Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, hello and welcome to the August 4th, 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,

Next, we have roll call of members present. Jared O'Connell, chair. Travis Tucker, vice chair.

Russell Blanchett, member. Jesse Noe, member.

Rita Riley, member.

OK. We are joined today by Jamie Carr from the NRPC. Joan will not be able to make it for tonight's meeting. So next up, we have public input on non-agenda items. Do we have any members of the public that wish to comment on non-agenda items? Seeing none. So yeah, we're going to be talking about the master plan, the resources chapter, the MS4 changes for the zoning regulations, and interview with the applicant to the planning board. That'll be third. Do we wish to keep that order?

Is the applicant here?

Yeah, so either do it.

Yeah.

Do your regular stuff first.

It could be a while. If he becomes a member, he'll have to sit through this every meeting. If he sits through all of this and still wants to be a member.

Yeah. Yeah.

So first up on the agenda is the natural resources chapter. Jay, do you have any comments on the changes?

Just really one thing to point out. There were a couple of small, minor things that I picked up on, so I did make a few little corrections. Really, the biggie is I did add a section on invasive insects.

I read that.

Let's see if I can find that page. Where it starts. Here we go. It starts with a big bug. So that was the main point. So yeah, I mean really, that's the significant change since last time, other than a few things that I corrected here and there.

Just a few hours ago, I went out to get pictures of the other pests, so if you'd like to pass the HDMI, we can discuss if we'd like to add any.

Sure, I could add more. HDMI, please.

Okay, so this is what humlock elongate scale looks like.

Yuck.

Yeah, so these are females right here. Oh, wow. Wow. And for reference, these are the little tiny needles of the tree. So these are just like two millimeters long, these ones right here. I believe these might be males here. And then these are the females.

Wow. I wouldn't have even realized that was an insect.

Yeah, it's just a little speck.

Thank goodness our chair loves to geek out on bugs.

Here's another picture. It's a little less chaotic. It just shows one male and one female, I think.

Wow. Neat.

This one does a lot.

Thank you. Is that in our neighborhood? Do we have to worry?

This is from my parents' property. We have to worry. This one.

So these truly are local in every way, shape, and form.

Yep. Wow.

Hmm.

so if you guys would like we can amend the proposal with one one of these whatever one you think yes send me some images for sure what is their impact They suck the nutrients out of the needles and it just slowly makes the tree less and less healthy. So like I've seen lots of hemlocks in town with these and they just look sick. But they don't die quickly because of it. You'll often have this and hemlock woolly adelgid on the same tree because one of them gets on it and then the tree gets vulnerable and then it's easier for the other ones to establish. So then you have two pests on the same tree.

So is it the kind of thing that you basically have to remove the tree and burn it in order to get rid of it?

You can use insecticides, but you have to be careful because... Those are very broad-acting insecticides, which means if you put them near flowering plants, you could kill bees.

Or any of the little critters that are living in the trees. That would be bad.

Like a rodent in the tree won't be affected. It's just insects that are affected by insecticides because they target insect-specific problems or properties. So yeah, I've treated like over 20 hemlocks on my parents property with two different insecticides. We're gonna have to get the more expensive one because this one doesn't get treated well with the with the cheaper one. So we're going to have to get the expensive one, unfortunately. So how do you get up into the tree? You, again, the roots suck it up. And then because these are literally just taking the nutrients out of the tree, anything the tree gathers will affect the insects. Certain ones can be treated with horticultural oil, which is just mineral oil that you spray all over the tree, basically. And that kills some of them. This one, apparently you would need to, like they are armored. Like this right here, that's armor. So it's armoring itself to protect itself. So you apparently need to do many treatments throughout the year for this pest. And of course, adding horticultural oil on the tops of some of these trees is hard because some of the trees are like 100 feet tall.

Good to know. Is there a photo that you're... Partial two or one or two that you think illustrate the point better than the others?

This one is really simple and not chaotic. And it just shows one male and one female. And these might be the shells of the babies.

There was another one. Yeah, that one.

This one looks more like an infestation. Do you guys have any opinions?

I can put two.

A close-up of the bug and then one that shows. And you could label it infestation of whatever so that people know that this is more the worst-case scenario, but keep on the lookout for these little things.

And this part of where I got the pictures, they are still healthy needles, but like... There are definitely, one thing you'll notice when this happens, you'll get yellow sections of branches because the tree is unhealthy in those sections.

From a photograph standpoint, this one's definitely a bit more unnerving. I guess the other one, if you kind of ignore the bugs, it's like a Microsoft screensaver. Whereas that one is a little bit like, oh, I don't really want to see that on my tree. Great shot.

And I'm just thinking like, you know, It's a perspective thing too, right? When I'm out in my yard, it might be harder to find something that is zoomed in that closely that's that small, whereas this gives some perspective.

Right. Even this, you're looking closely.

Yeah, these specks are two millimeters long.

Yeah.

That's a good image.

Yeah.

I'm partial to this one.

I like this one.

There's also this one, but I think it's a little more chaotic. It shows the males better, I think, with these disgusting looking bits. But it is a little less clear what you're looking at. This is another one with a little bit stronger flash.

This looks more sterile. Yeah.

So, yeah.

I mean, I certainly trust your judgment between the two of you, but I like that one. It's a good one. Yeah.

Sounds good, yeah. I think it gets the point across very well.

Well, the fact that it's actually in Litchfield is... Yeah. Yeah. It's good.

Are these crawling insects? In certain phases, but eventually they just armor themselves onto the bottom of the needles. So yeah, these are the bottoms of them. I was like taking pictures like this. Yeah, I did end up finding a picture of the hemlock woolly adelgid. But if I find one, I'll send it. Yeah. And if we also have to decide if the natural resources section is ready to bring to public hearing. Yes. I think one amendment that might be nice. is we can probably, but right after talking about trained professionals, maybe make a note that.

What page is this that you're looking at?

This is on page. 40? 40. It's one page below the Ash Borer. So yeah, the paragraph says, chemical treatments can be effective for protecting valuable landscape trees, historic trees, or trees in parks and public spaces. Systemic insecticides can effectively protect individual ash trees from the emerald ash borer and hemlock trees from hemlock woolly adelgid. And I think we can also make a note. Hemlock elongate scale. Just you need to use different ones when applied by trained professionals. And then we could probably add another sentence after that that says care must be taken because these insecticides can kill bees if applied near flowering plants.

And I would reiterate, consult your professional. Because the stuff you can't buy it like Home Depot, right?

You can buy it on Amazon.

So people would be inclined to do it yourself. In which case, be careful. Maybe it would be wise.

Read the instructions. Don't put it anywhere near.

We don't want to make ourselves liable for.

Yeah. Yeah, it's got to. Right. You got to read the label. You need to not do it anywhere near flowering plants. That's what really matters. You need to not minimize runoff and only use the amount you're allowed to use. Because there are actually limits on how much you can use per acre.

Oh, I'm sure. Because of the problems, I'm sure.

if we wanted to skirt around the kind of like liability issue where we're kind of advising them we could just add to that final sentence like however chemical treatments are generally not practical or economically feasible for large forested areas and then we could also you know and can be detrimental to bees if applied improperly yeah yeah that way we're just kind of informing not advising yeah

Because if you pose one scenario, but there's another scenario, then you're responsible for posing all of those scenarios, and we're not going there.

So I think, well, I guess, has everyone had a chance to review the new sections and all the ones that we've?

It was nicely done.

Yeah, and some new photos, too. Great work. Yeah, one thing that's unfortunate is if you're trying to protect the trees on your property, if you look up the tree professionals, so many of them are the types that take down trees rather than make trees healthy. Yeah.

Let's call it arborist is what you want.

Yeah. And plenty of arborists are the ones, or self-proclaimed arborists are the ones that take down trees, too.

Yeah.

Unfortunately. So it's a bit of a pain to find the ones that are actually the ones that treat.

So if we do want it to go to public hearing, we could do the 18th. It just has to be posted by Friday.

Mm-hmm.

And there's also, we'll have to discuss this later, the public hearing implications of the sidewalks.

Yeah, I was going to say, this isn't as impactful to the public. I mean, it certainly impacts and helps the public. But as a topic of more controversy, I don't mind this being put up in August for public hearing, but the sidewalk thing should not be in the summer. I think you should wait till the fall when people are back. in the thick of things and they have more opportunity to to weigh in I don't know if everybody feels the same way but I feel like this could go to public hearing in a couple of weeks no problem because it's just it's informational and it's interesting but it doesn't you know right it's not going to draw a crowd the way maybe I don't know maybe sidewalks or something might I don't know cool

Yeah. The sidewalk one, if brought forward soon, could be on the next meeting. Otherwise, I don't think anything is on the next meeting from when I last talked to Joan.

So then this would be the only thing on that meeting.

Oh, yeah, no.

In which case, we might want to bump it to the meeting after that.

And what would be the deadline for anybody who would be putting in for the August 18th meeting? Would that also be this Friday?

September 1st. No.

To get in for their two-week thing, or is that?

No, it would have been last Tuesday.

Okay, so this would truly be the only thing for August 18th? Oh, Mr. Chair? I say we defer until September.

Yeah, September 1 is the first meeting in September. Yeah.

I'm all for that.

And it gives Joan a little more time to get the notices out.

Yeah, I think, right. And I probably could make these changes and get the pictures in, but I'd have to have that done by Friday, too. So it takes the pressure off that, too.

Yeah, so when we make the motion, we'll probably have to say with the proposed amendments. Yes. And the inclusion of the pictures.

Yes.

And would that still allow me to send you images I haven't shown yet?

I think so, because you specified what they were. So I think that's fine.

Okay, so with the proposed text and image amendments Mr.

Chair, I make a motion to send What is this chapter 3 the natural resources? chapter the master plan to public hearing on September the 1st with the approved changes and the inclusion of images to be sent by Jared as discussed I

Approve changes or amendments for wording?

Yeah, it was the wording amendments basically around the use of caution in applying the pesticides and also the adding that the hemlock what elongate yes scale you can also use insecticides for and then the addition of the pictures that we discussed so we have a motion do we have a second second okay of a motion in a second any further discussion

All those in favor of sending the amended chapter three natural resources to public hearing on September 1, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion passes 500. Okay. Perfect. So next up is the low impact development changes. So I can just kind of... It's been a while since we've seen these.

So you probably would like to... I'll just get the HDMI back. Oh. Leaving through them. No one's seeing it. Let's see. Let's go. Okay.

This order is a little different than mine.

So just by way of... We call on, for folks who haven't seen any of this previously, so these are recommended changes to the subdivision regulations and related appendices that came from the town's MS4 consultant. And what the consultant did was go through all the regulations. There's actually another change suggested for the zoning ordinance as well. It's just a fairly minor change in the open space section of the ordinance, which we can deal with separately because, of course, that's something that would have to go to town meeting. So what the consultant did was go through the regulations and basically look for recommendations that would allow us to be more MS4 compliant. And essentially, What that means is MS4 governs municipal stormwater systems, and we are required by EPA to comply with the most recent requirements. And a big thrust of where the regulations are going is to attempt to reduce impervious area in order to reduce the total amount of stormwater. flowing off of those impervious areas. So kind of needless to say, makes sense. So we've gone through the regulations and the consultant came up with a series of suggestions as to how we could accomplish that. And so what I then did was kind of go through the consultant's memo of recommendations and go into the specific requirements in all these various sections and come up with some changes that we could implement. And I'm going to go down to the first one. So here we have everything, basically. Here we go. So what you see on the site is the whole appendices. This is appendix A of the subdivision regulations. And this is where the road standards live. So not surprisingly, this is where much of the regulation is going to focus. I'm trying to see if I can get this to come down without losing it all, and the answer is I cannot. And so just in terms of process, I'll kind of talk to these and then I'll talk to some of the other suggestions. So first of all, these are the road standards that the town uses for regulating subdivisions. There are two classifications of road, arterial and non-arterial. Arterial really doesn't matter because we don't build new arterials. Nobody does a subdivision with an arterial. So it's basically everything else. So right now our minimum road lane width is 12 feet. The suggestion is to drop down to 10. And then correspondingly dropping down from a 24 foot minimum pavement to a 20 foot minimum pavement. 22 total with curving. And then also a recommended change to design speed. This is actually not MS4 related. This is really more traffic calming related. But to drop the design, I'm sorry, to drop the design speed on basically what are residential streets from 35 to 30 and on very local roads from 30 to 25 based on the idea that people drive the design speed or more. And then finally minimum sidewalk width, which is eight feet on an arterial. And there was actually no standard, interestingly. It was just blank for local roads. So we put in four feet. Four feet is the minimum under ADA. And then finally, there was just a small note that says that permeable pavement surfaces are permitted for sidewalks on non-arterial streets. So that just essentially means local sidewalks, this would not apply essentially on the sidewalks that the town maintains, like on Albuquerque or on, right now, 3A. So that's the next change.

And we can probably talk about this. Oh, of course. Yes.

So my question is, this consultant who talked about ms4 and compliance and storm water and that's great i don't want to argue that they're the expert but was safety involved with this because i'm looking at one lane one lane travel way at 10 feet and you got huge suvs and pickup trucks out there and i honest to god i It's not enough. I don't think 10 feet's enough, personally. Especially when you got a biker or a pedestrian or something walking or somebody walking their dog. I mean, honestly. If we all lived in a place where we all drove around these little cars, it would be one thing. But honestly, I struggle with the narrowing of stuff. The safety issue.

Yeah. The widest normal vehicles would typically be 7 feet wide, 84 inches wide. So theoretically, you could have two of those large SUVs side by side passing each other and still have six feet to spare, but it will look very tight and you'll have to be more careful than normal.

Well, if you consider that the mirrors on each side add another foot for each car, I mean, that doesn't leave you with much. There's two of your three feet. So I'd like to know, this consultant, that's great and all, but did they talk to safety people?

Yeah. I mean, it is consistent for a local residential street. It is consistent with AASHTO standards, which is basically those are the engineering standards that everybody goes with. It's a legitimate concern. Certainly that was a concern that town staff had. What it means in your scenario is, which should be kind of true where I live, both of those cars would have to slow down considerably to pass each other.

Which I get, but do you honestly think on collector roads such as Hillcrest out here, people are going to go, oh yeah, gee, let me go down to 30 miles an hour? Let's be realistic.

Yeah. That said, narrowing the road does make people feel less comfortable at high speeds.

Oh, I agree.

Which could balance that out.

Have you ever walked on one of those roads?

Just to note, though, this would apply to where is a new subdivision street. It wouldn't apply to what it would cost.

Sure. I understand.

Yeah, I was driving through a road that was in Pelham or Hudson, and it was way narrower than I was used to. And the one thought I had was it would definitely be nice for a sidewalk to exist on a road this narrow. We can investigate requiring sidewalks on those, but then you end up kind of having just moving the pavement instead of removing the pavement. Yeah, good luck. Because you can end up with just a four foot wide, like if you're going from a 24 foot road to a 20 foot road, that's four feet less. And the smallest ADA sidewalk is four feet. So it would be a net, no change in impermeable surfaces if we required sidewalks on new subdivisions.

Yeah. I don't know. Who else could weigh in? I mean, who else would weigh in on this kind of stuff? I mean, I would hate to think it all falls on us. But I mean, this expands beyond planning board stuff, in my opinion. Oh, for sure.

And I would expect we would get input. If we decided to take it to public hearing, we would certainly get input, I'm sure. We did take it to town staff, which included fire department, police department, and road agent. And I can say that they did not love this. They would prefer maintaining wider roads.

Okay, good. I'm not crazy. Good.

Right. One comment I have is are we, do we wish to continue with the 13 foot travel way width for arterial streets? Because I think we mentioned in the last meeting that the highway lanes are 10 to 11 feet wide on turnpikes.

Yeah, I think 13 is the widest, I think, that exists that I've seen.

And this won't change the pavement size. It would just make it so that the lanes are just narrower, which makes people feel a tad less comfortable going too fast.

Are we obliged to take these recommendations?

No, and I didn't put in anything for, the reason I didn't put anything in arterials is because we just don't build new arterials, although it's not impossible to say.

It's not impossible. If you have a subdivision where there's one main road going through with feeder road, I mean, that's effectively an arterial road that passes through from one street to another.

The only road I can imagine being built that's an arterial road is if someone builds something through the what's being sold off on the bottom end of town.

The arterial really is Albuquerque. You don't have 13-foot lanes on 3A. So the AASHTO standard for interstate highways is 12 feet.

I personally don't see why we have to have wider lanes than the standards for highway lanes.

Yeah, I think the one thing where, like, the 13 feet might be useful in Litchfield's case is that I know we did spend a lot of money on those lovely pads, but a lot of folks do bike on Albuquerque in the roadway, and that can be tricky. And so I do know that that extra foot or two has been handy when there's a lot of kind of traffic coming in around 4 in the mornings before school in order to go around and leave the cyclists with some room. And that doesn't necessarily happen on 3A.

When we looked at Albuquerque previously in terms of the traffic calming, the recommendation was narrow the travel lanes, but have wider shoulders. So not reduce the pavement, but reduce the travel way.

So looking at what we have here, we have the pavement size, and then we have separately the travel way. So if we change that, realistically, it's just where the paint goes. And the cyclists... will probably feel a little more comfortable a little the same distance from the edge of the pavement and would probably love to have that lane paint a little further left so they are hopefully left a little more alone from the cars.

So you would say keep the 26th pavement and then reduce 12 feet for travel lanes and arterials?

11 or 12. Yeah, at least no wider than the road standard. So you said the road standard was 12 feet?

The AASHTO standard for interstate is 12 feet. Interstate.

Do you know what the other standards are from AASHTO?

10 to 11, depending on traffic volume. Okay, so 11 is, yeah, the one that was... As far as you as what?

What was that? An additional couple of feet to... say that you have reduced your impervious impervious footprint this is not changing the pavement size this is just changing the way of traveling which is just paid that's just messing with what works that's already there or it's already proposed and it's there required is that what you're saying

Yeah, just the top bit, travel way width each lane, that's just where it's painted and designed for full road traffic. But then we have the hot bitumous pavement widths. That's where it's actually paved.

But I would argue that if you're going to go to that level and thing to do that, why wouldn't you do sidewalks then? I get that it's cheaper.

Well, those ones are required to have, or a lot of them will have sidewalks anyway. The reason I care about this is because people go way too fast. People act like the speed limit's way higher than it is. And part of it's because the lanes are wider than the highway.

I would say I think all those are really great, but I don't think any of the changes we're discussing here don't have any kind of bearing on the MS4 thing. So I think maybe we might want to schedule in a work session maybe to revisit that. Because we still have that stuff from when they looked at Albuquerque and they made those recommendations. I know those grants probably aren't available anymore. But if we have some time, I mean, it might be worth maybe scheduling a workshop date. But I think it needs to be a separate conversation from this.

I wouldn't mind sharing the safety side. I mean, again, I brought it up because as a driver, as a pedestrian, as a... I guess a biker, if you're not on the path and you're on the thing. I don't know. I would like to hear what the safety experts have to say to weigh in on that.

Do we have any other comments? We can always ask the members of the public that we have here today if they have any thoughts.

13 feet has worked for as long as we've had this ordinance. There's really no compelling reason to change it. If it's a concern with vehicles traveling way too fast, that's an enforcement issue. The speed limits are set. The enforcement needs to be stepped up if there's a lot of excessive speeds being traveled. The change in lane width isn't going to do as much as an enforcement event would.

Yeah, but people often subconsciously go how fast they feel a road should be if they're not consciously thinking, oh, I can't get a ticket here, oh, I can't get a ticket here. When they're not thinking that, they'll just go whatever feels right. And that is partially designed.

There's lots of designed things that enable you to calm and slow traffic. roundabouts, and we all know how people whiz around those, but even the argument, and I know it wouldn't fly here because this is Litchfield and we like things out further, but one of the arguments that a planner will give you of putting buildings closer to the road is to create that more narrow corridor such that you aren't flying through there at 60 miles an hour, The whole purpose is to slow it down because the buildings are on top of you. Again, I'm not suggesting which field we have that or will have that. I'm saying you could go to ridiculous lengths that would still be effective. But I don't know that I'm not convinced. Somebody would have to convince me that narrowing the road or narrowing the lines to the point where I'm like white knuckle driving because I'm like so tight in that lane. I don't know.

You know something? Changing the setback requirements and bringing buildings closer to the road would make the MS4 people happy because there's less pavement for a driveway there. Win-win.

So that's why I said, what's the overall impact and the impetus for doing this is to make those people happy. But at the same time, does it make the rest of us happy? Like, I want to hear from the safety people.

You know, I travel 65 miles an hour in a 12-foot lane. The highway lanes are 12 feet wide. I'm pretty comfortable cruising 65 in a 12-foot lane. Oh, for sure. If we narrow Albuquerque to 12-foot lanes, what's stopping folks from cruising down at 65 on Albuquerque other than an enforcement action?

No, you'd have to go low.

You'd probably want to go to 11. And even so, none of that would change the amount of pavement that's already there, and so it would do nothing to bring us in compliance. No, it's not enough.

That's We didn't propose any MS4-related changes. Yeah, no, it's for new stuff. Right.

I just don't want us to get bogged down in a safety conversation.

For Albuquerque, if we wanted to look at that, it would be for different reasons. It wouldn't be MS4 reasons. Right. Thank you.

Psychologically, for me, slow down is seeing all the pedestrians, dogs, people in scooters, bikes, motorcyclists, too. Right. Yeah, a lot of people forget that the reason that the speed limit is so low on some roads is because of anticipated pedestrian activity. So while we're on it, do we have any members of the public that would wish to comment on this?

When you're talking about a subdivision road, you're talking about something like, not Albuquerque, you're talking about where the houses have been put in. traffic going to be. I would make it illegal to park on the side of the road, because nobody parks on the side of the road. You park on the road. That's a really, especially if you've got oncoming traffic. Nobody really goes that fast on this road. Let's not kid ourselves. Because you're speaking you should you have to state your name and address for the record.

Thank you. But yeah parking is definitely a concern because like even on my street it's kind of annoying when a car is fully like get on the street because our street has curbing so people don't go off the road whereas my parents street doesn't have curbing it has swales so people often like are like third off the road two-thirds on the road and if we have 10 foot travel lanes like 20 feet of total thing of total road it will be extremely tight if people park on the street feels like we should widen the paved area 10 foot lanes are fine just to stop people parking

Well, and then throw in when our landscaper comes, his truck and all his equipment and the stuff, it's significantly wider than your average vehicle. I mean, we have a hard enough time on the existing roads with cars passing opposite where he's parked. I'm not trying to single him out. I'm simply using it as an example of a larger vehicle that is parked there for a particular amount of time because we're doing the whole neighborhood.

And it is a fair point. I think you couldn't have on-street parking with just two 10-foot lanes.

Yeah, you try telling people who just bought a nice new house in a nice new subdivision that they can't have guests over and park outside. I'd be like, say what?

I think in that scenario, we would probably have to require certain designated sections where people can park off.

With single-family homes? That's not going to fly.

That's not what's failed to me.

Never going to fly.

No. Obviously, and what we don't have in here are minimum shoulder widths, but obviously you would have to have a decent size shoulder on either side.

Well, but to Mr. Rabideau's point, there's hardly any shoulders or even middle lines drawn anywhere. It's like you don't even know where those are.

which is a whole other issue we should think about.

Exactly.

We want to be age friendly. We need fog lines and center lines. It's true.

So what do we need to do to get the safety people in here to give us the other side of the story?

Well, I mean, in terms of safety people, we've met with the town staff. There's other folks out there we could certainly ask. Just to continue on this point, though, the rest of this section, the amendments are all the same thing. It's just to these figures, these exhibits. So one change just to note here, I didn't show it in blue, but previously what we had recommended was or had in here was you can see in the red changing from the minimum of 24 feet of pavement to 20. But what we had also changed, again, consultant's recommendation was the minimum radius of the cul-de-sac would be 70 feet. And when we met with town staff, they asked us to go back to the 75. So the sense was they prefer the 24 feet of pavement for sure. They could live with 20 feet of pavement, but they don't want a narrower radius for the cul-de-sac because of the turn. And so in my view, it's the pavement width that matters for MS4 really. Yeah, there is an impact with a wider radius, but it seemed just reasonable. So we went back to 75 feet, and there's just three figures here. It's all the same thing. It's just we have three different styles of cul-de-sac. So that's one, two, three. So that is it for this section. I can go on to the other ones if you wish, and then we can figure out where we want to go.

Before we move on, does any member of the public have any further comments on that section that we just talked about?

OK. All right, so moving to the next one. These are all simple kind of one pagers. So again, same logic. These came from the consultant, and I tried to adapt them into these regulations. So this is just very simple. I'll read it. This is a new section. The use of permeable materials such as porous pavers, paving stones, and pervious pavement are encouraged for road shoulders and parking lanes in residential neighborhoods. However, the use of conventional paving is required for travel lanes. And then at the request of the road agent, that's why it's in blue. This is a change from the change. We added driveway aprons and mailbox pull-offs. So basically his concern was anything that the town may have to maintain should be conventional paving.

Yeah, because it would be nice for some of those to be pervious, but it's much more labor intensive to have someone lay out pavers than it is for them to just draw.

Well, not to mention the load that they have to incur, right?

Right. And obviously, the driveway apron's in the right of way, so that's why that matters. So that seemed re- otherwise, it's really just permissible. Fairly benign. Moving on down to the next one, which is also going to be a one pager. And this is in the section related to street layout. So this is new language that they suggested we add. And it just says, under street layout, street layout considerations shall include reducing street length and minimizing total paved area, including cul-de-sacs, wherever practicable, with the goal of protecting site hydrology, reducing cut and fill, and protecting steep slopes and important natural features consistent with low-impact development best practices. And then the next paragraph, you notice that the sentence reads, connecting streets will conform with width, but in no instance will any new street be narrower than 24 feet was what was previously there. And again, that would suggest it to go to 20. I should just note that in the prior section that I read, low impact development is capitalized. And that is kind of a term of art. kind of throughout the consultant's recommendations, there's the concept of low-impact development is an approach to development that tries to minimize footprint. So that term is used a lot.

Okay. Thank you.

Can I ask a question? This is more I just don't understand. On section 730.01, second paragraph, there's a sentence after where your 20 feet red thing is, where it says, where a subdivision of Busser contains an existing or planned major street, the board may require a secondary or minor street. That's fine. What is reverse frontage? They may require a reverse frontage with screen planting contained in a non-access reservation along the rear property line. Are you saying that they have at their discretion to move some of that frontage on paper and consider some in the back rear lot line as part of that frontage? I didn't really understand that.

Hmm. So I think what it's saying, I've never really looked at this sentence. It's weird. It's very strangely worded. I think what it's saying is if you have a subdivision and the lots, some lots in that subdivision back out onto an existing street.

Yeah.

that you put in some sort of reserve strip, basically to create a non-access strip and put screening in. The way it's worded is very strange. Reverse frontage with screen planting contained in non-access. It's weird wording. I think that's what they mean though, that you can put in, basically make it a non-access area. if this new subdivision has its own little street, but some of the lot's back on Hillcrest, put in a no access strip and kind of screen it. I think that's what it's trying to get at. It's just poorly worded.

Yeah, if I look up the AI overview for what reverse frontage is, it's a lot, it's a property that borders two parallel or intersecting streets, but it's intentionally oriented so that its front opens to a local interior street, while the rear backs up against the major highway, arterial road, or heavy traffic area. So that happens a lot with Albuquerque, where a lot of the

place homes have frontage there but they're not allowed to yeah they can't access it yeah right my home's an example of that it's odd language though it could be clearer but their address is in albuquerque so therefore the frontage is in albuquerque the frontage is the side street on which their address resides so that would i don't see where that fits that definition, I guess.

I mean, again, it's weirdly worded, but legally they actually do have frontage on both roads in terms of it's a class five highway or better.

Total amount of linear frontage, yes.

Right. So yeah, strangely worded.

Okay, thank you.

Interesting. Sometimes it probably pays to read through all this stuff at some point. You kind of read these things as you need to.

Your head could explode too, you know.

All right, and then moving on. And I only include just this one page, but once again, we're in the subdivision regulations in another section. And of course, we require underground utilities. So the language that is suggested here is, underground utilities may be placed under the paved section of the right-of-way, if necessary, for land adjacent to the roadway to be used for swales. And again, the intent there is they prefer swales. They don't want closed drainage. And so what they're looking getting at here is saying you can put it under the pavement in order to allow for a swale. Of course, there was some concern from the road agent with that. So we added the additional language that says with approval from the road agent. And the real concern there is, of course, that means that if you want to put it in, you have to tear up the road. And there's concern about especially if we had just redone that road or resurfaced it needless to say you don't want to tear up that road to put utilities in and Also, if you have to me in the event that you had to maintain it That could impact the right-of-way. So needless to say that's a concern of the road agent so we added the additional language so that says, you know, yes, you can do it but only in that circumstance where the road agent agrees and

Yeah. And that like, I still don't. The only scenario which I see this being necessary is if there's like ledge, such that they just can't bury it underneath the swell. Because yeah, yeah.

My old neighborhood in another town, we have it that there was underground utilities was underneath basically underneath the swell.

That was just, yeah, I think almost always you'll be able to do it. Yeah. And I think that's the last one. Yeah, that's the last one.

Do we have any comments from the board?

I just kind of had a general question for Jay. I think if I understand correctly, our duty under MS4 is that we have to take the consultant's recommendations and reasonably implement some changes?

Yeah, I think we have to give reasonable consideration to them. In this case, this is different than the last time. The last round we had, we needed to be, we were looking at whether or not our regulations were compliant. In this case, these are recommended improvements that we make. and we do need to show that we're taking you know reasonable steps to do that and we want it we have to the town has to report to epa every year you know kind of what our progress is what are we doing and so you know this is a way of saying yes we are striving to reduce our impact and you know bring ourselves more into compliance so yeah that that was the purpose of them going through the regulations and making the review it's there isn't an EPA rule that says you have to have 20 feet of pavement but it is right it's it's kind of a holistic approach among many things that we're trying to do to bring ourselves compliant than another with regard to

An amount of pervious pavement is one thing, right? Because that's pretty quantifiable. But if you think of it in the way of the ratio of pavement to land, I mean, this town, we got a lot of land. I mean, so I would argue, I don't know, have you... You put it in the form of a ratio, MS, for people to show us and to demonstrate that we're not falling within a certain normal range and we're exceeding the range of too much. I mean, I don't know. I'm just doing something for the sake of appeasing one group. Again, I'm not convinced. I'm sorry. I've been very opinionated this entire time. Sorry. But until somebody convinces me strongly otherwise, and I'm not looking at you to do that, I'm kind of like, yeah, okay. According to your definition, Travis, of we have to... seriously consider their recommendations well I'll say oh sure I seriously considered it and I'm telling you no but that you know that's just me but I mean if we had to take a vote right now that's where I would be well it's

Kind of leads, I think, to my next question, which is if we found ourselves in a situation where reducing the amount of pavement on non-arterial streets just we found didn't really fit Litchfield, do you think the other changes, I know you can't from your individual vantage point predict what the EPA is going to, you know, accept, but do you think that the other changes about underground utilities and, you know, sidewalks and whatnot, do you think that would keep us in the... Do you think that would be something we would have to worry about?

I think it's hard for me to say to answer that. I think that just in terms of I don't think that one town is being compared to another town. I don't think it works that way. I think what they're looking for is, are you taking steps to get better, essentially, right? So what that looks like for Manchester is gonna be different than Litchfield. But what we had here were a series of recommendations. And certainly it would seem to me that if you made a good faith effort to, you know, we're looking at these proposed amendments, if we go so far as to take them to public hearing and we get input and the input is that, you know, there are, Some of these recommendations are not, the town just does not look favorably on them. Other ones, maybe we do. I would say, yeah, you're still taking steps. If you adopted some of these and not all of them, you'd still be, I think, taking steps. Now whether that's satisfactory, I can't answer that. certainly shows and this isn't the only thing the town's doing the town is doing a series of other things also so kind of when you do your annual reporting you're able to say we've taken these steps and I think that's what we really want to be able to show and if there's a particular recommendation that there's just a lot of pushback on maybe we try to make up for that in some other way

Well, and I think the vigorous debate we're having is probably, you know, shows that. We are taking it seriously, but we're, you know, questioning.

Mm-hmm. So just for information, because I didn't have time to look up good sources, I asked AI about the safety considerations of a 20-foot road without sidewalks. It said that there's a difference in the perceived safety versus objective risk. It says pedestrians usually feel less safe on a 20-foot road without sidewalks because vehicles pass physically close to them, and the perceived margin for error drops significantly. But objectively speaking, using statistics, the overall severe injuries and fatalities often decrease on narrow roads, shared roads, because vehicle speeds drop. A pedestrian stuck at 20 miles per hour has a dramatically higher survival rate than one struck at 32 miles per hour, but still trades off pedestrian comfort because they're closer. Wow.

Well, I certainly appreciate artificial intelligence's debate on something. If you give me 10 minutes with that computer, I could have you tell me a completely different story based on the questions I ask it. So we could have rigorous debate with AI, too.

I tried to use a neutral prompt, not prompting it, because it does do that.

But it wants to please you. AI always wants to please the person that is asking it questions. Unless you're ready to berate it and...

go to the mat with it like i often do it will only tell you what you want to hear i i actually added a instruction that it should always list counter arguments and if i go to that section let's see

I'm sure there's objective standards out there that we can find.

Yeah. Driver impatience, pedestrian displacement because walking adjacent to moving traffic on a 20 foot pavement stop feels intimidating, vulnerable residents, may stop walking along the corridor altogether.

And I'd rather hear the judgment of a safety professional who enforces this stuff on a regular basis. And if, you know, if they can, yeah, if the MS4 people can convince me that, that our accident rate isn't going to go up as a result of that, fine, put your money where your mouth is. But I'd really rather hear it from both sets of professionals, to be honest.

And it's like we're also really talking about non-arterial roads that are in subdivisions. These are the roads that people live on that are really narrow where they want to park their cars, where they want to walk their dogs. So it's like I'd want to hear from safety, and I also kind of want to hear from the people.

OK. Do any members of the public wish to chime in on this topic? Okay. So we have to decide if we think it's ready to send to public hearing. And if so, do we do it as presented or do we wish to amend it? Because we do not have to adopt it as presented. We can propose a wider road if we want, if we do not agree with it. I think it's a type of thing that we'll know, we'll understand it better once it's actually implemented, rather than just hearing what other towns have done, really. I guess a question I have for Jay, do you know of any other, like what the side street requirements are in other nearby towns?

I'd have to look, but I could pull that. Certainly reducing the widths is a trend, so we are seeing that in multiple communities, but I would have to look to see. But I could easily find that out.

So was the intent for this tonight to consider it or not for public? Public hearing?

Yes.

But by doing so, you're effectively creating a baseline of a document that you want them to go off of. So, right?

Yeah, a public hearing will get more comments from the members of the public, and we can decide to send it to another public hearing or adopt it.

Or adopt some of them and not others.

What I'm wondering is, will the implication be that... what we send to them is something that we want and feel like we've debated it enough so that it's fully baked with at least what we want and is now up for public consumption, because I don't feel we're at that point.

Well, I think if I can chime in a little bit. When we did the mixed village, we knew kind of that the density was going to be a back and forth thing. So I think we just kind of put out a number, and we knew that we were going to have a number of public hearings. And so we were all kind of on the same page about that. It was in our minutes, and we did end up changing it. So if we all felt comfortable to present it for conversation, we could leave it as is. But if the will of us, if we were like, no, we want to present it non-arterial streets without any changes, then I think we could revert back. But it might be a harder discussion to guide the public to there's nothing marked on this page, but this was the conversation, you know what I mean? So it might be useful to find like a middle point or something that can kind of guide the convo. Yeah.

Yeah, so we could send it to public hearing on directly to the next meeting, but then we'd have to have that meeting. Or we can send it to public hearing on September 1. And in the meantime, I guess we can look at more reliable sources and see what local towns are doing.

Yeah, I could certainly, at least the two things I could think of to do, whether we send it to public hearing or not, or another workshop, I'd certainly, I will go and take a look at what other towns are doing and look for safety-related data correlated to road width.

Yeah, I mean, I think if, I'm okay with taking what you have with the changes as long as it's understood and prefaced when we talk about this in public hearing that there has been a lot of debate by us and we're putting it here, you know, with these changes, it doesn't mean that we all subscribe to this. It's that we want to know what the general public thinks and we want to have more rigorous debate over it. So, I mean, that I can... subscribe to as long as it's presented in that manner but what I don't want is for this to look like this is what we're proposing right now do you know what I'm saying well yeah if we send a public hearing then it will look like we're proposing that right it will if you're more comfortable having another workshop getting additional input I mean it's really whatever your comfort level is because we could do that as well

So what we have presented here tonight, none of what you showed today was the was that what did you present the ordinance part of it?

No, the ordinance part, I figured we would wait. It was really a very minor change in the open space development. And so I figured we'll get to that when we get to zoning. It was really pretty minor. And so yeah, it was like, exactly. So it just seemed since that's a zoning change, and it's going to come at town meeting.

And when are we required to... What was the earliest cutoff for when you can send something to...

I'll have to count back the dates, but November. For it to have effect. So that's typically what we do. First public hearing is usually the first week or so of January. And so we're typically... sending them to public hearing. Last year I think we did some late November and some in December. So that's about our timeframe. That one's so minor that it's almost like, well, unless we're looking at other things in the open space ordinance, doesn't make sense. But that's one of the things we could talk about, which we should, by the way, talk about zoning soon.

How fast would you say we have to work on the regulation side of this for us to show that we're putting effort into this?

In this case, I think we're continuing to work through it. I don't think that haste is an issue. Again, as it was before when we had the consent decree and we had an actual deadline at this point, I think we should take the time that we need to feel comfortable.

And I mean, you all don't have to agree with me either. Like I said, I've been very opinionated this time and I can be the lone man out. If you guys feel like you're more comfortable, go ahead. That's fine. I just, I have more questions.

My only concern is that I don't know that for me, and maybe others might have, I don't know that another planning board work session would give me any new information, whereas I think the process of going through public hearings and hearing kind of input from people that are stakeholders is more informative to me. And so that is kind of where I'm at. I'm not a big fan of kind of pushing it down the line and taking time if it's not going to actually work. provide us with any new pieces, whereas we could put it to public hearing and it's a mess and we need to make a bunch of substantive changes and then say, let's kind of, right? Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. That's my position would probably be, unless we're all very strongly on the same page, we don't want to implement those changes, let's let's keep it as is a non arterial roads. I would say let's I'm I'd probably send it as is to public hearing and just for the sake of starting the conversation because then we know we have plenty of time to have a robust conversation with the people that it affects.

And I say certainly Richard where the board wants to go um you know of course as you know the board's pleasure uh I will say that when we were going through those really substantial changes to the stormwater regulations We got a lot of input at public hearing, and we made very substantial changes as a result.

I mean, you know, like I said, I just want to have more rigorous debate. So if that's what that gets us, then let's do that. Put it on the first. Get several weeks and months out of it or several meetings out of it.

Yeah, I wonder if we can, if it's practical at all to have it so that you're required to park partially on the curb. Do you know if it's possible to require the design such that curbs allow parking?

I think one option is to require a wider shoulder. And then which allows, that's what would happen, is people would park on the shoulder, and if there's no sidewalk, people walk on the shoulder. And that shoulder could be unpaved.

And also require it to be, if you do have a curbing, not be vertical curbing. You could do that too. Granite curbing is nice, but you can't drive on that at all.

And our road profiles have both a curbed and an uncurbed profile standard. So that's true. The right-of-way width doesn't change. It'll still be a 50-foot right-of-way regardless. So you've got room. Of course, obviously, if we're dealing with open drainage and we have swales, then we've got to think about where the swales are. You don't want to be parking in the swale.

Yeah.

On my parents' street, I'm pretty sure there are actually easements in their land, partially for the swales, rather than just putting it right away. And that's a pretty wide street, probably the usual 24, and it just gradually goes down into ditches for the swales.

But are developers in this town continuing to develop with swales? Because I don't see it.

Yeah, I haven't seen it since that development, honestly. That's what these guys would like.

And I was going to say, it would be interesting to see what the developers think about all this. Yes, it would.

Yeah, that's definitely an argument for putting this towards public hearing is because the developers will probably show up because they're the ones that have to follow these requirements. I wonder if it's possible to change the curbing profile requirements for narrower streets to encourage pulling off the road travel way for parking. Because people are going to park. We don't want them blocking half the street.

That's absolutely true. People will park. Is that the change you want to make before publicing it?

I'm OK with putting it to public hearing and then getting comments on that. We could probably ask the developers. It would probably also be nice to get input from the road agent on what options there are for curbing. Because I'm assuming there's a profile that is just a standard template that they just use for that machine. And I don't know if you can get a smaller profile, for example.

Yeah. I mean, they're in here. I can't say they're easy to read. They are in here. So that's Albuquerque. Albuquerque, okay, this is non-arterial typical section. You can see we've got the curbed on this side and the uncurbed on this side.

Can you zoom in a bit?

I can. It's still hard to read. Yeah. Let me try a little more.

There's not much visibility on the curb itself in this. It just it's labeled this curve.

I don't see anything. Right. So we've got the 12 foot lane 13 six total pavement.

And that assumes Is that drainage on the left there?

That thing underground?

It's showing a gray, it's kind of a diagram-y, but it's a gray. A catch basin? I would assume, yeah, it's a catch basin. Yep, it is. And then this is, this would be open drainage.

Do we have any more details on the curb detail? Not here.

It doesn't mean that there aren't more written requirements, but not in that diagram, unfortunately. We can look and see what we can find.

That's yeah, we definitely need to understand we're getting something to yeah, these are also minimum requirements.

They don't necessarily in line with what people are actually doing out there now. It would be interesting to hear. We don't see a lot of streets built anymore. You tell a Rico is probably yeah, what most of the subdivisions we're seeing now are small. you know they're just a couple of lots they're not they don't involve a street so tell Eric is probably the last one yeah the dead and we do have all of those plans and profiles and firefly would be relatively recent we've got those plans and profiles also both of those are curved ones with underground yeah

So I guess it's good to see how easy it is to park off onto the curb on those.

We could probably drive around and find out. Realistically, we could just kind of see what's happening out there.

We could add requirements that say if a road is under a certain width that considerations have to be taken for curb parking, maybe.

It's certainly in more urban environments where you have narrower streets, parking restrictions are common. Either no parking at all or parking only on one side. Yeah, it's not going to fly here. No, I know. But that's when you have a narrower road. That's typically what you do. You post at no parking.

It's one thing in the winter when the plows come through and no parking overnight on the street. You get it. Right. But aside from that...

right yeah do you see any ways at which we can require considerations for parking being taken in our subdivision or cycling or subdivision regulations I have to think about that I guess I I

The only way to do that really is to provide the parking. So either you're...

But that defeats the previous parking restriction anyway. So like, okay, narrow the road, but then you're going to put the parking over there. I don't see the point.

So it would seem... Difficult to do that. Not impossible, but difficult to do.

Yeah, I wonder if it would be possible to say if a road is under 24 feet consideration, the curb shoulders must be designed to allow vehicles to park on the shoulders.

Major already saying it's 20 feet. This document is saying that you're already reducing it down to 20 feet.

Because they do 24 feet. If they want this is a minimum. Right?

It is a minimum.

Theoretically, they could say, Hey, let's add another four feet. Yeah. I'd rather hear from them. We could sit here and speculate and debate all we want, but this could go on forever. So I guess let's just kick it to public public meeting or public hearing. That's fine. Yeah.

And with me, if we can get for the rest of you, if the engineering work is done for the sidewalks by September 1, that would be great to have that and these on the same meeting.

Is that highly likely or not?

Well, he said he was hoping to get it ready for this meeting. Oh, then possibly.

Yeah, well, then we'll give him the rest of August off. No, September 1st.

Yeah, during other visits, we're going to have to talk about notifications. Okay. So I guess in that case, would someone like to make a motion to send this to public hearing on September 1st? And that would be all of the proposed changes for? As presented. For, yeah, the zoning.

Yeah, I'll make that motion. Make that motion. We take it to public hearing September 1st as presented.

OK, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second. Any further discussion?

All those in favor of sending the proposed low impact development changes as presented to public hearing on September 1, please signify by saying aye. Aye.

Those opposed? Those abstained? Motion passes 5-0. So that will be on public hearing on September 1. Next, we have interview of applicant to the planning board, David R. Let's put a microphone on the table.

Yeah, well, they're all over here.

Okay, welcome. Thank you. So you're interested, I saw your application and you're interested in the planning board and the ZBA and... the Energy Committee and Cable TV Committee.

So I have seen several notifications around town looking for volunteers for various boards. I don't know what exactly volunteering was. If it's a board position and I can help, happy to do that. If not, there's got to be some other way I can help some other team around the town.

How familiar are you with the Planning Board or the Zoning Board of Adjustment?

I can tell you that I have absolutely no professional knowledge of any of these topics you're talking about.

Okay, so planning board is responsible for setting proposing zoning to the town to adopt and reviewing plans to make sure that it fulfills those requirements and updating the master plan. which is basically the long-term goal so we actually saw a lot of this today we were first we were discussing the natural resources thing so that's part of the master plan where we say this is what we want to see in this town over the next however many years and then we were discussing regulations which is another thing and then ordinances we didn't really get into much today we'll be getting into that more later in the year as we discuss when when we are able to prepare things for warrant, which is when the whole town votes. The biggest events that happen here typically are subdivisions, especially larger ones, or large site plans like condos, because those ones are pretty impactful on how the town character is. often gets a lot of people who are interested in commenting or learning about the development. The zoning board is a little different. So sometimes there's a a requirement that is hard to meet for like setbacks commonly or something else and they need to, the developer or homeowner would probably want an exception in those cases. So you can get what's called a variance, which says that you're allowed to, for example, encroach on setbacks. And this board sets the setbacks. An example of a plan that recently went towards the Zoning Board of Adjustment was just from last meeting we had a subdivision at the corner of Hillcrest and 3A where because there's currently a duplex on with a driveway onto 3A and they wanted to add two more lots basically behind that one with frontage and driveway access on Hillcrest And there is a requirement that we have in our regulations that says that you need to have a certain amount of space, basically, that is usable for that of continuous dry land for a duplex, which is larger than that of a single family home. And that's partially to make it so that people don't pack duplexes on tiny lots. But this is an existing one. And there is a drainage pathway. that went right behind it, all the way through the property. And there was also power lines that go through that property. And between the two of those, they both made it, it was very impractical to have additional contiguous dry area for the duplex itself. So they went before the zoning board of adjustment to ask for an exception for that, or basically allow them to have less space than required. And they originally came to us and said, this doesn't appear to comply. And we were basically like, this is textbook ZBA variance candidate. Because it has some existing conditions. And it's not negatively impacting the neighbors. And they ended up getting that granted. And we were able to approve the plan last meeting. Currently, the planning board has how many members six right now plus we have an opening for a full member plus three alternates yeah um and then there's the zba which i'd say is more desperately in need of members because they only have a five member board with four members presently so they have an opening as well do they have four or three

They were a couple months ago. Unless they've added one, I think they're still out free. They had to cancel a few meetings.

It's really hard to make a quorum.

So I'd say if you can volunteer for whichever one you're more interested in, I'd say the ZBA is in more desperate need. Would you like to learn about the process that the ZBA follows for

I'm actually going to talk to the zoning board person this week. She contacted me last week and asked me to call her this week to set up some time where we can just talk about what I might be able to provide. It sounds like I might not be able to provide a lot. I'm a software developer by trade. I've got a lot of finance background, budgetary stuff, but I'm not sure how much I could help here other than just being another common sense voice for you.

Yeah, like, all these boards are for the common people. Like, from all of us, like, I'm a software engineer. Well, I kind of do this for a living.

I'm an appraiser and a broker. So I'm in real estate.

But, you know. You deal with the technicalities.

But I was in finance and software before, too. So, you know. When I first got started in a different town, I find that if you really want to understand the way things work, start at zoning and then move up to planning, if you so desire. Because in zoning, you follow a certain criteria of planning. you know it's pretty black and white it's this is the rule it either fits or it doesn't um and you know and you go through a series of criteria and miss gandia laura gandia who i'm sure you're going to speak with she's the chair of the zoning board is excellent um and uh yeah

So could I ask one question? The document that you've gone through, and I've read the thing. Wow. Who's the intended reader of that document?

The first one that was natural resources, that one is just for the town. All townspeople. Everyone in the town, yeah.

And it's just like a general purpose information guide or?

Yeah, it also, like the natural resource is a little less, it's a little less impactful in terms of development than some of the other ones, like the economic development one, for example, but it is, there's a lot to learn about the town.

I think the section where you were talking about the infestations, that's great information for people to have access to because most people aren't aware of any of this kind of stuff. Now, my nephew happens to be somebody who's written papers, developed, identified brand-new species of bugs and that kind of stuff, and I can't even have a conversation with him. He'd love this job, or at least love to fill in that piece, but it would be volumes and volumes of information on that. Unfortunately, he's in New York State, so that doesn't help. So the part about the roads and the stuff that you're building, is that something that you would hand to a developer and say, there you go, everything you need to know and everything you need to qualify as legal for the town which field is in this document is that true or is this something that you could legally go sue somebody against or somebody could say well you didn't tell me what that was they need to comply with this so you need to have enough specifics in that document

This is the document.

And I think what you're getting at is, and to go back to Jared's original point, was that all of us here have learned and do a lot of reading. We've gone to some classes that are thankfully available to us. All the municipalities around the state, you go up to Concord and you take some classes, and of course this is all volunteer time. So I really appreciate you coming forward and wanting to volunteer in the town. It's so wonderful. But we're not gonna lie, none of us really knew any of this stuff. We had to pick up and read a lot. um and still do continually jay is um you know constantly updating us with the the newest latest and greatest of some of the the changes that are happening up within the state and in the various towns around us through the national nashua planning regional planning commission that gives us an insight into towns right around here But, you know, it's incumbent upon us in our spare time, you know, we all have jobs, but we all kind of geek out on, okay, well, I need to spend an hour or two a week looking at some other stuff and reading through it. reading through the stuff Jay puts before us in order to have these meaningful conversations. So, um, you know, it is a commitment and, but it's, it's totally attainable to learn. It's just, you have to be willing, you know, and you certainly sound willing, which is great. Um, same goes for zoning. You would learn all the rules and regulations behind that and then understand what our zoning is in this town and how to apply that.

OK. So the updates that you get, is there a mechanism for the state or whoever is imposing these new requirements to feed that to you? Or do you have to go ask for that kind of stuff?

So there's no one mechanism. So we've got a couple. It kind of depends on your area. So for this world, There's the New Hampshire Planners Association, there's the New Hampshire Municipal Association, Association of Regional Planning Commissions, all of those three organizations are all monitoring legislation that's related to, if it's municipal association, municipalities in general, but they're all gonna focus on these. So that's what I do is I watch, kind of what they're sending our way, because there's too many bills for me to read through all the bills, right? So I depend on some of these organizations who are compiling bills, analyzing them. So that's kind of what I'm looking at. And then THERE'S A CERTAIN HANDFUL THAT I KNOW WE'RE FOLLOWING AND KIND OF FOLLOW IT THROUGH THE PROCESS. AND I DON'T GET TOO CONCERNED UNTIL IT STARTS TO, YOU KNOW, ONCE IT GETS THROUGH ONE, EITHER THE HOUSE OR THE SENATE, NOW IT'S OKAY. NOW THIS MIGHT ALL START TO PAY

So that's kind of how it works. We've had to make some changes to comply with state law every year, basically. Some years more than others. Some years more than others.

So one of the other reasons I wanted to do one of these things, I've always complained about my taxes. And I know you guys are operating on minimal budgets. Our biggest issue in the town of Litchfield is the school. And there's no way I can get involved in the school board. I just want to understand, are we doing the best thing for the Litchfield taxpayers? As a taxpayer, I'm very concerned that my taxes have jumped significantly. And I understand that's a statewide thing. I'm not sure that I can blame the entire dividends and interest tax on the massive increase I got in my taxes last year. I don't believe that that is true, because I know what I've paid dividends and interest since I've been here. but i also wonder maybe it's this board maybe it's other boards why aren't we and i've been asking this every time i go into the election there's occasionally somebody there from one of the committees that's asking people questions and i'm i always my same question is why aren't we doing something that would increase revenue to the town that obviously doesn't impact what we're trying to do for the town. I don't ever see any new industries. I don't see any new zoning changes that allow us to build some sort of a business, you know, a new gas station, uh, 400 feet from another gas station Does that make sense? I know we just put one in here.

So the best resource for that is the Economic Development Committee Which yeah, you know and I think also the town select board They really are the ones that hold the person that make all the changes about advising and then from there the Budget Committee looks at the budget and and so last year i think there's a budget committee there is actually yes those are electable positions yeah to run for election for those so they turned to us last year in conversation with the kind of committee for economic development which was a volunteer committee And they surveyed the town, and a lot of people in the town said the same thing. We want some new industry. We want to see some different things. So then we kind of looked, and Jay did a lot of research on what we could do. So last year, we brought to the town meeting, maybe two years ago at this point, but I think it was last year, right? The mixed-use village. So that kind of northern commercial area, right kind of where the gas station is. We've had plans come in about kind of developing that property because of some zoning changes we made there. in order to make that land usable because it was just zoned commercial. And so our options were someone could take the risk and put in a restaurant or something, but none of that has done well. So likely we were going to see storage units. So in order to bring some new revenue into the town, diversify the tax base, And bring some of the stuff that people want to see we had to zone it so that you could you could put housing there If it's in complements with with the kind of commercial uses So that was our kind of ability there was to make some zoning changes But it all goes to this elect men to review and then ultimately to the voters to to enact so since you're in real estate and I've had conversations with various people in this building and

It always seems to cost us more in tax revenue to put a new house in than it brings back to the town. So if you put in a new subdivision, I know the town has a whole bunch of expenses to make that subdivision serviceable. You're also putting more stress on our schools and our gigantic fire department that we have in this town. isn't there a way we can make this at least revenue neutral? Is that something that would be handled by this board or is that, how would that, how would you go about working on that?

Again, that's, you know, as Travis suggested, the power of the purse lies with the town's electmen and ultimately the people of the town of Litchfield. We can affect change as Travis suggested in a section of town that already had zoning for commercial but as he said we were going to get not um less desirable projects than maybe we would want whereas there were more options with the mixed-use village concept so we were able to effect change in that regard to bring in a variety of different projects that ultimately contribute to the tax base

So let me ask you this. Is it true? Maybe I'm hearing misinformation. When we put in a new subdivision, does it hurt the town?

For the first 25 years, it's a net positive because everything's new and the road costs are a big chunk of the costs. The cost of children to the schools varies based off of how many kids people are having like right now the impact is lower because there are so few people having kids right now that the well nobody's moving out and they're all getting older so the net impact is a little on the lower side right now the con condos and apartments and those types of things tend to actually be lower impact because they typically use private roads and generally have fewer kids.

But you've still got to have water delivered there. You've got to have electricity delivered there. Who pays for all of that work?

Those are the utility payer. You pay your water bill, electrical bill.

Right, but if I need electricity delivered to this new subdivision that I'm going to create, who pays for that?

Well, the developer will pay for the new line.

Same thing for water and all this kind of stuff?

Yeah. They'll spend sometimes millions of dollars on water lines. In the development of the bottom end of town, they had to put 12-inch water mains in, and that was millions of dollars.

For a subdivision?

This was for the townhouses that went into the bottom end of town.

12 inch water mains.

The reason was for fire suppression requirements.

They all have to have sprinklers now. Most of them.

And also fire hydrants. Yes.

I think to answer another part of your question, Jay, perhaps maybe you can speak a little bit to the way we collect impact fees and think about that.

We do, yes. We do collect impact fees from all new developments for a wide variety of uses, everything from roads, fire, police, town hall, recreation, library, and schools. So that's also a way of offsetting some of those costs.

So we set the fee schedule, and what happens is when a developer builds a unit or a square footage of something, based off of the rate schedule we specify, we collect money from the developer that the town has to use within, I think, six years? Yes, six years. On improvements to offset the development. So it's trying to offset the additional impact of the development. Someone was going to go?

no i mean just a very general statement from a real estate perspective is you know you're you're you're almost always going to get a bigger bang for your buck to put in commercial uh over say a single family house it's just at the end of the day the return to the town is is going to be more over a longer period of time through commercial it's always the trick in the planning is to create a commercial residential balance that everybody can live with and tolerate deal with but also enjoy and find palatable in your town and that's the that's the delicate dance that we You know, we're due here.

Oh, you also have to be close enough to the Manchester area to be close to the airport to attract somebody because, you know, restaurants, we've seen a few restaurants come and go. Yeah.

So, you know, they have to have jobs to get paid in order to go out to eat or.

I mean, if you drive around the airport, it's nothing but commercial commercial space.

And a lot of it's industrial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

With the mixed-use village dome that we mentioned, the thought process for that is the residential is the valuable part for the developers, and that can help subsidize the commercial aspect and also provide customers for the commercial section. Because otherwise, as we've seen, no one's building commercial in town. We don't have enough customers in town to make it economically viable.

It doesn't help that septic and .

It's sewer. It's traffic volumes. It's a combination of things.

Traffic would be the tough part because there's no easy way in or out. It's hard to get gigantic trucks down 3A.

This town is also majority residential in terms of our economics. We have a tiny bit of commercial and a tiny bit of industrial with the sand and gravel. So it's almost all residential.

Can I ask you, how long have you been in town?

I moved to this town in 2000. I've been in New Hampshire since 84.

So you've seen a lot of change.

Yeah, not all for the good. Not necessarily the town. The town's fine. It's just the taxes are... painful, especially now that I'm retired. It makes it really hard.

I believe that knowledge is power, right? I think, um, I know before I, I'll share before I got into this, I was that, that loser who would sit up at night and watch cable TV and like the local planning board. I was in a town nearby and they had all access TV. I could watch those at any hour of the day on demand. And I just was bored and started watching those things. And I, you know, And that's how I learned. I had children, young children at the time, and I couldn't get out to meetings, but that's, I read the minutes, I watched the shows, if you wanna call it that, the meetings. And maybe start at a place like the zoning board where you really start to understand what can and can't be done and what's allowed in this town, what's not allowed in this town, and start to expand your knowledge So that, you know, maybe you run for selectmen or budget committee or something because you have those other skills that you could really offer to help the town. So, you know.

And we have those. We have the meetings also available on video. So you can go back and you can, if you're thinking about like which board, you could watch some different ones and kind of see, get a sense of what they do.

Yeah.

I was hoping to find somebody that could use my skills, but I guess that's probably not going to happen. It's more town-oriented, which I expected. I was just hoping that there would be some project that you guys would have a whole bunch of numbers that need to be crunched or data that needed to be massaged or however, and I could actually help by doing that. Not necessarily even being a board member. Just if you need something done, just... reach out. The communications one is interesting, because I worked for Comcast for 15 years. I worked for the supplier to all kinds of cable vendors for 12 years. And I worked in a telecommunications company for another six years. I figure I could just walk into that one and contribute to that one. But again, the conflict was between planning board and the zoning board because she said you can't serve on both because you'd be conflicted out because they eventually end up here. Their problems end up here. Or vice versa. Oh, it goes the other way too.

Yeah, and then you'd have to abstain and then we couldn't inquire them. It would be messy. Would you be interested?

a summary of the ZBA decision criteria?

If that's... I'm not sure of her name right now. My apologies. The woman that I met with to start to volunteer sent me a description of each of the different boards and what they do. Is that what you'd be reading me?

No, the details about what, like the types of decisions you would make on the EPA. So like for a variance, you generally go through the five criteria that basically allow them to not perfectly follow the ordinances and regulations that we set. So the requirement one is the variance will not be contrary to public interests. So basically, it's not a problem for those around the public. Two is the spirit of the ordinance observed so if you have to basically see what the requirement is and like think why was that set and is the spirit of that still present by letting them not perfectly fulfill that requirement. Substantial justice is done. It's not possible. And the values of surrounding properties are not diminished. And literal enforcement of the provisions of the ordinance would result in unnecessary hardship. That's the biggest one. Also, that there has to be something unique about the property. I don't have Litchfield's ZBA things in front of me. But yeah, there's the requirement that there has to be something unique about the property that makes it so that doing this is required. So let's say someone has a perfectly normal lot. And they just want to build an addition on one side. But they can't because they're too close to one edge. they may not be able to because that's the requirement. But if someone's lot has some weird features, like this over here is a cliff, for example, or wetlands, and they don't have a lot of space, then maybe you can say that there's something unique about that property. So basically, just to summarize, it's basically just figuring out, just balancing the uniqueness of the property, the uniqueness of the property, and if The benefits to the applicant is greater than the negatives to those around it.

Are the people that they serve generally homeowners or are they contractors or builders? All of the above. All of the above, yeah.

That's anyone who's doing any development. It's just putting in a pool and they find, like one of them was, they were putting in a pool and they were building a deck for that pool, but the deck would have been in the wetlands or too close to the wetlands. It would be within the wetlands buffer. During the meeting, the inspector pointed out that you can just put the deck on the other side of the pool.

But they didn't want to probably put it on the side.

Oh, they didn't realize that. Once they thought of that, they're like, oh yeah, we'll withdraw. So that's the trick.

But I have seen instances like that, for instance, where someone might have a valid argument socially like you know if I'm in the kitchen and I'm looking out at my kids at the pool I want you know I want to be able to see them um or you know something and I and if if the way and the positioning of where that pool is is not just so and somebody suggests they put it here instead in order to meet the requirements You know, that may or may not be enough to enable them to put it where they want it.

There's definitely plenty of times where you have to say, no, this is not unique, or this is, there's no, like, we don't see why you need this other than you want it type of thing. So, like, one common one, have you heard of a paper road? So, there's a lot of properties that have a paper road, which is a right-of-way that isn't paved, basically, but is technically a right-of-way to access a property. And a lot of people run into the fact that The way the ordinances are written, that is considered a front yard. The people who are adjacent to a paper road have two front lawns. And they have front frontage on two sides, which does significantly impact how much room they have to build stuff. So I've seen a lot of cases go to the ZBA where they're next to a paper road and they want to put something close to that paper road. And they don't see a problem because there's nothing there.

It just looks like land.

It's just land. But I have seen instances like with the Talladega Street development where a road does go in and now someone's house is really close to the street and then they weren't happy.

That's why I moved. I moved here because my house in the other town had a paper route. I knew it was there. Buyer beware. That was on me. But When I found out that they were contemplating putting a road there, I didn't want to be a corner lot. So, first sale.

Nice. So, yeah. The developer was on his...

He wasn't required to, but he ended up putting a fence into that property because that person... cared a lot about that.

And there was an instance where that was denied near the school. Someone wanted to put a vehicle containing shed like three feet away from the paper road and they got denied for that because it's just a corner lot. It is a paper road, and while you can make the argument that the paper road isn't being used, that doesn't mean that in the future it won't. And that's what the ordinance are, and we set the ordinances for a reason. So those are the type of things that the ZBA contemplates.

If you don't mind me asking you guys a personal question, you guys are obviously a lot younger than I am. What brings you to this board? Why did you want to serve?

I guess we can each go so I'll go first so I was I like knowing about what's going on in town and when I've heard about the process I started watching the meetings at like two times speed. We're all geeks! And looking at the documents and just learning about them and seeing what's going where and I wanted to contribute to help make sure the town is heading in a good direction and all the requirements are being fulfilled and so I could provide my input on all that stuff and hopefully balance the interests of all the different parties including developers business owners homeowners other residents I think that's beautiful and also when I when I joined the board it was a

after I think they'd had two meetings that they couldn't conduct any business because there was no quorum. So then I called Joan and I was like, hey, if you need an opening. And so that's kind of why. It was this much smaller board. I think you were the only face on it when I joined. So, you know, there were some changes a few years ago and some turnover. And so it was, you know, when duty calls, you show up. And so that's why it's great to see you volunteer and put your name forward and also for other things in town because there's always a need

it's one way to keep your taxes down voluntary everything exactly I just wish our budget committee would realize it not every little plant on the side of the road needs a budget item that's what the fundraiser used to be for back in you know when I was maybe your age so that's great I just didn't expect to see I'm assuming you guys are much younger than I am just I didn't expect to see two young guys here Not to say that you guys are old. You look old. I know you're old. I'm old. Because of the gray hair.

We just really take care of our skin. And you've got a great hair dye, too.

It's good to have a good variety of thoughts and opinions because diversity of thought is valuable. And yeah, it's good to have people of all ages because we may have different life experiences and think differently.

And I think it's always important, too, that when we talk about a lot of this stuff, you know, at least in the planning area, you know, I'm always thinking in the back of my mind of, okay, that's, that's great, but what's in it for Litchfield? You know, like if somebody comes in and asks us for something or a developer asks us to consider a site plan that looks like this or whatever, I'm like, okay, I see what's in it for you, but what's in it for us? You know, so. Oh, you're representing the town. Yeah, you know, you have to balance, balance all that.

and a lot of it is we have to get everything the ordinances and regulations correct from the start because once the developers come in if they're following the requirements there's not much we can do to stop them precedent is a really dangerous thing if

if you allow it to establish itself in a way that might not be exactly what you want. So we debate a lot about what could happen, good, bad, and ugly, just in case. And Jay's been a fabulous resource for us to point out, you know, what may be some growing pains of some other towns. And Joan McGiven, she's not here this evening. Joan's not here. she's a wealth of knowledge for having been here for years. And I know I'll often look to Ross Blanchett over here because he was on our planning board years before, kinda I guess went into a little retirement and then decided to come back and help out. And so oftentimes, you know, getting the perspective of some of the people in town of like, why was something done back then? Can you give us some perspective on it? I find it really helpful because I moved here in 2020 and the town I moved from was a lot bigger and had its own planning department. So just understanding how this town, smaller town, did things was an education for me. And you really had to rely on kind of the history of what had been done here and the respect of the decisions that came before this board and the years that preceded it to understand truly there was a lot of thought involved in why they did things a certain way. And it may not be appropriate now, but it it might still have some merits that should be considered. So I feel like each one of us, I feel like, has brought something to the table to help move those discussions.

Yeah, and talking about precedent, like one case of precedent causing twist-like, twist-bending of the rules, and we addressed it in the last cycle of ordinances, was the square footage requirements for accessory dwelling units. Are you familiar with accessory dwelling units? They're informally called an in-law apartment. So it's basically a unit that is on a property either attached to the main house or attached that is a full dwelling unit where it has its own septic or it's designed to tie into the main septic. It has a full kitchen. It has one of two bedrooms and is... No more than 1,300 square feet. The old, one of our older inspectors for some reason subtracted certain closets and stuff from the square footage for we don't know why. And people ended up getting a lot bigger ones than the old ordinances allowed. So we ended up clarifying what counts as square footage in the recent amendment, but we also increased it a little bit to make it a little less tight because at those sizes, square footage is more like luxury than the cost of the town up to an extent.

We were bumping up into some people saying that it wasn't financially feasible. if they were going to put something on it had to be of a certain size. Otherwise, it wasn't worth doing.

Yeah, yeah, it's like your in laws. Depends how much you like your in laws.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's an example of one thing we've done.

And president. Someone does, I think, ultimately, we need to decide whether or not we would like to send you to the select board. Does this interest you? Do you think the other two, zoning, might do more?

I think they're all going to be about the same. I'm going to be able to walk in knowing as much as I do here. Again, voice of reason, maybe.

So it'll be up to you if you want us to, if you would like to make a commitment now, or if you'd like to come back for the next meeting, or...

I think I'd like to talk to the zoning board person, because if they're down two people, that seems like... If I'm coming in blind either way, I should probably go fill a hole rather than fill a leak. Just out of curiosity, the people that leave, why do they leave?

Life. No, seriously. Our past chair was our chair for a really long time. And had been on the planning board for a really long time. And I think he believed he had served the town well and moved on.

He got a new job. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not too. And then also our vice president, I believe. Was he our vice president?

Secretary.

Oh, secretary. OK. He had also been on the board for a long time. And I think his children are at an age where they were, you know, life happens, right? So he wanted to spend a lot of time with them. And I get that.

I'm just surprised you don't have more retired people here.

We've got plenty of retired people in town.

I try, I mean, I work the polls, as I'm sure some of you guys do too. And I try to convince some of the people working the polls that they should be, you know, they should be volunteering for town committees. So for that very reason, because you are, you have the time. You have experience, a life experience that is very helpful. I just, yeah.

It's not like these are physically demanding positions, as far as I can tell.

Two meetings a month. Most of these boards, ZBA included. Two meetings a month, and sometimes in the summer, as you may have heard earlier in the meeting, I begged off the second August meeting because... Well, gee, it's August and, you know, we don't have anybody anyway.

You don't go home dirty.

It's pretty easy work. CBAs once a month, and it often doesn't meet every month because it's only when there are other issues.

We have a statutory requirement to meet at least once a month, but the other boards and committees do not. So there's always going to be a planning board meeting in any given month.

Okay. All right. One question I had as a listener. These changes that this organization, the M3 committee or whatever they are, they're suggesting that you make, that's to new stuff, right? All these other things are grandfathered in? Yes. Yeah, we're not going to be repainting the lines.

Well, I know, but so for example, if we build an extension to Albuquerque, it'll be to the new standard.

My road just got eaten alive and then repaved. I'm wondering if those would apply to that. No, no.

Whenever we make changes, it's only to future projects and development.

Existing infrastructure changes are the purview of the selectmen. So if the selectmen want to narrow the roads or make changes of that sort, that's their purview.

All right, I will contact Joan and let you know how I dealt with the zoning board, because again, I'm here to help.

Yeah, I think the ZBA has always been in need of volunteers, so hopefully you can watch the meetings, learn about the process, talk to their chair, and...

So it was interesting, Joan had suggested that I go look at the minutes and the meeting notes and the agenda. So I went on the litchfield.gov site, navigated down, and she said look at this specific date and this specific date for each of these separate documents and they weren't there. So I emailed her back and she sent me a different link that had Litchfield but it was later on down the URL. Do you guys have hidden stuff?

No, that's that portal. That's a portal where all the documents reside for the meetings, and that's available to the public to see. It's just, yeah.

It's not hidden. It's just the navigation can be challenging on the website.

It's not on purpose. It's simply... If you spend a lot of time on their website and you click enough times, you'll get there. But it's not very apparent.

Yeah, search is not good.

Yeah, it's not very apparent.

So from logistics.gov for planning specifically, if you go to government, and then planning board, you'll get all the documents for the planning board. Okay.

You'll get there. You just have to search around a little bit. Same thing with zoning board.

On the left, there's planning board meeting portal as a link. It's not that obvious. That's what brings you to the documents that we look at during the meeting. That's right.

I always just type it in.

I was going to say, I just have it as a favorite on my browser, so I wouldn't even know how to navigate to it anymore.

If you really want to nerd out, the meetings are on YouTube. Going back to 2014, when we started recording planning board meetings. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

I love the one that made national news. there was there was a litchfield planning board meeting that made like the john stewart show it wasn't planning board they're like look at this small town meeting where these two guys are sitting there like public anyone and they're showing crickets in the room there's nobody in there oh my god it was some comedian that had put it out there was it john oliver oh my god and i was like oh my gosh that's litchfield yeah

It was hysterical. I used a frame from my standard shot of the audience being empty. It was great.

Mosquito control. Very well, Lexi. Yeah.

so yeah there's also the under government there's also the ZBA page and as well as other departments that you may want to consider volunteering on and they have the list of members the portal link their bylaws the zoning ordinances and the ZBA variance application so And currently shows to those currently George.

Yeah, there's this remembers. Yeah, but if you if you have a trouble finding something just ask Jones shows Syria.

Hopefully we'll get one place or the other.

You guys all have a good night.

Take care.

I'm not going to wait for my wife to wake up.

I hate that when that happens. Alright, you have a good night. You as well.

Okay. So next we have, we'll have some other business to talk about, but in the meantime we'll go through the usual order. Next we have committee reports. Do we have any committee reports?

Yes, CIP committee met last night. Jay, I may need your help on this because it doesn't actually say in the minutes, but I think our next meeting is August the 12th.

No, it's the 31st. Oh, so we didn't decide to do that? Unless I was confused, because we were back and forth a lot. Yeah, we were a little bit. I thought it was the 31st. I did put it in my calendar. We better double check. Yeah, we should. Yeah.

So, okay. Tentatively, there may be a CIP meeting on August the 12th, but if not, it would be the 31st for presentations and then for the schedule. That we approved last evening. So then it would be August the 31st September 9th would be additional town presentations September 14th is when the school the superintendents will give us their Presentations and then we have another one if needed so that we can make all the final kind of you know decisions and priority rankings by October so definitely keep an eye out for those meetings and you know, there's lots lots of stuff being put forth for us and to kind of rank and give to that select board. So things like the new police station, things with fire trucks, things with smaller library things. So there's lots and lots and lots of things. So if you like to kind of follow what kind of capital improvement projects the town is looking at and how we kind of plan, keep an eye out for that. And we'll have more after the future meetings, because now it's really the meat and potatoes of the process.

Thank you. Lisa?

Yeah, we had the check committee the other night. That's the circumferential highway exploratory committee.

Exploratory committee, yeah. Check. Check.

Exploratory committee. CHEC. So... The bulk of the meeting was really, we had a citizen business owner who was with us most of the evening. He had written some letters. This is Noelle's Tree Farm. He had written some letters to the board. And I believe those were distributed. Were those distributed? I believe they were distributed to this board as well.

One of them might have been.

Okay. Did you all receive an email? I will... asked jen to send them forward i thought they would already push forward but um they were sent to me a few weeks ago prior to the check meeting but i i um i believe at this meeting last time the planning board meeting last time i had said that i wanted to first have that that address at the check meeting first before I bring it to the playing board. So we will make sure you get copies of that. It was a concern because Noel's Tree Farm actually is a direct butter to the property in question, one area of the vast property in question where one of the major rights-of-way goes through that would be under consideration. And it actually bifurcates, or bisects, if you will, his property. I think going into the meeting last time, we were under the assumption that, and maybe hadn't drilled down too far, thought it was only on one side, but it actually goes right through, that right-of-way goes right through his property.

And technically speaking, the right-of-way is already there, right?

Yes.

Specifically, it's a right-of-way for what was intended to be industrial drive.

Yes. Quasi-paper. get out there it's sort of worn path but it's yeah anyway um without getting into the thick of things that you know um i would say a conversation of understanding between ourselves understanding the lay of the land understanding what we were dealing with uh listening to his concerns um you know getting them on record that sort of thing um and uh and sort of going through what options, if any, were available, may be available to him, and the to-dos coming out of that meeting were to better understand the deeds, the easements, the legal stuff behind it, because we were sitting there kind of, feeling our way through it and what we decided was we need to stop that conversation and start to do a little research. And Diane Plansky, who isn't here tonight, she's the chair of that. was taking some things offline. I was having some conversations with DOT to better understand too some of the decisions we could make as a town and what's available. And so that we do all of the, consider all of the right things to then be able to put forth a, ultimately, a recommendation to the select board, which is our charge. Our charge is not to make a decision, it's to provide enough information, context, and recommendation to the select board so that they can make a decision that is, yeah. A good one for the town, and of course we're considering all those things. So, you know, it's to be continued. There's lots of that. I don't know, did I cover everything?

Yeah, I just think what's going to be particularly relevant to this board when we get into zoning discussion, because this is a discussion of the committee also, is what is our plan, right? The zoning scheme that exists now was for a time when the highway was gonna come through. It's no longer true, and I think one of the maps that jumped out at me that Jason Brennan put together, I believe, is just, the right away land. Overlay it with the existing zoning and you've got the the property falls into 4, 5 different zone. It just doesn't make any sense and so it's really something for us to think about when we look at that does that really does that reflect what we want to see in the future.

And I think at its core we really wanted people to think long and hard about what Don't you want to see there? What do you want to see there? And then figure out the zoning from there. Right. Like start with that. You know, don't want that. Don't want this. Yeah, we'd like that. And then kind of go from there.

What we do know is that never happened.

Yeah. So it's kind of silly that it's still chopped up. And it doesn't even make any sense, right? Because the way the lot lines are and the things, they're like crossover zones. It's bizarre. There'll be one lot with three different zoning. I mean, it's crazy. So it just is what it is.

Do you have any context for why... like that subdivision ended up bumping a huge section of residential into the commercial section? Like was that done or did that get changed over time for that development?

I think it just got changed over time.

Which subdivision? Oh, you mean that?

The yellow on the far right? Yeah.

Oh, the green around it is transitional zone and that was specifically to protect it.

Yeah. And was this done after this?

Yes, that street existed before that zoning.

Yeah, Cutler Road is pretty old.

Yeah, because at one point there was talk of a quarry to go in there or an asphalt plant. I'm sorry. That was smelly. And that had... a lot of impact on the neighbors to the south. There's a neighborhood, technically in Hudson, right over the line, where apparently, for those with historical context, at the meeting, they were saying that that meeting drew the ire of those neighbors, and they actually had to call the police and shut down the meeting. Like, yeah, it got that bad. So, you know... Right. Yeah.

That would be a crucial impact for sure. Yes, it would.

So needless to say, it's something that we're going to want to think about zoning-wise. And I am sure the committee is going to have thoughts as well. Sure.

Yeah. That was good, thank you. I think that's it for committee reports. So next we'll be approving the July 21st, 2026 minutes. Has everyone had a chance to review those? There's one section where it says Ms. Moreau confirmed that the sidewalk improvements would be incorporated into the co-reform farm development plans. That sounds like something that like Rick Charbonneau would say, because he was the one that. Where, what page? This is on page two of the minutes, on paragraph fifth, down from the top of that page.

Yeah, I think he did say that.

He did say that, yeah.

Because it's also part of the... So Colby Farm is the new one that hasn't been built yet.

What's the name? Because Colby Farm is with Colby Rhone.

Yeah, I think the reference to Colby Farm is incorrect.

Yeah, it's Corning Farm. It's Corning. Oh, you're right. Yeah, it's Corning. Only farms. Right, right, right. It's Corning Farm. Okay. The confusing thing about this is it's going in both Corning Farms and Colby Farms' developments. Just the part in his development is going in the Corning Farm. Right. And the other part...

It was his obligation.

In that paragraph, Colby Farm, Moores Falls, and then... The last one should not be Colby Farm, it should be Corning Farm. It should be Corning Farm, yes. So that's the change. That paragraph is fine up until the last two words.

Right, so it should be Mr. Moreau confirmed that the sidewalk improvements will be incorporated into the Corning Farm development.

Yeah. And interestingly, it's also parts of there are also going into the Colby, right?

But it's in this case, it's it was his requirement as part of that to do this.

So it's Yeah, it should be corny for the next sentence, the end of the next sentence should also say to the northern entrance of Corning Farm shouldn't because effectively it is going by Yes, it should be listed twice as Corning Farm.

Yes, it should be listed twice as Corning Farm.

Usually Joan makes the notes on the amendments, right?

Yeah, I'll just convey it to her.

Sounds good.

Just to confirm, the second Colby Farm stays?

The second one stays, yeah.

You mean the same paragraph?

So, Mr. Moreau confirmed that sidewalk improvements will be incorporated into the Corning Farm development plans.

The sidewalk constructed as part of the Colby Farm project.

It's... The second one should be Corning Farm also.

I think for this one paragraph, it's all Corning Farm. All these farms.

We're a farm town.

Yeah, I love it, but I'm not used to them having names like that.

But if he's talking about a continuous pedestrian route, that's why I say keep that Colby Farm. Because he's saying... The sidewalk that's being developed as part of Colby Farm extends up through Moore's Falls, which then extends up into his.

Colby Farm is on the opposite side of the street.

Yes.

Because the complicating factor is the gas station was responsible for the sidewalk from the gas station to Albuquerque.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this is from Moore's Falls. To the northern entrance of Corning Farm. That's what he's building.

Which was going to be required for Corning Farm. And that would have been within the conservation area. But there were complications. So now it's going outside of that. And then Rick Charbonneau decided that he... He'll take over that section and incorporate that as a part of Colby Farm. And then Mr. Moreau would be responsible then for extending the portion inside of his all the way to his second driveway. Right.

So both of these should be Corning Farm.

Yeah, these should be Corning Farm, yes.

All three of them.

Yeah. All those in that paragraph.

All three references to Colby Farm in that paragraph is what you're saying should be Corning.

Corning.

Yeah. Yes. I don't know if the Colby Farm stuff was acknowledged elsewhere. I will search the document.

Fortunately, this one is searchable rather than scanned.

No, that's all that was referenced.

Put it into AI. It'll tell you.