly, what we call urban, which is basically mainly residential development, was gonna be your biggest category of change. I actually thought water was interesting. We have increased water area. I know. I thought that was interesting. I'm not sure why that would be true, but I guess it's true. Yeah, water change. You can see the areas where that's happened. So that was the table. This is the map.

So a lot of the water changes are next to wetlands. Right. It means that.

And it could be beaver.

Yeah, it could be.

I guess I'm thinking Brooke picked up a bunch. And then there is a whole section which is not worth going through that just lists federal regulations that relate to conservation and then we will list state regulations and that is really mainly just informative. Everything that could possibly touch it. So that was federal, now we're into state. And actually double check that. And then local, so we get into all of our local regulations that touch and concern the actual resources. This is what we do. And these are additional mechanisms that we don't necessarily employ. Current use. Then we talk about all the ways that land can be conserved, acquisition, donation, and current use, etc. So these are just all methods protecting land. And then a discussion of funding sources, mainly available grants or potentially available grants, many of which we have already taken advantage of. Other organizations. Finally, we get to recommendations. And a lot of this is, as you would expect, we prioritize conserving prime agricultural land, wildlife habitat and corridors, scenic areas, and then obviously protecting surface waters. And then, again, just get into ways that that can happen. both regulatory acquisition, et cetera. So both of the recommendations are not really major changes. Because realistically, the focus is going to be in addition to the regulations that we generally have, it's really going to be a focus around acquisition in some form. And land management, finally. So that's managing the land that we have. And a lot of that is, you know, in particular, and this is an area that we're seeing more of an emphasis is because of the impact of invasive species, particularly insect species that are causing damage. It's just something you want to try to continually monitor as much as possible. Maintaining our lands is important. and trail systems, education, et cetera. So that is the overview.

Thank you for all this work. Absolutely. Does it make sense to talk about the insects that are threatening our trees?

Yes, if I didn't, I thought I did.

If you did, you weren't very specific about it.

Let me make a note of that, because we should be specific.

Yeah, scale, there's hemlock woolly adelgid, there's the ash borer, and probably several more.

I will, I'll make sure of that.

I know that on my parents' property, I've had to treat dozens of hemlocks because they Because there was hemlock woolly adelgid on them. And we successfully removed the hemlock woolly adelgid, and now there's scale. One of them has almost died. that was unfortunate that's very unfortunate and there are also implications of treatment because insecticides are bad for bees if done improperly but that's like the chemicals we had to use like you have to not use them in your flowers because that will kill bees but that's the most effective way to do it without spraying a hundred foot tall tree with horticultural oil in order to save those trees. We like those trees because they provide a lot of shade, especially in the wintertime. I mean, privacy.

Privacy.

Yeah, they're really good understory trees.

And there was a recommendation to consider treating Darapont.

Recommendation to what you say?

For treating Darapont.

We did that in some of it this year, this year or last year.

First sign of bacteria?

No, milk oil.

Oh, yeah, milk oil. I know they're doing Babusic Brook for its DES just approved treatment. So we're hoping that that's going to work. What type of treatment? Because of the algae blooms.

Because that algae is toxic. It's toxic. How do they treat that?

I'm going to say it wrong, so I probably shouldn't, but I think it's like an aluminum-based treatment. It's a chemical treatment. I could be more specific about that, too.

Interesting. Yeah, that could be good information, context on what other communities are doing is helpful.

We've been slow to do it in New Hampshire, to prove it.

I know it's been happening more commonly in Maine. Yeah, I searched the document, and the only reference to cyanobacteria is that it's a bad score for cyanobacteria. So there's currently no mention of treatment for it. I will add that. Thank you.

OK.

So how many more iterations do you think we'll need to do on this document?

I know I got comments from Joan, so I incorporated those. So I think it's adding these things. And unless there's other comments, I think we're probably ready to go.

Yeah, I think, yeah, more details on the treatment, more details on the tree. Yes. Anything else?

And there's no rush for us, per se, to if like, you know, I definitely wanted to take a closer look.

Yeah, because it's long. It's also probably the typos that I've missed.

But great resource. I was like, just in case, right, good to know.

And if you do come across those kinds of things, and you want to just send them to me, feel free.

And with a lot of the recommendations kind of fall on the Conservation Commission, John, do you know, did they had a chance to kind of look it over as a group, everyone?

I sent it to them several times, but I didn't get any comments back.

Okay. And we did look at the Conservation Commission's conservation plan, so a lot of those recommendations were carried over.

Good, good, okay.

That's a great name. Excellent. So we'll make changes, and we'll get them back to you, probably at the same time we look at the straw monitor again. Sounds good.

Thank you.

OK. So that's that. When do you think we should have our next workshop?

So June 2. We've got applications.

Just one that should go pretty fast. And then June. What's the second one in June?

16. 16? Does that work? Or do we have somebody coming up?

I don't have anybody right now.

June 16 would be just about a month. So that would be good.

Sounds good. Does that seem like enough plenty of time for these changes to be incorporated?

Yeah, definitely on this chapter. And I mean, there should be enough time to get input from fire department and road agent and Lou. So I think that should work. 16th should work for both.

Perfect. So yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. OK. And I know that.

Excuse me, the cutoff was 16, so it should be good.

I know Rick Charbonneau had some comments that he wanted to make during a workshop, so we should probably just add just a, when we have that meeting, we can just have a section on our agenda for just general workshop, and we can let him know so that he can come here and we can actually have a meeting.

On that same day or a different day?

That probably makes sense, the same day as we do all the other stuff. Unless anyone has any other. He may also have an interest in the storm wire rights.

Good point.

Yeah, he is one of the, he is the biggest, his company is the biggest road company in town. Right. By large margin. So yeah, that would be good. Any other things to discuss before we move on? Okay. So next is committee reports. Do we have anyone here that's on any committees?

CIP last time, but we'll meet, what, June 2nd?

Monday, June 2nd, I think? That's right, yeah.

So we'll update kind of at the first meeting of the month.

Okay. Sounds good. I think that's it for committees.

June 2nd was what committee?

June 1st. Oh, June 1st, sorry. CIP. Oh, CIP.

Okay.

Okay, so next is the minutes. Has everyone had a chance to review those minutes for May 5th, 2026? I noticed that the absent section in the in attendance was supposed to be the also in attendance section. Yeah, those two sections got reversed. Yeah. Yeah, we have these people that this is absent, or it's like they were definitely present. I didn't notice anything else. I think one other thing in the where we discuss the conditions for approval I think it sounds like the same thing in on page seven summary conditions landscaping shall be installed behind the garages including evergreen planting strategically placed to screen and break up the view from abutting properties i think those are more separate items there one is landscaping just to break up the facade And then separately, evergreen planting strategically placed along the front of the development across Albuquerque to break up view from the road.

And also I had on E, a restoration bond shall be established in an amount to be calculated by the town. It should be by the town's consulting engineer.

Yep. They took notes on the conditions, so let me just make sure that they match. The wording is a little different. The wording in the minutes is the application shall coordinate with the property on a cross from the Charles Bankrupt Highway entrance.

Yeah, that was a little confusing because it was more than just right across from the entrance. It was further down also.

The way we worded it was stipulation of talking to the owner across to address concerns regarding traffic lights. So we used the word stipulation. Maybe to establish a stipulation to address concerns related to traffic and traffic lights specifically.

Yeah, because I think that was the specific concern was the light shining. Yeah.

And let's split B into two. One is landscaping shall be installed behind the garages to break up the facade. Right. And a separate bullet to say evergreen strategically placed between Albuquerque and the U.S. to break up the view to be reviewed by the planning board.

What would be the new bullet point that we're adding specifically about the evergreen plantings for Albuquerque?

So yeah, for B, we ended at the comma. Or we can clarify also that it's to break up the facade. And then the new bullet point would be evergreen strategically placed between Albuquerque and the units to break up the view to be reviewed by the planning board. and strategically.

So you want that to come back to the board?

Or that's the wording we use. So that just means that during a meeting that will be, because either it's reviewed by just me or reviewed by the board. Right.

So when the final plan comes in.

We'll just take a look at it. We can add it to our agenda to just review it.

To review the conditions for approval.

Yep. That was how it was worded during the meeting, so we got to reflect how it was worded during the meeting. And what it means by strategically placed, it basically means every once in a while, far from all the leach fields, because it can't be placed next to leach fields.

I think that sounds good.

So Joan, do you have any clarifying questions regarding what we just discussed?

No.

OK.

sounds good so any other yeah going back to page three at the bottom under the paragraph site walk and sidewalk observations second sentence during the walk residents expressed concerns particularly near the wooded areas oh yeah yeah we i think the we we we we did they didn't do it during the walk we it's just we we looked out for the concerns yeah

we how do we how do we state this in a clear way we the board expect the board took into account the residents yes yes yeah thank you

previously stated residents concerns. There were no residents at the sidewalk from the previous meeting where the residents had expressed concerns to us that we then acted on.

Yeah, or expressed at the prior hearing. That was probably the biggest takeaway from the sidewalk.

Any other concerns or proposed amendments? OK. In that case, would someone like to make a motion to approve the Mayfair 2026 minutes as amended? So move, Mr. Chairman. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor of approving the amended May 5th, 2026 minutes, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, abstain. Motion passes 4-0-0. Okay, thank you. So next, we have any other business? So is there any other business for this evening? Not for me.

Over the weekend, I attended the New Hampshire Office of Planning and Development training. That was a training designed for planning board members, local land use officials. If folks are still curious, all of the slide decks and the agendas are posted on their website, but also there is a YouTube channel of all of the recordings for anyone who is curious to review the materials. But I attended the sessions that covered legal requirements for procedures, how to handle conflicts of interest, new tools for housing and preservation that can also strengthen our decision making. I attended some of the special tracks because I found them really interesting, particularly around historic preservation and planning tools for our community. So I'll be sure to link out with all the slide decks and the recordings. It's a good rainy day read.

Yeah, thanks for attending that. Were there any takeaways that you think are worth mentioning to the board?

You know, I think we do a pretty good job at, you know, just observing our procedures there, too. They had a couple of case studies that they presented where things could go wrong. So it was a sobering reminder that, you know, things can go in the other direction, too. So that was one of my takeaways, so.

Yeah, I feel like this board has handled things pretty professionally in my time here, which is definitely very something to be proud of.

Yeah, I've worked with a lot of boards and I think that's absolutely true.

Thank you. So yeah. Any other business? Okay. In that case, would someone like to make a motion to adjourn? So moved.

Okay.

Second. Second. So we have a motion and a second for the discussion. All those in favor of adjourning, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, abstain. Motion passes 4-0-0. So yeah, thanks for watching the Tuesday, May 19th meeting. The meeting will be on the first Tuesday of June.

Yeah, they hadn't confused because they put two lots into four lots. It's confusing.