Zoning Board of Appeals - Regular Meeting

Trust your memory better than mine.

I don't know if it has to start. I have to start talking for it to start. We're good. Okay. Good evening. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals. It's May 21st. 2026 we're at the Littleton town offices, room 1, 0, 337, Shattuck street, Littleton mass. Um, and the time is 7 0 PM. The agenda had 630 printed, but we've been here some of us since 630. so we're on track. Um, this is and this is a scheduled meeting and it's a agenda meeting, but we do not have any applications. before us tonight. We're cleaning up some housekeeping business and getting prepared for what I hope will be a fruitful coming season. So I'm the chair, Cheryl Gould. This is my vice chair. To my left is Cheryl Kelly Hollinger. Clerk to my right is John Sewell. Members, David Outman, one of our newest members, Rod Stewart, one of us longest members. And we have with us tonight William Bent, who's a recent appointee as one of our alternates. So welcome, welcome to the board. And I would like to just go around and let's reiterate what each person's background is and what you bring to the board for us so we all get to know one another. And do you mind if I start with you, Bill, since you're newest?

Oh, sure, yeah. So I'm a registered professional engineer, civil engineering. I worked for a large consulting firm for almost 40 years. I just recently retired. this past December, so I have time to devote to these types of activities. My experiences in kind of civil infrastructure, in my role, previously I ran our northeast operation, so I've done, I've been through before a lot of different boards in different towns to present different infrastructure projects over the years.

That's a good addition to the world. We lost a building inspector who moved out of town, so that fills a nice hole for your expertise. Thank you.

David. I'm 20 years in land conservation. I'm an executive director for a national land trust, though it's more of... We don't have boundaries. We're more of a regional land trust that doesn't have boundaries. So spent 10 years working for the trustees of reservations here in Massachusetts, five years with the Harvard Conservation Trust, doing a variety, mostly land protection projects, but also a number of other types of projects. subdivisions and various land related activities and projects as well as spent a number of years sort of traipsing around in the forests and fields of Massachusetts trying to find old boundary lines and following meets and bounds.

Your input has been very helpful in the times that you've been here so far, so please continue. And maybe do we, who marks our boundaries every year? Don't we have, once a year we vote for the boundary markers and they have to go to the tri-towns and mark it. I'm not sure we still do that. I think we still do it. I think it's Dave Badger.

Yeah, we used to have someone come around and check on the chickens, but they don't do that anymore either.

Yeah, but I think we should get him involved in that.

Way back in the day, 14th century, they used to bring children. out when they were first originally creating boundaries. And in order to make sure that they knew where the intersections were, they would give the child a sort of, a bit of a beating. And that would create the memory. That child would become the person that could attest to boundaries. No kidding. Yes. That sounds kind of tough. No kidding.

Obviously the peasant children. My ancestors.

Children's of the village.

Who knows? That is very interesting. What years?

So this would be, you know, wait, 1400s? Very interesting.

1800s? I do, I've done some land research, title research, and there are actually deeds that say, you know, go across Mrs. for its boundary line to the brown cow in the field.

Very interesting. John, how about your background? In college, for two years, I worked in the summer as a surveyor. And I do remember, you know, it seemed like every week we were doing a boundary line between two people's houses that were fighting. And then there was, oh, it was one place we did where there was a note that said, the corners where the tall hemlock used to stand.

Yeah.

And you go that spot, and there's like 40 hemlocks. Yeah. It's 40 acres of land and you just spend a lot of time gathering all the information you can go and then you basically do your best guess and go to a land court and let them sort it out. I'm a retired civil engineer also, professional. I spent most, about half my life as a professional career as a construction manager. And then the second half is the facilities manager for a large corporation. And so I've been in front of planning boards and conservation committees and whatnot many, many times. I think the toughest one was to getting planning board approval for installing a small building that was called the disintegrator. And then trying to explain to them what a disintegrator was, because they really thought we were, you know, using atoms or something, blowing things up. It was just a paper shredder that shredded things down to half the size of a letter. So it was basically, the biggest issue was it was an explosive hazard because it was so much dust made. And so I've, you know, had experience of both. I've been here for, what, hours? This will be my fifth year, I guess. I started in 2018. So is that fifth year?

Excellent. You're also a longtime Littleton resident.

Yeah, I've lived here since 1980. My wife moved here in 57, I think it was. Yeah, so you have history. But we moved here by accident, so to speak, because we got married and moved away. Don't admit that. Well, we came back, and I was working in Westboro, and she was going to school in Lowell. So we decided to go from Bolton to Chelmsford. We were looking for a house, and we found one in Lillipin we really liked, and we've been here ever since. Excellent. We've had a second house. We've moved once. Excellent. Cheryl.

My parents moved to Littleton in 1960, so I grew up in Littleton. And then when I became college age in 1977, I couldn't wait to shake the dust of this little town off my feet. I went away to college, and then after college went and lived in California for a while. I eventually moved back to the East Coast. I'm a New England girl, it turns out. I am not a California girl. I am not a Southern girl. I am a New England girl. This climate is my comfort zone. Long story short, I ended up moving to Groton with my husband for our first house and then my parents decided to sell their house and we decided to buy it. and moved back to Littleton to raise our family. At the time, I had a six-year-old, a three-year-old, and I was eight months pregnant. And it was a really bad time to move. I'm a real estate broker. I know you should not move when you're eight months pregnant. You really should not. You should not be making any major decisions when you're eight months pregnant. No one should tell you that either when you're eight months pregnant. But since then, I moved back to Littleton. for a lot of reasons. I wanted a place that I could not worry about my children playing in the backyard or riding their bikes on the street because I had long-term neighbors and would feel safe about them. I wanted a place where my children would learn to run towards the police when there's a problem, not away from them. I wanted a place where my kids could be in the Boy Scouts and in the, you know, Girl Scouts and do all the things that are good for kids and, you know, a little town swim club and be able to rent, do sailing camp and all those things. And it's been, it has been a wonderful town for my family. I bought out my mother's real estate business about that time also. I own a small real estate company here in town. I've got four people working for me. I love Littleton.

And I'll just add that your experience as a real estate broker and with the history of properties in Littleton has been very helpful to this board because what we deal with are requests for variances and exemptions from the zoning bylaw, which mostly affect allowing people to stay in their homes, age in place, expand as children are born, and other things like that. So especially on our smaller lot.

Yeah, I've been a real estate broker for 38 years now. And so I'm pretty aware of, you know, there are things that are detrimental to neighborhoods and things that aren't. And one of our charges when we create variances in special permits is to make sure they are not detrimental to neighborhoods. Right. And don't set precedents that, you know, aren't what our zoning bylaws allow. And don't, you know, it becomes more challenging with the new regulations that the state has been handing down. The state is, oh, I don't, I guess you should.

Yeah, don't wax poetic yet. And Rod.

I have degrees in engineering. and worked in those fields in the last 18 years or so up to retirement last year in project management.

I was in the planning board back when we did the aquifer overlay districts.

That was a lot of fun. And redid zoning maps. Not as busy as they've been now, but we were busy back then. And I was in a town government study committee that lasted a few months. And I'd been in town a little while. We bought our first house in 72 and we're still in it. We haven't had to move.

So that's great, yeah. You have too much junk, you can't move, right?

Well, you know, we're trying to clear out because we probably figure that even if we die in the house, in another five or ten years, we're probably going to have to do something.

also a very thoughtful and provocative member of our board. When I joined this board, I remember, I'm Sherry Gould, and I am a lawyer in town, basically a real estate lawyer, pretty familiar with zoning. I remember growing up as a kid, we didn't have zoning yet, and my father, who was a judge and very important in the town of Clinton, was trying to decide if zoning was a good thing or a bad thing for communities, you know. But what I started to say about the thoughtful deliberation, when I started on this board, which must be at least 30 years ago now, I would have called it the board of no appeal because the members of the board never approved anything. And I can almost say that we've segued into a board of give it away for free. The pendulum swings, but we need to have a healthy balance. And again, I think that what comes before this board are individuals looking to remain in their homes and use their homes in the most effective way possible to raise their families and that's usually what we see and what we have to balance against the needs of the person or family against the needs of the neighbors and community and I think you all do a very good job of that.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, their requests are very reasonable and not detrimental to labor. And you are a fabulous leader. You're a real estate attorney. You bring a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, a lot of practical experience to this board. You lead us with an iron fist, which is great.

So that segues into the next discussion, which is a little out of order on the agenda. But when we were, two things happened. For a time, we were very, very active. We had two or three, I'd say two or three applications a month. And we had a building inspector who believed, as I believe, that if it's on a gray line, get it before our board so that the neighbors can come out and be heard and express their wishes. And our board has some ability to give conditions on things that are, like I said, on the gray line. And that happened for a long time. And while that was happening, by the way, we had an awful lot of interest in people who wanted to be on the board. And as I recall, there was an elderly retired gentleman who really wanted a position on one of the boards in town. And so the town voted to increase the alternate numbers on our board from two to five.

Was it only two at one point?

Yeah, it was only two at one point. And the other thing that was happening is 40Bs, which was the bylaw that enables, or the state statute that enables dense housing and multiple housing without regard to zoning to happen. And the Zoning Board of Appeals is in charge of the hearings for 40Bs. And because of that, we had many, many of those hearings and they would span six to eight months and we needed members in attendance start to finish. So it was a good idea to have five alternates because then nine of us, excuse me, four alternates, then five members and four alternates, nine of us would be hearing start to finish and we were likely to end up with a five member board that was there the whole time. Since that time two things have happened. One is that the bylaws have changed radically so that many of what we used to see is now being presented to the planning board as part of a larger subdivision approval or a new statute that allows, let's say, I think the newest one we're going to see is accessory dwelling units, and that statute or that bylaw is going to give waiver and exemption authority to the Planning Board rather than to the Zoning Board. So our responsibilities have been shrinking. And in addition to that, we had a subsequent building inspector who wanted to take control over everything and issue his decision as done. And so that didn't come before our board. 40Bs have died down completely. We don't have 40Bs anymore. And people are not so willing to donate their time and volunteer their energies. Thank you both very much for your willingness to do that. But we have been short of our alternates for at least, as I can recall, three or four years now, and short of applicants to become alternates. So one of the things on the agenda tonight was my request for this board to take a vote as to whether or not we will petition the selectmen to bring us back to a two alternate board, and part of that is When we have hearings, even if you're an alternate, we like everybody to weigh in. We like to hear everybody's opinion. And while you may not be allowed to vote because you're an alternate, you're certainly welcome to voice your opinion, and it's always weighed and heard. With nine, that becomes unwieldy, especially since we have fewer and fewer applications, and they're less and less intense. So with this board's permission, I asked town council how to do this. She thinks our board needs to vote to authorize a letter to the selectmen. And she thinks it would be a no-brainer because if we find two is too few, we can always go back and ask them to increase it again. It's not a town meeting vote. So the first thing I would like to do is have somebody make a motion that we can petition the selectmen to bring us back to a two alternate select board. What are we at now?

I make a motion that we petition the select board to reduce the number of alternates we require from four to two.

and I need a second to that motion. I'll second it.

We need to do that even though we just stopped looking for people with two?

Well, the thing says that if online it shows that there are four available, and they go to the select board and ask, someone goes to the select board and asks to be, the select board says, okay, you can do it. You don't have a choice, but it just shows up. So if you want to reduce the number to make it a little more wheeled, so to speak, then you need to go and change that number.

When there are nine, we have had nine sitting up here. And when there are nine of us sitting up here, it's a little unwieldy.

When was the last time the board or the committee had nine?

Probably two years ago.

I think it's more than that. I think it's three or four or more. And I'm trying to remember one of the...

When John Fields was here, we had nine.

But I don't know if we had nine appointed.

I don't think we had nine. I think we had three. I think it was when Patrick Joyce was still here is the last time we had nine, honestly. I think we had eight. I could be wrong. But the point is, even with the 40 Bs, there were a lot of decisions that needed to be made with the 40Bs, like architectural design and numbers of units first, last, and in between, and how many affordables do you build before the affordable, how many affordables before the market ones. And with nine people and nine pieces of input to those decisions, it's an all-night meeting. And it may not be necessary. So on a 40B it might be, but whether somebody can put a garage on the side of their house might not take nine opinions. And I like the two alternate position because then the alternates can see a path to permanent membership sooner than if there's four alternates and they're all vying for a position to be the next permanent.

There has been cases where one of the permanent members has to recluse themselves because they live too close to the project or some other reason that they know the person and therefore they don't feel right.

I was an alternate for five years. I was an alternate for probably 10, yeah. And I've been on the board now for another 12 or 13 as a full member.

Anyway, I called for the vote and the motion. I mean, I called for the motion and the second. We didn't have discussion. Do you want to input anything to that idea? No. I mean, your question is the same. That's my question.

Just curious, yeah.

Yeah. We'll set then. Can I call for a vote? We have a motion and second it to reduce down to two alternates again.

Aye.

Aye. And your input, welcome. You're not able to vote yet because we have five more.

Did you get signed in?

I did the one thing I guess that I would add in relation to this is I'm not retired yet and I do have I don't travel a lot I have quite a bit of flexibility but I do travel some so I'm grateful for alternates and it's not inconceivable that I'll miss meetings and on that score alternates are more likely to come knowing that they're that important

And that's exactly when we need them because you've been very good about letting us know when you can and can't come. But the first meeting, I remember we're knocking on your door saying, help, we need you. I scared the dickens out of your wife.

It's a communication breakdown. It happens. If we know ahead of time that you're not going to be here, then we can actually call the alternates and say, hey.

please be there we haven't opened tonight so please show up the alternates will always get noticed and the admin is usually good about saying if you can't make a meeting let the admin know so she can reach out to the office and i will say that my travel is scheduled it's not like i'm not on call to go to an emergency or something so no i had it i know with plenty of notice

But for, go ahead. I just have a question. So is the expectation I would come to the meetings? Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah, we want the alternates at every meeting.

And we ask you to get involved and help us make a decision. Okay. And if there's only four of us and there's two alternates and we have more than one case, you know, one person will be on one case and the other person will be on the other case so that everybody gets a chance to...

And even if you're not on a case, we want your opinion. Okay. And so maybe you can't vote, but your opinion is valued.

On that score, I don't think I need to educate anybody here. You're all very educated and you've all been in the business. But on that score, you know that if you are in a butter or have a financial interest in the outcome of a matter, you can't sit on the case. So it's not... It's not often, but it's not infrequent that because I'm a real estate attorney and she's a real estate broker, one or the other of us might have a financial interest in the outcome of a matter because we're dealing with that person as a client in another capacity. And or, and or, like the Tehanawan Road project that was last week. You're in that butter. I'm a direct abutter, so I had to stand down.

I was in the butter because I'm the... The trustee, if somebody else is someone's trust that the house was on something.

Yeah. Yeah. So you never know. I mean, and we often don't even know in advance.

I had to recuse myself once. I don't remember why.

Because you were.

I know I've recused myself. Oh, stop it. I know I've recused myself because they were a client.

There's also, isn't it true, though, I mean, there's sometimes you have to recuse, but there's also you can recuse just from the perception, right?

I mean, you can choose to recuse from any matter. Not if it leaves us short.

We've got an alternate now. I know.

But say there was a case where neither Sherry or I wanted to be on it. Now you're a four-man board. And many of the decisions, especially on variances, require four votes, four positive votes. And so suddenly you're in a position where they cannot have a negative. And that's not very fair to the applicant. If it leaves us short, it actually says in the rules you cannot just for the heck of it recuse.

Except David's right. You may not be an abutter or have a financial interest if you think that there's an appearance of a conflict.

You can explain it in a way, though. You can say it ahead of time. I know this person. Absolutely.

But you may not want to. And on that score, in a small town like this, we all know everybody. I'm not going to recuse just because you were a client in my office in another capacity. It has nothing to do with this decision. I don't have to.

But that's... Well, there are special rules for the ZBA that aren't necessarily true for... Don't we have a special... Yeah, that's probably an important thing to say.

We are designated and voted to be special municipal employees. As a special municipal employee, you and I can appear before any other board in town except the CBA. That's what our status gives us. So especially for me, for instance, I can represent a client before the planning board, but I can't bring that client here to this board. And I don't know that it applies to anyone else.

And I can represent a client at the Board of Health.

Right. It might affect you if you're doing any design work or architectural work or something like that.

I'm fully retired now. Fully retired.

Okay. All right. Just in passing. The next thing I wanted to say. Welcoming and appointing new alternates. Well, we already did that. Yeah. There's another fellow I think we're going to see. I don't think he got appointed or sworn in yet, but I think he said he was coming, but I think he decided without being sworn in he wouldn't come yet. The other thing I wanted to raise, Cheryl, I apologize to you. These minutes were circulated on... The meeting packet that was sent out, I hadn't read them because when I read the beginning, I realized it was a planning board meeting. So I want to talk about that for a minute. Did you get them? It's a joint meeting. I did not attend the planning board meeting, though. So you can't really vote on it anyway. Did you get them? Yep. And you read them?

I have not had a chance to read them in detail, and I already found a couple changes I want.

Stop a minute because that's what I want to discuss, and Rod brought it to my attention.

This is not our meeting, and I don't think... It was a joint meeting, and it was advertised as a joint meeting.

It's not a joint meeting. It's a planning board meeting to which the zoning board was entitled, and we had to post it as a posted ZBA meeting because there were going to be more than three of us there. It is not a joint meeting. We weren't conducting the meeting. And we have no say in what the minutes of that meeting look like. That was the planning board's decision to vote or not vote the minutes of that meeting.

Have they already accepted them?

I don't know. And that's up to the planning board to decide. I don't think we as attendees have a right to change the reflection of minutes. that the planning board's admin...

I don't know. I disagree with you. I think it was posted as a joint meeting. The minutes are coming from Sophia.

She's new to the job. She's new to the position.

So I'd like to ask Daryl Baker, the chair of planning board, his take on it.

He's the chair now?

Isn't he?

No, he wasn't before. He's not voted the chair yet. Jeff is still the chair.

Is Jeff still the chair? I thought that just changed.

And it's not... It's not up to the chair of the planning board whether the zoning board has any right or ability to create minutes for a meeting they didn't conduct. They were there as guests. It's the same as when the ZBA was hearing the affordable housing matter on Tejadawan Road They posted the meeting for the selectmen to attend because they were... You mean the Housing Authority? The Housing Authority to attend. The Housing Authority did not make minutes of that meeting. We did. And I am a little bit adamant that we not start setting a precedent for making minutes of a meeting in which we were invited as guests. It wasn't our meeting.

It was posted as a joint meeting.

We were invited to their meeting, essentially. And what we don't want, if we approve these, and these are unique to us, then we'll suddenly have two different sets of meetings for the same subject. For the same meeting. And I think that could be a conflict.

Okay.

All right.

So we're not voting on these. I don't think we should vote on these. I wouldn't have a problem if they went unvoted into whatever Freedom of Information Act stuff people want, but I don't want to vote on them.

Okay. There are some mistakes on them, so I have some corrections I'd like to make.

If we see some mistakes that are related to us, we should let the planning board know.

We should maybe let the planning board know.

If they say you said something you didn't say, then that would be something you should say.

Well, there are certainly a couple of things I said that I think were misinterpreted. So I would like to, I mean, it's small corrections, but just corrections and punctuation. let's eat grandma as opposed to let's eat comma grandma as opposed to let's eat grandma you know that kind of punctuation then I think you bring that to the planning board and you know and but they probably approved it about four months ago so unless it's really very important I would just let it go I probably will but I may talk to members of the planning board and see where they're at on it

And it does say attended a joint meeting with the Littleton Planning Board. It doesn't say conducted.

And the meetings are only about the part where we were there?

Yeah, and then the way it says is attended, and then others in attendance, also in attendance. Yeah. It puts us up front, and we weren't.

We've had several meetings, or the selectmen have had several meetings with us in attendance, and we have never, ever signed a set of minutes on someone else's meeting.

All right.

So thank you.

I won't argue with you anymore.

That might be it. I told Damon he's only got half an hour. I don't think I have mail received by the board, and we didn't talk about member comments. Does anyone want to comment on anything that's happening in town that you want to bring to our attention?

Apple Man's coming up.

I knew that was a tip of a tongue.

Apple Man's coming up. The Littleton Rotary Club made $40,000 on Apple Man last year, and 95% of it has gone to Let's put it this way. 80% of it has gone to needs directly in this town. Another 10% to 15% of it has gone to needs in the greater communities, such as Loaves and Fishes and the homeless shelter in Lowell, and there's a place in Fitchburg. That has gone there, and another 5% of it has gone for national, international needs. But, you know, we do everything from sponsor $500 for the Boy Scout Eagle Project to we've helped with the one year we helped gave $10,000 to the what's it called? The trust that helps seniors in trouble with their scholarship trust. We always have a Thanksgiving breakfast for the Littleton Scholarship Trust, and we raise about $3,000 for them there. That's a targeted fundraiser where everything goes to the Littleton Scholarship Trust.

I think it's the Littleton Housing Trust.

But I guess we're not going to have a football team next year?

I don't know.

I think that's what I heard. There's no football team next year, so having a Thanksgiving football breakfast is going to be a challenge. I think we'd have to do something else for scholarship trust. Anybody else?

Member comments? One more thing I did forget. Any other?

We need volunteers. Member comments?

The other thing, I forgot this. We've always voted signatories to the payroll bills, so it's always been myself. I think you, Joan, because you're the clerk, and I think you because you're the vice. Sure. So we just need a ratification of that, that if there are bills to be paid, any one of the three of us can sign them.

So moved.

So moved, second. All in favor? Aye.

Okay. I've never been asked to actually sign anything.

Because John's always been around when I'm out of town, I think. I don't know that we ever sign anything anyway. We don't have any bills to pay. We have the publication bills when there's a hearing, and we haven't had a hearing in so long we haven't had publication. And we probably have to have election of officers coming up, but I was thinking of that tonight and thought we should probably wait till we have a couple of real meetings under our belt so everybody can see the board in action before you make a vote as to who you want to be in charge of and the officers. The other thing is, if anybody wants any information or tutelage on what we do, basically this board has authority to issue special permits if the zoning bylaw grants us that right. And then we have the authority to give variances, which would be exceptions to the zoning bylaw, and we have to find certain criteria are met to give the variances. We also have the right to hear cases involving an appeal of a zoning enforcement officer. So if Henry were to make a decision that a candidate or an applicant didn't like, they can appeal his decision to this board, Henry Fontaine being the building commissioner. And that's happened a few times.

Yeah, but what's happened is a neighbor complains about the noise or construction going on next door. Henry goes out, finds that there is or isn't, and if one of the parties doesn't like his decision, they can come to us and appeal.

I suspect, and everybody should put this on their radar, we talked about it a couple of meetings ago. I suspect that what's going to come up hot next are two items that are important. One is that Governor Healey has enacted something called the Affordable Housing Act. We were having an academic discussion about this recently, you and I. The Affordable Housing Act does two things to zoning that I think are significant. One is it allows for ADUs to be built almost as of right if certain criteria are met, and an ADU is an accessory dwelling unit. I am hearing with my ear to the railroad tracks that developers are trying to work around the limitations of building in this environment to build ADUs as a matter of right and then sell the principal unit separate from the ADU unit. So I think that is coming up as a hot ticket item. Littleton has got to enact some zoning by law to address whether or not the ADU can be separated, if you will, from its principal dwelling. In my mind, accessory dwelling means you have to have a principal to be an accessory too. But there are many who oppose me and say an accessory dwelling unit should be able to be separately sold.

Our town attorney opined that is not accessory if it is owned separately.

But so stay with me for a minute. On the other hand, I'm seeing in other states and with my own children even, You build an accessory dwelling unit on your property because you're trying to augment your income or do a stay-in-place elder unit that the elders can stay in while the young families grow their families in the main house or whatever. And now after everyone's aging out or the oldsters pass, you've got this extra unit on a lot. And what do people do with that to realize their equity out of having built this lot? So I think these are coming up as issues that need to be resolved. I think planning board will have hearings on it. And I think we should think about weighing in on it because it's something in the past our board has had to give a special permit for. I think they're going to take away our special permit rights. And I'd like everybody to give some thought as to what we were able to protect when it was within our jurisdiction and what we might be able to influence the planning board to continue to try to protect if it goes out of our jurisdiction and they make it into a bylaw. The other one that's coming down the pike, and I just started looking at this, is the same Affordable Housing Act has a doctrine of de-merging merged lots. The doctrine of mergers says this. I own a house on less than the current zoning bylaw acre that's required. I own this house on three quarters of an acre. And all of a sudden, this lot comes up for sale beside me. It may be a vacant lot. It may be one of the lake area lots that's a bunch of 20 by 100s. And I buy that in the same name. The doctrine of mergers says, I've just merged the two because I put them in the same ownership and this one wasn't conforming but I just added enough property to make it conforming, so now it's merged and these two lots can never be separated again. Marahili's recent legislation says you can de-merge these from now on as long as the Extra lot has 10,000 square feet, 75 feet of frontage, I think was the frontage requirement, and the unit is 1,800 square feet or less, containing three bedrooms. The thought being that people who have these merged lots will want to unmerge them and create a separate buildable lot for equity, for value, for, I don't know. What's happened with me is that there's a bunch of these that don't quite make the Marahili 10,000 square feet. But the state legislation says 5,000 square feet works. So I think what's going to come down the pike next is whether or not we're going to adopt the Marahili legislation that says 10,000 and no more, no change. I mean, you can't afford the 5,000 anymore. or if we want to adopt a bylaw that says we've always allowed the 5,000, we've never demerged, but if they haven't been merged, we've always allowed The 5,000 square foot pre existing non conforming lot to be built on.

So we're going to continue just slightly. If there's a lot standing by itself. And if it's 5,000 square feet. Or more and has at least 50 feet of frontage. Then by state law, it can be a building lot, even though it doesn't meet any of the setbacks. Even if you can't, you don't suddenly you don't have to meet the 15 foot setbacks on the sides. The front or back setbacks you can build a house. very close to the property lines of the house ignoring the setbacks because it is a grandfathered lot and that's that's the state regulation pre-existing pre-existing now the new legislation from the state says that you can de-merge lots that have been merged but that in de-merging them requires them to be ten thousand square feet and have at least 75 feet of frontage. So the question is, do we allow de-merging and go with the old state guidelines, or do we go with, gee, she's giving people a bone here, this makes sense, because a 5,000 square foot lot is very small. so you have to you have to weigh the options and and still it doesn't matter if it's pre-existing all by itself in a different ownership it is and it's 5 000 square feet and 50 feet of frontage it is a building lot it still works but you have to get a septic on it too yeah littleton so it's just something well so if you don't have town water in the area but most of littleton has town water now so just two things i think are going to be items that will come

whether it comes before us or not, we should be involved in it because that's exactly what we do, is decide whether you're going to give exemptions to the zoning bylaw. And my thought on the example I just gave was, if the theory is we want to create more housing, And if 5,000 square feet on a non-merged lot is acceptable to the state, then why does the de-merger have to restrict itself to a 10,000 square foot lot. The intent is still to create housing. The merger is intended to create housing.

I think they were trying to soften it for the town. Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking it's got to come up. It's just a curious thing because, I mean, I've certainly sold lots that were tiny to builders that then built big houses on them.

Anyway, so that's all the news that's fit to print for tonight. Thank you all for coming. Just a quick question.

Anybody watching this old house this episode?

No.

No? They're building an ADU in Walpole, and they've also highlighted a couple others around. So it's interesting. The ADU they're putting on is huge.

Well, Littleton voted several years ago. five, ten years ago, to allow ADUs by right. We were pioneers at the time. We were the first town in Massachusetts to allow it by right, an ADU. But we restricted it to, and we allowed 12,000 square feet, but it had to be less than.

1,200 square feet.

It had to be 1,200 square feet. Thank you. It had to be physically connected. It couldn't be a separate building. No, it couldn't be a separate building. No.

Yeah, no, that one could be separate. Before that, we had one that fell out of funding.

But it had to be behind the house. Oh, it had to be behind the primary house.

Yeah. Hidden from view. Well, it had to be hidden. It could be on the side. But this front had to be behind that front.

Right. And so, you know, it's...

Are you saying that we as a Board should come up with a position and submit that to the Planning Board?

No, I think each of us individually should be... As residents? As residents or as CBA members invited to a Planning Board hearing on the matter should be there to input. what we know from experience here.

You should also realize that we aren't allowed to give variances on new construction. We're not allowed to do that. Variances are for problems that are not created by the

That's generally true. That's just not a total blanket statement, but that's generally true.

And normally we won't. We have a few times people have come before us where they have built something like too close to the street and now they can't get their steps in and they're asking for help and we've kind of laughed at them.

Well, we've made people move their houses.

Well, now we've done things that solved the problem, but it wasn't quite the way they wanted to solve it. But you're right. If you own a house that's got a small lot and something comes up and you have to solve a problem like you've got your aging in place and you need a garage now, we help. But we don't let somebody come in building a brand new house and decide he just wants to build it close to the property line. We're not going to give you approval for it.

Anyway, each case comes in on its own merit and with its own set of facts, and we listen to them, and then we weigh them against the protection of the town and the zoning by-law against the need of an individual. I still entertain a motion to close. Second. Second, please. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. I promised a half an hour meeting, so.