Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. I think I'll start the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. It's actually his first, I guess. The other Michael wasn't able to make it today. So we'll see. I can't remember if I seated one of you guys at the last meeting or not. Did one of you get seated? I did. Okay. Then we'll see Howard, Harold tonight.

All right. I'm seated.

All right. So we can start on the agenda. First on the agenda is the 87 and 95 West End Drive lap line modification, which the plans did get sent out, but we want to throw a copy of them out to get a look.

Great copies. So basically it's taking that strip from 95 and giving it to 87, so that 87 has that little bit more. And it's just to make the lot more conforming, or what's the purpose? I did look at the aerial photos and it looked like there's a lot of wetland to the north and so that any activity would require wetland agency review probably. I don't believe it or not.

It would be a tile weapon? Okay, because I just saw it. It looked like it was all mapped as weapons. The map on my wall I had does.

It looked like it. I mean, I obviously don't have that, but the next application after this is we could go further and do this.

So the first step is add a little bit more room on that side of the garage. Are they changing the buildings at all?

Not as far as this application goes, no. Not this application, no, no. At some point, they are planning to do a little bit of work on that side of the garage that is going to get the additional space. I haven't seen an application that looks like that, because obviously until they got this far, they've been decoding for it. It's all kind of levels back there, so depending on how close they are to the level, I'm not sure what they're able to do back there anyway.

Well, it could require a zoning coastal area management review, right?

you can't do anything. So it may be at the end of the day you're not even able to do what they want to do, because they're too close to the tidal wells, but that's sort of, that shouldn't factor into whether or not this is a balanced application or not, I guess. Ultimately, up to you folks, but they're taking from the larger life and giving to the smaller life.

And just to confirm, since there's no septic, no anything, ledge light doesn't need to weigh in in any way?

Yeah. Yeah, these will never be used for that. There's no septic, no, you never know that. So ledge light is a pretty good picture here. That was shown to Medulite. Medulite basically said, you know, I don't care. Okay.

Any other questions? Anybody like to make a motion?

I'd like to make a motion that we accept the proposal.

We approve.

Approve, yes.

Okay. Seconded. Motion is made and seconded. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Unanimous. Okay. Thank you. Alright, so next on the agenda we do have, leaving it on there, a plan of conservation and development. Don't know if we have anything to discuss on that today. And the other is just the referral of public at 25-1 overview, which we wanted to talk about a little bit.

I'm not going to talk about the act itself, but I just wanted to tangentially to it. The River Cog I just did a housing assessment of the whole region. And they looked at 10 years from 2014 to 2024. And they were going to email it to the people who listened, but I didn't receive it yet. But it's nothing surprising to think exactly what you would anticipate. There are 175,000 people. in the River Cog region, and the growth in number of people has been small, 1.2%. Households, 3.5, almost double that. The age group from 55 to 65 has grown. All the other age groups have declined. I think the one thing that stands out is the school-age children have dropped 15%. And housing supply is up by 2%. Job growth has been static. Most of the jobs have been filled by commuters. And the job categories with most jobs are manufacturing, followed by retail, which has declined. education, healthcare, and food industry. So the conclusion basically was, just as we've experienced here, you're going to have a mismatch between older people living in large houses with three or four bedrooms and the need in the community in this area It's for more affordable housing, to have any kind of job growth or bring back children. So I don't think any of that is nothing we didn't know before. It just kind of confirms that.

Cog area to the rest of the state? No, this was just of our River Cog, yeah. I think it's probably comparable to the rest of the state.

They didn't talk about that. A couple of things when I was looking at that, they talked about several key dates that they were looking at getting some additional information out. Beginning at the end of this year, there's something that's supposed to be coming out in December this year. And then it goes on up to 2028. What are those supposed to be? What are those benchmarks? Did they talk about those?

No, no, no, no. And they were supposed to send the whole report out of receipt, didn't they?

One of the things I was thinking about is, you know, they talk about saying how they want to have affordable housing and growth and everything. But when you take a look at a lot of the towns, I think they also have to kind of take a look at how much available land you've got to develop. Right.

Yeah. I think they mention that. Yeah. Yeah. They realize there isn't. So, I mean, that's why I think they're looking at, you know, accessory dwellings and other options and You know, there's a proposal for a Golden Girl. Have you seen that proposal in the legislature, which would allow people to rent out rooms? So...

That would be just for single people, right? Perfect. Is there anything out of room in your house for an individual?

I don't think they've kind of decided on the parameters, but it's up there to be discussed. Okay. And the other thing I would just add is, in conjunction with this, you know, we just formed a new... Housing Strategic Planning Committee and the Steering Committee. What's that? Housing Strategic Planning Steering Committee. And there's two members each from Planning, Zoning, and Affordable Housing. And I was elected co-chair of George Frampton from Fort Lauderdale. And the idea was to initially kind of make sure that we were coordinating efforts. We have both 25-1 and 830G is still in place. So how best do we address that? I think we will have to generate, according to 25-1, a housing plan for each municipality that will come basically with some criteria that was sent down to the state to the COGS. But that's a way away. But I think most people felt that that would fall under our jurisdiction because it's housing. And then the group decided to, we originally thought of just sharing kind of information and more of a coordinating role. But we thought to give it a little bit more weight that we would, we voted and the selectmen voted to permit the committee to make recommendations to the three boards. So after having delegates from all three sitting in the same room coordinating efforts that we would do that. Now of course they

My father was chairman of affordable housing. And they established, there was a committee, and then they gave a bunch of recommendations to the Selectman's office.

Well, could be the Selectman, it could be, I think it would be to planning, zoning, and affordable housing. Could be. I'm now best to implement 25-1. So I think the purpose was, if you were all working in silos before, and then you have sequential approval, then it just seemed like a better idea to get people representing those three boards and commissions in the same room and working on the same call. Yeah, I agree. Better coordination, better communication.

Howard, has anybody thought about whether or not we're going to participate with COD or by ourselves?

Well, that's one of the issues we're going to be looking at. But it's probably too early to do that. The state has, I think, the next steps of the state is going to put some more meat on the law on what put some numbers on, and then they'll give that to the CODs, and they'll work out their plan so that we can decide whether we want to participate in it or not. I mean, if you listen to River COD, they kind of present it as It's probably the best alternative to go with them because they're going to have kind of the endorsement of the state. So if you want to go out by yourself, you can, but that's the way they kind of frame it. But it's probably too early to do that. We don't know the criteria, the number.

Eric, was there, I saw it when I was looking through that PowerPoint that there was a date of 2027, I think. I don't know, it was July that we had to make a decision, was that?

It's somewhere around, I don't know exactly off the top of my head.

Yeah, it's in the PowerPoint, but... There was a date in the PowerPoint. I don't know if that's current or not. It was 27. Yeah, it was 27. I think it was July.

Is that to provide the plan or just make a decision?

The town's in COG after making a decision, which they had to.

Yeah. There were several milestones in there that were supposed to be met. I couldn't remember.

The other question I asked first, it looks like. 27. Yeah, 27. The other question, Eric, was that under this housing growth plan, there were guidelines and studies and tools that had deadlines, one of which was OPM was to issue initial guidelines for these housing growth plans by March 1, 2026. I'm wondering if we could do those guidelines.

What is OPM? I didn't find that accurate.

They're kind of driving the whole, the law. But did we get that study or timeline?

And so then they had other dates for, you know, developing land tools, I guess, to decide how much land is developable in each town.

That was due July 1st this year, along with waste study capacities, July 1st this year. So those might be shifting back.

It might be shifting back, but again, the town, because we have the affordable housing group work on this, already largely has a list of what the town believes is developable land. Okay. So I'm not sure we have a game on that, but my expectation is as we reach some of these deadlines, the state's going to sort of admit that it's not ready yet, and some of this is going to get discussed, but we'll see. I haven't heard anything coming out of this new legislative session that amends any of this, but God knows that we know it's almost about yet.

Those are my only questions. There was an asterisk that OVM has issued in the Permanent Housing Growth Plan Guidelines up for written comment until

I see that. So he didn't get the plan.

He found out. Regale the state.

Just be aware that one of the provisions allows someone to come in on a lot in a commercial area and build two to nine units of housing. In a commercial area?

Yeah. The zoning commission has to address that. We're in the process of doing that, yeah. In our C-30 and C-10 zones, you have the ability to stop anything the residential community will teach you with nine units is very limited from here on out. Basically, it's a site-level approval for those type of units. So everything along Halls Road, whether the Halls Road Community Committee got approval or not, now can put up to nine units on every wall. We'll see how it plays. I mean, they still accept it. There's still other reasons that this is a bad idea to start with, but we'll see what they do now that they have this law in place. But the only conclusion is that 14th February is having its own written place that addresses this by the end of June. Excuse me?

By the end of what?

By the end of June. We have between now and July 1st to put some sort of writing place that talks about what this new law does. without us having a ring about it, they just go based on the statute, which gives us no ability to deny it at all. So, we're working with Sister Gomes, who's the guy who did our rewriting phase one, to give us language that we can get in place by the end of June. This will involve special meetings, public hearings, all sorts of things. The zoning commission is going to be frantically busy between now and the end of June trying to get things in place.

This is just

The other piece of it, though, is the parking overlay zone that you can put in. Right now, in the law, you can't deny housing based on lack of parking in your town. However, you are allowed to create two zones per town where you still can acquire parking. in those generalist language and between areas, including the Falls Road area and the Soundview area, and areas around them, where we would still be able to look at parking limitations in connection with that. So, again, two pieces that are going to be adopted between now and the end of June. One involves hazard prevention, and one involves parking limitations. And those will be coming to you because you have obviously a consulting role for any of the new regulations, whether they're consistent with the PSU. So expect that in your June meeting.

The only thing else that just comes to mind is that River Cod feels that this law is more of a carrot where 830G is more of a stick. According to the state, When they went to OPM, they really want to just work with the towns. And, you know, I think there's incentives for if you set up a transit district that you get additional state funding rather than any.

to me by transit. In other words, if you don't have parking, that means you have to take the bus, right?

Well, if you read it, we might qualify. It doesn't, if you're Old Saybrook that has a train station, yes. But if you don't, even if you're a community, municipality next to one, as long as you have a bus stop The idea of the whole thing is to develop mixed use in these central commercial areas and some housing to create these new districts. Art, may one elaborate?

I'll say there's a separate provision in the law from the two parking districts that would have to be in place. But yes, power is a right regarding the transit communities, the adjacent communities. It turns out, apparently, according to the state, that we have nine-hound transit in town, and that qualifies us under the law to be a transit community here, so that we would be allowed to gain some of the benefits under the statute if we create this transit-oriented district. But that's a separate provision than the whole parking issue. That's the rest of the next 30 days or so. And again, that will be coming to you probably over the next year or so. We have a little longer to get that in place. But we could pick, if we want to, and it's going to be a discussion pre-consulting and planning, if this is something we want to join, to try and create this transit district and then get the benefits from the states for doing stuff. We've got more to come on that, but that's less urgent than the stuff that has to get done in the next month.

So, I mean, all of this kind of ties back to the POCD. I think, you know, given all... My question is, given all of this, is this a good time to review the POCD? Because... there are going to be all these changes coming down the road, and how do they fit?

But we don't know exactly what all these changes are.

Well, I'm getting a short understanding of trying to determine whether the new ways you're about to get to address these things by June 30th, meet your POCD. And for us to reopen the POCD now, when we're trying to immediately determine when to meet the POCD, we're creating moving, two-day moving targets at once. I think we need to, again, the specific pieces of the POCD you want to look at, great. But reopening the whole box right now, I think is really asking for a lot of trouble, given it's not a deadline for it.

Right, for the future stuff that's down the road. So, yeah, I think that's what we may have to look at it in more depth for future stuff that is affected by this plan and the actual regulations. Okay.

The housing plan lands on planning. I've graded it.

I think the housing plan lands on planning. Yeah, I've talked about that. So yeah, I think that that's going to fall... who looked at, you will probably have the final review of that. Obviously other committees want to be involved. Your affordable housing committee wants to be involved. I know other people want to be involved. The final judgment on that is probably going to be on the Planning Commission side.

But this special committee that the first electmen has created will probably make recommendations to us and we decide Yes. Whether or not we go along with those recommendations or want to tweak them a bit.

Right. Yeah, again, that's why this joint task force is created, so that you can get into it with the way it's done. It was specifically determined it has no power to make actual rulings or make, you know, motions. So all you're going to be getting are recommendations from this committee, and it's up to you whether you buy the recommendations or not.

And then ours is just the plan.

Yes, the how do we live piece of this is a separate plan that you're going to need to either adopt something through Gateway or adopt your own parking plan. You previously had to do that. It's sort of similar to your hazard mitigation plan that you guys have to look at periodically to be a conformable safe station.

Okay. Good for now, and there will be more to come in the real near future.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anything I get, I'll see to that.

All right. Appreciate that. Okay. Last on the agenda is the reading and approval of minutes from the March 12, 2026 public hearing and meeting.

I would like to make a motion that we accept the minutes as published on the town website. March 12th, 2026 meeting. All right.

Motion made and seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. All right. There's nothing further. Motion to adjourn, I guess.

So moved.