Town Council - Special Meeting

Okay. Um, before we get started, I just want to make sure I um I got a lot of feedback from the last meeting, council meeting last Monday night that these microphones are very difficult to hear from. I think we got new ones or something changed. So, we're going to uh work on that in the meantime. Um, but I would ask tonight any comments, you speak directly into it if you could because it was very difficult. Even I was having a hard time hearing some of the people at the podium. So, and some of the residents that um emailed me or text me said, "Hey, couldn't hear you guys." So, just want to make sure Wendy, if we could um make a note of that for Sean because something's not right. Something changed.

Did a lot of work on it now. So you can set back a little bit and it should catch. Oh, it's good, Nate. Yeah, it sounds better. Okay, great. Thank you, Nate. All right, so Wendy, if would you please call the role? Council President Paul M. here. Vice President Thomas P. Welch III here. Councelor Peter D. Conorton, Senior here. Councelor Christopher M. Logan. Councelor Charles R. Roberts here. Councelor Dennis B. Toronto here. Councelor Barbara Avonis here. We have a quorum. Mr. President, thank you. Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. You said your seat.

Algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Okay. Good evening everyone. Um let me just read this in and we'll get started with our um joint meeting with the planner board. Number one, communication of planning board chair in reference to discussion of priorities of the town council. Motion to receive said communication. Second.

All in favor? I. So, uh we usually do it once a year. I would hope maybe we can move that to twice a year because I think it would be uh more beneficial. Um, you know, it's like when you get an employee review, if you only get it once a year, you get a whole year to think about what you did well and what you didn't do, we need to work on it. I think if we do that at least twice a year by annually, um, then we would, uh, I think um, um, see may I don't know if you see better results, but you would certainly um, know what the plan board's working on a little closely and they would know um, you know, what the council priorities are and and if those are still aligning or not. So, I think that's important. Having said that, um I did uh reach out to Mr. Crochi uh this afternoon and um he would like to start with a statement and talk about the priorities and it's open discussion. Uh this is a public meeting. It's not a public hearing but we are going to take comment because his residents want to speak. So worst thing you can do is say no, right? So um having said that um and we do have some folks that filled out forms. Uh but Paul, I'm going to turn it over to you. And again, it's it's good dialogue. Um it's wide open. Um and um um hopefully we uh walk away knowing feeling better about um where we align or don't align prior from a priority standpoint.

Okay. Thank you, uh Mr. President and members of the council. Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you. Um, I was going to say we do this every two or three years, which has been the practice, but if you want to do it more frequently, that's okay with me. Um, the main purpose, uh, as you mentioned, is to make sure that our priorities are aligned with your priorities. That's been the purpose of all of the meetings where we've had this get together and that is the case today also. So, uh, along that line, um, the planning board prepared a list of what we see as priorities. Um, we did this a while ago. Um, we've had this meeting scheduled several times and for various reasons, we've had to postpone it. Some of these things might no longer apply and as we get to them, we'll point that out. At any rate, I if um if no one has any further comments, I would like to start going down this list. The first thing we had on the list was the new comprehensive community plan. Now, this is one of the things that is somewhat outdated because when we first prepared this, we thought that you would already have it in your hands. Well, you don't. We have our public hearings scheduled for Monday evening and that's when we will um hear comments from the public, make any modifications if they're appropriate before we forward it to you for your approval. So, you haven't seen it formally yet from us. On the other hand, if you have any comments that you would like to share with us, we're willing to hear them. Uh if not, wait until we have our public hearing. We'll forward it to you and uh it's in your hands then.

Okay. Okay. Tom, so Paul, can you without going crazy here, can you like if I had no idea what the new comprehensive plan was going to be, what would you say is the biggest change or difference from the old one? The addition of resiliency, right? That that was not in the old one and it's a it's a new item in the new one. And as you know, resiliency seems to be affecting everything. So, everything we do, it's a big change. Okay. Thank you.

Nothing else on that. Uh the second item on our list is uh long-term housing strategy. Um question is, is this your highest priority and uh is it covered by what is in the new comp plan? Well, you haven't seen the new comp plan yet, so you can't comment on that aspect of it. But clearly it's a priority of the of the planning board and uh there are several um different ways to address the housing issue. We're looking at all of them. Uh we even have a new member Matt who is very enthusiastic about it and uh perhaps is even bringing some new ideas to us. So uh with that if you have anything you want to share with us on housing, we would like to hear it. Yeah.

So, um I'm actually I'd like to I just motioned to Mr. Frank before we did the pledge of allegiance. I'd like to talk to him after the meeting because um I talked about it the other night at the council meeting a little bit with housing. The we obviously have across the street going to take place. I think it's I think it's somewhere around 36 uh housing units or multiple mix of I think there's eight individual houses. I think there's four on the bottom, four on the top and there's more condo type in the middle. Yeah.

Um various bedrooms. I think majority of them are two and three bedrooms. Um so the housing committee has done a good job with that. Um they brought you know some nice Mr. Frank and that team brought some nice photos that you know this is what we could do here and so they voted upon it and brought a photo to the council and the council so right now we have a um and Peter was Peter's can't see you so correct me if I'm wrong um we have um a group that is looking at putting a proposal in right

there was a uh an RFP that was put out and there was a group that um submitted a response a proposal in response to that uh to develop the project. Yes. Yeah. So, at the same time, Sean had set up sent out an email saying Frank um what's Frank's last name? Sp uh Spinell Spanella. I want to say Spelain, but it used to be a Frank Spelain that

that lived on um off of Walcott. So, I apologize. is I had a little little uh bump in the road there. But um so uh Frank um arranged it with Sean where um he asked for members of the if any members of the housing committee, any council members wanted to go and take a look at the work that these folks have done, the one that's going to um is interested in in maybe doing something here. And so it was in Providence. Now Providence is a Middletown as we all know. Um but they did a 140ome 120 some 140ome um unit housing and it was four levels which I wasn't crazy about the four levels and I'm not saying we have to do that but it um it was one two and threebedroom apartments and it was impressive. So they own their they from start to finish it was 14 months. So we said, "Well, how do you do that?" And he said, "Paul, we've done this for," and Peter, Peter, jump in anytime. Peter was there with me. Um um he said, "We own the construction company and we've been doing this for 30 years and or we have most of the same subcontractors for the past 30 years." So what really I The places were nice. It was new. Of course, it's beautiful when it's new. The landscaping was was sharp. Um it was up by the by the hospitals. It was behind the hospitals up there. Woman and infants over towards that way. And um the thing that struck me the most, it's a fatherson team. Son's probably in his early 30s. Um I'm not going to speculate on his dad's age, but um what struck me the most was the culture that that they spoke about and how they do things and their passion to do it and they do it right. But what really struck

me was it was 100% affordable. So it was from anywhere from 30% of the um AMI index to 80%. And um you know we asked him how are you able to do that? And he said he was able to do it um you know through you know the cost but the number of units as well. And also um again going back to they own the construction company and they have the same subs. So there's probably more to it than that, but that's pretty much what he told us. But it was pretty impressive. So Mr. Frank, one of the things I want to talk to Mr. Frank about, I want to get in the car with him and I want to I want to drive up there with him because he couldn't attend that day. There's something going on and I want to see if we can't arrange a meeting and if anybody else wants to go we cuz that's how impressed I was. Maybe it was just me. It's always nice to put more eyes on it. Um Sean was there, Frank was there, Peter was there. Um so that's, you know, maybe that's a possibility for other areas in town specifically comes to my mind where JFK is. So um you know, it's just that's what stuck out to me from a housing perspective. But I think that needs to remain from a priority standpoint. At least my my one vote would be that has to remain on the radar because it's not always about the 10%. It's more about what the need is for the community. And so with the one, two, and three bedrooms and that AMI index, I think if they could do something like that here, whoever it is, um, the way that these folks did it, I think that would open up a lot of possibilities for for, you know, our kids to stay here and have reasonable uh, rent, um, workforce housing, if that's what you want to call it, where we have a very high hospitality industry here. you know, even our even our municipal workers. I mean, a lot of them

can't live here, but this this this was this was sharp. Um, they had a community room. They had a a fitness center for their tenants. It was awesome. It was just awesome. So, sorry for the long story, but I was excited about it. I really wanted to share that. Oh, I I can understand that. It's It's a little surprising that uh 100% would be affordable. You you don't you usually see a percentage being affordable, but that's pretty unusual. I It was unusual. Now, I'm not sure because if that could happen here, I would hope so. He could maybe do something similar. Yeah. Uh but um I think it's a it's a a potential avenue to help a housing uh issue.

Yeah. Sure. So, I uh was going down to go to a nursery today, not for kids, but for plants, and I went down Turner Road and uh You get a speeding ticket? Absolutely not. All right. Just check. I'm just I have my car. I have heads up display so I can look at my windshield, not at my speedometer. So, when I see 20 on it, I know I'm not going to get a ticket.

Okay. Sorry. So, uh, my question is we we have the the nursery property sitting someplace and with some kind of plan for it maybe. So, I'd like to know about that. And a couple years ago, the Polo Center folks came before us with a conceptual idea to put in about 60 town houses in that empty lot that sits there. So, we haven't seen anything more since then. So, I don't know what they're doing, but can you share something with us on uh Turner Road?

So, um my knowledge of Turner Road as far as uh housing goes, um I have to go back and look at the funding source because if it's open space um bond money, there's somewhat restrictions on what can go there, what could be used there. It's more recreational and that type of thing. However, um before we get to that, when we when we made a deal with uh to buy it from Hooands, they have two five-year leases. F Peter, you three three five year leases or two? I think it's two with I think it's two. Yeah. With off the top of my head. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um they still want to vomit. They're very passionate about the employees they've had over the years. And that was their deepest concern was are their employees, a lot of them are um lifelong employees. Are they going to be taken care of? If you know, um the town does something there or does nothing there. We're not going to run a nursery. Um I think they were hoping at some point in time somebody would take it over. Um but that hasn't happened. I think some of that property is kind of convoluted. You get into the Colonial Dames uh part of the property. I've seen that before in real estate and that area seems to have some uh Colonial Dames baggage also. So,

yeah. Peter, can you just speak to that a little bit? I thought we we thought we cleaned that. that was an issue during negotiations. But there's there's one portion of the property which is the subject of the 999year lease which has a significant period of time. I know the dames plan to be there once the 999 years are up, but um there's a several hundred years left on that. So

I don't I'm not sure we'll see that art, but maybe somebody in Middletown will. And just with regard to the use of the property um uh because in addition to the some reimbursement from the state that the town will receive the the property was purchased using open space bond money. So uh while that bond is remains on the property it would be restricted to things like agricultural use open space there. I know there is a plan um to uh on the northern end of the site uh to put some multi-purpose fields uh and other recreational facilities up on the northern portion of that site. But um at such time as those the bond is paid off then um there's no restrictions on how the town could use it. Well, the other thing I think you'll find is uh because it's been used to grow things, you're going to have a pesticide,

probably a big pesticide inspection to see what's what's in the ground. And the other thing with that property, too, was um I think some folks are aware of it, maybe some aren't. We've spoken about it publicly a bunch of times, is that um um looks like we're going to get reimbursed 55% of the purchase price. So, um, we'll get back more money than what we spent on it. I think we've spent we bought it for 52 or 54 and we'll end up paying um once the reimbursement comes in about 2.8 million for for 58 acres. So, yeah. Does anybody else have comments for housing? Matt, go ahead. Hi, Matt.

Hi. How you guys doing? It's nice to see you on this side and um usually see you in the audience. Yes, of course. I like to show up. It's important. So, um, thank you for having me. I app Thank you. Um, thank you for having me. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. Um I had the opportunity to sit in on the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce um meeting about two weeks ago at this time which Sean Brown was part of and he was a panelist

along with some of the members um of the community and of the future employers Noah Rathon and the speaker of the house. Um and it was interesting to hear just for perspective for the public that um you know I'm an engineer. I'm a data driven person. And it was interesting hearing the Newport greater area in the next 10 years is going to need 9,000 housing units simply to keep up with demand. Now that's not just Middletown. For Middletown, our own studies by Stantech show that 900 units are needed to simply keep up with demand. This is not future demand. This is simply to keep up with the demand that is necessary we're seeing now. Now, in talking to these individuals and I think many of the people my own age and many of the seniors is that yes, the cost of housing is astronomically increasing and it is my number one and priority. Now, what I've done and I'm I'm not going to present it tonight, but I plan on bringing to the board a PowerPoint presentation of five different aspects that I think would be good on the local level that we can change about the zoning code to enable more communityoriented housing development. because we often see a lot of push back with these massive developments of like 300 units, 200 units when we have a zoning code that doesn't allow for incremental development which could fill a lot of that need. So my goal in talking to you guys is to make sure you're on board with the future ideas so we can support not just my generation but the retiring generation people in between hopefully find a good median to enable a compromise that's going to be the best for middle time.

Awesome. Looking forward to it. One other thing is uh you probably noticed that the more ships being homeported now and uh destroyers primarily in cutters for the coast guard and they probably well destroy probably has about 160 to 80 people on it. uh they're coming in and uh what's happened uh in some cases is some people that have been in government housing are being displaced for the active duty people. So create another problem. Uh can you just speak into the mic a little closer please?

Yeah. So that's that's you know obviously a problem in itself. So I just point that out. That's another thing we need to be cognizant of. Yeah. So we we have we have a few issues here, right? So with housing, so a lot of them, but um you know um we have the Noah and and and the military and stuff like that, which is our largest employer, right? So we have to create that balance of of you know, it shouldn't be all on Middletown either because, you know, we got to take care of our own folks as well.

Yes. I mean to me that's I get the I get the military and all the respect in the world and you know we got to create that balance but we have a lot of our own folks too that need places and that's that's important. I mean that's what we're really we started this for. This kind of came in uh you know a year or two or three or four uh later. Um so that's just my opinion. It's always in the back of my mind that I understand the military piece but all of that shouldn't just be on on the town of Middletown. Portsouth, it more should be more of a regional. It should it will. I'm sure it will. Yeah. Yeah. So, just throw it in there because that we got to be thinking about that.

I know. And I I agree. I just um and out of respect for those folks, I just, you know, we need to always just keep in mind our own people because that's really what we started these initiatives for. Um so, Charlie, thank you, Mr. President. Thank you all for coming. Um I think one of the things my because this is long-term housing strategy. I I absolutely agree. I look forward to seeing your ideas, Matt. I think we've this town has done a pretty good job like to date, too. We've we're adding a lot of housing right now. Um that, you know, through private companies have done it already and and us. So, you know, I know there's that 10% number that, you know, the state has always been kind of,

in my words, shoving down our throats a little bit and but we all there also a need and we see that with a comp plan, too. Like, there's there's serious need for some housing here. I I just want to also I I think we have to be careful of you know what we do though because we have some resources that are already you know we talk about resiliency you know our our water supply here doesn't get talked about enough like every single one of our water supplies water guy came in here and told us they're puddles they're all contaminated all that surface runoff every time we do a development everything. So, we have to factor that in. And and also, I would say the neighborhood characters, too. Like, I I think we got to be careful. You know, I've been vocal about a couple projects near me. Um, and and it's bec and and I thought it was tapping out that lot. I thought it was tapping out the resources. So for me, I 100% am behind our housing strategies for more affordable housing, for more housing if we can. But I think we're also at that point in this town, and I haven't lived here my whole life, but I've been here for quite some time, and we're at that point where we got to be careful here of of what we build in this town. Um, and and where we build it more importantly. So, thank you. I I think you'll be pleased at uh what's in the the uh draft comp plan about uh water protecting water.

Yes. Okay, Tom. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I beat you out. Um I want to assure uh Mr. Roberts, also that that balance and that challenge that you just identified is one that we deal with constantly with respect to every application. We know there's this great need for housing, but we know there's a lot of other aspects of Middletown that make it. Would you mind pulling that a little closer? That make it attractive. Sorry. Thank you, sir.

That make it attractive, including the uh open space. and we're very very aware of the water related issues. So um every time there's this balance to be made there's a few things that uh can be done I think with respect to uh how to increase the housing without creating some of these problems. I do think and Mr. Weber's question about the status of the polo center. Uh I'm not sure of the answer of this, but I think it has to do with the developer is having a difficult time making it economically viable with the regulatory system that we have. And it may make great sense for that developer and some other of the major residential developers in town to sit down with Mr. Vansky and maybe some members of the town council and and the administration to talk about the challenges that they have in building housing in Middletown. And it may be that there are some accommodations or changes that are appropriate and could be made that will make make it make it easier because it is a shame that there's 60 acres sitting on Quinnick Avenue that can't be um built. So, I have a couple of other ideas of my own as I would say first of all um kudos to um the town for coming up with these projects that excite you. Uh Mr. President, you should be excited. That's a really wonderful thing. This is a direct way to get housing built. But you can also indirectly encourage housing to be built. You know, the state has done that. Every year they passed leg

legislation under Speaker Shuki to really take away from the zoning board and the planning board our some of our discretion to force us to accept certain things that will facilitate more uh housing. It affects our ability to make that balance, Mr. Roberts, but it it it encourages housing. And there's some other things that uh the state will continue to do, but there's some things that we as a town can do that you as a town council can do. Um uh one is easy and the other you're you're not going to be happy to hear. But the the easy one is this. One of the state required changes is a sort of as of right ability to repurpose commercial property into residential uh property. You see that happening right behind us with the Enterprise Center, the KVH um building. [clears throat] And when that happens, that frees up a lot of excess land because commercial uses usually require like three parking spaces um to every square to every unit. whereas residential use would require much less about one-third the amount of parking. And so when you have a big um repurposing like KVH, you get a sea of empty parking space. Well, that parking unused parking space could become could be deemed to be excess land and automatically available for uh con uh construction by special use permit of of multif family or other kind of of of of housing. right now. Uh it's it it can happen but it happens through a very awkward process where the

developer has to build a new com before us with a new commercial application. Um and then they build it and then they seek to repurpose the commercial use that they've built. It's all odd. It kind of misrepresents to the planning board what they're doing. We were misrepresent the public uh what they're doing in public hearings and so on. I think the town by legislation could make that happen automatically and there might be some uh meaningful amount of housing that could come about as a result of that and you're just converting unneeded parking to to to to that. The item where you might um groan is the topic of short-term rentals, which I know that this town council spent a lot of time with and it was a very difficult issue. And the data that we have from the um is that about 6% right now of the town's housing stock is dedicated to uh short-term rentals. Short-term rentals is the enemy of long-term housing. Almost by definition, every home that's taken out for a short-term rental is one fewer home that's available, one less home that's available for a long-term lease or or or something permanent. My thought is you guys did a great job at regulating and dealing with the behavioral and conduct issues of short-term rentals, and that was good. A lot was grandfathered in, of course, but that it was was positive regulation, but you didn't address numbers or percentage of the town stock that could be dedicated to short-term rental. And my my thought is there should be an annual calculation of how many homes are dedicated to short-term rentals. And if it and the

town council has to figure out what the right number is, but at some point if it goes from 6% to 8% or 9% or or whatever, you might um put a moratorum on it. Um and finally at some point the grandfathering might um expire. You might provide that uh clauses that that homes that are grandfathered in lose their grandfathering protection after some number of years. Anyway, those are my additional thoughts for you.

Okay. Thank you, Miss Tutler. So, a couple issues um there with short-term rentals are that um we grandfathered in them because we were um legal counsel. That's what we had to do. That's that's been a case law, I guess, Peter. And jump in anytime that I go south on you or I get something wrong. Um and also, um I think the last it was a month or two ago stats we saw about short-term rentals. I think there's been five uh new ones and is that accurate? Five new ones um since we went to owner occupied only. So I think it's a good good idea to get annual numbers on those. And um I'm not sure the short the grandfather ever goes away even when the property sold. I think uh by law that stays with that use unless it's abandoned and that abandonment will be determined by the building inspector. Um, so

all right, the grandfather thing is a separate issue. The the percentage or number would [clears throat] help ensure that there is the long-term stock of housing available.

And just to follow up on that, Mr. of the um the changes that the council enacted to the um short-term rental ordinance. Essentially, the one the five or so that were granted the special use per by the zoning board, those are owner occupied dwellings where they're renting out some bedrooms while the owner is present. So, that is and and it was designed so that you're not taking a unit that it would otherwise be available for long-term rental off the market. this is someone's primary residence where they're earning some extra money by renting out some bedrooms, but that that if they weren't doing that, it still remains the primary residence of that property owner. So that you're not taking something that would be available as a long-term rental and turning it into a short-term rental. And the other thing that the council has done is to try to incentivize landlords who have purely rental units to uh to rent them long term by if they do that to someone for at least a year and if it's that person's primary residence, they they can get the owner occupied tax rate on that property. So the idea was to provide some kind of a financial incentive for some some property owners or landlords to to rent long term rather than short term. Can

I add one thing? Um Tom had a gohead.

Y so I probably should keep quiet but I'm having a hard time sitting here because I don't necessarily agree with what has been said so far. Um, for me, housing is not my number one priority. And I say that because the 10% number from the state doesn't do anything for me because that does not address our local need. Um, and there's a number of ways to look at the local need. I'll just give you an example. Uh, as a kid growing up, all the guys [clears throat] that worked in the nursery came from Fall River on a bus and they came from Fall River on a bus because they couldn't afford to live here, but they were the people that came and did all the labor. They went back on the bus. And I think part of that couples also with the fact that younger kids and even with a good uh degree, you know, or a good profession, there's an incremental way to get to the housing. Um, in other words, we all remember getting out of college and renting a room with a couple other buddies and then maybe we go to two guys and maybe we get one guy and then maybe someday we get to own a house. But it it it seems to me that today's younger generation wants it now. And unfortunately, I wish Middletown was like it was when I grew up. It's not. And as uh property values increase, people are going to buy them because they want to come here. And I don't know that we as a council can dictate how affordable it is to live here. And and that's unfortunate. I I don't like that. But I also don't see it as the job of the council to fix the housing. I see that as a private enterprise. if there

is money to be made and there's property available and you can build housing um they will do it if there's money in it. Um I and I also want to say that as a council we agreed to get on board with Portsmouth a couple of meetings ago to sign a resolution to push back on the state for all the zoning that's been jammed down our throat. Right? So we do at some level here

are agreeing to push back. Now, where that goes, I don't know. But, um, again, same as the 10% housing is a number that's always out there. Well, what's good for upstate isn't necessarily good for here. So, I I take I take offense to that. I don't I don't like that. Um, and uh I think the Steve, you mentioned KBH is a great example. I'm all for the conversion of I mean we all see that uh commercial buildings being converted into housing. Great idea. Perfect. Well, for all the reasons you stated. I'm I'm 100% behind that. But again, I see the glitch in and Paul was talking about it earlier where there's too many hoops to jump through. We're saying we're doing one thing just to end up at residential in the end. I I get that. That's a good change. But that's private enterprise. That's that's that guy over there buying up the property because he knows there's money in it and that's how it's going to work. Um and just to finish off my thoughts um lastly nurseries for me um if I had my dream that would be a agricultural program that benefits the school and the kids that live here. That's what I see. I would never want or nor would I vote or support housing to be there under any circumstances. Thank you.

Okay. Um Dennis was next and then Chuck. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead, Dennis. Yep. Thank you. So I think purpose of this meeting is to prioritize maybe a little bit of what our top priorities are where we can both work together to get something accomplished.

And [clears throat] so um you know the comprehensive plan, everyone put some hard work into that. I may attended a couple meetings here and there, but I was really excited about the number of people who participated in that, the different groups of people who participated in that. And so I'm looking forward to learning more about that. And I've always looked like the comp comprehensive plan should kind of mirror what we march to, you know, if that works. I know in the past the comprehensive plan came out and zoning looked one way and and the comprehensive plan looked another. We battled for years to determine whether the comprehensive plan was the right legal thing we should abide by. It all depend on what lawyer you were talking to. And that lawyer, well, you must approve this. And then our council says, no, you don't really have to approve it. And what? Okay. Well, what's more important? What overrides what? Zoning override comprehensive or does comprehensive override zoning? Well, zoning overrides comprehensive. I believe had to tell me that a few times for me to figure that one out. So, um, so I'm excited to see that, right? And then let's see how it ties to what we've been up to because this isn't we're not starting from scratch here. This housing issue started 10 years ago. We formed our first affordable senior affordable housing committee was one of the first things I ran on because that's what everyone was telling me was a problem. Housing affordability and we thought just senior. But then when we started looking into it and understanding the problem as a whole, it became housing across the board, right? Call it what you want. We were told you can't use workforce housing. That's not it's not appropriate. It's just housing and affordable housing. And so we've been growing into this. So we've been working on this for 10 years.

And honestly, it's moving at government speed. We we still don't have a shovel in the ground. We have private folks putting shovels in the ground, but the town hasn't put a shovel in the ground yet. So, we're getting close. We got, as Paul's talked about, we've got a couple spots. But if there's a strategy behind this, and we have our affordable housing strategy, I mean, affordable housing committee. I actually think this is a town wide a community like should be Newport, Portsouth and Middletown group together to figure out how we resolve it for the island. That's what I think. Okay. So if my strategy is let's find a group of people who want to focus on this across the comm all three communities and come up with a strategy to make a big splash. And the reason why we're getting all these rules and rags from the state level is because we haven't done anything in 101 15 years. And they're like, "Okay, well, if you won't do it, we'll change the rules and we'll allow duplexes and we'll allow ADUs and we'll allow changing commercial real estate. We'll allow changing movie theaters. We'll pretty much allow anything, right?" And that didn't sit well with the council. We're probably planning that the state's going to tell us what we can and we can't do, but we sort of asked for it. So, I would love to see a strategy here. It's one of my top priorities. Affordability in Middletown. It's not just housing. It's just day-to-day expenses, jobs, businesses, you know, and it's got to be a long-term plan. It's not a short-term plan. It's not going away. affordability is not going to go away. Litter is not going to go away. It's it's something we have to have a long-term plan for. So, I appreciate this meeting. This is really good stuff.

And if we could, again, I do a islandwide affordable housing committee and come up with a plan because, you know, Portsmith is they're in on this. Middletown's in on this, and Newport's in on this. Thank you. Thank you, Dennis Charlie.

Thank you, Mr. President. [clears throat] I I agree with uh the vice president and and with Dennis as well here um and two different things, but I housing for me is not top priority, but affordability is and um you know and some of that has to do with the housing stock that's available. I get that. But there's also other things too that are really like taxes. We got to always keep an eye on that, right? But one of the things when I hear the STR come up again and the 6% I I'm more concerned with another number which I I believe the Stantech report shows and I don't know what the final number is now. I haven't looked at it but you look at the primary ownership the primary home ownership in this town over the last 20 years. It's changed significantly. I mean we've gone from I saw a report that said 80% of all homes in Middletown 20 to 30 years ago were primary residents. People were living there year round. Now that number is somewhere around 50%. So I don't know how that's that's so like 50% of our stock. I think it's like 43%. I'm sorry it shouldn't maybe it's not 50 but that number has grown significantly over the last 20 years. People are coming in scooping up houses buying them. They're not renting them out. They're just sitting there. But that's taken away stock for local people. And I think that's something that gets missed in this conversation a lot. Thank you.

Thank you, Charlie. Yeah. One of the things uh that ties into this is a couple years ago the planner told us the demographics of Middletown. Uh one thing was it was an aging group. I'm not included there so I'm off the hook. But it also said it's

it's a declining we have a declining population. What does that mean? Several things. If you have less people in in homes, uh you have a a shorter tax rate from the the side of the citizens. So how does that get made up? Can be made up in a variety of ways. Reduce services, raise taxes and everything else. So based on that, that's why the planning board got involved in where do we go to cover the gap and the gap was to get additional commercial properties in appropriate place and that comes through the West Main Road project which is moving uh slower than anything. Uh, I know there's been a lot of discussion about changing the plan and everything else, but I would urge all of us to make sure we can get that thing completed because we need to fill the money gap so that our taxes don't go up and we'll have a commercial base hopefully, which will take care of that deficit. So, I just add that in. And when you look at what we're talking about for housing, it it impacts me. I have a a daughter and a son-in-law who my daughter's a lawyer and this guy is a does computers. They make a lot of money. They can't afford to buy a house. It's not only the price of the house. When you go into the bank for the loan, there's no 3% money anymore. It's six and 7% now. So, it's a double whammy for the young people. House prices are ridiculous and the interest rates are out of sight, too. So that's why I'm interested in getting whatever we're doing on West Main Road, we need to do it faster if everybody's satisfied with the plan or the new plan, whatever it is. So that's my thought.

Yeah. So um it's the next item. Yeah. So uh West Main Road. All right. Um take us to the next item.

Yeah, it is. Okay. So thank you. Um, you know, we uh we we thought we had a plan and then certain things happened and we got a lot of feedback from the residents saying, "Hey, we don't want this." Um, I do still feel like um what you're saying, there has to be some type of revenue generated on the most valuable piece of property that the town owns. There's no revenue being generated from that property. So, while people can, it's like the speeding thing. Hey, and maybe it's a good analogy, maybe it's not. people are speeding, you know, slow people down. You do something about it and then they complain about that that I'm getting tickets. Okay, so I get the I get the um you know, don't want a hotel, but there has to be revenue. There has to be increased revenue coming from somewhere. That's the most valuable piece of property. You know what? The more we sat on, the more feedback we got about the poty field, the more we said, hey, you know what? maybe this and and and something else happened in between there as well. Um but hey, maybe this isn't the right thing to do. But again, you for me, life's about compromise and trying to create a balance. And I think I think that's what we're trying to do. To your point, um I still would like to see me personally, if I'm still here, I would still like to see some type of housing on the other end. You know, um how many units that is, I don't know. I don't want to overburden that area either, but I think, you know, that park could be a nice open place for maybe the housing folks, maybe for um some other visitors. I don't know. But um but there's that balance that you're you're talking about. And it's not a popular decision. Do you think we we want to do those things just out of spite? No. You have to do them. You have to have look down the road and you know um revenue doesn't towns are starving for revenue

and we're pretty fortunate because of our industry here um hospitality and you know Sean was successful in gaining the extra percent uh of the hotel tax. So, you know, it's those things that kind of all add up, you know, and you still say, "Well, my taxes still went up." And you're right. There's there's fire, there's police, there's school contracts coming up, there's that type of stuff. And you do the best you can with it, you know? I mean, that's that's and I'm not looking for any sympathy. Believe me, it's just those are facts and that's reality.

Well, I I respect very much when people in the town get involved and have an opinion. I think that's healthy and I always excited when I see a lot of people come to the planning board because they're interested in our town. They're willing to come out and talk to us about it. When I don't buy this, nothing goes here. That's the thing that frustrates me. Nothing is going to go here. X whatever it is, whatever the project is, it's no. And that's not going to work for us. Now,

again, I respect the people's opinion, but you can't be on that side all the time. There's a middle someplace. And I think when it comes to things that are vital for the town's survival and continued services that they provide and everything else are very important and they can't be ignored and of course money is something that fuels all that. So I wish we had a less know and more maybe in us here on all these projects.

Well, I think it's our job to make sure we we we fully educate everybody on what the you know what's going on and and maybe we've done a good job. Maybe we haven't. But um there's always going to be people that um understand. There's always going to be people that say no matter what you do. And that's just the nature of what we do. And so, but you got to listen. And that's the most important thing. And my understanding, Paul, is that the um um for the north end of the West Main Conington property that a plan for that will eventually come before the planning board, go through the planning process. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, we're not there yet.

Yeah. because there's no formal proposals, there's no RFP, there's we're just kind of talking about it a little bit. Um, so kind of kind of rebounding a little bit on the on the amended plan. Um, and what's there's going to be hearings in June 3rd and June 10th um about the hotel on the corner, but um I think I think it makes sense for housing some type of housing to be there. Whatever it is, it'll go through the planning process. Correct. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

And and and you guys you guys as well have um you know, the town's changing and so it's tough to change. You know, I grew up here my whole life and it's you know, if I could turn back the clock, I mean, you can't you can't,

you know, there's there's so many farms when I grew up and now there's just a couple and and that's it. And they're not even they're not they're working farms, but they're not. They're more gentleman type umh farms now um just trying to be good land stewards and we're actually we're one of them. So uh we understand that but at the same time that the change is difficult and you know and you guys face some difficult decisions. You got one coming up which is going to be it's pretty contested. I'm going to stop phoning all the emails we're getting to you because it's a planned part decision, but I don't mind answering those the best I can and and uh you know, it's just you know, just for your information, we're we plan to continue it to a special meeting.

That's a good move. I mentioned that the other night, Paul, because the amount of emails we were getting, I just thought that, hey, look, the worst thing can happen is folks come here for a meeting, you know, and they're emotional about this or passionate about this this this proposal and you got to cancel it because there's too many people here. You just can't we need to be we need to be better than that. and and so I think um or more accommodating I should say maybe not better but more accommodating and and kind of see that have that vision. So we we'll be doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. President comments. Yes. Go ahead.

Yeah. Specifically pertaining to West Main, I think there's a lot of great points made today and I look forward to hearing the public's opinion next Monday at the plan. I hope you guys can be there at the cafeteria. It's a very important meeting. I had the opportunity a few months ago to read through the entirety of the plan, every single page, and Melissa Walch and the rest of the team did a phenomenal job. So, it is something that I'm proud of, something that I think the community is going to benefit from, and in my opinion, it serves, you know, Dennis mentioned zoning supersedes that plan. I think legally it does. What it acts as is a macro highle plan where we can say, "Hey, we want to do XYZ in this plan." we can apply it. But that requires action on our part to take different pieces in changing our laws that go back. Little things like parking minimums or how much extra space do you need for lot minimums? Things like that can drastically impact a private developer's ability to build a house. You say I I think private industry does want to build house. To Tom's point, I think they do. They're the catalyst, right? the town shouldn't have to put like 800 houses out there. The private industry will do it. But at the same time where we have these very contentious projects like West Maine that, you know, the residents have fair opinions on, we have a vacant school, JFK, that's been closed for what, 15 years now. We have the lot next to the IHOP also on West Main Road that's been vacant since, you know, before I was born. We have Benny's which been closed for literally like 30 something years, right? We have these vacant lots, Benny's, right? That's been closed since what, 2018, 2019, something like that. We have the Stop and Shop Parking lot, which is asphalt, three times the size it needs to be. There's no cars parked there. I'm on the Conservation Commission, and the biggest thing we talk about, Paul mentions it all the time, is runoff. You know, our water supplies are so corrupted with

pollutants because we have so much damn asphalt. How can we utilize our own space more efficiently rather than create green field developments which destroy the farmland? I don't like that either. You know, go go on like a history map and you see it just disappearing decade after decade. How can we utilize these vacant lots, the space that is already sitting there providing zero community benefit? I mean, unless you want to go play in a parking lot, right? Or the Benny's parking lot. Nobody wants to do that, right? before we talk about green field development, we should be talking about how to better utilize the the spaces nobody wants to be there anyways. You know, that's my opinion on it. and our zoning laws heavily restrict us from doing that right now because it's easier for a developer to come in with a brand new development on Pottsy Field or whatever than to redevelop the site next to IHOP or the Benny's because our zoning laws are so convoluted to get through. That's just my opinion.

Some good points, Matt. Thank you. Yeah. Yep. No doubt. Um Okay. Okay. Okay. So, maybe we can move on to the next item, which is um undergrounding the util utility poles in the Atlantic Beach District. We think undergrounding is good not just for appearance, but also for resilience, and I think that has been documented. Now, I think it's also good for all of Middletown. We also know it's very expensive. I think we're about to get some numbers on that, I believe. Yes. Well, we've been waiting for numbers for for a while now. It

it seems likely that we we need to attract some private funding to do this and um we were wondering if the town council would be willing to make some kind of commitment which would make the acquisition of private funds a lot easier. So I the question is is that a priority for for the council to maybe take a stand and make some kind of a commitment for the undergrounding of the poles of utility poles. You mean are you talking about you're talking about a financial commitment?

Well the one that's been discussed and is the most obvious at least to me is is the tiff money. You know, when the tiff area was initially set up, as you know, that money was supposed to go back into the Atlantic Beach district, and apparently it hasn't. I don't know why, but apparently it hasn't. And so I was the council could make that commitment to re to commit those funds back to the Atlantic Beach District. That would seem a very good first step. So that is a priority we wanted to mention to you. Okay. Anybody else have comments on that?

Right. So I think we all support utilities. [clears throat] No, I was just saying I I think for the most part most of us all support underground utilities, especially by our beaches. And I think that's a very good uh concept. Yeah. It could also apply to other other parts of the town too, not just the Atlantic Beach District.

Right. Right. I had this wild vision years ago of underground utilities starting at Aquinic Avenue here all the way to two-mile corner and these black pole, you know, lamp posts. you know, the communities do it with wreaths and they do different or you have veterans pictures hanging from them. Um, that kind of stuff. I think that would be so cool. But I mean, look, I think we all would love to have underground utilities and who knows, maybe there's funding out there or private funds to be able to help get there. Um, we're being told, you know, initially we were told I think like $6 million and then within a year we were told $21 million.

Yeah. 19 to 21 million in that range. And now we're being told it could be between 30 and $40 million. So I don't know, maybe you could write a check. Um another wild vision, Paul. I don't know. Um um but but um I I think if if the money was there, I think I I'd certainly say yes. But you know, that's a lot of money. So, um, and I think the majority of it would probably have to come from from private funding or or some type of donations to be able to do that. I just it's tough to when things are tough all over. It's, you know, it's a beautiful area of town. There's a beautiful plan in place. Yes.

That's really the missing missing piece to it and that's really what's holding everything up. Yes. um

just seems that if if the council could make some kind of commitment, it would be a lot more attractive to private donors to give money. Anyway, last evening uh right here there was a presentation by uh some URI students looking at um not not just the Atlantic Beach District but all the way up Valley Road and they had some incredibly good ideas. If you think undergrounding the poles just in the Atlantic Beach district is all it's going to be, if their ideas could only come to fruition, it would be terrific for the town of Middletown. Uh but it would it'll cost some pennies. It really will. But we should keep that in mind and and we should be working to make it happen. We should be setting something up so that we could make it happen. It's good for Middletown and and that's that's the guideline, isn't it? To do what's good for Middletown.

Right. So anyway, I wanted to mention last evening's presentation. Right.

So, uh, for me, I think there it's for all the right reasons. Resiliency is a good one that you threw in there in the beginning. Um, but visually and just safety wise, some of those polls are atrocious. I can't even believe how they got there in the first place. One of the problems for me in that is that we can never seem to get the information. And you talk to some people that know workers on the ground and guys that work for electric company and you should be able to pick apart the polls that you want. Maybe not all of them, but the ones that are most egregious. If you go to the upper echelon of Rhode Island Energy, it's all or nothing. It's like you have to come that entire circuit has to be underground.

And I honestly think I mean it's like you should be able there should be some some middle ground but we cannot get to the person or people in the room that will say yes this is what is possible or give me three options everything two polls or six polls something whatever somebody should be able to do that. If you could do that, then instead of the numbers of 6 million, 10 million, 20 million, whatever it is, we could actually dial it in and say, "Okay, is this possible? What would we have to do?" I think under those and and I don't know the answer to how to get there, but if we could, then we could say, "Okay, Sean, how does this work? How do we do the how do we do the tiff so we have an impact on if I'm a donor and saying, "Well, Middletown's not doing anything. They're not putting a dollar in, so we're not going to help you." Well, I'm willing to if you can show that Sean can say it's feasible and here's how much it's really going to cost and here's how it could work. I I don't know what we need another committee, somebody that knows somebody. I don't know what the answer is, but it for me it is certainly something we should go after. It just keeps getting back of the bus, you know.

I agree. It would be good. Good. Well, there's a reason. Well, sorry. Thank you. You know, I've been fortunate to live in that area for a number of years and we have not invested much in that area compared to what we've invested in other parts of the town. I want someone to put a list together of what we've improved in that area in the last 15 years. Not much. Just private development,

right? And so we made promises to the businesses down there. We said if we create this tiff, we will take those tax increases in this area, put them in the tiff, and we will use that money to improve the infrastructure in this area. The businesses were applauding. They were standing up. They were in the game. We stopped funding the tiff the next year. we put it into general fund and spending it. So, [clears throat] we're still waiting for something to happen in that area. And we talk about this is going to be our one shot at redoing that area down there. So, we have to make a decision. Are we going to live with above ground utilities or not? Resiliency. They're saying put them underground.

Yes. Right. If our number one priority is resiliency, then the question answered, right? Yes. So, one idea that was brought to me was why don't we increase the area of the tiff? Why don't we put it all over East's Point, the whole area, maybe even Indian A, and those increases that come off those taxes when we reassess will be more than enough money to fund this project. You could also you could also based on the presentations that we saw last evening, you could even go up Valley Road with the TI. Yeah. Oh, you mean undergrounding

uh for the T if you enlarge the tiff area. Go up rally. Enlarge the tiff. I exaggerate a little bit, but look at it

because I know that people, you know, it's a heavily taxed area. It's it's growing. It's one of the biggest percent increases every time we do a reassessment. So rather than lowering other people's taxes, let them keep continuing to pay their fair share and take that extra revenue and put it into the tiff. So just a conversation. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, but I just think might be an opportunity to find some dollars to help pay for putting things into that area. And then once that area infrastructure was where it is, that tiff could then underground utilities across the town. Just a thought. Yeah. So, some of the some of the issues with potentially doing that is and Dennis is right about how the tiff what happened to the tiff and it went into the general fund and I think 2018 or in that time frame um when we had those zero budget years, zero increase years. I'm not saying that's what funded the 0%. We gave nothing to the schools in those years as well. Um, but I've also had other residents say to me, "Hey, if you do that, doesn't that mean my taxes go up more? We carry more of a burden." And, "Well, what about in front of my house in the area I live? How come I'm not doing a tiff here? That's not fair." So, while I get that and I understand that, um, that's something that needs to be considered as well because if you expand that tiff area, the way I understand it, maybe I'm wrong, is that, okay, so that money gets diverted to those type of improvements of undergrounding poles under the ground, right? So, if that money's going there, that's less tax revenue coming in for to fund the town operations itself. And so, that puts more of a burden on other residents.

Um, and I've gotten push back on that. It's like, hey, I understand the plan. I I don't necessarily disagree with it, but this what this puts more of a burden on me and what about my area, you know, and everyone's always concerned about the areas, understandably so, but that's just something that needs to be considered as well. But isn't it u feasible that other areas in the town would uh could develop a tiff as well for the development of their areas? Absolutely. But but still that puts more of a burden on other folks. If that tax money is diverted specifically for those improvements in that area,

then increase the taxes for Yeah. It makes more of a tax burden on on the remaining folks. There's also the question or or the consideration that having a vibrant Atlantic Beach district, for example, benefits the whole town, not just the area. I mean, you know, it it'll bring revenue in to the town. So, there are those considerations also. Yeah. Uh Charlie, sorry.

Oh, no problem. Thank you. Um I I do I work with utilities all across the country for my for my living, for my job. uh that pays the bills. And I can tell you that um I I don't want to be a pessimist, but I don't have any faith that we're ever going to do underground utilities. And here's why. Because utility doesn't want it, and they're going to keep jacking up the price. They do it to people like us in the solar world that we have to interact with it as well. They jack up the prices. So I you're going to see that number continue to grow. It's just my gut. That's what I understand because for them, it's not resilient to put it underground. It's actually more maintenance for them. It's more work for them. It It's It's opens it up for flooding. It's easy for them now to go into areas now and repair telephone poles, repair wire. It's not going to be underground. So, you're going to continue to see that push back. I I would love to just say like I think it was mentioned like, you know, National Grid before they sold this company, they went through and they upgraded everything. Well, they they hired contractors and they didn't even put the poles in straight. I think we have it all over this town right now. You know, you go to a place like Charleston, South Carolina, there's under there's above ground utilities everywhere, but they're clean, they're neat, and and they and they fit the character of the area. That to me, like I I I don't want to be a pessimist, but I don't see we're ever going to do underground utilities down there because I think they're going to continue to grow that cost to a point where it's not going to be feasible. Um because they don't want it and that's simply it. Um, now maybe we can work with them to clean things up better. Like I like really like when you drive around this town, you look at the the utility poles around this town. They are some of the ugliest utility poles

I've ever seen. And I see them all over the country, trust me. So, um, but I do think we should, you know, a previous council created the tiff. Um, I think it is a special area in our town. Um, but, you know, I I think it should be funded. I I personally voted for it last year. I think we should fund it for whatever kind of projects because I I do think it benefits the town. We don't have a downtown area really in this town. You know, we don't we don't have that. And I think that's what people are holding on to. We could create that down there. I'm all for that. I support it. Um but I just to me the underground utility poles I just don't see them ever happening. Thank you.

Okay. Go ahead. So, I'm sure that Charlie's pessimism is warranted, but I want to say we have done it in Middletown. We did it in Paradise Valley. And if you look at

paintings, art paintings of what Paradise Valley was before it happened. It it it was horrible. And you look at it today and it's it's beautiful. So, it it can be done now. Maybe we don't need to do it necessarily as a tiff. Maybe the suggestion that Mr. Crochi made at the beginning of finding a way to capture private funding is a is a way to go. Um it's my understanding that the Paradise Valley undergrounding was done largely with private funding. I know that the preservation society contributed. We um don't have a lot of corporations in in Middletown and Rhode Island who would fund something like this, but we do have a wealth of foundations who love the o open space and the beauty of our island and and they may be willing to help. And it might just require that the town council establish it as a priority to begin to do undergrounding of utilities where feasible in the town and ask the town administrator to set up a mechanism by which private contributors can be solicited and receive 501c3 tax credit charitable contribution credit for their contributions. We've done it with respect to the library here. Some of these people that um are not here 12 months a year and their houses are empty 183 days a year. They have res resources and an and a willingness and a love of our town to uh contribute like some of them have done for the library and I believe more will do for the library. And I think if we if if the town made it clear this is a priority something we want to do and courage and then there's you know receptions and you get a lead funder from the Vanurren Foundation or whatever I think you could raise some meaningful money

and get the process started. You're here I think you should be in charge of that new committee Mr. was just a little Oh, yeah. I think all in favor. All right. Um, here you go. Okay. What do we have next? Okay. Because I want to get to the folks in the audience as well.

And next on the list is inclusionary zoning. Uh, you and I had talked about that and the board uh wanted to make sure that the entire council was on board. Would you like to see? We have a we did a draft on inclusionary zoning uh a couple of years ago. Uh this was before the state passed all these laws. So we would have to go back and revise it anyway. But is this something the council would like to see? That's a question. Would you like to see a proposed ordinance on inclusionary zoning? Okay. Any councils have any comments um or questions about any push back on conclusionary or you you want to you want to see

their proposal? Yeah. I'd like to see what you come back with and Yeah, we would have to rework it um to make sure it's compatible with the state laws. Correct. Okay. But once we do that, we can forward it to you. Okay. Okay. Good. Anybody else have comments on that? Can I just add one? Yes, sir. What? Let me um just the topic in general of the zoning and the state zoning. I I I really was not a fan of the state pushing stuff down to us and I think I've heard this come up um at other committee meetings too. Like you know

all of that is designed for Providence area and we are unique down here. Places like Naransson are unique communities and that's why you're seeing the push back now. I think there's got to be an adjustment from the state guidelines and the state zoning requirements to our town because we're different and it and it that's all there is to it. I think this will continue to come up. I think that's why you've seen us come together on on supporting Portsmith because, you know, we do want to have some control over that. And so that's that's all I'll say. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I think BJ had something you wanted to say. Yes. But this reminds me of my college when we were a woman's college and then when they invited men to come in and join the college professors all stood up and said we have to treat this differently because the women were sitting back and the men were talking like mad. So this is just my thought listening a bit to what's going on here which is I'm not criticizing but I wanted to say we are missing a very important individual in this community and this is Teresa Santos and Teresa was the one who at Satchuest with the underground utilities found private funding and she's the one whenever I go up to Sachu along Second Beach. I think of her because there are no poles sticking up. Everything is underground and I think bless bless you, you know, bless you for for everything you did to get that private funding. So, I do believe it's out there. It's just you have to know the people or the companies that have the money and encourage them to contribute and then they would certainly get feedback positive about what they've done for the community. That's what I wanted to say because I still miss Teresa to this day.

I think we all miss her. Yes, she's special. I miss her mumbling under her breath to me over here. [laughter] some of the stuff I said, man, I hope the public didn't hear that. Oh, man.

Thanks, BJ. Um, the next one, uh, has to do with, um, a problem that we've been seeing. Um, it has to do with making sure that plans that are approved by the planning board are implemented as approved because we've seen some cases where um the planning board approves a plan and once it gets implemented it does not comply with everything that was in the approved plan. Now there is a question about this. I don't know um I can't say whether this applies in general or just to u landscaping plans because the the projects that I'm familiar with all have to do with the landscaping where um the project team did not implement what was approved by the planning board. So that we see this as a problem and we don't know how to address it. So, um, Peter, so planning board approves a project. Project moves forward. Um, building inspector is the one that oversees the to make sure things are done in accordance with whether any specific restrictions were put on or any additional landscaping requirements. And you're saying that's not happening?

It's not happen. I I do recall and don't sorry I'm just Ron can correct me. I know that we there were some changes that were made to the development regulations and and in particular dealing with landscaping if I recall to to ensure that landscaping was put in or or that the landscaping had to be maintained for a certain period of time. Um you would just stick plants in and if they died in six months that was it. Um right. So that's right. There were changes to the regulations to ensure the the maintenance of installed landscaping.

Um to Paul's point, there have also been cases where landscaping that was supposed to be installed in the first place wasn't installed and it was caught, you know, at some point down the road. What's happened over the past minute,

I don't know, year or two, I I'd say, has been um working more closely with the building inspection department, helping them to uh ensure that all the landscaping is installed. And the way that that's happening is when they go out to do their inspections, of course, their focus is on the building. That's what they do. They're they're worried about building code stuff. When they go out to do the inspection to to clear the property of all the requirements, including landscaping, they are contacting the tree commission to assist the building official with reviewing the property in comparison with the approved landscaping plan to ensure that what's installed in the end actually meets what was approved by the planning board. So, that's an ongoing process. I think it's a learning curve for for everybody, a little bit of a new process. Um I expect that over the next you know period of time that we'll see much um we won't see as much of those issues pop up. Um from my perspective it's extremely disappointing that some things may fall through the cracks here and there. I get it. But if there's a plan that's approved and they've gone through this whole process and then they go well we're not going to do this because we're going to cut that corner from an expense standpoint. And I'm not sure if that's what we're talking about or we're talking about trees that died that should be replaced anyway. Uh we need to be on top of that. I'm not saying you're not, but uh or the build inspector is not. I'm not saying that. But what's ever happening, it needs to stop. And we need to figure out a way that um to stop that because if you're if you're if you give a decision and your decision is this is what it this is what it is. this is being granted based on these conditions. Those conditions need to be met or that person or that developer needs to be dragged back in and say, "Hey, you didn't meet this." So, I don't know what the recourse is on that. Um,

so how do we this how how does if the planning board is aware of of projects where that has happened and by the way couple of years ago uh we initiated and it was accepted to put in landscape man maintenance plans as Ron mentioned so that uh uh these applicants once they have their project completed they should be maintaining their landscaping that that's according to this plan that they submit. What I'm talking about now is projects that are completed and um uh they are not completed according to what was what was approved. Uh I can I can give you an example. The auto dealer on West Main Road. He has a parking lot that abuts a side street. The tree commission originally suggested they put in uh evergreens to put a barrier there. They came back and said, "Um, there isn't enough room. Could we put a could we put a fence up?" And the tree commission then said, "Yes, but then put some sidewalk trees up."

Yeah, but I'm not I'm not sure the tree commission, in respect to those folks, I'm not sure they were in have that authority do that. I understand they came to the planning board and we discussed it with the client. The client agreed to do it. Okay. So even though the the tree commission suggested it, we brought it up. They agreed to it. Okay. To this day, it still hasn't been done. Okay. So what do we So are you communicating that to Mr. Wansky? We've talked about this many times. Many times. Who are you communicating it to? To the building official. Okay. And how long has this been going on?

I I don't know. the um uh uh an an earlier case is the multi-use building on Wave Avenue, right? There's no street trees there. They were supposed to put street trees in and there are no street trees. That goes back a few years now. So, it's few years, an easy fix. So, I I see it as a very easy fix. It's really just um a condition that the building inspector has to add at the end of every permit before someone gets a an a final co he has to meet certain uh uh issues to be sure that they're completed and that just has to be one of them.

So let me ask you this and nobody wants to give you any more work and you probably know where I'm going by say stating this. You have subcommittees and and maybe this isn't the answer. It's just in my initial thought, you guys do a great job of the subcommittees. You get out there and and you go to and you visit these places and you put your eyes on these things. Could that be a part of a subcommittee once a project's complete just before they give something just to go through the list to make sure everything's completed? I I don't know that. I'm not sure if that's that's something you should be doing, but I would be concerned about the planning board having an official role to property. I mean, I think it's great if if

well, they have official role in implementing these things. Well, I mean, but they they it's great, I think, if because you're aware of what the conditions were when you approved the project if you draw and say, "Hey, something's missing here." And then that's something that the administration should be handling. And okay, so if it's not, then that's something we need to talk about. I guess the bigger concern if it's being reported and it's nothing's being done, then we we have a problem that we need to talk about with with the administration because we beefed up the regulations to allow us to do a better job of making sure that people complied with these requirements. So there's some there's some disconnect here. Yeah. No, I just think that the planning board shouldn't be the enforcement agency for the Absolutely not.

It's it's not more of an enforcement. and it's instead of eyes on it reporting back, hey, this is not done and this was our restriction. I'm not saying that you're in the Y although Joe, you could be an enforcer. I don't know. Um but um I hear what you're saying. Okay, Charlie,

I think you're making a good point. I mean that but that that it can't be the planning board when we close out a permit. I mean, every permit that I close out, I have a special use permit or something with it and the building official checks to make sure that's done. But where that where I do see sometimes I think this comes up is they plant the trees and the trees die. Like I had that happen at the McDonald's behind my house. You know the planting board I we we came we asked for trees. I knew they were going to grow there but we let them try to do it.

And then at that time it was Rick Lombardi and I had reached out. So people have to reach out you know because that is the enforcement of you know the building official. Um and they put a fence up instead which we were happy with. But I I think in general I I have heard some stories of like, you know, there's a sign maybe that says like a direction of how you're supposed to pull out of a parking lot or something that's part of the plan and then something happens to the sign and then they change it. And so that that is something that I'm more concerned with. I mean, first and foremost, we shouldn't be closing out permits if if all the requirements that you guys put forth are are done. But there is that fiveyear 10 years down the line, like are they still complying with it? So, is there a um is there some type of bond that these people put up like a landscaping bond? So, is why is that being is that being refunded before every final in before it's done? I mean, how I thought we put that policy in place years back.

The bond is only put up if they are unable to install the landscaping before they want to pull or get the CO to ensure that we've got the money to to make them install the landscaping. So, for example, if they're getting a CO in the middle of the winter, they're not going to plant the landscaping, but we'll have the bond to cover the cost of landscaping to be done in the

Well, the reason the bond started going in place, one of the reasons was years ago over at uh with the with Kessan Farm. I used to work there when I was a kid when it was a farm and when they started putting the phase one in, they had some issues. They got they got fixed. In phase two, there were some issues, they got fixed. The the town administrator at the time released the bond money. Phase three was a disaster. And the bond money was released long before it was completed for whatever reason. That goes back in the mid9s or so or early 90s. And so I thought we we learned our lesson by putting these uh things in place, bonds. You're not going to get, you know, 25% of your bond back until final inspection and things are complete and you've done everything you said you're going to do. Um same thing with High Street, same thing with Turner Road years and years ago. So

So that's that's in place. It's the question of the maintenance and and after the fact if landscaping dies. We don't have money to cover that. However, if that landscaping was required as part of a development or a special use permit, I think there's enfor Peter can speak to this better than I can, but I think there's an opportunity to for enforcement against that property as a result of getting the permit. There is. Yeah. And once again, we we beefed up the language to to give us the tools to do that.

Well, I mean, that's part of the whole process. I mean, if you agree and say you're going to do something and you get a you get an approval based upon these restrictions or these these uh conditions, then you should do it. If it's not being done, then is the recourse municipal court? I mean, what's the recourse ultimately? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, then that needs to happen. Dennis,

thank you. I kind of Charlie hit on it in regards to I can see you giving them the permission to do what they need to do with stipulations of landscaping. I would agree. Why would they get a certificate of occupancy if their landscaping is not being done right? So then we got to make sure the landscaping is being done. But I think one of the issues you mentioned is year two, year three, year four if they're supposed to maintain it. Do we go back and inspect it? How do we handle that if that's in our obligation? And how do we know to go back and inspect it to make sure they're keeping it up? Long a period of time. Are you going to follow up? Yeah. And what how long is that?

With with with the uh with the with the landscaping plan that was introduced. Uh there was um a um requirement for the tree warden, the town's tree warden to inspect the property to see that it's being maintained properly. I don't know that he has any authority though. he can inspect the property, but I don't know how that can be enforced.

Yeah. I mean, I would think it would be a simple report back to the building inspector or the town administration saying, "Hey, this is this wasn't done." But I don't think to your points earlier about enforcement, you're right. I mean, you shouldn't be the enforcers. It was just, you know, but you hey report back and say hey this is not completed whether it's tree commission whether it's tree warden and whoever it is that's annoying I got to tell you for me for us also. Yeah. Yeah.

Well what's happening here? We're dancing around the real issue. The person supposed to do the job is not doing it. That's the point here and that needs to be fixed. The building inspector needs to do exactly what he's told to do, especially with a new house and new construction. He looks at the plan and makes sure it's done to the plan. If it's not done to the plan, he reports back to the planning board to somebody. But in some of these cases, that's not being done. So, you got to go to the source and fix it.

Okay, let's move on. If you I'm sorry, BJ. A good example is the car dealership right right across the street here. Uh they're supposed to have certain amount of uh a greenery and flowers and whatever. And we noticed and talked about the fact that this was not being done. And the big question was to whom do we go to complain and to have this done properly? Uh, so this is right in our backyard here with the Toyota dealership. I think it looks fairly decent now, but it's not the way it was supposed to be. Do

you get a recap on on um like with town projects? We get a recap. So, we kind of got a pretty good idea what's going on most of the time um with with with town projects. Do you get anything like that? Once once we approve a project, that's the last we see it. the way it should be. Okay. Okay. All right. What do we have next? Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Next, u we have an infrastructure issue. One of the things uh town is lacking. Uh can you grab that mic closer, please?

One of the things we've I think brought up to you all before is we don't have a wastewater management plan in this town. And uh we feel fairly strongly on this board we need that we need to have that u at least one reason is we're adjacent to uh water you know in the bay and all that kind of stuff. And we have an awful lot of imperous service here to deal with when it rains and so on. So, uh, what we'd like to ask you tonight is, uh, let us write a wastewater management plan, uh, and then bring it to you and and you guys approve it.

Yeah, I think we've we've declined that in the past. It's a different council. Um, I Why would they decline it? What's What's the

Well, there was pretty intrusive for some of the folks out on the east side that have have septic. I mean, it was and it was expensive for those folks as well. Um and also there I'm not sure if I think initially this was part of it where um it was um you know proposed if it rains and you have x amount of of frontage some type of crazy formula somebody came up with that you're going to pay as an infrastructure fee to help some of this groundwater. So in in some folks that had I know Mr. He just passed away. Mr. Murphy I think it is on uh Riverview in and whopping. He had like I forget how many couple few hundred feet and he called me up said Paul this is going to cost me about you know $80,000. I'm 80 years old. What am I do? I mean it was just it was some crazy stuff going on. So just for the residents I mean practically does it make sense? Maybe. Um, but it just from an affordability, we talk about affordability, right? And all we want to do is put things in place that are going to cost people more money.

Well, I think zoning, and again, I could be out of my league here. Any water that comes down, any moisture that comes down on your property is supposed to stay there on your property. And if it doesn't, and it goes someplace else, uh, that's that's a problem. Is that fairly close? Well, you're not allowed to do anything on your property that would increase the rate of runoff or the volume of runoff from your property. Water may come onto your property, run across it, and then run across your neighbor's property. That just happens naturally, but you can't um increase that flow or increase the volume of that flow.

Well, so here's we just are recommending that we put one together and you guys review it. If you don't like it, it goes in the trash can. We'd like to put together a wastewater management plan and send it up and see what happens to it. Okay. Sure. I mean, you guys okay with that? Sure. Take a look at it. Yeah. You okay with that? Work closely with uh Sean as well because we've got some infrastructure work that we're proposing in regards to the sewer run where we're looking to maybe turn the flow to another direction. There's a lot of money being, you know, going to be spent in this area. So just keep that in mind as as you put that together.

Well, we'll we'll do is run up the flag pole and see if anybody anybody salutes.

Sounds good. Joe, you know, one of the things that always strikes me when we review certain applications and they're primarily commercial properties is, you know, an older property, the has zero storm water management and zero run uh runoff uh recapture. And you know, one of the projects that comes to mind is the old KJS and it looks beautiful now, but I remember uh applicants that came before us and I would ask a question on the engineer storm water and and runoff and they're like there's nothing there and we all know where that flows and now um so maybe maybe there's an opportunity to look at you know commercial properties maybe identify a list of properties that have zero uh storm water recapture and maybe there's a plan short of something that's townwide that could really focus on uh something more specific.

It's a good idea. I don't know. Just Okay, throwing that out there. Yeah, good idea. Yeah. Anybody else on this topic?

Just and just to follow up on Joe's comment that I think Matt earlier talked about trying to redevelop existing sites. um as opposed to new development of vacant or green property. And that sort of redevelopment of existing sites uh is is beneficial also because it allows you to put in those storm water and water quality controls that might not have existed at the time when that property was originally developed. So once again, it's that infill development and that redevelopment of existing properties has a lot of additional benefits when you do it that way.

I I also want to add that I appreciate P Peter mentioning that um the fact that when you infill development, you know, it's not very difficult if you have a set amount of sewer capacity which acts as a liability towards the town. The we we pay the sewer charge but not the water, right? The town or do we pay both as a town? the residents through taxes. We do. Well, there's there's there's the east side basically doesn't have any sewer or water from like Well, well, west side in particular. The west side. Yes. Yes. So, the taxes pay towards the water and the sewer. Correct. We don't we don't control the water and the city of Newport does. Okay. Y but the sewer, right?

We the rate users. Yes. Only the people that are attached to it.

Okay. I just wanted to make that clear because if you have an amount of capacity that is underutilized, you know, it's much more expensive to go further with sewer or water or expensive utilities than to add capacity in the areas that we already have. So I think in talking about infill development and zoning, it would really need to focus on the areas that already have that builtup infrastructure on the west side rather than the east side or you know the places that have septic because it's much more expensive to it's great to have everything but if the costs of neighborhoods can't pay for the liabilities of adding the pipe or the conduit or the undergrounding then we shouldn't do it as a town because that p that cost is going to get passed on to everybody. You know, if you have a town, if you have a a subdevelopment with, let's say, 25 houses and you would really need 40 houses to actually c cover the cost 30 years down the line of liabilities, then why are we doing that? Because that's just going to cause a trickle effect down the line. And we have aging infrastructure. You know, as Dennis mentioned, we have a sewer plant that is how many decades old and we want to run things sideways. And I heard I was at the presentation where you guys were talking about like huge liability costs that nobody thinks of. It's kind of shitty, but you know, you got to think about it, right? Because when the sewer goes out and we release 20 million, you know, gallons into the bay, you're going to have 20,000 people on your doorstep saying, "What the hell's going on?" Right? Another thing is the the raising of Eastston's Pond, right? That federal money got cut off. Hopefully, we'll return in the future. But as we redevelop areas, we got to think about that resiliency aspect. About, you know, 30,000 people rely on that pond for water, right? And that's during the winter. it doubles or triples during the summer when you have all the tourists come in. So, working with Newport, working with I know Portsouth doesn't have any, but really with Newport to make sure those liabilities are taken care of and doing it as a like resiliency measure as finance itself is

going to benefit everybody in this town long term. One thing,

thank you. I I I don't want to follow you, Matt, but um um you know, one of the things though with the infrastructure, I think too, to keep in mind is, you know, because the west side is the one that's going to You're right. Like it's easier to put new sewer connections, new water connections on the west side of town, right? But then don't forget about traffic because we don't have a lot of control. I mean, we do, I guess, but with West Main Road, I mean, it sounds like they're just going to repave it and recurb it like they did East Main, right? So there's no thought going into the fact that we're adding we're going to be adding a light for the apartment complex up there like and anyone that the last summer that dealt with the traffic on the west side of town. It was it was horrendous. And so we got to also keep in mind that too like it's not just about we Yeah, I agree. Maybe the west side is the place we can develop easiest, but think about the impacts of the traffic too.

No, I couldn't agree more. Honestly, the traffic going down to Rathon during the summer is horrible. Honestly, it's horrible. And um as part of the package I will present for this board at a later date, um I've talked about aspects like that and how to mitigate those risk factors. Um including the type of development we do. Um but that's a whole topic for another time. Thank you. Good.

Anything else on this? Okay, we're going to eliminate number eight. So it brings us to the last item on the list and that is the preservation of historical resources. When the um current uh comprehensive plan was introduced 10 years ago, one of the priority items that the council gave to the planning board at that time was preservation of historical resources. They requested that the planning board develop an ordinance, a draft ordinance to present to the council. We've done that and um it took us a while to get to it. Uh and when it came time to present it to you, there was some issue before the town and we were asked to table it for a while. Um the last time we met, we brought it up. Um and because it involves um reducing the town's um um revenues um through um um historical um benefits to the residents if they follow certain procedures. You asked us to table it again which we have. And so the question is, are you interested in seeing an ordinance on the preservation of historical resources? Just briefly, what what the um what the ordinance covers is the creation of a historical preservation commission. They would be charged with um creating an inventory of historical u resources in the town. He would also be charged with uh creating the process to grant historical benefits to residents who qualify, determine the the uh uh requirements for qualification and so on. Um there would be tax credits uh some over a 10-year period, some for on

a one-time basis, and that's what will tend to reduce the revenues of the town. So, uh, the question is, do you want to see that, um, draft ordinance again or should we just continue to sit on it? And if I could just add to to make it clear that this would be a voluntary program. Yeah.

Um, this this would be an incentive program where residents, property owners would have the ability to to enter into the program. Um, there's there there would be two, at least as drafted, there would be two separate um incentives that would be available. One would be if someone with a qualifying historical property entered their property um or or confirmed that their property wouldn't be altered in a way that would you know render the historical significance to be less for a period of 10 years. they would get a a tax incentive over that period of time of I forget the percentage but there would be a percentage reduction in their tax bill in exchange for them confirming that they wouldn't alter the property for a period of 10 years. The second part of the incentive program would be is if they wanted to enhance their property um in a way that restored it historically there would be some incentive again

onetime incentive onetime tax incentive to assist with the cost of making those renovations. Um so again we don't want to get into I don't think the planning board wants to get into a regulatory situation. It's strictly voluntary. Um, but it would have a cost. You know, any of any of those incentives would would have a cost to the town in terms of the tax revenue.

I mean, I think to move forward on something like that, we'd have to have more information. Um, I think we would need to know what the stock of historical places are and what the financial impact would be. I mean, anytime we make decision, whether it's in public or whether it's an executive session negotiating contracts, we have a fiscal impact statement. Yeah, when we did the draft when we did the draft, we we did a financial impact analysis, but that's so out of date now we would have to redo it and it was a very it was a very rough um estimate based on you know ballpark of how many properties we might expect to participate in in again using the assessed values at that time but that's five or more years old.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And they would have to meet certain qualifications I would imagine or criteria. So, yep. I'll get to her in a second. I see the hand. Go ahead, BJ. Sorry. I takes me back to my college days when we had the men come in and you know, all the women sat back like this and the men never stopped talking. Well, the only thing I wanted to say, are you saying I talk a lot, BJ? I would never. You would be right. [clears throat] Bad about you. Okay. All right.

No. uh the Middletown Historical Society in which the I serve on the board has been over all of these things that we're talking about right now and we did not follow through with it because we did not get any encouragement particularly like from the the uh maybe the planning board too. I mean, we needed to know a lot more about what individuals who had historical properties and wanted to make it known what it would cost them or if they would get a break in some type of either taxes or in in what they were going to do with their land and property. And so, I don't think they ever got an answer to any of this. So this has been going on for I remember two at least two years maybe three years

longer than Yeah. So that's what I wanted to say that the Middletown Historical Society is very much involved in this and wanting to know what the rules and regulations for having this type of property in Middletown would be. Okay. Is there any councils have any interest in Yeah. in something like this moving forward? I think it's tough to make that decision when you just don't have that kind of information. I think if if there's some examples and yeah like what is a when you say historical resource that's different than saying like historical structure. So is there other historical resources you can give an example?

Well it it was it it it covered kind of everything. It wasn't just buildings. It was also uh landscape areas that are historical and so on. So it was kind of general in that respect. I can't give you the details right now, but it wasn't just buildings. Is it like the stone walls? Stone walls. Yes. Yeah. I got my certificate for mine. I don't know what I do. I mean, we have stonewall ordinance already.

Yes. And followed through with the historical society. There's someone in charge of stone walls and they have it the whole thing written out as to what people should do if they have stonewalls. and and they do have a monthly magazine and in that has been application for stone walls, but it has to be old stone walls, antiques, not something that you just built. Yes. So there's

I would certainly like to the information to look at it. I mean, it's hard to say no. It's hard to say yes if we don't have the information. So, I think the the right thing would be do say provide the information um and and see if there's a an appetite to move forward with it or not.

Let me ask you this. We could give you information in two forms. We could give you a draft ordinance updated of course or we could give you an information sheet that would be briefer and simply describe what's uh would be in a draft ordinance. And that's f fine, Paul, but I think it would be the number of houses eligible or buildings eligible and what the finance you have to get the financial impact from uh from from Sean or the finance office and the specifics specific based upon the ordinance you're presenting. Yeah, we can we can prepare an info sheet and send that up to you. Then you can decide whether you'd like to see a draft ordinance or not. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Let's get to the folks in the audience because it's been an hour almost an hour and 50 minutes and um Joanne Thornton, thank you for all of this by the way. Thank you.

Take pause here. Take mine. You got Yeah, Joanne, sit there. Thank you, Matt. Too close, too far away to

Hi, uh Joanne Thornton, 28 JH Dwire Drive. Uh tonight I wanted to speak to the section of the revised comprehension comprehensive plan that addresses the town center for residents. The 309 page 2015 comp plan spelled it out like this. The town would like to see the area transformed into a walkable and attractive destination to include a mix of commercial, residential, excuse me, and [clears throat] municipal uses that is well integrated with the surrounding neighborhoods. Overlay zoning should be drafted and adopted to ensure the town's vision for this special area is implemented when private development takes place. The 189 page 2026 comp plan revision, a document that has been reduced by approximately 40%, is proposing this. The anticipated West Main Road and Cardington Highway redevelopment project will transform 15 underutilized, there's that word again, underutilized acres of town-owned land into a mixeduse development that might include residential, office, retail, recreational [clears throat] spaces, and housing. A potential public private partnership could transform the corridor and support job creation and enhanced public amenities in addition to increasing municipal tax revenue. In addition, there is no mention of Psey Field being a gift from the federal government and deed in perpetuity for recreational purposes. This is not a small omission in my opinion. I find this very concerning because there were multiple public hearings on the Middletown Center. At the onset, there were public hearings where the public defined their town center for the request for information.

A developer was chosen from the RFI responses and other public hearings were held where the public expressed their displeasure with the developers proposed direction of the development. After further negotiations with the town council, public hearings were held with the planning board and then the town council where hundreds of people attended filling the room each time and dozens provided input on their land at the corner of West Main and Codington. The glaring omission of Potsy Field with all that has transpired over the last year is outright appalling and shamefully disrespectful in my opinion. I believe the facilitator and the committee had the information from the 2018 through 2025 public hearings available to them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume they had that. The passage in the [clears throat] proposed 2026 comprehensive plan most certainly does not reflect what the public has expressed in multiple previous public hearings. The most concerning, this is most concerning to me indeed. The Middletown comprehensive plan, as I understand it, is supposed to outline how the community, the whole community, wants the future of Middletown to look like. Paul, I've heard you say more than once. What do you want your town to look like?

The public hearings mentioned have generated an immense amount of public input on relevant issues to Middletown's future. The public hearings, I might add, that were better attended than the comprehensive review committee's workshops. It seems rather obvious that the public's input is being overlooked and omit omitted in this very important document and I hope the town council would like to know why and that the planning board explains this to both council and the public. Thank you for letting me speak.

Thank you Joanne. Okay. Um, Kim, good evening. Tonight, I would like to speak with you as a concerned resident regarding your joint meeting on town priorities. Respectfully, There are nine priorities but tonight I'm concerned about number one among others but number one I would like to discuss. I believe the 2025 comprehensive community plan update committee started back in September 2023. As you know, I am a member of the affordable housing committee and was asked to join, [clears throat] excuse me, the comprehensive community uh plan unit community comprehensive plan in January of 2025 because they needed two people from the affordable housing committee. I attended every meeting and special meetings in 2024 except for November meeting because of an injury. In December's meeting, I did attend as a project um as the project draft was near completion. I did ask along with other committee members for the legal document version to be redlined. Our facilitator and Sorry, I forgot his

name. Along with Ron indicated, no, it was not necessary at this time. Document was sent to the planning board to begin a formal adoption process. I was disappointed that they did not redline this legal document. After 21 years with a legal firm, I have officially retired. I did learn a few things over 21 years and I know when you do have a legal document before attorneys, corporations, businesses, you should always redline your document or letter for everyone to see the changes. For example, this document before the town council and planning board is a legal document and this is a legal public hearing. The standard for all parties, excuse me, the standard for all parties to review and access acceptance to approve of a legal document is redlined. Headlining is required to grasp what a final document will look like and full transparency especially with legal issues that involve the public and transparency should be first priority. Also, this project was named 2025 comprehensive community plan update. My opinion this name was confusing because the document was not updated. It

was totally revised in 2015 39 pages to the 2025 189 people. I want you to know that in most meetings, it was brought up several times by the facilitator and with committee approval to keep this a shorter document than our two 2015 document. This was another legal reason why this document should have been redlined. In closing, I would like to know if the town council and the planning board know what was added in and taken out. I did some research on both documents and there are 120 pages missing. If there is going to be a public hearing with our residents at some point, all members will need to be able to tell the public to show and to show the public exactly what was put in and taken out. If the members are not able to complete this for our residents, then I'm not sure why we would ever hold a public hearing. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kim. Ron, I have a question about that. Um, I attend most of those meetings, not all of them. There was conflicts. There was You can only attend so many meetings sometimes, too. Right. So, that was an important one. So, I did try and attend most of those. However, or Charlie and I would flip back and forth. Hey, can you make it? I can't make it or whatever. At least it was some type of representation from the council. Um what will be we what will the council be provided as far as you know to Kim's point of 309 pages to 82 change-wise so that everyone understands what was taken out and why it was taken out. So I I think well when we had that discussion during the comprehensive plan update committee meetings and that request was made uh the explanation is it's a completely new document. It's not it's not simply editing the 2015 plan um where you can simply you know do a red line to see what was crossed you know what was taken out and what was added. Um it's a completely different document. a lot of the goals, a lot of the action items are the same. There's some additions um in that respect. I I think that we could do um uh I don't know if you'd call it a red line, but we can do a comparison document um that would show in terms of uh goals, policies, and action items what has changed. But in terms of the text of the document, the body of each of the chapters there, it's basically a different it's a it's a new document. So trying to red line it, it just wouldn't work.

Okay. So, but I think it's important to to make sure you know, okay, these these things changed whether it's one page, two page, 20 pages. This is what was taken out or condensed. I mean, when I sat on those committee meetings, some of them drove me nuts because everyone was doing a good job, but it was they were arguing about where commas were going to go. And I'm like, can we just move on? And everyone's really p they did a good job. They did. But to their point, we got to make sure that um you know the changes are highlighted in some way form whether it's you know when we go through it or the planning board goes through it and these are the changes and this is why it was changed. Again, I think in terms of the the policies, the action items, the implementation program, which is the the last section of the plan, I think we could do that. I don't know if I'd be able to get that done by Monday night, but we can certainly talk about it. Um, but again, the when you get into the body of each of the chapters, it's a completely different document.

No, no, I understand that there was a lot that was condensed. Um, maybe that's not the right word, but um, I think it's important to see changes. And if that, in my opinion, if that takes a little longer, it takes a little longer. That's just my opinion. So, okay. Um, thank you, Kim. Uh, Terry

Terry Flynn, 34 Warren Avenue. Uh, thank you for the opportunity to present some concerns on one of the council priorities listed on tonight's agenda. I'm going to address also the comprehensive community plan. The proposed update seems to be missing 120 pages. It is 38.8% shorter than the current comprehensive community plan. That's pretty close to being cut in half. And this is concerning. Having less detail about Middletown's future exposes Middletown to a future of interpretation. You know that old saying, if you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else. And with all the controversy over the last few years with the Middletown Center proposals, moving the library, and Pottsy Field, this is the time to assure the residents vision of Middletown is achieved and not left to chance. I heard that the shortening of the comp plan was to make the comp plan less daunting to readers. And as a resident being asked to give input on the comp plan, I'm asking who who asked for that. I've never heard anyone say that the current comp plan is not well organized or that it is difficult to understand. On the contrary, the current comp plan has been a valued resource for the last 10 years by the town's board and commissions, town counselors, and attorneys representing those applying to make change in Middletown. I can speak from personal experience having used the current comp plan as a new planning board me member and a new town counselor that more detail is clearer and better than less. Whether the facilitator made the decision or the committee made this decision or perhaps a combination of the

two, the sheer amount of deletion of detail from the current comp plan is not an improvement and is quite troubling. I request this statement be made of the public record and thank you.

Thank you, Terry. Okay, Karen. Haron B. Ashri, 207 Maple Avenue. Um, thank you for allowing us to speak. Um, I don't want to repeat a lot of what Kim said because I had a lot of the same concerns about the lack of a a track change or some sort of uh notation of what was taken out, what was added. Um, basically a red line version. But holding a a legal public hearing without having that basic information doesn't help with transparency for the residents and it prevents informed public comment in um input. Um the lack of a redline copy if that was an oversight by facilitators I would hope that maybe it could be corrected as soon as possible. Um, so I'm asking um, respectfully that a tracked change or a redline version be released as soon as possible and to provide adequate review time for the public? And if there isn't enough time, would there be a consideration to postpone the hearing so that the public can digest this these changes that have been made and the difference in the in the former comp plan to the new one um so that we can provide meaningful input. That's all.

Okay. Thank you, Karen. Mike Flint. Flynn, 34 Warren Avenue. I wasn't I wasn't going [clears throat] to speak tonight, but the tiff discussion got me thinking and so I just have some comments about that. The tiff was approved in 2018 and the according to that town of Middletown Atlantic Beach tax increment financing district and district master plan. It was projected that there would be $30 million in revenue from that over the 30 years that they projected 30 million. Okay. So with all the with all the financial you know um Sean's very good at this kind of thing. So, we got 30 million coming in. Even if it costs 20 million, why couldn't there be some kind of borrowing with that pledged as a backup for it? And that along with a little private money and maybe some resiliency funding could pay for undergrounding. Um, the last point is that the the TIF ordinance, it bugs me because it gives the town an out. In section seven and eight of the ordinance, it actually says um it says the town council authorizes that 100% of the future increase assessed property values within the district shall be retained. Okay, so and in contracting I did a lot of that in my work life. Shall means it must be done. May doesn't mean it must be done. Okay. So, it says shall there. And then it says um up to 100% of that money. Doesn't say all of it. It says up to 100%. Could be used. And then it says such captured and assessed value may be

used to fund these things. It's almost like it was written so that you you the town, not you guys didn't pass this a while back, um didn't have to fund it. Didn't make sense to me. Um, the final section of it says, you know, the ordinance shall take effect because it has to say shall because it's legal and it needs to say that it should have been written if they were serious about funding it. It should have been written with shalls all the way through. Um, so thank you. That's all.

Okay. Thank you, Mike. Okay. In all my years, I've never seen anything like this, but I really like it. It's simple. It's like old school. Uh, thank you, sir. I I think that's pretty good. I like it. What is it, Mr. Frank? Lawrence Frank at O'Donnell Road. I have not a prepared statement, but I'd like to comment on some of the what was talked about tonight. Uh, we talked about Hoganor property. Did I understand Mr. Reagan to say once the bonds are paid off there are no restrictions. Is that correct?

Um yes. Mr. Frank, could you just pull that mic a little bit closer, sir? I'll say it again. Did you Did you Did you say that once the Koganor bonds are paid off, there are no restrictions on how the land is used? Is that correct? Generally speaking, yes. Yeah. So if if the town were to pay off these bonds, then they could use it for whatever purposes they deemed appropriate. Generally speaking, yes. And that would include housing.

Yeah. um the enterprise center. You may or may not know that besides a development for uh apartments, plans have been submitted to develop or build um retail space on that property which could have been used for additional housing but was is not being done. Are you aware of that? My understanding is that uh once these uh buildings are built, they will come back and and um request that they be turned into housing. But they have to go through this process the way it is now. and and you should be aware that the planning board has submitted to the council some changes that would um alter the process so they don't have to go through a a two-stage process anymore. But for now, with the with the ordinances we have and the zoning we have, this is what they have to do. But the plan is that they will become housing. So, are they being designed with the idea specifically that they will be used for housing or will they be have to be modified after the fact? They they are using uh a building design that has been used elsewhere in Middletown for housing, but for this application, they have to submit it and address office space.

Okay. Thank you. Um there was a some comments about the percentage of STRs in the town and as a member of the comprehensive plan committee and Stantech reporting to us various information uh they reported that the approximate STR use of vacancies is actually includes homes that are not occupied year round and that's at 6% which brings the total of vacancies in town to almost 13% which is considered to be an unacceptable level that causes severe strains on housing and in particular drives up prices throughout the entire uh community. Tom, Mr. Welch talked about a younger generation of uh coming in and first living in apartments, one, two, three people and eventually being able to buy houses suggesting that supply and demand will take care of the issue. Uh I would beg to differ with Noah coming in and the Coast Guard coming in. You do not have that luxury of waiting for supply and demand to finally come up with the adequate housing to take care of those individuals. the comprehensive plan being cut down. I was fully in favor of it. I think it's a good idea. I think too many times I came before zoning board. came to visit and listen to zoning board meetings where individuals representing varied interests each would say their their uh their intent was compatible with the comprehensive plan no matter how much in opposition each each suggestion was even though they were opposed each one of them would say it's compatible with the comprehensive

plan I think this new uh proposal developed by our committee and with the help of Stantech is actually quite an improvement. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Frank. Um I I guess I have a question on I know you said that I believe you said Mr. Crochi that you are submitting something to the council about or have submitted something to the council about this two-step that Mr. Frank was talking about because when he said retail, I said to myself, what's he talking about? I wasn't aware of that. So, and then when you explained it, I understood it. But that's kind of that's a I want to say dumb, but I don't want to use that word, but I just did. But it's unnecessary to have to go through that route twice when hey, what's the use going to be? So, I'm not sure why that

it's it's the it's uh it's what our zoning and ordinances uh require right now. you know they they cannot just go straight to residential. Yeah. So that zoning area

it it is it's taking advantage of the um the one of the changes the adaptive reuse change which allowed existing commercial buildings to be converted to housing by right. Um, and you get a much higher density in most cases than you would be allowed to do uh under the standard zoning code. Um, and so but but it's limited to that existing building envelope. So someone might come in and say, "Hey, I've got this office building. I want to convert it to housing, but I want to add a second and third floor to it." Um, under the adaptive reuse statute, you can't do that. you could add a second and third floor to to the commercial building if zoning allowed that and then you could convert the entire thing to housing. So, it's it's it's sort of trying to use that that new adaptive reuse statute in a way that allows you to not only uh convert the existing structure but to expand it or to add to it. Um, and once again, the only way you can do that now is through a two-step process. It's it's similar to like with an ADU. I might not have I might have a lot that doesn't it's not big enough for me to build a standalone ADU, but I can build a garage and I can build a garage and once the garage is built, I can convert it to an ADU. So, I I think that there my understanding is there might be some changes at the state level to try to address some of this. I think the state craziness I think the state screwed up with their legislation is what really happened

and and we're trying to take care of it.

Okay. All right. Well, listen, uh good comments. Um really good discussion. Um I think that's why it's important for us to to meet um maybe more than once a year. Maybe maybe it's not necessary. I'm not sure. But I think you certainly can't overcommunicate with each other um to make sure that we're all heading or you know rowing the boat in the same direction. And if we're not, that's why the meetings are important to get it out there and figure it out because that's what we do, right? We'll figure things out what's best for the town. So, I appreciate you guys uh coming tonight and your time and efforts. And you know, I think one of the things when I see um and I kind of just chuckle about a little bit because I I chuckle because I think people don't understand the amount of time and effort that that that you folks put in um you know whether people agree with you or not um on your on your decisions, but I know in my heart um you you all work very hard between subcommittees and um your regular meetings and special meetings and um you're always going to do what's right for the town of Middletown. So, we appreciate you and we thank you. Um

and we thank all of you for meeting with us. We appreciate it a lot. I mean, that's that's what makes the town go when you have people that sit down and and and talk like adults, uh whether you agree, respectfully, disagree, and and figure it out. So, that's important to do. So, thank you for this evening. Thank you for the public comment. And Wendy and Karen, thank you for arranging it. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Ron, thank you. And Peter, all in favor? I. Okay. Mr. Frank.