Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, anytime you want.

All right. I'll open up this meeting of the Maynard Planning Board. Today's date is Tuesday, May 26, 2026, and the time is 7 to 8 p.m. Here in Town Hall, we have three planning board members present. Bill, just to confirm, we have no planning board members and no members of the public or that members of the planning board and the community can join here in town hall. We're virtually through the Zoom link. And we should note that this meeting is being recorded. Bill, do you want to go to item two? No. Is this a hearing? This is? I didn't actually catch this before. All right, I have one minute. Any comments?

Can we take out the intro paragraphs that are talking in the future tense, like paragraph two, paragraph three? I'm sorry. Say it one more time, Bill. Can we get rid of the intro paragraphs that talk about the future tense?

OK. Oh, yeah. Please note, yeah.

Get rid of that one. Get rid of the two please notes, and then get rid of the intro. Well, maybe change the tense of the intro for the discussion of Riggs. Change it to... There is like an agenda in that.

Yeah, I got you. Yeah, it says, yeah. I sent them the agenda, so they probably just took it right off of that. Okay, knock out those first two.

Anything else? Second. All in favor to approve minutes, please raise your hand. It's 3-0 bill to approve the meeting minutes available. Thank you. Okay. As amended. Got it. Here's Mark.

Oh, okay. Mark H. Mark S. Hey, Mark. Can you hear us? You're on mute.

We should roll them at all so we can see it. I don't know. The L's not working. What? No, it is. It's aimed over there.

Is it juicy? Yeah. Can you hear us?

I can hear you.

But you can't see us. Quiet.

There we go. I'm sorry. I forgot what day it was. All right.

It's okay. There we go. Yeah. So. There we go.

Okay.

So, Mr. Chair, now if you could go to the public hearing, if you'd like.

All right. I will open up the public hearing for the review of Planning Board Rules and Regulations and Landscape Regulations. This is a hearing to consider proposed updates to the Planning Board Rules and Regulations, the fee schedule, and the landscape regulations. Bill, you're up.

Okay. I think just... You're up. Let me share this so Mark can see it. We have three documents related, though. go through. We have the fee schedule, which is part of the rules and regulations, which we went over all these at our last meeting. And I don't think you had any comments on the fee schedule, so I'll just start there if I can get it going here. There we go. This is the same as we talked about last time. So there were some changes. Zoe reformatted this. I thought it was kind of easier to understand what needs to be done for each one. The costs were based pretty much on the average of the area. what we're getting in the area and then we did a couple of things different. We're charging, I don't know if the board is aware of that, but basically for, we're still doing return receipt requested for mailings and we're making, we're having everybody paying up front with everything now, which is easier and we have a butters list so we know how many we're going to mail. But basically nothing's changed since you saw this last time. So I just wanted to show you this to see if we have any questions on the fee schedule. We're also charging now, we hadn't been charging for road acceptance, we hadn't been charging for zoning map requests, and we hadn't been charging for determinations. And when we do a determination, it takes me just about as much No, it's not true, because we don't advertise it, but there's a little work in there. It takes a little bit of time, so we wanted to make sure we're taking care of all that.

Any questions? Who pays for the road acceptance?

Well, typically if it's a developer who's giving us a road and they pay for the costs with it. Are those typically still under, I guess, it's not parceled out, I guess it's part of the HOA?

Yeah.

Yeah, like if, when they'll say, usually like when they do a subdivision plan, that they're going to request to take it. Yeah, but they Well, you know all that. Basically, we just want to make sure that the road is up to where we're not getting an albatross.

Bill, the notice of decision at the bottom, that's to all the abutters? Is that what happens? Right, exactly.

So we send, we email everybody a notice of decision. But just abutters?

I mean, do you want to say that?

To Butters, no we don't do a certified for the notice of decision.

He's just referencing what is the notice of decision and who does it go to?

It goes to Butters and interested parties, so should I put that in? It could be more than Butters, never mind. Yeah, I mean you could like, there's like a list that we go, so like you know, regional planning, the planning board next door, but if somebody came in and you said You were interested in this, we would, you know like we have that sometimes at our hearings, so that one person's not in the butter who wants to be notified. And these are the July rates for postal? I don't know. They were last month.

Would it make sense just to put current first class?

Well that's why I put refer to current USPS rates. We'll update these if you... Whatever the current rates are is what we charge, basically. So as of right now, or as of last month when we did this, that's what they were. If they went up next week, we just charge what they charge. I wouldn't want to have to come back to the board.

Yeah, but they are going up in July.

Are they?

Yeah. Well, let's just make a note there. That's what I'm saying. You don't have a surcharge on it. You just charge them. That's a good point. That's a good point. Let's see.

May I ask a question, Bill? Yeah. So how are the rates determined? Are they in line with other towns race?

Yeah, it's it's that's the federal post office. It's just we're just we just charge whatever they're they're charging. The question also, if you is when we we don't have to mail certified, but we've made the decision that it makes it's better practice for at least for the notice we do occasionally somebody comes in and says they haven't received they weren't noticed you know or whatever and so it's nice to have the receipt but it is almost it's 10 i don't know what it's going to go up to if it's 10 50 now or 10 44 you might who knows what will be with the july rates but you know for most of them the letter mailings are small the exception is um Like when we have Manor Crossing or we have Deer Hedge, where there's 80 or 100 butters, that gets a little bit.

Mark, were you asking if the other rates, like the A&R and subdivision plant rates, are similar to other towns? Or were you asking about the postage?

I was worried about the other rates, Bill. Thank you.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. We surveyed a number of the towns here. We had made a spreadsheet. This is more or less right in line. Yeah. We just added some new things that we weren't doing before, like the modifications, determinations. But we're pretty much right in there. And we haven't raised them since what, 2019 I think. So this is one out of three things we're looking at today? Yeah. Is there any more questions on this? No. Alright. Now, I packed up a redlined version of both landscape and the rules and regs so we can work right on this document and we'll save any changes we make. This is the landscape regulations. You saw these last time. Nothing's changed in these. These are the ones that Natalie made. I'll show you her changes. And, you know, they're all lighting. And this is the one, you may remember we did this last year. Yeah, thanks. So the changes start here.

Bill, can you share with me, too, please?

Oh, sorry. Yeah, you got it. Sorry. So I guess we can change as the dark sky bylaw did pass. It's still going to go through AG review. And if we have to make any changes afterwards, we can make them. But right now, this reflects what Natalie came up with working with them and then our feedback from last session, where I can't remember we met. Oh, we did the exterior, I think was what we said, we did the exterior lighting.

Mine's scrolling down just a little bit.

I like that we only care about the safety of the residents. Oh, if you're visiting, you're not interested.

Now this, why do we have this 597? I don't know.

It was in the one that got passed. I mean, so?

I mean, it doesn't help guide our discussions. The other ones do. But, oh wait, so no, this is not, sorry, can you scroll up again?

I don't really see why it's needed. I don't imagine how it would ever come up. But it's one of those things that if that night sky ever makes it past the AG, then this is completely redundant because it's the exact same language.

Yeah. Would you want me to strike it or leave it or what? If for some reason, let's say right now that the dark sky is not law yet. So is this something that we'd want to have at least until then? That really doesn't seem like something ours, does it? It just seems out of place to me.

Yeah, I kind of agree. And the point of the rest of this section has either specific references like DPW or specific foot elevations. I don't see why it needs to be here. I mean, the point of our rules and regulations is to give some rules, give some regs, provide some guidance for discussion, right? This seems very, very specific to, I don't know. Blake, should I strike it? I think it's too much, personally, but. Yeah.

Is the second sentence important?

And yeah, so, Mark, here's what I'm thinking is like, big picture. Like, the planning board has. Has the authority to. To not allow any of these things that we determined that it shouldn't be allowed. So we don't also need to say it. Okay, like, if we don't want a sky being, we just say.

This site plan should not have a light house in my front yard. Yeah, I mean, to me it's just extra bourbon. Alright, I'll nuke it. I'll nuke it.

Everybody good if I nuke it? Seems that way.

Mark, you okay with that? Yeah, of course. Nuke it. Is that it? Alright. You didn't nuke it. No, I can't. I've got to get this thing out of there. So, just for an example, 5-9-2 for our regs, right?

Yeah.

Like, that's what I want to see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Now, these are the... That's it for lighting?

And landscape, really? No other landscape books? Just that one section?

Yeah, that's the only thing we changed in landscape. Okay, now we're going to go to the rules and regs. This has got all your changes from last time. Let's share with Mark so he doesn't get left out again. Can you see it, Mark? Look at that logo. Look at the tire. MARK TUBBS- Yep. Okay, and you see we made some formatting changes. Okay, so these are from last week, or last meeting. General recommendations, that was the only thing there. Okay, this was... remember this? This is where we adjusted for the water in the sewer. Why are the headers indented and the text is not? I don't know. Zoe formatted all these sheets so they're all consistent. This is exactly the same as what we talked about. At the last meeting? No. No, it's what you asked for at the last meeting. So, in other words, you saw and then we added some stuff from that. This is what you asked for at the last meeting.

Is there any text we have not seen before?

No. Whatever we added last week, it's just cleaned up. We added PMOD here.

So we're not going to be asking for a letter from DPW? That's right. Any further? Nope. We're just going to make it totally separate. That's based on legal counsel advice as well, right?

Yeah. This was, we kind of clarified this, which was pretty good about, you know, start other actions or stuff that we may need, analyses or whatnot, that may require peer review. So we got that. OK, this was transparency, efficiency. OK, this was probably, I guess, the biggest change that we made at our last meeting had been the process. So we've been through this actually a couple times, this one.

There's only one peer reviewer for everything? There's no specialty peer reviewers? They have lighting or something.

Yeah, what we've done in that kind of case is we do a... Usually it was a subcontractor if they don't have it in-house. So when we did, like when green... All right, but this text allows us to do that? it's covered there and the other thing is when we like if you came in and you were an applicant we we say okay we get your scope first and we tell you what's going on with it and you agree to scope so it's laid out there so sometimes it is a subcontractor or something that may come out but yeah that's that's typically that's typically what we have done

Okay, so this clearly states that payment will be made up front.

Yeah, what we do is we ask for the scope amount, whatever it is, $10,000. If it was more, if it went through that, then we would ask for more.

Should it say prior to the peer review commencing?

At the time the applicant selects the peer review, the applicant shall deposit a full amount.

Okay, so that basically means you have to select the peer review and pay essentially at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's all, that was a great move when we did that a couple years ago. That was where we were chasing everybody. Yeah, we don't want to do that anymore. No, we fixed that a while ago and I like it.

That first line seems to have an extra parenthesis. Which one? After the 30B. Oh.

It's value-added right there.

That'd be section 2, right? That'd be a little section symbol. That's it.

Let's see review.

Oh, come on. Review. Tracking. Tractatus. There you go. OK. Yeah. So what was it you just said up here, get rid of this little parentheses?

OK. I guess, yeah. Unless it was intended to mean something else. Gotcha.

Unless you muted it.

Unless it's just on the other side of it somewhere. Right. I mean, it could potentially be 30b section 2, right? Yeah. Which would be parenthetical.

But then it wouldn't have the comma. Well, either way. I'll fix it. If there's a change, if the board is OK with that, I would just change. Okay.

Any questions so far on this, guys?

Okay, this is nothing new here.

You missed the deep dive last week. I did? Yeah.

Oh, okay, traffic circulation, yeah. Are there even printers that can handle D anymore? I don't know. Plotters.

We got rid of our plotter a long time ago.

Why? What, what, what?

Great things.

Huh? A plotter? If I asked an engineering firm to give me plotter size D, they would be like, we can't do that, we have to sub that out. Right, we'll call ABC.

Oh, we know we use it for scanning, that's why I use this one. Yeah. Yeah, I need that one. These firms don't have flatters anymore. I didn't know that. What did we say here? App that shall provide details of courier package third party delivery. Oh, that's what we were talking about. Yeah, that is good. Yeah, OK. This is, that's new.

Oh, there it is. See? Yeah. Oh, we kicked it out. 3436, that's not, is that D? That's not D. I think that's C size. A little shorter than D. Yeah.

It's still big. 36, USB drive. Yeah, you can actually find something. Right.

Yeah, proper plane set.

Could we do something here? Maybe we can.

Yeah, you still want to have every other word.

I feel like we probably should look at these sections at some point.

When you say that. Yeah? We should look at the whole thing. You missed a lot last week.

That's it guys. Okay. The production plan stuff. Oh yeah, oh my god. I'll tell them after we do this about that. yeah all right any any any last thoughts on this guys mark any changes proposed any comments okay um bill for the record there are no members of the public here tonight in town hall and i don't believe there's any can you just double check that there's no members of the public on some call that's marker nope all right um so Any final thoughts? I'll make a motion to close the hearing. Second. All in favor to close the hearing, we'll have to do roll call. So Bill? Yes. Yes. I'm a yes. Yes. And Mark, do you vote yes or no to close the hearing?

Yes.

Thank you. All right. Bill, what's the motion just to approve the changes

As discussed and amended? Yeah, to the Planning Board Rules and Regulations, which incorporates the landscape regulations and the fee schedule.

OK. I'll make a motion to approve the Planning Board Rules and Regulations that includes the landscape regulations and the fee schedule as presented tonight and amended.

Second.

OK. All in favor by roll call? Bill? Yes. I vote yes. Chris? Yes. Mark?

Yes.

All right. That's 4-0 to approve the updated plans bill. Thank you. All right. Public hearings closed. Conducted meeting minutes. We're on to Planner Update.

The biggest news we have is PMOD, we've selected a most advantageous respondent to do the work on that. It should be out tomorrow, so I'll just pass around tomorrow. But Bill and Natalie both were a big help on that. We had a lot of good, some good stuff to go through, but that's going to be really exciting. Let's see what we can do with that. But the big news, with the housing production plan, we all met, what are we, about a week ago, right, Mark? With the consultants, I guess. Right, yep. It's going to be good. Right now, that's underway, the consultants are going to be reaching out to us as a group to Chris separately and then to a lot of stakeholders throughout the community. We had a long talk about the changes that have occurred since our last housing production plan and a lot of the challenges that we're facing now. And I think nothing highlights that more than we just at today, and I'm going to send it out to the housing production people as well, the team there. We just approved the new rental rates for some of the affordable units. And at 80% of AMI, these are just... It's crazy. Very expensive. So I mentioned this to the... Consultants today as well, and we have got to really If we're going to serve the community for this we 80% is not going to cut it And I don't know but you know water challenges aside. There's going to have to be some really creative stuff them The the representative from the affordable housing trust was on there was Donna Dodson and I said that I think we're going to have to really coordinate our groups together if we're going to make a dent in this now. The numbers are staggering, I mean, I think. 80% AMI and now we're, you know, having the Boston-Cambridge metropolitan statistical area as our benchmark is tough. I mean, we knew it before, but I mean, So, it's going to be daunting is what I'm saying, but it's going to be really important. They've got a great plan they've laid out and we're going to have a lot of outreach and stuff, but right now, this initial phase is the needs assessment, which is the demographic snapshot, checking out what's going out there and then so we'll have a meeting after that when we see what we turn up, but that's going to be... I'm kind of glad we're slower on projects right now to do these two things, because they are biggies. And then lastly... Bill, you said that we set the rates.

We, as the town, don't.

You said we got it from... RHSO, yeah. They propose... what happens is the applicant or the developer will propose a rate, that they'll raise their rents annually typically and then they provide the numbers to RHS and make sure everything is consistent with what would be the 80% and with the utilities allowance and that's typically done annually and

So, but it's a lot of money and I think that this is a very important... What's the number? What's it for a two bedroom? What's that? What's 80% for a two bedroom?

I want to say 26. That's not the scary number.

I don't get it.

Tell them the studio number. Studio was like what? be exactly correct, but it was like low twos. I'm going to send it around tomorrow, you've got to see it. Yeah, you see it? It's the studio and the one bedrooms that were just terrible. I told Chris... Here the 60 would be probably above our market rate.

Right, for those, could be, yeah. So anyway, that kind of was something to think about. We've got a good group for that too, don't we Mark? We're some good people on that. We've got some really, we've got... How come we can't get that law changed? What?

The AMI assignment.

That's a state law. I know it's a state law. You can get state laws changed. Yeah, we can advocate for it for sure.

I mean, it's like, it's not affordable if it's $2,600, so why don't you allow us to make that number two instead of 26?

I mean, it's something that's a long term Yeah. A long term goal. But we could, I'm sure we could definitely put it on the agenda for some discussions.

Oh yeah, yeah. Everyone knows the AMI doesn't work.

Here? Here, right. It works in Cambridge. Cambridge, Waltham, I'm sure it works fine. But it doesn't work here.

Well, they have right now... The math is just ugly. I mean, the math, it's federal.

I don't even think it's a state group. We have... Right now... I have to get out of Millisex County.

Oh, yeah, we just annex them, right? Yeah, exactly.

We have a domain. We have on the board on this one, we got a member of the planning board, obviously. We got a member of the housing trust. We've got an active realtor. We've got an economic development and housing planner. And we've got, I'm forgetting somebody.

Who's that guy? Lee. Nice. Who is it? A Maynard person? Yeah.

Just moved here last year. You a Maynard? No. Yeah, very nice. I'm just a realtor. Don't make her do more work. She's a double dipper for me because she's an alternate in the zoning board and she's a realtor. And she's interested, lived here for a long time and wants to... I didn't know her before. the zoning board. So we do have some good people, really good people working on it and I know I forgot somebody, Mark, in that group, but well, they're good too. And that's all I have, guys.

Alright. We've discussed and we would like to see a by-law for drive-ins. Okay, want that on record? A by-law for drive-ins? Bring back like Mel's driving. It can be mixed use if it needs to be, I guess.

They were fun. Apparently it should be a driving range also. Lots of driving going on in these locations. Different driving, yeah. All the types of driving. That's it, Bill?

That's all I got.

My apologies to everyone for being late.

All good, Mark. Thanks for joining. Do I have a motion to adjourn or close or whatever we have to do? Mark wants to do that.

So moved.

Well done.

I'll second.

All in favor to close the meeting, please raise your hand. And Mark, do you We're going to close the meeting. Thanks, everybody. Thanks. Bye, Mark.

Thank you.

Thanks. Shortest meeting in a while.