Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

North Smithfield Town Planning Board meeting for Thursday, August 13th is called to order at 7.01 p.m. With that, we'll do a roll call. Dr. Benoit. Here. Mr. Hammond. Here. Mr. Kisparo. Mr. Benoit.

Here.

Mr. Porto. Here. And the chair is here, full house. We have no minutes to review this week? That's good, this month. I know, you're gonna make a motion to not ever have any more minutes to review, okay? There's any plan board member need to disclose any potential conflict on the matter before the board this evening? Hearing none. Any plan board members need to disclose any ex parte communication about any contested or material, judicatory facts or opinions concerning the merits of any application before us this evening? All right, voting members for tonight. Dr. Benoit, Mr. Hammond, Mr. Menard, Mr. Porter, and myself.

Okay, so first up.

Mr. Carrillo, if you'd like to give us a little background.

Mr. Chairman, as you're aware, this is a project that was continued from the last hearing. It's for a gas station at 3 Greenville Road. It had received master plan approval. And had been back before the planning board, I think last month for a unified development review. They were asking for dimensional variance for signage, as well as a preliminary approval of the plan. The applicant has withdrawn the request for the dimensional variances for the signage. The town's zoning ordinance, as it's been readopted, Changed some of the sign requirement sizes and I believe many of the requests have been resolved with the amendment to the zoning code. The meeting was continued last time because there was an objector here who had an attorney and they wanted to bring in some new testimony. So the applicant agreed to voluntarily continue the meeting to tonight. Now we've got a request by the objector to continue the meeting because their expert was not available this evening. I believe Attorney Noonan is here to agree to that extension with a condition and I will turn it over to Attorney Noonan at this point.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name's Elizabeth Noonan. I represent the applicant in this matter. And there was a request by Attorney Kelly that I received yesterday to continue tonight's hearing because his expert, traffic expert, was sick. That's fine to go if the board wants to grant that continuance. Mr. Kelly had drafted correspondence. I did respond to it. I don't normally like to engage in a back and forth of letters, but I wanted to point out the reason for the continuance last month was that we got their traffic letter, if you will, 24 hours practically before the hearing, which didn't allow our expert time to look at it, much less you. So part of my request is that the public meeting be continued to a date certain, which is what we did last time for this hearing. And also that any written materials are submitted seven days in advance of the hearing, so we don't get into this situation again.

Okay, so it sounds like we have a couple of things to talk about, and I appreciate that. The traffic pattern was one of the topics of biggest concern. So I think it is important to have everybody in the room and have that discussion once and for all. But is the seven day notice a separate topic from the continuance itself?

I think that you could combine that into one motion to agree to extend to date certain of September 7th with any new, September 10th, excuse me, in any new written materials to be provided at least a week in advance to be submitted through the planning office on or before September 3rd. Okay. And if someone wants to say so moved, I guess we could do it that way.

And also to let you know that Mr. Kelly had emailed, I'm not sure Mark, if you were on that also.

He did email that he's in agreement with that.

With the seven days, yes.

Okay.

I do have one question because it seems as though we have opposing traffic study experts. Would this be an appropriate time to engage in our town's peer review so that way we can get as unbiased of a review as possible and understanding of who may be in the right. Just make it as black and white as possible.

Is it a call for peer review, meaning an independent traffic study, or is it a review of the two traffic studies? A review of the two traffic studies. Okay, and a comparison and interpretation.

Just to- Okay.

So you've got two competing traffic engineers. I think a traffic study was submitted as part of the master plan approval. There was actually a statement in there that there would be additional traffic information coming at a later date for information that was not available at the time. The review that came in from the objector at this point raised some issues and one of them had to do with that traffic. I think it would be a little early to call in a peer review because I don't know what the response to that objection could be resolved and agreed upon by both parties. I don't know that it is or isn't. If at a point the board is uncomfortable making a decision after hearing from both traffic experts, then it would be your prerogative as to whether you wanted to request a peer review. But I think at this point, I actually, myself, haven't even been able to compare the new traffic with the objector. When I did read the objector, there were a couple, you know, the main issue was the school wasn't addressed. That was the main issue. So that, it is being addressed now. How it's being addressed and whether they're going to object to how it's being addressed, I'm not really sure.

So one of the things on that, it was that the city of Woonsocket had not yet provided any information. Has that been resolved?

This, as I understand it, last I know, the city of Woonsocket had not filed for a PAP with DOT as of the time, not only that we had done our report, but while we were going through our process. So from DOT's perspective, they don't have a lot to say right now, because that PAP has not yet been applied for, despite what I drove by and saw today. However, what we've submitted to you, and what was submitted to I forget when we submitted it, it was after the last hearing, was the report that we gave to you last fall. And within that is a supplementary analysis that DOT had asked for in part. It does address the school, and what DOT ended up saying is we don't We're not considering the school for our analysis of the physical alteration permit. However, our analysis is still contained within there. I think, and I don't want to get too substantive here, but as you go through and read this, and I anticipate Mr. Kelly will, Traffic Engineer, may respond, I think you're going to see the issues winnowed down. Yeah, okay. Because the comments that you got from PAR Engineering, did not have the benefit of our supplemental analysis, including the school. So I do think you'll see a lot of that pared down from the PAR report.

And if we were to go down that path, but if we, worst case, in the end we're still not comfortable and we want to do the peer review comparison. How does that put us calendar wise in terms of the requirements of following the timeline for the project?

I would have to check to see what the schedule looks like. However, right now these are voluntary continuances, so- So they don't affect our- The clock kind of stops. Yeah, that's what I thought, okay. So that a peer review on something like that could be done fairly quickly. We do have three. on-call engineers, PAR being one of them, so they would be discounted, but our other is GZA, which is more environmental. We have Crossman, and Crossman certainly has the ability to do a quick peer review of any traffic report, so we'd likely end up going with Crossman at that point.

Okay.

What I would do, just so we understand the process, I would request from them an estimate of the cost. I would share that estimate with the applicant, make sure that we agree that that would be the traffic engineer and that the estimate was reasonable. because the cost would be borne by the applicant.

Right. But you're under the impression that we wouldn't have any issues with the timeline.

I'm under the impression that, just as Attorney Noonan said, that it would be winnowed down. I know that in me reading, and I think there were four, there may be between three and five issues that PAR raised. The main issue was the school. The other issues were Very marginal, like there was no graph of a delivery vehicle driving through the parking lot. There were very minute issues that were raised. The school was the major issue.

Yeah, quantity of traffic.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. All right, thank you. So I'm looking for a motion to, let's do the combined motion to, if we could.

I motion to extend to a date certain of September 10th as well as require that any additional written documentation be provided seven days prior on or before September 3rd.

We have a motion. Do we have a second second? Roll call.

Mr Hammond, yes, Mr Menard, yes, border, yes, and the chair vote yes.

See you next month.

OK, we'll see you.

Alright.

Next on the agenda. Minor change to a recorded platter on Blunder's Way. Major.

I'm sorry, a major change to a recorded- Mr. Chairman, that application has been continued to September 10th also. The applicant's representative sent out mail notice to the abutters, but did not place the ad in the paper. So this has not been properly advertised, so we're basically going, it was re-advertised, I believe the ad will be in the paper. It was either in the paper this week or it will be in the paper next week for the meeting of September 10th. So that will be back before you on September 10th also.

Do we have to do anything for that?

No.

Okay, you've already done it. Okay.

Make a motion to adjourn. Second.

Those in favor? Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned at 7.13.