Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Whenever you are ready to go. Okay, good evening, everyone. Welcome to a special meeting of the O-Line Zoning Commission this evening. It's Wednesday, the 24th of June. We have one item and one item only on the agenda this evening, and that is focused on the zoning regulations rewrite. We have... in our quest to speak with all the boards and commissions of the town regarding this phase two effort. We have the Zoning Board of Appeals here this evening and the Flood and Erosion Control Board. And probably some others too, but our focus in the conversation is going to be, well, I'm going to let Denise go through that. She can work that. For everyone's knowledge, edification, this meeting here is a data collection meeting. The commission will not be taking any votes. The commission will not be making any decisions. It's beginning of our data gathering so that we can take all of the input from all the boards and commissions and noodle them around and decide where we're going to go with them and possibly incorporate them into the new set of regulations. We expect that we'll have good discussion. We'll expect we're going to have some great input from you folks as well. Denise is going to go through the basic format of the meeting in a minute or so. I just want to let you know that we're time constrained. We're here 6.30 to 8.30, 6.32. We'll adjourn at 8.30. Every subject that she is going to go through and speak about and collect data from about, it'll be about 10 minutes. So we're going to try to keep it to that and take it from there. So thank you for being here. Look forward to your input. It's not a public hearing. It's a public meeting. So we're going to be speaking with, I guess, members of the boards and commissions that are here, but folks from the general public will not being able to engage in the conversations this evening. Okay. So with that, and Denise is the vice chair of the commission. Denise has been spearheading a subgroup of the commission to really work these regulations.

Yeah. So just quickly, the subgroup that is to look at the process to make sure we're getting input from everybody. So the first thing we want to do is do some introductions. What I'm going to ask is if you are, as you know, with the focus groups, we sent information out to all the commissions. If you're the liaison with the commission, could you sit in the first one, two, three rows? so that we know who the liaisons are with the commission. And that would be great for us. So if you could just move up so that we can, because we want to have a dialogue with everybody. It's going to be interactive workshop. We're here to listen to you. So if you're the liaison, if you're here just as a commission member or the public, if you could sit in the rows a little bit further back, that would be great. Thank you, because we want to do introductions. So if you, so we do introductions, we're going to start with that. And if you just say, you know, your name, obviously the commission you are, and if you're the liaison from the commission. So we're going to start with our commission. And Michael, why don't you start with who's here from the zoning?

Just your name.

Zoning is sitting up here. So we don't have to say who, just your name. Michael Barnes. Jane Marsh. Paul Orzo. Denise Savageau.

Gary Jones.

And why don't we start on this side?

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

All right. Well, so thank you for being here. I'm just going to quickly go over the process we're using, how we're using the stakeholder focus groups here. And I want to thank Michael Pogliano and Mary Gardner-Capola, who have been working with me on the process. We kind of have a little subcommittee that has put together a few things that we really wanted to cover. Um, we reviewed what the consultant had put together in terms of the process he was going to go through with us. And we added in, he kind of said focus groups, but I can't do that with you, but we thought it was really important to do the focus group. So let me just go over that quickly and then we'll get started because we're really here to listen to, to everybody. Um, We're updating the regs. We finished phase one, which was really just kind of reorganizing and, you know, cleaning up the regs, and we adopted those. Now we're in phase two, and this is really where we're looking at the zoning rewrite. What the, you know, are there changes we need to make that are substantive changes, not, you know, the cleanup that we did before. And this process is, you know, we started it now. It's going to go through March 27th, so we have a time. The first couple of months is going to be what Paul indicated was data gathering. We're going to do that in a couple of different steps, and I'll go over those in one second. But the idea is to do that through... Probably the beginning of October, we'll be getting all of the feedback we have and that our consultant helps us gather. We will be then starting to look at regulation rewrite at that time. And then we'll be spending more time with the commission saying, okay, now we did all this data gathering. Do we like some of the things that are being proposed that the consultant's bringing to us based on what he heard and what we shared with him and what everybody here has shared with them? Or do we need to go back and forth? And that's kind of where some of the stuff is the focus group. So we have a couple of different ways that we're collecting input from everyone. So first of all, I want to say we have a web page. If you haven't seen it yet, we have a web page that's on the zoning rewrite. If you go to the zoning page on the left hand column, there's a column and there's a page that says rewrite. Click there and it gets you to all everything. One of the things we did, and we thought that this was really important because we had a lot of questions like, did you get, people were wanting to make sure the commission got all the information. Well, it's not only important for the commission to get the information, it's important for everybody to get all the information. So every written document we have that, whether it's from your commission or or whether it's from the public, is being posted on that page, and there's a hub document page for every document that comes into us. So those will be posted, and right now it's in two sections. One is the information we get from commissions, and it'll say the commission name and whatever, and then it will be from individuals. If you're sending something that is from the commission. Please make sure that we know that it's from the commission, not just from you publicly, because publicly you as a resident, you also have a right to voice your opinion and it might not be from the commission. Please don't say you're writing for the commission if it's not, if the commission didn't authorize you to send that in on behalf of the commission. So, but that's how we're setting that page up. We have some information up there already. Send that to Craig Bonatti, and everybody should have his email address. If you don't, you can talk to Eric. But if you send it directly to Craig, then he knows how to post it, and he'll be the most efficient. What we're asking is, obviously, staff time, holidays. You never know when someone's out or whatever. Three or four days. Check the website and make sure it's up. Once in a while, something can get lost, an email doesn't go through, or 20 million emails come in in one day, like on Monday morning. So if for some reason it doesn't get up, then you can just say, hey, Craig, did you get this? Just make sure. But give us two or three days, three or four days to get that up. And so we're really pleased with that. We think that will be. And what I'm saying to all the commissions is, you know, if we get information from the Flood and Ocean Control Board, ZBA may want to look at it. Inland Wetlands wants to look at it. Everybody may want to look at what they sent to us, as well as the general public. So these are the recommendations so that everybody can see the recommendations that are coming in to us. So that's the web page. There's an online survey if you haven't taken it yet. So we're trying to get the word out. We're asking for other commissions to help us get the word out. Send it out to your fellow commission members. If you guys have an email list that you deal with, send it out to everyone. Then we're also having community workshops. There will be three. I don't know. How many attended the community workshop that we had on the environmental issues? Okay. A handful of people. So the community workshops are for the general public. We're encouraging commission people to come and participate as a member of the general public and or come to listen to what the public is saying to us. And we hope you'll also get the word out. We did have the one on the environment. We're going to be having one on housing and then we're going to have one on education. Some of the other issues like parking and signage and the commercial districts kind of rolled in, kind of that miscellaneous stuff, because the two big issues are all the environmental stuff and housing is going to be big. So just to let you know that we're going to have those community workshops. The next one's going to be, I think it's the last week in July, on housing. And what we'll do after that is we'll then have a focus group. And this is what we've done this time. We held a workshop. We have some information from the public. We're going to, you know, go over that a little bit with you. And what we're hoping from that is that, you know, like, okay, did the public, tell us everything you think is important in terms of that your commissions are dealing with, or is there something they missed? Or that you can say, yes, we know that's a real issue and we're focusing on that. That's the type of thing we want to hear. And that's why we're holding the focus group workshops after the community, because we want to hear from the community and we want you to hear from the community so that then we can have a collective discussion with the focus groups. We're going to have a focus group meeting, which is a general meeting like this after each one, probably a week or two after. Probably maybe like two weeks so we can make sure the consultant gets us information back. That will not be the only time we talk to you. We're going to go through topics today kind of to get a general feel and a general sense of everything from what we've heard. But the real, but we have some real specific things we need to talk about that will probably be a one-on-one. So, for example, we know, I keep picking on the flood erosion control board. They have some very detailed things that they think need to happen. Obviously, with flooding and in a coastal community, there's some real challenges with the flood regulations that we need to update those. And that was already one that we had targeted, knew it had to happen. We've got that. we're looking to have a one-on-one with you in terms of you presenting to the commission. One of the things we talked about, and we'll set that date up specifically, but possibly at our September meeting. So we'll talk about that a little bit more. But just as an example, if there's something very specific your commission needs to talk to us about, That's fine. And we can bring it to the full commission, like at our commission meeting. The other thing we can do with the focus groups is, I'll just throw this out, is let's say Conservation Commission has something they want to run by us or they're going to be talking about and they want us to hear. But you don't have language presented yet. It could be that we have somebody from our commission come to your commission. We want to make sure communications is back and forth. So it's a two-way street. We don't want to stop any kind of communication. communication. We're trying to want to listen back and forth and get feedback. So that's kind of how we're using what we're calling the focus groups, which really is, for the most part, commission members. It's also town staff. It's also possibly some other NGOs. So, for example, if we're talking about open space, we certainly want to hear from the Open Space Committee, but we'd also like to hear from the land trust, right? Because they do a lot of work on open space. So there may be some other folks who are real stakeholders in what we're talking about that may come in. So for example, we're talking about affordable housing, we'll have the Affordable Housing Commission, but we may also talk to some groups like Habitat for Humanity that does work in our town and see if they have any recommendations for us. So we'll be contacting other folks in terms of focus groups And so then we'll be finalizing all of this over, you know, probably starting in November. We'll be really looking and working back and forth with our consultant. If the consultant sends us a draft regulation, it's like, you know what, we should really run this by Inland Wetlands. We will do that. Whichever commission we should run it by, it's going to be, you know, to get feedback. And again, promoting this feedback back and forth when we see a regulation that we're kind of struggling with or want feedback on. And then we will have a public hearing on it. And the public hearing will start with an information session. So we don't want to confuse everybody and have an information session that people come and speak to or feel like they're going to speak to and then a public hearing. The information session will open the public hearing so that you'll come in here exactly what all the changes are will make the presentation and then we'll have the public hearing because of that. We know that we're going to have the public hearing be at least 2, at least 2 meetings, if not more. but we will have them as long as we need them. That said, the first night will be an overview of what the changes are, so everybody's on the same age, but you don't have to be prepared to comment at that time. We will be having you know, we'll be setting dates for the public hearings and we'll let, you know, folks know that you can, so that you can possibly go back to your commission depending on timeframe and talk to them. Well, here's the exact changes that are out. What do we have on that? But you don't have to be prepared necessarily for that first meeting when we're having the consultant tell, we'll have at least a second hearing. And we're always, again, taking written comments, public hearing, you know, during that public hearing process, written comments. So your commission can sit, consent stuff written. It doesn't have to be at a meeting. You could just go to the meeting and say, here's our written comments just to be on the record at the public hearing, but you don't have to go through everything at the public hearing. And you will be limited time-wise probably depending on how many people we have in the room. So that's kind of where we are in terms of processing. Anybody have any questions or about the process, trying to be back and forth. We're all commissions. We work with you guys. So we're all commissions. We all work together. We all represent the town. And the folks on the zoning recognize that zoning is, you know, one of the key things and that there's a lot of input we want to gather on that. So... I'm running way back with a question. Oh, yeah.

Hi, Judith. Greetings.

Okay, so yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you okay? So because you came in, because you came in late, which commission are you on? Because we're not taking comments from the public tonight.

Okay, so we're not taking remote so people can ask us to watch these hearings.

Yeah, Eric, they are not being broadcast. They are being accessed afterwards, but at the moment they are not being broadcast live.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry, I missed that.

Yeah. So just quickly for folks who came in, this is a public meeting, but it's not a public hearing. So we're really asking the discussion that we're going to be having to be limited to people who are serving on our commissions. And we know we have a liaison from each commission that's here. It doesn't have to be that person who speaks since we only have maybe one or two from each commissions. We're not going to be, you know, we're not going to say you're the liaison, you're not. it's we want to get the input if we had the whole commission if we had you know seven or eight people from each commission we probably have to limit it but since we don't we're we're okay with that so that said we're going to get on to the next part and um my cohorts here, Paul and Eric, are going to try to keep us on time. And the one thing I want to say is make sure that everybody has a copy of this. Was this sent to everybody?

No, it was not, because we sent it to the commission members, but I brought copies tonight for everybody who needed them tonight.

Yeah, why don't we pass those down.

I'm just going to see what we have.

I got it.

Oh, that's different. That's just it's just one of those videos. So maybe that's how it works. Yeah, we're gonna follow up. So Jen just said we have an order of the discussion. You have this? Thanks.

just like when you facilitate a meeting and basically just say you're having a workshop.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Good. Okay. Okay. So, um,

You have the categories that we're going to be talking about. And I'm just going to quickly go over some of the stuff over here. Some of you are aware, this is our website. From the environmental thing, we're going to be looking at resource protection, conservation, resilience, sustainability. Some of the stuff, these are the first words I'll give you. But when we're talking about environmental resource protection and conservation, We're going to be talking about coastal resources, beaches, dunes, flats, marshes, rivers, then river streams and brooks, light lakes, ponds, river pools, wetlands, marshes, groundwater, forests, ridges, habitat, agricultural lands, and other open spaces. We're going to be talking about the zoning that we already have in terms of our changes. So, coastal management, overlaid zone, gateway conservation zone, flood hazard regulations, site design standards, lighting standards, soil and erosion sediment controls, stormwater management requirements, wetland regulations. And then when we're looking at sustainability, that's going to be looking at the, you know, things like, you know, energy conservation and other types of things like that that might fit into our regulations. It's about meeting the needs of the present. How can our regs make sure that we're being sustainable? You know, with what we do, And the same, so talking about that, so mixed-use development, solar, wind energy, electric vehicle charging, low-impact stormwater design, those types of things are all basically looking at sustainability. And then resilience is just obviously resilience from flooding, but also resilience from drought, resilience from all the different impacts we're seeing. How are we resilient as a community to some of the changes we're seeing? and that we can come back and find the things we can do in the zoning process to make sure that our community is more resilient. So that's what we want to be talking about tonight. That's kind of what we had asked the public to talk about, and that's kind of on the sheet we have. So I'm going to sit in the front here just so I can touch base with folks a little bit easier.

So the first one is water resources.

And this is what we've heard so far is that we need to upgrade protections for postal resourcing. We need to upgrade protections for inland water resources, upgrade protections for drinking water resources, reduce increased use of pervious services and low impact development practices. and allow alternative wastewater solutions, including community septic systems. So from a water resources perspective, looking to see if you have any comments on what we've heard or just comments from what your commissions are discussing, what do you see from a water resource perspective that we should be focusing on? That's in our regulations, or maybe not in our regulations, but we'll figure out. If you tell us what the topic is, we'll say, like, we covered or we don't, but we want to start with water resources. We do things like erosion sediment control, stormwater management. Those are all under zoning regulations.

Improvement of Okay, so we're going to talk.

We actually have FEMA added one topic by itself. So we'll just wait on FEMA. The flooding, yeah. So let's focus on more the water quality aspect for any quantity from a drinking water perspective, not from a flooding perspective. Flooding is a whole issue by itself.

No. Enforcement. Enforcement.

Do you want to elaborate a little bit?

Just in conversations popped up through the years, I hear a need for perhaps increased enforcement for people that are breaking regulations that are already closed.

Like setback or what kind of regulation are you talking about?

Because again, we're talking about water resources. I'm trying to understand as the enforcement officer what I need to be better at enforcing on the water resources side. So I'm hearing you, I wanna understand what I can do better.

I'm just trying to think of issues over the years. There's been drainage issues, contamination potentials, those sorts of things.

So we don't have to respond. We're taking the comments in and we'll figure out if it fits for us or not.

Should you come up with additional thoughts on that subject, please feel free to email me with additional comments you have about it, and we will sort of work to incorporate them into what we're doing.

Because some of the water resources stuff falls on us, some of it falls onto other agencies, but if it's in zoning, we can take a look at it ourselves. My guess is we've probably heard some comments on stormwater. You know, people are really usually, when you talk about drainage, they're really worried about stormwater. And are we enforcing and making sure that stormwater management is taken care of and that the erosion segment should close during construction or taken care of?

Denise, can I ask a question? That was along with Ms. Campbell's comment. One thing, I think this might be something you may have been trying to get at. We know that we have some people who release water from maybe their basements or something onto city streets. So that would be what might fall under drainage. I don't know that we have a regulation that covers that sort of thing.

Yeah, that's largely covered by Organism Public Works. There is a regulation that says you cannot discharge onto the streets, but it's not really a zoning regulation per se, okay?

So is that an example of something that maybe should be in our zoning regs?

We didn't talk to, as Francisco goes and our attorney, whether there's a place for that in our regs. It may be beyond the scope of what we can regulate, but it's certainly something to consider in our next generation of regulations.

I have somebody in the back I want to get.

Just wondering about construction-related impacts to water rights and how it's enforced, you know, during the construction process, I realize that it's .

Okay, so inspection, so during construction, inspections during construction.

Right, if it's a long-term construction project, some construction projects go on for years, and still hasn't passed.

Other? Go ahead.

Is coastal site resource part of this? I think one thing that we've noticed at the CVA is that now that we've changed from RC BAML to someone else who's going to connect with DEP reviews, we get very different feedback. And so I think if we want something consistent interpretation of what we'd like to see in terms of coastal site time reviews, we need to be more specific in our own regulations rather than rely on DEP reviews.

Could you say specifically what aspects?

So, like, for example, for me, when I was trying to expand the house in the flood zone while they were raising it, spending all the money to raise it, it wasn't that house bigger. She said that that should not be allowed or that should be discouraged because increasing living space in the flood zone is against Well, it's like, please, please find a different. Statue like I have in our view. I think we helped over this. We are a little more specific about what we think should be the way we interpret.

So is there any? Is there any limit on house size and any of our regulations like?

Well, we certainly have coverage issues, we have other things, setbacks. What I think you can do is in what you're allowing for variances, right now you more or less prohibit use variances. You can say if you are raising the house for flood zone purposes, you should not be able to expand it beyond X percent, even as a variance. So you can tighten up what the ZBA can do due as far as parameters go, written right into the regulations, to make sure that people aren't using the variance process to get more than would be wise in the flood zone.

But that's not the point, though. The point is they would be compliant with the total floor area coverage, but she still thinks that in a flood zone there should not be expanded living space, even if it's allowed by regulation.

I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is if you have X number of square feet now, we can write into our regulations that even by variance, you can only gain X percent more, 10%, we can put it whatever the number is, that you are unable to vary the total square footage of a house by more than a certain percentage, even by variance.

But I think the point is not by variance, but by total size term, it's that even if you were requesting variance, you should not be encouraging the expansion of living space in a flood zone under the coastal site plan review.

Why don't we just take that as a comment and not, you know, because we can't have a dialogue. I understand. So the one question I have before we go off of water is the topic that comes up is drinking water supply. We don't have... very much public water supply. We have a few areas that are served by public, so most people are in wells. As if any of your commissions, any other commissions, are you looking at that? Is there something if you are or if you have any comments to us, I think we'd be interested. We are hearing from folks. We definitely hear it when we're taking applications and it was brought up. So just if any of the commissions have comments on that, we'd love to hear from you. Any thoughts on

you know, drinking water and particularly, you know, groundwater private wells. Any other water related before we get to flooding? We'll get to that by itself.

Anybody have any comments about community septic systems and whether you want them? Anybody? Anybody?

I think I think it's come up in the past that they tried to develop a community child safety system, but it was turned down by the Connecticut DEP or the health department. So I think that's a little bit out of the scope of the zoning commission. It's more in the scope of the health department. And I think even if you wanted to do it, it would have to be approved by the health department or the Connecticut DEP.

But do you want us to consider it?

Oh.

Okay, any other water related? Then we'll go on to open space.

So of course we've heard protection of existing dedicated open space, creation of incentives for dedication of future open space. I don't know if that means dedication of funding or whatever, but dedicate, I'm not really, I guess, was there an explanation there?

The explanation I think is that we, you dedicate open space through new subdivisions or new development. Okay, okay. So you're creating. Set aside. You're setting aside new open space. You're dedicating that as part of some future development.

So looking at that, it's not really used in our town. Then open space zoning. Perfect. or a cluster zone, you kind of think similar where, you know, the difference is cluster can just be, you know, a cluster, but it can be very high density spots. If you use cluster models, that open space zone needs to put so much in open space, and then it's clustered, and then it's clustered more, you know, development, you know, will allow for higher density when you're going really good. So you can use that. And then we have also, we have a 10-volume survey, which is critical. That's what we're looking for. Is there anything specific that we need to address here from a zoning perspective and that supports the open space or anything we should be cognizant of?

Okay, Greg. I'm looking at the open space committee here. Looking at the sections within the existing right of notions for open space, settings have an equal meaning. I think I'm going to start with the definition of open space. There could be two definitions. One is a very broad definition of open space that is not developed on here. This definition talks about parks and playgrounds and so forth. And that leads into the second definition of open space, which is land-conserved, specifically conserved nature. with limited recreational opportunities. So it's a bit of a dichotomy there.

Okay.

So open space that isn't just about public access and parks, but also about preserving, for example, our nature-based solutions or the ecosystem services of open space.

Also looking at this, there's a discussion of what would be perhaps values of open space that would protect floodplains, wetlands, watercourses, sites of historic archaeological or scenic values. One thing that's not mentioned in there is living organisms. This statue that created the Open Space Commission kind of gives equal weight to finding property for passive recreation, but also property for that, that was protected for and for one of those who didn't have property. And there's some references to invasive species OpenSpace, one of the things OpenSpace is interested in doing in the future is for certain properties where it's appropriate to create wildlife features to have a sanctuary for species that might be under pressure from biochimic or whatever. So that's something that we're interested in. And then the last thing I wanted to mention, when you talk about growing the OpenSpace programs in the TLC-based Can you mention other things? The one document that might also provide a reference, which is, as money was solicited from the OCB's Open Space Plan, which is the commissioners required to update or protect any property properties.

Okay. And then just quick, does the plan talk about the regulatory process in terms of its role in protecting or preserving open space in the Open Space Plan?

What do they end up? How would you suggest that interfaces with zoning regulations, the open space plan, how would

How would zoning, I can see how planning would do it with subdivisions and things like that, but.

It provides more information in regards to what you have in the regulations about what would actually be protected as open space.

Should we set some kind of priority?

Some of the content has been taken in the past by the planning commission to open space to EOCB. If you're applying the POCD to help guide you in terms of how the town should view open space policy, this document has it in more detail.

Would you suggest that the regulations set a priority for the land that is identified in the plan?

I think one of the things that we need to do in this process is to get active on solving the regulations.

Yeah, that's what I'm asking about. If that's something that you think we should add a prioritization, if somebody's coming and has to give open space for some reason that we would say, well, the priority open space, if there's any of this stuff on your property that is on the plan, that's what we want. Is that it? Okay.

I would add that surveyed Conservation Commission has talked a lot recently about the importance of surveying the flora and fauna that's on a property. And so that ties into not just parks and open space spots, but also construction, surveying your potential site beforehand to know if there are threatened species of special concern so that

that we would ask the applicant to give us some kind of report on that subject.

Something more than like an inland or tidal wetland delineation?

On a broader question, and maybe this is going to be dealt with elsewhere, should we try and increase density in certain parts of the community so that we can have less density in other parts of the community? Is that something that is It'll be interesting to this group. We did hear from people at the meeting that if we could basically concentrate our development around the circuit nodes, that would leave other parts of town more available for open space. So I don't know how that sort of plays into where your boards and commissions are.

It plays into what the Conservation Commission has talked about as far as surveying to know what's in a given area so that you can either avoid it or use it. So if you have that biodiversity understanding, whether it's a bird pool or an insect or mammal, it's prime habitat for these protection that you can move people away or...

But that wouldn't necessarily go by areas of town then. That goes on the value, ecological value of individual parcels. Because if it was by the town, then the town itself would have to do some kind of survey before we could adopt anything.

You know, if you're doing a new application, looking at whole open space only, and you have a wire course in that application, what level of open space do you want to consider? So maybe just in a broad sense, saying the applicant has a water course, is it a troubled water course, is it a non-troubled water course, what type of open space? You don't have to be specific, but just in general, different types of water, different types of levels of open space to adapt to a water course in that application.

And some of it that doesn't apply to us, if we need to share it with other commissions, we will, but if you can fit it into the zoning, we will do that.

Something.

Yes, it's a bigger problem, Eric was saying, with the town, which there's a consensus in the town to preserve all these spaces, all that. Concentrating development would be a way to help achieve that. And that's something that we should consider. I wanted to add, Eric, that concept is something I do very much favor. But I'm speaking this to myself. I don't have a general view on that.

It's fine. It's an important topic just to get out there and see what people thought about it.

Yeah, I do think that both the Conservation Commission and Open Space Commission, if you could provide any kind of feedback of thinking of, you know, doing like open space zoning or cluster zoning with that open space component, we would love to hear back from your commission. So if you could bring that back to your commissions, that would be great for us to hear. because that's something we've heard from the public. If there's anything else on open space that I'd like to move on, because I think timing, we're- They're almost at 10 minutes. Okay, go ahead.

I think one group to really bring into that is the WPCAs. Yeah, and they've been invited, so we'll follow up.

Thank you.

I broke my own rule.

All right. So we will make sure we contact them. But that's the simple question. Just to let you know, like all town agencies work, you know, everybody. Push that out.

Yeah.

Yeah. Before we get off on the stage. But I mean,

You can say, okay, it's going to be denser over here.

This is a concept. So just hopefully there are things we can do. Because solar is a one facility, it has to go to the siting council.

So that's a little bit of a challenge, but we can take a look at our regs and see are there things that we can do, but we don't regulate. Utilities per se, there's other types of things we could possibly regulate, but solar farms in particular are regulated as a utility, and that's our challenge. Yeah.

On the back page that we handed out, it does talk about creating centers for solar installations over parking areas. So maybe if you have people put solar where the parking lots are, that that might be a way to move them away from other areas that are not otherwise developed. So if there's an opportunity for big white parking lots, for instance, to get some solar panels there, that's not disturbing new open space to do, but it still generates some level of power. So there may be opportunities to do that sort of thing.

So yeah, so we could make sure that we're providing solar where it should be, like That said, we can't regulate it on, because what you're talking about is large-scale solar versus individual solar, so we can, and what people do on private property, we can incentivize it, but we can't stop large, the large solar farms are considered large-scale utility, and that's why they're regulated as a utility. That's our challenge, is individually, you're not a utility, so individually, property owners do on their property, very different. So we can make sure we incentivize it in the right place. That said, it doesn't necessarily stop in large scale until it's coming in. It will be, it's hard for us to do that. I just want to make sure everybody understands that challenge.

Well, I just also want to point out that the preamble of the current regs talk about encouraging the use of solar. So then potentially a place to address it would maybe if you don't want to encourage it.

Well, maybe encouraging you in the right places. We're adding language to that. I guess with the mercy of the state.

Yeah.

In that regard, one of the issues, a lot of times, is the loss of road productive farm management soil, but also the loss of the road forest, which is a really effective way to encourage circuits. sequestering sub-targeting that's taken down. They gain one benefit by losing another benefit.

So we'll look at all of that.

Just to let folks know, generally, with some work loops that happen outside of our work, just statewide, the number one issue that was identified from an environmental issue was conversion of farmland, and open space to development. And it's a real problem. So it's a problem in, I mean, we're a community that has a lot of open space. Everybody's doing a great job, Open Space Commission and Land Trust, but we need to be diligent. So that's where, that's what we can do with the rigs, just less, you know, that's one of the things we're really looking for within the zoning regulations. There's other stuff the town can't do, but within the zoning regulations, I appreciate you really taking a hard look at some of that stuff.

Can you focus on large scale? Solar farms versus the size parameter?

Yeah, so large scale, there's two different, let me just clarify that. Large scale solar, if someone's, so let's just say a farm was doing some large scale solar for themselves, but they weren't selling it, they weren't doing it as part of a public utility, they were going to use all their on-farm, you know, energy. so that they're not a utility, they wouldn't be regulated. And we actually work with farmers on that, and most of them end up putting it on their roofs and that type of thing when we're doing large-scale solar. But when you talk about large-scale solar that is being done as part of the electric grid that is regulated by the Siting Council, and we don't have a lot to say with our zoning regs, I encourage folks to make sure you keep talking to the state, your state reps and whatever, because that's where that one falls on them.

There's no space for towns to have any.

Not much. It's like a cell phone tower. This is the same equivalent.

Yeah. You have no choice.

We don't have a lot of jurisdiction over that.

Time to summarize this up.

Yeah. So, okay.

So we're going to go off of open space. We know we've got great people here to talk to us. The door is open. So this is a big issue in a lot of towns. It doesn't surprise me. But people were talking about landscaping and native species concerns. And of course, if you wouldn't want them in trees. And there was a general desire to better regulate the flora mixture used in old lime. And the concerns included native species requirements in our planting plans, prohibition of invasive species in landscaping projects, regulation of tree removal and trimming, better protection of existing trees through, you know, during trenching and construction activities, providing lists of appropriate native and suitable species for screening and buffering, creating a policy addressing use of land cap lawn chemicals, better regulation of clear cutting, and more regulation of aquatic invasive species. So that's a mouthful when it comes to plant materials, but Are any of the other commissions working on this? Do you have comments on this list? Take a minute or so to think about it. But it really is about some things that we usually do is, you know, we'll require screenings. We'll require a planting plan. As part of the erosion and sediment control plan, they have to have a site stabilization plan. They may have to have, you know, any other, you know, things that we put into a zoning or, you know, a zoning permit that has to do with, you know, either the planting of trees or trimming of trees or removal of trees. So those are the types of things we're commenting on, as well as, you know, other species, you know, other, not just trees, but other species as well. You know, so go ahead.

Another thing that I'm showing you might look at, I don't know if you might be well aware of this, but it's just, congratulations, it's for the rest of the impoverished that helped.

Okay, so looking at riparian, you know, look at what we can do for riparian buffers. And I think there's some model stuff that some of the causes put out. So if you're familiar with anything you like, let us know, because there's some definitely some good work out there. But I'm sure our consultant is on top of that as well.

Related to that, I think we've seen from the CBA that people are putting a riparian buffer but they don't put enough effort into making it really established. Whether planted and then a year or two later, the plant shoots. Maybe some, they don't know what's planted, but what they need to do to maintain those has happened.

And it always is a little bit of a challenge because vegetation changes. It doesn't stay, it doesn't run around, but I mean, it's not what we put in. It's not what you end up with. So it's always us. interesting challenge.

So how do we write your grades to do that?

So does the public pretty much cover everything we should cover? Is there anything missing from that list? Let me just go through the native species, prohibition of invasive species in landscaping, regulation of tree removal and trimming.

I guess clarification on the removal of trees and trimming, is that going to be for new applications or for existing properties?

So underzoning, it would have to be for new applications. We regulate cutting, as it says in here, for clear cutting if we're creating an erosion issue. As a general rule, we don't regulate individual trees. Yep. Where there's an exception to that is, for instance, as everyone's aware, the big Y site there where there isn't a landscaping plan. There's an ongoing obligation to meet the landscaping plan. So potentially one of the things we could look at is, honestly, the Y landscaping plan is out on the shelf for 30 years and no one looked at it. Some sort of obligation for the appellee to give us periodic five-year, whatever it is, updates as to how they're maintaining the landscaping plan so that we know that it is being followed into the future. Most likely if they get a building permit, something like in that process.

Yeah.

So trees, in terms of just regulated individual trees, and a lot of communities do this, particularly in our southern states that have a lot of regulations on trees, and that's usually through a tree ordinance. It's not usually through zoning, just to let folks know. So regulating trees is usually something People have the tree warden do, and they do it through a separate ordinance. Like you do other things through separate ordinances. So that wouldn't be through zoning. We'd be looking at. Yeah, usually it's a tree commission, and usually it's what they call the tree warden. We have a tree warden.

Yeah, and a tree commissioner.

Yes, we do. But you have to have an ordinance for them to regulate. They can't just regulate. I think there's like only... two towns or something like that in Connecticut to have an ordinance regulating trees at that extent. The tree warden does have jurisdiction over trees on municipal land, but that's very different than regulating private trees. So the removal of trees on town lands, the tree warden can weigh in on.

Anything else vegetation-wise we'll move on, right?

I'm not sure if this would be a so-and-so. In terms of trees being put into one-row sites as part of human developments, my neighbor, for example, has poplar trees that are about 20 years old. And whenever we get a storm, the street is just filled with branches. That we're on a main road, that would Absolutely, it has a pervasive effect. Not to mention the job for poplar forks to keep from stone grits, pretty overwhelming too. So they're not, it may not be the basis species, but it may be an integral distinction for municipal paintings.

Okay, we'll take a look at that. Unless you're doing phytoremediation, of course, right? They just did a big study on poplar, and it can remediate, not just take up, but actually remediate T5s, right? Okay. It's like, who knows what's going to happen with poplars now, right? Anything else on vegetation that we missed or whatever? And again, topics aren't ending here. So the other thing we heard was providing options for non-vehicular transit. This kind of falls under the sustainability of requiring bicycle parking in new developments. and require sidewalk installation or create a feet in lieu of process for areas where sidewalks are not appropriate to fund sidewalks someplace else. So that's what we heard from the public. Anything else?

Yeah, there's more on the back page.

Yeah. I'm just saying on the transit, is there anything that we missed on? These are comments we heard from the public on transit and this is some of the stuff we can report.

There's C&D.

C&D on the back. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you meant the whole of it. Concentrate development in village areas so that we have more villages that are walkable and increase walkability by requiring or allowing development patterns that reduce vehicle dependence.

Thank you. So does anybody have thoughts on that?

I think the Lee and Fee and Lou program would be a really benefit to the community for the sidewalks.

That's a wonderful point.

take those hard look at with, you know, like these are the, what we heard from the public.

So are the group present really interested in concentrating more development in the village area? I mean, that's the question. You don't have to say yes to that, but are you really interested in the area of the village of Lime, Old Lime, having more dense development?

It could also be along Shore Road or other possible places to concentrate development. But whether it's here or Laysville or wherever, the thought is we can rezone certain portions of town to encourage more dense development in those locations.

In trade for rezoning other areas or less. I'm interested to hear whether the people present really favor, you know, take a look around. Are you favoring denser development in the area where we're sitting right now? Neither. Neither.

I feel like it's a fundamental aspect of Andrew's plan.

Well, what is the idea?

To concentrate development where we have support services for it. and allow areas that are not, you know, to have areas that are not burdened by a denture development to be a more natural environment.

So we really don't have services in this area. Everybody's got a well, everybody's got private water, private septic systems. Where we have services is in the beach area.

Yeah. The school walkability, shopping walkability, their services is maybe not the right.

So I think that's it. And that discussion on the concentrate development and village area will probably come up more in housing, but it certainly plays into the idea of walkability and whatever. So if your commissions take that up, or look at it a little bit more, let us know. Okay.

I think the Gateway Commission should have a big role in that because that's an important part of the Gateway Commission.

Okay, so we'll make sure that we, and they're on our list of things to be working with, river fog and some of those other, if you will, issues.

Just a quick comment. Let me do a change. I had no idea about this thing, right? Regulations, but another half that we're sharing. All the safety for me. They do this survey class summer for all the residents in fact. Three main safety concerns people have were speeding drivers, but also pedestrian and bicycle use. And that particularly related to the types of students we've got. We found many narrow streets. Very good in a way of shoulders, so OK.

We'll look at that and see, you know, if there's something that fits into our ratings. Like you said, sometimes it's more a planning concept rather than a zoning rate, but we'll take a look at that.

Anything else under the transit?

Okay, so FEMA flood zones, and of course this gets to the water, you know, part of the water issue, but very specifically So this is what we've heard so far. Updating strength in the flood hazard regulations to improve resiliency in the community rating system. Explore coastal retreat as a policy. Conduct a comprehensive flood management review as part of the broader resiliency study. Somebody knows we're doing a resiliency study. And then conduct stormwater infrastructure improvements to floodplain mitigation and planning for sea levels. So let's hear from the flood control board.

This is the first major board who's asked to provide a comment. We took a slightly different approach. We didn't want to come and reiterate what we've already provided in the recommendations. Just put it on. We've provided 60 plus pages of recommendations. But what I would like to do is give you some background on on the context that we made these decisions. We recognize you're making a very difficult set of decisions. We took a very deep dive on something. We look at the 20 areas. We want to hear about something that we've discussed month after month, year after year. So I do have, there was a direction on how this is going to be. I did put together some prepared comments. I'm a professor, so I can talk for hours. like to stay tuned.

So this is what I'm going to ask because we have 10 minutes for this topic for everybody to talk, not just you. We are going to have you come and make a presentation. I think you had asked for 20 minutes. So we have you scheduled to come to the full commission in September. So We'd love to hear what you have to say so that everybody can hear it. So maybe if you can give us abbreviated comments, but we want to make sure that we can, just like you have, you could have commented all open space. We want to make sure everybody- I understand.

I would talk for about five minutes, but- Yeah, go ahead. Five minutes is fine. I would like to hear what you have to say.

I need to.

Okay. And like I said, the point here is to give you the context, because I think that that context helps you to be able to process those 64 pages.

I, as you know, didn't go to London.

representing for the Flood Mission Control Board. It could have been any of us, really. I personally, for my part, I follow a disaster management consultant program. I've been for 25 years advising governments on flood risk. I've also written 25 books on the topic, and there are, you said, 300 universities. That said, it could have been any of us. Harry is an engineer, and John is a realtor. We also have, we have experts in chemistry, and psychology, these are all things that are important to flood risk.

And we use that in taking your charge and translating that to what this town needs.

So we see a rerate as a once in a lifetime opportunity, once in our lifetime, once in generation perhaps, because this doesn't happen often. We want to support you in modernizing towns, we see this as an approach to help us stop the flood risk and hopefully because without it, that's not going to happen. Floods are a defining hazard. It's our number one hazard. If you look at our new and our old hazard mitigation, it outright says it is the defining hazard for the town. It's our highest priority. If you take a day like today, it's hard to recognize that it's that big of an issue. And we tend to see flood risk as something that happens associated with hurricanes or with the torrential floods. But in Lyme, peak flood risk is very complex. And that's why this recommendations we provided is similar but we need smarter development regulations because of that complexity. Our board has heard from residents that king tides are happening more often. Drainage systems are inadequate, basements are flooding, rising water tables, Roads and yards, flood drains, clear sky, events. This isn't what you typically think of in flooded places, but that's what the town is facing. We know this is the result of two things. It's how we develop and how the climate is changing. I can't stop the climate before it can change how we develop. It's how we live with water instead. It's worth noting that there are 570 FEMA-backed flood insurance policies in effect. At least, these are just FEMA policies. There's an unknown number. number of private policies. Let me have them in front of the public. FEMA policies alone protect $150 million in time frame, and the private property does that. Although there's no right to know total losses from floods or residents in Oman, because uninsured losses aren't tracked, we do know that there's been 380 FEMA flood policy claims, totaling 8.2 million in losses. So that's Let's do the question.

Yeah, just a quick time frame.

Go ahead. On the time frame.

On the 8 million. Was that over 20 years? Was it in the last five years?

That's in what FEMA has. I think that's in 79. So, sorry. So, yeah. So there are six repended loss properties in this town. These two of which are severe repended loss. I don't know what that is. Repended loss is twice severe. It is at least four times. And the total damage is more than the value of the house. Because of data, it's only on properties with blood insurance. And less than 15% of old-line properties have blood insurance, which is probably a lot more. People in old-line aren't oblivious to their risk. 75% of people said they're concerned about flooding. 75% of people in the town surveyed said, you should discourage development of flood hazard. 82% said they wanted stricter rules for development of wind wire. And 72% said updating zoning for resilience was a high priority. Flood board, like I said, we took your call to action seriously. And this rewrite effort has been part of every one of our agenda meetings for over a year. We identified, 30 potential, more than 30 potential reruns. And we narrowed this down to the eight that we gave you. What we looked for was the greatest benefit to the lowest cost. We understand that any regulation affects development, and we don't want to do anything that's going to limit that. So those eight recommended regulations that we gave you, that was our priority list. That's not our exhaustive list. We've always been aware of the impact that zoning restrictions have, and I want to make clear that nothing that we recommended. I want to read this without clarity. None of these changes affects existing homeowners, given the present status of their homes, including those that would be out of compliance, should you adopt any direct relations. Same for the downed properties. We made a significant effort to avoid any hardships being presented, any unfunded mandates.

And like I said, it's the same including town hall, which is in the

All recommendations apply only to new construction to significant improvements that equal more than 50% of the value of the property or to recovery following a flood that that recovery represents more than 50%. That's it. I should also mention that most, if not all, these changes are coming anyways. In time, because most of what we're proposing matches what the state is or will soon be adopted through ASCP 24-24. It's a standard by the American Society of Civil Engineers and by the Association of State Flood Land Managers. It also matches what UCONN's SORCA, their Climate Change and Adaptation Resilience Center, and FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program already have. So O-line is being an activist in proposing and accepting any of these regulations. It's just been current. Taking these actions avoids a lot of what the updating efforts in phase one looked at because these things are coming. They're coming to town in New York too. We're just getting, we're suggesting we get ahead of it. One last thing I want to offer is the value proposition. That's always the hard part of this is, you know, is this all a negative?

Are we imposing partnerships? You mentioned the community rating service on there. There's an immediate financial benefit to taking these regulations.

Even if we never have a flood in our lifetime, by adopting what we recommend, there's an immediate financial benefit. Flood board is working hard to get the town admitted into FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System, CRS. Under CRS, every resident This is where they live, in the floodplain, out of the floodplain. They're rewarded with discounts on the flood insurance premium for every actual amount that the zoning commission takes to strengthen our flood regulations. It works like this. We're giving credit on a point basis for every 500 points that we get, everybody with a flood policy gets a 5% discount. So we get a thousand points, everybody gets a 10% discount. We can earn up to 45% discounts for the line We have, like I said, 570 plus policies. O'Lanley residents pay $800,000 a year, but it's free. 10% discount, that's $80,000. 15% is $120,000. So it's an immediate discount. And it's year after year. 10 years is 1.2 million dollars. So our goal is to make this job for you as easy as possible. That's why we provided you the language that you can use, or the action. This is all based upon what PEA recommends, what EconCirca recommends, and what the American Society of Civil Engineers recommends. Going in by stressing the town's flood risk isn't going away. If we don't limit development in these flood-exposed areas, it's just going to keep growing. Most of us have already seen evidence of sea level rise. I mean, we've only been here for five years, and I love the word I hear, but they don't hear it in our town. People see things that we didn't see. You hear a lot of 20 years ago, it was never like this. It happens all the time. It's happening. That's going to keep happening. It's also been 36 repetitive flood loss homes. What a lot of people don't know is if we hit 50, then we lose some of our status in the National Flood Insurance Program. continue to build houses in places that flood, those houses become internally flooded properties, and we get stuck at 50, and all of our flood insurance policies go off. We might get kicked out. Without access to flood insurance, people in the floodplain can't sell their houses. We cannot create a federally backed village without a flood policy. We need a flood policy in the National Flood Insurance Program. So I'll stop here. We're ready to answer your questions. If you continue to support, we'll be there in that message at the beginning. We recognize that that's not the way. We did provide all that language. We don't expect you to pay for everything. We just hope that you're able to look through it, ask us any questions, and we'll support the situation.

So we're not asking questions today because we're listening, want to listen. So we want to just get all the information in. And that was one of the things we were talking about. That's why if there's a board that needs to come to us very specifically, like you do that up and it will be going back and forth. Once we, you know, we're going to invite our consultant to that meeting. So that feels here. we'll be able to ask all the questions about the very specifics of the regulations at that time. But I think it would be really good for us to make sure we open it up to everyone.

I have a question, actually, regarding the content you just presented. The credits that you're talking about, is it specific to residential properties, or is it taking into consideration water-dependent use properties?

It's National Flood Insurance Program policy, so anything that falls under a National Flood Insurance Program It could be a right-of-roam for something like a private insurer. It could be a direct right, but the community rating system discounts are specific to national federal choose vote or any policy. You can see private insurers like Trident, otherwise London, doesn't affect those. Again, there's 570.

Yeah, no, I just put that at 570. I didn't know if those were all residential properties or didn't decipher between residential versus, say, the water-dependent use properties.

The data that we amassed doesn't. I think that Eric probably has some information on what town properties have.

It wasn't so much town properties as I was talking about, like the marinas, for instance, and all of the waterfront zones.

I can't answer that.

Okay, thanks. And you don't have information about which 36 houses they are?

So the FEMA's rules are you have to be a town employee to be able to see what those properties are, what violations are, and things like that. So we can only get to anybody who has a question.

I imagine Dave Roberge has that information.

Yes. Would that information be helpful for you guys, I would imagine?

It would be. We can't get private homes out of violation. There are repetitive flood properties. There's two issues. One is Passes that are in violation of the National Flood Insurance Program. Those can be corrected by repetitive flooding. Once you are a repetitive loss or a significant repetitive loss property, until you take significant action to, for instance, lift yourself vertically out of the floodplain to horizontally move yourself out of the floodless period, it's going to be listed as a death of need. But most importantly, we don't want to be building new houses that are most of what we're doing. So let's say, for instance, somebody, most of the regulations that we provided have to do with significant improvements or disaster improvements that are so major that they equal greater than 15% of the specified amounts. So if somebody is going to be making that much improvement on their house and they cross that threshold, now they've meet the requirements under floodplain regulations, use something like a wind house. Or to put pretty good walls in there in the first floor if it happens to be not compliant with those regulations. It's not going to change anything that anybody has a property in the floodplain.

So we do have people that come before us that are doing that. I think they're looking to reduce their flood insurance premiums and stuff like that. But we have some difficulty because of height restrictions and whose view they will be blocking by raising their house. Also, this bulking up concept that you heard earlier that more houses actually built because they're raising it up and then they add stuff underneath.

The sacrifice of the and decisions that we have to make as a town on what our values are in terms of, do we want to make sure that people can maintain their views exactly as they are, or do we want to be more resilient by saying, you know, we're going to be a very insistent, allow people to get their house out of the floodplain and be more resilient. At the expense, perhaps, of being able to do it. That's what we're going to do.

Why don't you go ahead and say, if you have something to say, or, you know, So there's a look back at five years, and you're recommending 10. No, it's a couple of things.

If you, for instance, if you add a regulation about storage on your property, and you cross that threshold for doing renovations, now this

associated regulation it's not just so yeah so one of the things i really would encourage the recommendations that the flood motion control board has provided to us are online they are they put their document online so everyone can take a look at them i guess one of the things i would be looking at is if there's anyone else They're doing a fantastic job, but just that we hear, is there any other boards that are looking at this? So for example, should we embrace retreat? Is that open space we shouldn't protect it? So there's, because if you embrace retreat, so I'll just give you an example of a program that West Haven is doing. West Haven got into a program with USDA where, And this is a program that's available after a storm event, which is unfortunate. We'd love to change that. But it's a program where after a storm event, USDA can buy the house at free storm event rates. So whatever your house was valued on the day before the storm, they pay you for the storm, and then they turn that. And then when they take the house down and turn it into open space. So that's where I'm looking. So I just want folks to understand that there's implications when we do regulations and we talk about things like what people had recommended was looking at coastal retreat, looking at this implications for other folks looking at this. It's not just about the flood erosion control board was really important about what they're looking at, but there's also other implications here. I want to make sure people are aware of that.

I guess I'm trying to clarify, is the Zoning Commission really considering adapting a retreat clause into the Zoning Commission regulation?

At this point, it's been recommended to us. We haven't discussed whether we should or shouldn't do that. That's what we will do once we give it all the information it goes and it comes back to us. Or if he says, this is what you could do, and we say yes or no, but that's why we're trying to get feedback. We haven't, we're not discussing stuff yet.

We're 20 minutes on us.

Yeah.

We're a little short on some of the other ones, so we're fine. So just, does anybody else have any comments?

So just for the commission and check your schedules, make sure that works. Because the other thing we talked about from a scheduling thing is if you can't make that meeting, we would possibly have to schedule a special meeting just because we really want to go into those. We're hoping that our consultant will be at the, you know, the plan is to have the zoning. So we just want to make sure everybody's schedules meet, but that's what we're, that's what we discussed earlier and that's what we've lost to do. So, because we really need to go into details and have you do the presentation of like, okay, based on what you talked about, now you've done this, this, this, this, this.

And I do think that's why I think I really wanted to focus on the context of our thought process today, because especially those regulations are online and the public can't see them. But I think this part of it is missing. This part of it is lost in the technicalities.

Well, you can submit that, write that up and submit it to be posted as well. Okay.

Yeah. We'd love to do that. We have the Plunder Ocean Patrol has a new website that we're working on. But we're going to cross check what we're doing with your commission. Just to say these are these are why I just want to go back down the line. But we recognize that the technical aspects, how this coincides with other decisions.

One thing, if I may comment, is I think it would be an advantage to the property owners in addition to your forward. to reach out to specific beach communities, associations, presidents, like Mr. Whalen here from Old Colony Beach. People in those positions, they have access to their 400, 300, 500 houses in their subdivisions or in their beach communities where people aren't, in my experience, people aren't going to the town website on a regular basis to get information, right? Your average person in their daily life isn't thinking about flood rules, zoning, planning, any of that stuff. They're not like, oh, I should go to the town website and see if the zoning rules are changing. No one's doing it. And I think we put too much reliance, resilience, pressure on thinking that people just go to the talent website for fun to get information. And that is just not a fact. Like, no one I know, where are you hearing this information? Where do I find out about it on the talent website? Who goes to the talent website? So I think by you guys reaching out to individual beach associations and keeping them up to date, you're going to get a lot more context in your discussions.

But I understand they're not changing the break.

No, no, I understand that, but they're a mechanism that is going to provide information to people who might come in and comment during our public hearings.

The. Series has six or seven different areas of support. One of those is improving zoning regulations. There's also, you know, public education and there's specific.

I just want to get some of the recommendations. We're working on that.

Oh, and the recommendations, they're very specific to what people recommend.

And probably if you're in the state, you're exceeding people.

There's many, many more that we could. address, but some of them just aren't relevant and some of them are just bridge too far for a community that has value. It's what I'm talking about. You don't want to hinge on anybody's ability to enjoy what it sounds.

We're a unique municipality in the fact that we have six or seven title rigors that crisscross our town. So it affects everybody.

I think it's probably time to move to the next subject. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So just quickly, I mean, we do have plenty of time. So other issues that were not captured. We talked about solar installations already, but one of the things that I'm guilty of bringing this up with some other folks, and I thought we were going to have something from the district. Is somebody going to make the director's permission? But they said they might come here. Provide better protection for cultural resources. So obviously the Historic District Commission has its role within the historic district, but it's all the cultural resources that we see. And a lot of times it is tied to open space, things like stone walls, archeological sites, those types of things. And we don't really address those in our way. Has that come up in any of the commission work? Is anybody looking at that in terms of the work that we do? Go ahead.

The two different properties of open space is thinking about serving the land through the five meters and so forth, considering that there's demonstrated occupation by indigenous people thousands of years back. I mean, we had state archaeologists come in and do testing for each other.

so and that's one of the things where we would be working at like when would it be appropriate without a zoning application and how do we do that so we'll be looking at that um here's a good one for you a comment was made so if it data centers it's going to happen but does that fall under the infrastructure uh utilities they are not considered a utility yet That said, I'm waiting for that.

That's got to compensate enough.

Yeah. We're probably fairly safe because we have a square foot limit on commercial development that is very small relative to what they're looking for.

The other advantage is we don't have huge sources of fresh water to provide to the data center. So that seems to be a big issue at the moment. They are water hogs, and we don't have a lot of spare water to devote to that sort of thing.

I suspect there will be many data centers, however.

Yeah, we'll see. One of the things you may want to consider if you are going to address what you're telling me is you should address it in a self-sustaining way. Self-sustaining. That's what's going to happen.

And that's where everybody's going with that. Is that they have to be self-sustaining. Yeah. So, not that we're going to allow that, but if they're here, they have to be self-sustaining is an important part.

Yeah, I like that.

That's a good... And then, especially, like you said, if they're not the large scale, but they come in with a smaller scale. But the other issue that has come up with that, just to let folks know, because we're in the Connecticut River Water Church, is there's a group that's involved with the entire watershed. It's called the Connecticut River Watershed Partnership. And they're looking at collectively how many data centers are being proposed to a watershed. The one thing, you know, so I don't know if we, you know, how that fits into our zoning, but just a tidbit of information because it's huge in terms of then, you know, what's happening within the watershed itself.

They potentially use fresh water.

Yeah, all of it. Yeah, there's potential there. And we're the downstream, so that's why I just brought it up just as a point.

They might not like ours, though, because it's kind of salty.

Well, actually, are they prohibited from using salt water? Because isn't that why they wanted to put it over on the millstone? Because it is salt water?

Salt water, I mean, I'm not saying they have to do salt water desalinization and then I don't even want to talk about the power requirement for desalinization.

What they're doing now is it's all nuclear now. Yeah, that's true.

But they would have to do all of that.

So that was the last one that was brought up, and then I'm going to open it up for pockets. Places are welcome. that fall under environmental or cultural resources. But the last one was implement stronger dark sky protection.

I really kind of agree with that. Okay, is there anything else that we haven't touched on?

Touched on what we thought, you know, what the campus, well, we put, we lumped all the stuff we've heard from people into those, botanic lorries. And then, you know, if other stuff comes up, like what other stuff do we need to be talking about that's from an environmental perspective?

Does gateway count?

Yeah.

Shoreline gateway or gateway?

Gateway. One of the things that's been interesting is They section in the overlay for whatever section it is for Canaveral Gateway. Then all the other sections start with a purpose and intent. And that one just starts with definitions and goes into regulations. I think because the variances have to say whether they're aligned with the technicals of building regulations. If there was added a section that said, what was the purpose? Oh, okay. That would be very, very helpful. Because it's come up in our meetings. as you know.

Gateway probably had its purpose statement in the state legislation which created it. It's probably there.

We just hate drag days now.

We put them in, but we didn't put the... And you need that.

Yes. That's important for us now when we're doing anything, because we should make sure that we put everything else as a preamble.

Yeah, because most everything else... The two main factors are, is there a hardship or a little alternative hardship? And is it in line with the 10 process on regulations? So if there's no clarity on what the 10 process on regulations is, then people can argue and we want to be more financed.

I would just mention that Anne and I are both members of the Nickelodeon Gateway Commission. And Suzanne Thompson was going to be here tonight, but she had a conflict. Deeper I did see you see what Sony Commission, the CDA had their document.

Yeah, gateway will look at that and will comment. Thank you. Great. So is there anything else that we missed?

Commission members, is there anything that is environmental that you would like to hear from folks that we met or that we noticed that we brought up about public meeting?

We talked about the town developing a comprehensive plan of the existing drainage facilities in town. There is nothing for us to look at when we're trying to decide about stuff. So nobody's really thinking about where are the catch basins, where do those pipes go, and things like that. So I think that would be a good idea, and I don't know whether you guys would agree, because... It's the information. We don't know where it's going. There might be a catch patient somewhere, but we have no idea. And if it's going down Swanbrook, we know what happens at the end of that. Nothing.

There is a storm training map that Tom has that we are going to submit to the public works and they're supposed to be working on updating the map because it's probably 15 or more years old.

Does it have private property stuff on it too?

I know they're going around with GPS, and the town tracks are going around with a little more specific stormwater, right? They tag it, and it's building a data layer that can then be added to the town. That's happening right now? Okay. It's under development, and it's being modernized. If you're talking about stormwater catchment basins that are on private property, you don't have to.

Yeah, because I mean, that's what we see. We pretty much only see development on private property and there are drainage issues. And sometimes there's drainage basins and all kinds of drainage things proposed. But there's also a drainage system in town. We know there is. And sometimes they're talking about it's sort of like connecting to road system. You know, the town really can't do anything about its roads if they're terrible. They still can connect to them. And so the drainage is treated sort of in the same way, but we don't know anything about its efficacy except when we've been reviewing the beach areas just lately and looking at Miami Beach's problems with Swan Brook and its outlet and Hawks Nest too. It to me, it occurs to me that it's probably true throughout town that the water is put into the system, but it doesn't necessarily have a place to finally go.

But, you know, sometimes abuse tort law and other mechanisms to prevent people from creating another property that then transfers their drainage to a neighboring property as using water as a nuisance. I think we can look into another example that towns have used other regulations to prevent that because tort law generally is something that's in private.

What's the word you're saying? Toilet.

Oh, I thought you said toilet water.

He's saying that we can use tort law as a tool for people who are dumping water on adjacent properties. Yeah.

I don't know how that works out. Well, yeah, but tort law, it allows for you to have the right to drain, but how you do that drain in terms of concentration versus sheet flow, that type of thing. But you do, if the property normally goes that way, you have the right to drain. Now, if you're changing it, that's a different, if you're changing the direction of the drainage, that gets into a whole different thing.

General rule, it's a question of quantity, velocity, and whether it's happening at a denser period of time versus a slower period of time. So other towns, one was in Clinton, they definitely did regulate for increase in quantity and velocity leaving your site. And you needed to make sure when you gave a proposal that you were demonstrating you were not leasing either one of those two items.

When the flood war first got reconstituted, because there was a period where Initially, a lot of the first complaints that we were hearing were about driving.

Big issue.

About what? Yeah.

It's a real issue. So we asked if there was any other issues that needed to come up. Is there anything else commission-wise? Because otherwise we'll just kind of start wrapping up. So just let, you know, I think with flood and erosion control, we know we're going to try to meet with you, set that date. And if it doesn't work for everybody, we'll find a date. But we will, we need to, because it's very specific language. That's not just saying, hey, here's a concept, put it into language you've given us, and we need to go back, you know, have details we need to have. Basically, we need to let our consultant know, yes, go forward and put these in or not. And that means we need to give and take back and forth. So we'll have that. And, you know, so we'll have that presentation. Other commissions, if you have something like that based on the discussion we've had today, this doesn't have to be the end of the discussion. And as I said earlier, we can, you know, there could be a couple of commission members who go to you to find out more information if you want to do that. We have a lot of other stuff that's going to be happening, so we can't always put everybody on our agenda. But certainly, if you have language or something very specific, we can do that. But we want to just make sure the dialogue goes back and forth. And this won't be the last. And depending on what we need, we will definitely be having this. The focus groups come together. We had kind of outlined a little bit in a document you probably received that said, well, we think these commissions fit into this focus group and these commissions fit into this focus group. That was just general that these are the people we know should be in the room. But you may say, oh, we need to be in that room too. So our next work is going to be on housing. And a lot of the work we're going to be doing on housing is going to be talking about how to change the regulations. It could be about open space zoning. It could be about using other types. So once we hear from the public, but that's the point is, obviously, when we're talking about housing, we are going to talk about housing. you know, the floodplain regulations and how that impacts housing. So just some of those ideas. So, you know, we said that'll be our next. And I don't think we can emphasize enough that we want it to be a give and take. And we may be reaching out to your commissions as, hey, you know, our consultant got back to us with a draft regulation. We're going to be taking a look at it. Do you guys, what do you guys think of this? It's in your ballywick. So, and, or we'll invite you to the meeting where we're going to be discussing it to be part of the discussion. So those are where we're going to be heading next. And I think the, as I said, oh, so a couple of things I just wanted to mention, because this has come up when we talk to people about it, and it's going to come up definitely during housing. There's multiple things happening at the same time. We're updating our zoning plan. regulations. But obviously, Public Act 25-1 changed the zoning regulations statewide and what we have to do. So we're updating the regulations and we're going to be having a public hearing July 1st on those. One of the things with the Commission, when we voted on those regulations, was to send them to public hearing because we haven't adopted them yet, but to send them to public hearing was that we're looking to make sure we have something on the books because these become effective July 1st. So we're going to have our public hearing. It's actually not going to be effective in our town for two weeks later, but we wanted to make sure we had what, you know, because this is changing the commercial zone where housing can go in a commercial zone. So we made sure we had regulations. We are going to be saying like, you know, is it perfect? No, but we're going to probably adopt something so that we have something on the books. But we'll be looking for people to give us more feedback during the whole housing process. So just to let you know, we have multiple things happening at the same time because we don't know what the state's going to do. So we're dealing with that. The other issue, it's not an issue, the other thing that's happened at the same time is there's a resiliency work that's happening at the town level. And we've got information that's gonna be coming to us. It was part of the hazard mitigation plan to do certain things. So there's gonna be new information coming in from that. And we'll be looking at your regs, but it's like, will we get any new information from that at the same time? Who knows? Just in terms of should you go two feet? Should you go three feet? Should you go four feet? Who knows? And as we're getting more information from exact things that need to happen. So that study is happening at the same time and could inform our work. And I know you guys are part of that, the flood erosion control part of that, as well as some other in town. So I just wanted to let you know there's multiple things that are just happening. And zoning rewrite, you can't do the zoning rewrite without other things happening. It's just it takes too long, and it's not like you can do the zoning rewrite and tell everybody else to stop while you do it. The rest of the world is still happening, and we know that. So I just wanted people to be aware of that and that we're juggling that and taking that. And sometimes if we're making a decision to move a regulation forward and whatever, when we do that, it's not like it can't ever be changed when we get more information. And because we know we're gonna finish our zoning rewrite, hopefully March 2027, and under Public Act 25-1, River Clog is now developing regular, not regulations, housing proposals that the town may or may not decide to opt into, but if we do, That could change what, you know, even though we're looking at adopting regs, and that's going to happen in two years, right? That's in 2028, they've got to have that.

Assuming it doesn't get further adjusted.

So their timelines, so we could still need to adjust after that. So we just want folks to understand what we're doing in the regulations up. to standard now, but there's multiple things happening all at the same time that we're juggling and we appreciate the other commissions in particular. You know what we're talking about. You guys are part of town and you understand the process.

Denise, so I'm looking at the list from the posted comments from boards and commissions. And then also the summarized list that you guys sent out today. I feel like maybe we're missing one step in between having these public information settings and then the information that's coming out of them afterwards. Like we got the summarized thing today. Now I'm looking at these comments from the flood and erosion or from the comments from boards of commissions. I feel like there's a lot of information here and on our summarized list that people don't know about. And if they didn't show up to the meeting, right, they're not, and they'll have another chance to hear about it in the public hearing when the public hearing happens.

No, they're not. It's not a public hearing. The flood erosion continues later.

When we go to do the zoning rewrite public hearings, this is going to be the first time a lot of these people are going to see the comments from the boards and commissions. Like, because this isn't circulated publicly yet.

Yeah, this is Eric's notes on what it is, but I think don't jump the gun. The Flood and Erosion Control Board is going to come to us and present.

No, that's not what I'm talking about. So as I look at the list from the week, if you were to share that list in the community, people are going to have questions about it. They're going to be like, oh, we're not sharing this. This is for us. This should be shared. For example, if you're expanding the flood zone to include the 500-year flood plan, the FEMA will look back in the flood area zone. So if you're in the 500-year flood zone and you damage 50% of your house, now you're required to bring it up to the FEMA flood standards. But in the 500-year flood zone.

That's online right now.

It is on the website right now. I understand things are on the website, folks. How would you like us to... I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Maybe in this room we can come up with another option besides the town website to get this kind of information to the residents of the community because these are drastic changes.

So I appreciate what you're saying. We don't know if these changes are going to be made yet.

I understand that.

And until we have a dialogue with the Flood and Ocean Control Board and we go back and forth, then we can say, this is where we're going, and we can start educating people at that point. I don't want to jump ahead and confuse people because we may –

come to the flood roach and we may say like no that's not happening or we could say that's a good idea i don't know what that's going to be based off feedback you might get from people who are unaware of this information i'm specifically not working notes for us i'm not talking about this one i'm talking about the list that you guys those are working notes that we're working from right now and that we're going to have a

going to continue the conversation with the Flood and Erosion Control Board. And then from there, we go to public hearing and we talk about all that. It doesn't need to go out right now. What's that?

I guess my question is that we had a public information session last time on the environment.

We got this list of things that we may or may not talk about or change. But there's no opportunity for the people to comment until the public hearing about that content. So if they don't see these lists and the public hearing comes, they had no time to digest it until you presented it to them.

They can go online and see everything that's happened.

And again, the publicity... portion of it, we are certainly looking for new tools to drive people to the information. But I can't mirror this information on other websites or other media. So to the extent that we can figure out new ways to get people to come and see the information we have, we are certainly open to whatever possibilities there are to get people to go look. We're not trying to hide. What's that? Put it on a banner.

Actually, that's honestly a good idea.

I think if we're going to end up making drastic changes, we know that the flood... Right. As well as the housing rewrite. We're going to probably have to say like, OK, how do we get more feedback from folks once we do that, even before we go to the final, final? And we know that that's an interim step that we've that we've we've been talking about.

That's what I'm trying to get at.

But we haven't gotten there yet.

OK, I just want maybe with the people in this room, if you guys have any ideas to help get this information that you plan to change or want to change and let the public hear it. Because all it's only hearing is the people in this room right now.

Yes, is that is the date? Yeah, July 29th is the housing from 630 to 830. Thanks. And that's for the and that's for the public.

So that's for the general public might have to move the meeting to like the town or to on the hot on the housing. Yeah. We might as well just plan ahead and maybe plan for it outside of this space so people don't get here and we can't entertain them.

We have to have at least one social event every year. I think this is going to be it.

You would think.

If we have that many people coming, I guess we're getting the word out that we're rewriting the zoning act.

Damon, go ahead. So we offer the briefs. We design them in a way anticipating this. There's going to be some people who look at this and say, oh, this is a drastic change. one of the risks, and there's other people who are gonna say, why are we doing this for the benefits? And so we made these briefs that are, this is the issue, these are the benefits, this is the risk, this is what it would take, and this is how other towns have done this. It might not also have any big change, any big zoning issue. If the standard is, if you're a board and you're gonna recommend that the zoning commission make a change, you need to do a SWOT analysis of this, you need to be able to explain to people that you've done

If you have the briefs like you were saying or a fact sheet on stuff like that, that we could post on our website that gives a link to yours so they can say, hey, for more information on this. So you gave us the regulations you want us to look at, but if you say, hey, for... for looking at the background material on that. Obviously, if you submit it to us, we can put it on, but we can also refer them to your website if you have it on.

Huh?

Yeah, but that's the zoning, that's the regulation. What I'm saying is the briefs are in there? Oh, okay.

Does anyone think that when we have our Town of Old Line Facebook page, which is specific for the whole town, but would it be to our advantage to create and have the town run it, a Facebook page exclusively dedicated to the zoning rewrite? So that way it's a page that people can follow, that it's not the town website, not the town Facebook page, because you're on the town Facebook page, you're getting signed up for Little League, do this, do that, and people might not be paying as close attention to it. Whereas if you had a dedicated Facebook page that people can't comment on, you turn the commenting off, but at least it's a source for information That's a dedicated portal to share in the community. I feel like you're going to get a lot more information out that way than expecting people just to go to the website.

I have to explore that. The only concern I have about that, Mike, is if you don't put enough content on it, it's like people don't go to Facebook pages that post once a month.

Well, they also don't go there to read posts. It's cyclical.

I even think with our webpage, we can improve what we have. Right now, on the welcome page to the website, it doesn't mention rewrite at all.

It should be on the landing page.

You have to know to go to the zoning commission to find the information. Then you have to click to go to another spot, and then you click there to find the hub. Some people don't know what a hub is. I think it needs to be on the welcome page. It needs to be there till we're done with this process. So people click once and they go, oh, here it is.

And we're working on that. There's some challenges.

Even someone like myself who's had a hard time finding, for example, these excellent documents that we heard tonight on the flood and erosion. So I think we need to make it easier. We can make it easier, more transparent. Because that is the intent and that's what we've been working for. Yeah.

And we're working, you know, we had to get everything up. We're working on the rest of that. Because we have to work with other, our staff can't just do that. They have to have, we have to work with the other departments.

That's fair, but I think we should make that a priority. I also think we should consider having people be able to listen in on these conversations. Even if they can't comment, at least listen in. If they want to be here, we're Now, the room where it happens, the only way they're going to be able to do it is listen in.

So what do we got to do to make that happen?

So we'll work with Eric on that because those are staffing things that we need to take care of. Go ahead, Greg.

Just a quick comment. In the professional background, we've been in communications. A couple of quick ideas. You might see if the first select woman would put something in her weekly newsletter, which goes out to a thousand people. with a link to a particular document that you think people should share. The other option would be to talk to Elizabeth Regan and see if she might do something to land on. So I think that's a pretty good leadership.

All right. Thank you. We'll get that out. Great.

I like the banner idea.

Okay. So if there's... That's it. Any more comments? If not, thank you very much. Appreciate all your... Did you have something?

Did you have something? Sounds to me like the House of at the community workshop, so you should, I think you have sent us all your comments, or do you have more comments? Okay, so. We may individually have thoughts about

Yeah, so we'll look at that and see if we need ZVA. We'll probably have a, just like we're going to do with flood erosion control. You sent us a lot of comments, so we'll have to take a look at that. We're going to send them to our consultant as well and say like, okay, how do we do this? But before we change anything or say draft something, we're going to have the community forum. So the community forum, If you, you know, one of the things is like, hey, look at what ZVA sent us, you know, we can do that as well, so.

The other thing I wanted to mention is our contract with our consultant, who's very good. Part of the charge is that he's going to be looking at what other towns have done. So this isn't just coming out of this room. He is bringing to us his expertise.

He will be bringing best practices, Mary Jo, yes. Yeah. Not that we're going to incorporate them, but at least there'll be some guiding, you know. So we have, should we look at this and maybe we build a hybrid? Maybe we steal shamelessly, just, you know.

So we'll see what, we'll have the community forum on housing, what's here from the public. Then we'll have the focus group to say, like, did they cover everything? And then if we have to look at the very specifics, like what you sent us or, you know, from ZBA or any other of the, folks, what they sent us on housing. You know, we're expecting affordable housing folks to have a lot of comments.

Sometimes you ask us questions about what do we think about commercial. And the CPA didn't discuss that, so I'm not going to give you any recommendations. There's a few days on that.

Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks again.

Take care.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.