Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Showing 630. Okay.

Good evening. This is a special meeting of the O-Line Zoning Commission on Wednesday, May 27th, 2026. At the table this evening, we have Mr. I'm just looking around. Looking around, yeah. Michael Peter Barnes, Land Use Coordinator, Eric Knapp.

Mary Gardner Coppola.

Mary Gardner Coppola. I got that one. How about that? Is it Coppola or Coppola? Mary Jo Nozzle, Michael Pogliano, Denise Savage-O, and myself, Paul Orzel. I just drew a blank. It's the way you walked in. I deal with my kids. There's all those senior moments.

You know, I have one with the flow.

And also, we have our guest hooked in here, Francisco Gomes. by MEG, the lead consultant for zoning regulation. So, good evening.

Hello.

Today is the only agenda item is to receive and set a public hearing for case 26-14, since Jane, I guess, is in here, I'll read it, application to amend zoning regulations, new definitions and uses to include mixed use middle housing in zoning districts. Those are WF-20, C-10, C-30, C-30S, SVVD, that is the Soundview Village District. Creation of parking districts in Halls Road area and Soundview area for Public Act 25-1. allowing regulation of number of parking spaces. The applicant is the Old Line Zoning Commission. So before we probably set that, receive it and set it, we should probably have a discussion.

Yeah, again, this was drafted by Mr. Combs. He's here to discuss it with you. I did send around, though I have part copies as well, the memo he prepared explaining both of these regs. But again, because this was drafted by Mr. Gomes without really getting a lot of input on your end, the thought is before we go to public hearing, if you guys want to kick it around and have thoughts about it, now would be a good time to do that. Again, I think the... The appropriate thing to do now is just have Mr. Gomes introduce to the regs, explain why they came out the way they did, and then we can get around a bit. He did say he has to leave around 7.15. We can go longer if we want to, but again, if you do have questions for him, now is the time to sort of talk to him about the regulations.

All right. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for the setup, Eric, Paul. I think it would be best to back up just a little bit. I do have a few slides I can share with you that explains the public act and what it is that we're responding to. And let me qualify all that as saying that this work that we're doing with respect to the public act and these amendments in front of you are actually being conducted through River Cog. Coincidentally, we've been working with you on your zoning regulation update, but we're also hired by River Cog to work with communities across the region. And we're working with 13 of the 17 towns in the River Cog region in a similar fashion to help them update their regulations to comply with the public act. And so this work is actually being funded by River Cog and it's through my capacities on that project that this work has been conducted. So with that being said, let me share my screen and I'll hopefully explain some of what's in front of you, and then we can get into the details of your specific minutes. Okay. All right. Is that showing up okay on your end? Yes, it is. Okay, fantastic. So Public Act 25-1, it became the public act on Wednesday before Thanksgiving into this past year when the governor signed House Bill 8002, and he signed it on that Wednesday afternoon. before Thanksgiving, so that probably speaks to the anticipated popularity you thought it might have on signing. It does a number of things. It's a very broad act. There's a lot of items related to housing, related to affordable housing, 830 , but there are two items that are directly relevant to your zoning regulations, and the zoning regulations of all 169 towns and the boroughs in the state. And that surrounds middle housing and parking. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by those terms. So this is the exact language from the public act. The language in red is my emphasis, and this is the middle housing piece. So what the act amends existing statute section eight two, which is a zoning statute. It gives you your zoning authority. It amends it to say that your zoning, in addition to all the other things your zoning regulations have to do, as of July 1st, a month from now, your zoning regulations shall allow for the development of transit community middle housing development as defined, and they define it in Section 11 of the Act, or a mixed-use development on any lot zoned for commercial or mixed-use development subject to only summary review. So that's what's being required. Now, I'm going to break that down into its component parts because we have some terms here that likely the first time you've seen transit community middle housing, it's a mouthful and it's an unfortunate name they've given it. We've improved upon that a little bit. Summary review is likely a new concept to you because most communities don't have something called summary review approval. It's special permit, special exception, site plan, zoning permit. Summary review is a invention of the legislature. So transit community middle housing, what that essentially is, it's multifamily housing between two and nine units in any form, right? It could be an apartment building, a duplex townhouses, three family, any configuration you can think of, including something called cottage clusters. It's multifamily development, right? So it's a big long name. It really has nothing to do with transit. As I mentioned, All communities in Connecticut have to allow this form of housing and many have no transit whatsoever. I'll just refer to it as middle housing from here on out or multifamily because that's what it is. The act also referenced mixed use development. And mixed use development is defined by statute as a residential and a non-residential use in the same building. Summary review. is a term that's been amended by this act. It was created by the legislature a few years ago for a different purpose, amended by the act. And it essentially means that you can't require a special permit or exception, whichever one a community has, or a public hearing. You can't require either for a middle housing project. It has to be through this summary review equivalent. which you can require a site plan. You can send it to the commission, your case zoning commission for approval. So it can be a commission sign off. It doesn't have to be administrative approval, but you can't require a special permit. You can't require a public hearing. So that's what's critical about the summary review approval. So the short version of this is As of July 1st, in any of your commercial or mixed use zones, you have to allow multifamily or mixed use development. And I say or because that's the exact word used in the public act and that's being written into statute, not an and. And that's a really important distinction because or, as there's a long case history of or being supported found to mean or, either, as in either, not both. An and conversely means both. So or is disjunctive. It's one or the other. You don't have to do both. There's a lot of discussion, debate surrounding the intention of this word in a previous version of the bill in House Bill 5002, which didn't get signed into law in the early part of 2025. It was an and. and it got changed to an or, I think, to make this more palatable. The difference being, if this were an and, we would, without any question, in all of your commercial zones, have to allow both multifamily housing, as in an apartment building, and mixed-use development. You'd have to allow both through this summary review approval. Because it's an or, we, in consultation with our our land use attorney and with other land use attorneys and with some cogs, including River Cog and some other cogs are understanding this to mean as long as you provide one or the other, then you are in compliance and you could choose to allow both. You could pick and choose by zone, which form of development, as long as you allow one or the other, that you are in compliance. And so that's how we're applying this in Old Lyme. And there are communities that are taking a more conservative approach and for whatever reason would prefer to allow both because maybe it's actually meeting some objectives that they'd identified through their plan of conservation development or an affordable housing plan. With Old Line, given my familiarity with you as a commission, with your zoning regulations, with town staff and the town itself, I'm taking a very strict interpretation of this to mean we can pick and choose. And what I've recommended, what I've proposed to you, and I'm certainly open to discussion and to your advice otherwise, is I'm recommending that you allow the mixed use form this development. And there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, within your business zones, they're very limited in their geographic scope and range and size, I mean. And you very intentionally have identified those areas separately from your residential zones for the purpose of reserving space for economic development, for commercial use, for services, retail and other functions that are important. And requiring mixed use development allows you to continue to do so in some capacity, at least on the ground floor or a certain ratio of that is going to have to continue to be commercial. The other benefit of that approach is that mixed-use development tends to be higher. It can be higher in quality because it's subject to commercial building codes for the commercial element. And so there are fewer developers that are really capable of or interested in doing mixed-use development. So the result is usually a higher, not always, but often a higher quality product. coming out of a mixed use development than a purely residential development, which I'm sure you've seen apartment buildings around that are very low quality. So what we have to do, what we've recommended doing, and it's in the amendment, the middle housing amendment in front of you, is to allow mixed use in the zones that were read into the record earlier. And in order to comply with the summer review requirement, We're going to do that through requiring a site development plan, which is something that currently exists in your regulations. You have procedures, application requirements surrounding that. So you already have a mechanism that effectively works, but we're just going to repurpose that to meet the summary review requirements rather than create a whole new summary review application and procedure and section of your regulations for this concocted term. What's critical is that it meets the requirements, that you don't require a public hearing, that it's not a special exception, that the criteria are limited to public health and safety. In doing this work, there's a number of assumptions that we've had to make that have been really vetted with other attorneys, with COGS, with Connecticut APA. And that is because the bill references commercial and mixed use zones, that this does not imply to your industrial zone or any industrial zones. And that's, we've got a lot of assurance surrounding that. So that's a very firm assumption. I already talked about the mixed use, the interpretation of mixed use versus multifamily. The legislation just said mixed use. It didn't apply a unit range like they did for transit community middle housing, which is defined as two to nine units. So we've been applying that same unit range to mixed use, meaning it's only two to nine unit dwelling unit mixed use that you have to allow. You don't have to allow, you know, 10 or 100 dwelling units in a mixed use development as long as you allow up to nine, you're in compliance. So we're applying that same unit range. There has since been proposed legislation that got out of the house in this past session, went to the Senate, but didn't get onto a floor for a vote. That would have done exactly that, would have amended the definition of mixed use to apply the two to nine unit range. So it seems to be what the legislature had intended from the beginning. Furthermore, because of the definitions, these are defined as a building, both transit community, middle housing and mixed use are defined in statute as a building. Therefore, by allowing a single building through summary review approval, you're in compliance, which is to say that you don't have to allow multiple buildings on a site. So the legislation isn't intended that someone come in with a proposal for five, nine unit buildings and put 45 units on a lot through a summary review type approval. They're not entitled to that. They're entitled to one building. And that building, of course, has to meet all of your zoning requirements. This is not 830G. They don't bypass your zoning regulations. They have to meet your setback requirements, coverage. Parking's a separate issue we'll talk about. And all of your other zoning standards, they're still subject to height, density, anything. It's applicable to this type of development. furthermore i talked about the site plan application your plan development requirement we're going to use that as a vehicle for the summary review and this is not so much applicable to you because you don't have floating zones or other kind of special purpose planned area development districts but this legislation is applicable to those as well and that's far more complex we've been handling that on a town-to-town basis you can apply an affordability requirement or inclusionary housing requirement. We propose doing exactly that. I think it's a very modest proposal. And I think it's consistent with what the legislature is asking us to do. They're asking us to allow for more housing and to help meet housing needs and to provide affordable housing. The benefit of having an affordable housing requirement is as the units get added, Market rate units get added. If you're requiring a certain number of affordable units, your percentage of affordable units in the town, you're not falling behind. You're keeping up or actually gaining ground. And then finally, and this is not applicable to you, but village district requirements, local historic district requirements, all those, and I would add wetlands to that list, all those other requirements from overlay district or special regulations are applicable to this type of development as well. Okay, I'll pause right there for any questions, and then I'll go over the parking piece, which is the second half of this.

Just a quick one. Has Attorney Willis reviewed the assumptions and concur?

Yes. However, he wasn't able to be here tonight. He said he will try and be here with a public hearing and give him enough advance notice of it. He is generally in favor of having a reg versus not having a reg, but he has not gone line by line through this reg and given his review yet.

Assumptions are kind of platforming that.

He agrees with the assumptions. He's not reviewed the underlying reg yet.

I think those assumptions would be useful to apply.

Yeah, I think that the assumption of the word or, that it means that we can pick one or the other, and I was going back and forth with this myself, so if we have River Cog and, you know, other attorneys saying, yes, it is an or. I'm comfortable at this point. That said, I think we need to be paying attention to that. What it would require is just adopting a definition of transit districts, not just the mixed use. But I'm

I think the approach is a good one for us at this point. And again, that's one of the reasons that Attorney Willis indicated to me that he prefers that we do actually adopt regs as opposed to just relying on the statute. Because if we just rely on the statute, then someone can come in and say, well, it's one or the other. I get to pick because you haven't specified yet.

That's absolutely correct.

Yeah. So the law itself didn't have any requirement for affordability. You're just adapting that.

No, they don't have a requirement and they don't prohibit it. The council that we've been provided with is that not to adopt an affordability requirement that is excessively high because it could be viewed as prohibitory. So generally speaking, we're trying to stay in the 20 to 30% range in most communities.

Um, like the units.

Yeah. The units. Um, so if you have two units is one of them have to be, or would that not be, we've written it, we've written it as, because the numbers are so small here, like a percentage is, is kind of funny. Cause you're always rounding up or down in one direction. So we've written it per unit. We've written that you have to have one affordable per four units developed. So if you only have three units, there's no affordability requirement. If you're up to four, it's one. Four through seven, it's one. And then seven and nine, it's two. And so that, excuse me, eight to nine, it's two. That's how we've written it.

And then, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Yeah.

So that works out. Average is out somewhere between 20 and 30% in that window, which is really consistent with inclusionary housing requirements we see across the state. So it's It's in no way, you know, onerous or excessive. And that's what we caution communities that wanted to adopt like a 50 or 100 percent requirement for that reason.

I've seen other towns that have done this with the small numbers, Francisco. Instead of just going with a blanket 25 percent, they actually put a table out. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And then how many units are required to make it unambiguous and not subject to, you know, is it 51 percent?

Right. In our case, the way we written it, it's pretty clear. And if you felt we needed a table to drive that point home, I'm certainly happy to provide a table. But we read it exactly as one per every four units. It'd be a small table if we did it.

So the law itself, and if I heard you correctly, the law itself didn't require the mixed use. So if I was reading through this, my understanding is correctly that We are drafting or this proposal is an amendment to the law to say that we want to not an amendment, but to your regulations.

It is your regulations. Yeah, correct.

That would allow for. So, like, I noticed in Madison, I was reading through there and I obviously it's not the same town, but, um. like their commission has the ability of waiving the first floor commercial requirement. Because what I'm concerned is, is that people build multifamily housing and then they have a dead commercial space because they can't find the client. And I see that a lot in multifamily mixed use developments where you have a vacant storefront with people up top. I guess my concern would be, is there a mechanism for the commission to possibly have a waiver like other communities do that if they can justify why they should have, because first floor apartments are going to be, if you have to be committed to commercial on the first floor, you're going to automatically exclude some people who might have access issues from having a first floor apartment. That's my concern.

Those are very important points that you bring up. So let's start with the topic of waivers. Generally speaking, it's a really bad practice to give yourself the authority to waive requirements. So the better way to do it is either to provide very specific conditions where, you know, purely residential can be built. You know, for example, an example of that would be if the building is street fronting oriented to the street, then you would require the first floor street fronting commercial space to be a space to be commercial. But if it's set back from the road or the rear of the building could be residential. And we could certainly write that flexibility into your regulations. It would still be mixed use. You're just limiting. In that scenario, you'd be allowing for first floor development, but to not street fronting. You allow it on the rear of the building. And that might address any interest regarding accessible units because they could be on the first floor.

I guess my main concern is building space that's just going to remain vacant. Yeah, I understand that it is.

Yeah, no, I understand the concern. You know, ultimately, that's a decision for you as a commission to make as to what your bigger concern is, whether the concern is losing space that might otherwise be available for commercial development or having more commercial space than you need and having vacancies. And I think it's a decision for you to make. We can, I'm very happy to, and we can fairly expeditiously amend these zoning regulations to distinguish between mixed use and middle housing residential, as we're calling it, to allow for both. And you could do that selectively by zone too, right? You could pick and choose the zones. And so I think, as Eric mentioned, I have another commitment at 715, but beyond that, if you wanted to have further discussion on this issue, and then make some decisions, and then Eric can relay that information to me, and I'm happy to adjust the amendment wherever you land, okay?

Let's move on to the parking now, just so we can get you involved in this. We will have further discussion here. I will sort of facilitate whatever we talk about afterwards, but I do want to leave time for you to get the parking piece in here as well.

Okay. So the parking piece is more straightforward. It I shouldn't call it straightforward because there are some caveats involved, but it's very clear at least what the legislature is allowing us to do. And we don't really need to make too many assumptions in this work. So essentially the legislature is telling us that for any residential development with 16 or fewer dwelling units, you can no longer have an off street parking requirement. You can't require two spaces per dwelling unit or whatever it may be. You can continue to require off-street parking for any residential development with 17 or more units, but that requirement is being set by the state. The maximum amount that you can require is being set by the state. You can require less, but you can't require more. And that ratio is one parking space for studio or one bedroom unit. and two parking spaces for any unit with two or more bedrooms. That's the most you can require. Now, when I talk about residential development, we're no longer stuck in the middle housing mixed use conversation. This is applicable to all kinds of residential development. Single family homes, two family condos, apartment buildings, mixed use, anything that isn't an institutional facility where you have beds or rooms and not dwelling units. This is applicable to any dwelling unit. So the meaning of this is that for any residential development in town now, if there are 16 or fewer units, which represents 99 plus percent of your residential development, you have zero parking requirement unless you create what the legislature has called the Conservation Traffic Mitigation District. We're calling it a parking management district because the latter is not a very appropriate name. And within those districts, you can, in fact, require parking. But you have to establish one of those districts. And those districts is established through your zoning as an overlay. And it's a zoning regulation that says within this area, for any size of residential development, you can continue to require parking at that ratio that the state has set. So I have some visuals to help kind of walk us through this. Let me continue. So I just talked about the numbers here. Oh, parking needs assessment. Here's the other component of this. In addition, to everything I just discussed, you have to allow an applicant, if you are in fact requiring parking of them, such as if they have 17 or more dwelling units, or if they're in a district that you created, you have to also allow an applicant or developer to do their own parking needs assessment. And if their assessment says they need less parking than that ratio I just talked about, then you have to allow the lesser. So if they say, I actually, I only need half of that. I need one per dwelling unit, regardless of my dwelling unit composition. I only need one per my study. That's what you have to allow and approve, right? Unless you can demonstrate there'll be an impact of public health or safety. So we have to write that parking needs assessment language into your zoning regulations as well. So that's the other piece of this. So the parking needs assessment, The state gave us some very basic parameters on what that is. It is basically a review of all available public and private parking in the area. It's a review of transit to see if that factors into a reduced parking demand. It requires a projection of future needs for off-street parking and any relevant local traffic or safety study. You can add additional requirements to this, which we have done in your recommended amendments. For example, the state doesn't say who's qualified to do one of these. So we've written in that a licensed transportation engineer has to do one of these. It doesn't say what kind of numbers and what basis where the data should come from. So we've written in Institute for Transportation Engineering Parking Generation Manual, which is the standard for parking analysis as a requirement. We've also written in that they show their math. Essentially, they provide their methods and their calculations. So we've made the baseline requirements the state provides us far more robust. And we've also referred to the authority that you have to require the applicant to pay for third-party review. Would you have that authority? So if they come back with a parking needs assessment that you think is absolutely absurd, you can essentially hire a consultant to do their own study and have the applicant pay for it. And you're enabled to do that through statute. So the short version of this is that we have to remove any parking requirements that you currently have in your regulations and replace them with the off-street parking ratio or requirement of one space per studio or one bedroom and two spaces for any dwelling units with two or more bedrooms. And then we have to apply that only to residential development with 17 or more units, or if located in a district. And then we have to allow parking needs assessment. So the Conservation and Traffic Mitigation District, this is the creation of the legislature, has nothing to do with conservation, has nothing to do with traffic, For those reasons, we're calling it a parking management district. And in the purpose of that district, we're referring back to this terminology and to this section of statute that it's created. And just to be clear what our parking management district is, but we felt that was a more appropriate and better appropriate description of its function. And so we're using that term in all the communities we're working with in the River Cog region. So we have recommended that you do adopt such a district to the maximum extent that you can. And you're being limited to two districts. Each one could be no more than 4% of your land area. So in combination, you can cover up to 8% of your land area with these districts. They can be contiguous, but not merged. In your case, we've proposed separate areas, so that's a non-issue. And as I mentioned, this is created through your zoning. It's not like a parking authority that you might have for parking meters or anything like that. It's created through your zoning. It acts as an overlay. And it's enforceable through your zoning. So the visual on this is that, and this is just to summarize everything I just talked about. is townwide, if you have 17 or more units, you can require parking at this ratio and you have to allow parking needs assessment. 16 or fewer units, there is absolutely zero requirement unless you are within a district that you've created, in which case the parking requirement for 16 or fewer units becomes the same as 17 or more. All right. So that's the overview. in terms of how we've applied out, start with the parking and we'll work our way back. So the parking amendment that you have in front of you, and Eric provided you with printouts of these, we have the purpose, a description of what it does, geographic extents is town wide, provide the context, which is exactly what I've gone over. The downsides of not adopt, of amending your regulations to adopt, what happens is you put the, applicant in the driver's seat. They're dictating all the terms as their attorney interprets the statute. So it wouldn't be interpreted in your favor. And then, you know, you end up arguing back and forth as to what's actually allowed. So if you adopt something in your regulations, provided it's consistent with statute, then you've got a playbook you can follow. So we add a brand new section, 13.4, to your regulations. Anything in red is brand new text. So we add parking management district that just creates district and concept explains what it does and ties it back to connect to the public act. The public act hasn't been codified in the statute yet. So we're not exactly sure which section of statute it'll be in. So we referenced the act for the time being, and then we need to apply that geographically. And again, I'm very open and receptive to your feedback. And if there are other areas that are priority for you, we're happy to amend these maps or draw other areas. What we have tried to do is to maximize the area to get as close to 4%. And so we've done that. And to the extent we could include your commercial zones like the C30S. So this is the town center and Hall's Road area. So we've captured all of the C30S in this area. Why C30S? Well, because now you're going to have to allow mixed use or middle housing in that zone. And you're going to want to be able to require parking. And because it's nine units without one of these districts, you get a middle housing proposal with proposing zero parking. And that's probably not what you want. And we've covered the waterfront zone. We've also covered R15. So we've covered some of the areas of your higher density zone. We've tried to leave out things like the high school, because you're not going to have residential development there. We captured the multifamily zone. So this, we've left out highway right away for obvious reasons. So this has been, we are very strategic in this. We followed as best possible parcel lines and zone boundaries. The second area is your shoreline because you have some commercial zones, mixed use zones, and extremely dense residential development. I think as everyone's aware, on-street parking is a premium with already very limited off-street parking along the shore. So this zone, as you can see, is very gerrymandered so that it's all connecting. It starts with the R-10 along the shore, including the Soundview Village District, which is a mixed-use zone. That is a zone that we have to allow middle housing in. The C-30, the C-10, a little sliver of the R-20 and R-40s for the sake of connecting over to the C-30, and then over to the C-30 and parts of the R-20 and WF-20 in this waterfront 20 in this area. but trying to maximize the, get as close to 4% as we can, in which case we're just under. So within these zones, you can continue to require, if you have one, two family, three family, 16 unit development, you can continue to require parking at the ratio I've discussed, but outside in the RU 40, outside these districts, It's going to be zero unless there are 17 or more units. Okay. Let me first go over the parking assessment. That's the next piece of this. So we've changed the table to get rid of your, you know, used to be a flat two spaces per dwelling unit. It's very nuanced now. So we provide all new language. Here are all the different types of dwelling units that you allow. So for all of those, it's the same requirement. We've had to clean up some other sections of the regs to make sure that we don't have a standard that differs. So as best as we could, we're just referring back to this so you have one consistent standard. So that's what all these cross-references are. And then getting down to the parking needs assessment is a brand new section. And you have to allow the applicant to do this, but as I said earlier, requiring a licensed traffic engineer, and we put a lot of conditions on this, including third-party review. Okay, any questions on that?

Is there any guidance on the health and safety constraint? No, unfortunately, that's a great question. Picking and choosing areas where if health and safety was not an option to manage this, that might be We might want to consider that in placement of the management districts.

Right. So all the legislature has given us is health and safety. So we have to look to case law and practice as to how that's been applied for special permits and other types of approvals. And what that looks like, and if you needed us to flesh that out a little bit more to provide some language, we can do that. What it looks like is, you know, you consult with the fire department, fire marshal, fire chief says that, hey, I'm concerned about if they're not providing parking, I'm concerned people are going to park on the street. I can't get a fire truck down the road. Or I can't get, they're going to have people in front of hydrants or too close to hydrants. So that would be a basis for requiring the applicant mitigate that with some off street parking. And the language suggests that you have to work with them to mitigate the public health and safety. It doesn't suggest that it's a flat out denial. Just send them home. It requires you to work with them to mitigate it. And that mitigation can't diminish the feasibility of the development.

I'm thinking we should consider at least, we're certainly not going to do it tonight, but consider some objective criteria to evaluate health and safety and get it on the books so that we have a leg to stand on there.

Sure.

Okay. Francisco?

Yes, yes.

I have a couple of questions. Yeah. Just so I'm clear, is this all for new development? So if we've required parking in previous development that stays,

This, yes, is most certainly applicable to new development. It does not make existing development non-conforming. But if you had existing development, let's use an example. Let's pull from the middle housing issue here. Let's say you have a three-unit residential development and they're in a commercial zone. And now they want to go up to nine units. And let's say they're not in a parking management district and they only have six parking spaces because at the time they're approved three units, two spaces, unit six. You couldn't require them to provide more and you couldn't deny their mental housing application because they didn't provide more. So this impacts redevelopment as well. So it suggests people could expand residential properties without providing more parking and even while building on top of parking and actually reducing their parking supply.

Thank you. The other question I have, just to make sure I understand, for example, on your parking use table, and you've added the new language, but some of the language is not crossed out on the left side under the U side. Does that mean they're no longer applicable or should we be?

So the red text represents new text that's been added. The black text is existing text that will remain. And anything that's crossed out is going to be removed, is being displaced.

So if the black text isn't on the amendment, it's still applicable?

Yeah, it remains as written. It's already there. Okay. So those terms like detached dwelling for one or two units, multiple dwellings, multiple units, those are all existing terms in your parking table, and they will remain.

Thank you. Question I have, and I know you should go here in a moment.

Two minutes. So in our regs, we have it where you have no more than one principal use per lot. So does that mean that we have to remove that provision? Because now you're going to have more than one use per lot when you have the mixed use.

We are limiting the middle housing, what's being approved through middle housing, to one per lot, which doesn't prohibit multiple structures. So here's an example. You have a commercial lot. It has a commercial building, but it's a good size lot and they have room to put up another building. As written, they can, because we only say that you're limited to one principal building with residential uses per lot. So they can come in and put in a mixed use middle housing building on a lot that has another commercial building.

Okay. That's what I'm trying to clarify.

So, but, but we're, we're restricting them from doing that repetitively for mixed for the residential development, right? Because it's pretty common for commercial lots to have multiple principal structures and we don't want to restrict that. It's just that the mixed use building that we want to limit people to want to, because they're getting, they're, There's no special permit requirement here. They're allowed to do this through just a plan development. There's no public hearing. It's as of right. Kind of. It's a little more than as of right because there's a site plan requirement and you do get two criteria upon which you can deny. It's public health and safety. It's similar to the parking issue. So you do have a limited range of criteria that is kind of broad and not you know, not as specific as a setback, by example.

So, Francisca, I know you've got to leave soon, but just, you were picking up on that. Under the mixed use in the SVV's D zone... Yeah, so let's go to that.

I'll go to that document. Yeah, please go ahead.

So, number three under that mixed use, you said, you know, the site demonstrates the ability to provide sufficient water supply... and effluent disposal. I'm looking at also stormwater, you know, making sure we can meet the stormwater requirements. So I'd love to add that in here. But the other piece is I didn't see a line like that under the net when we were talking about the mixed use middle housing. And I was wondering if we could put that line and include stormwater in under the 7.15-2? That's a fantastic question.

So you first pointed to your existing mixed use requirements in the SBDD. So these are existing, right?

Yeah.

Okay. Everything in red is what we proposed. And the reason, and if you feel this is really critical, then I will follow your lead because all of this remains untested in terms of can we do this or can we not do it because the statute, the act is silent. It's our understanding that what the legislature's intention is that if it's physically possible, if it's feasible for the development, we need to allow it. Meaning if an applicant can get their public health sign offs for whatever system they're providing, whether it's water supply, or wastewater disposal, if they can get public health approvals and they're meeting building codes and public health codes, then you shouldn't restrict, you shouldn't limit it through zoning. And that's basically how we're interpreting it. And there are other communities in which we're working that have required that any multifamily development be on a public sewer, and public water supply. And we're counseling our communities not to apply that standard to middle housing because the language of the statute, as it's written, is really suggesting that if the developer can figure out how to build it and make it work, then through your zoning, you should allow it. You should let public health and building code regulate and restrict that. That that's our approach. And I'm not suggesting that's the way it has to be, or that's the way that's how it will be proven eventually by the courts as right or wrong, but that's been our approach. And so that's why we don't provide this same requirement that you have for the SVVD for mixed use middle housing.

Okay. So are you – but we are now – Here, let me take that. I guess I was looking at that the SDVD zone is a – because it allows as a mixed-use zone, we have to now do this requirement. So that's why I was saying it's a different standard, but it's – In the statute, it's only a summary review in both. We can't require a special exception anymore.

Correct, correct, correct. So let me dial that back a little bit. The language that you have under item three, I don't think, we've been steering clear of this, but in your case, I don't think it's problematic. because you don't actually require mixed-use development to be connected to sanitary sewer, public sanitary sewer, or public water supply. All you require is that it's demonstrated that there is sufficient water supply or effluent disposal. And the truth of the matter is, it doesn't really need to be stated for your SDVD as it is. I mean, you can't build something unless you get these approvals. But I think I understand the intent to be, before you even approve it through zoning, you want to see it proven, demonstrated that, you know, they've designed a system, that they've done PERC testing, and that they've demonstrated, they've proved that they can provide that supply and discharge before you even get a zoning approval. So, yeah, I mean, I think this language is okay. I would be very receptive to adding it, Down here to middle housing.

Yeah.

Because you're only requiring, you're not limiting them in the system they provide. You're only requiring that they prove that they can provide it in whatever capacity it may be in.

Yeah. Because one of the things I was looking at is trying to add in stormwater management as well. And particularly that it gets referred. Obviously, if they're coming in with this, that it gets referred to the engineer because.

Yeah.

We need to, they need to comply with that as part of this, you know, general stormwater permit for the state, which if it's under five acres falls on the municipality. So that's why I was looking at using this, adding stormwater and then doing it in both and doing it in both sections.

I think that's a very good idea. Generally speaking, stormwater, your plan development requirements, I think you already have a requirement that the stormwater, uh, the stormwater design be included within the plan development requirements. I'd have to revisit that, but I think it's a great idea to include a reference to both. I mean, the truth of the matter is you're going to require that of an applicant anyway, because these developments are subject to all of your regulations, but we may as well make it crystal clear by providing it right here. So no one thinks they get a free pass on any of that. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Francisco, one quick question if you have time. Sure, yeah. For a newbie of this, what is middle housing? Is it somewhere between single family and an apartment building? I'm not sure what the definition is.

Yeah, well, let's talk about that. I kind of touched upon it earlier. Middle housing, and that's the kind of abbreviated term I'm using to refer to transit community middle housing or mixed use. It is two to nine units, multifamily in any form. In your case, we proposed it in the form of mixed use, which means in a single building, you have anywhere from two to nine units with a non-residential use in the same building. And for you, that's what middle housing means. If we were to also agree to allow middle housing in a purely residential form, that would mean two to nine units in any format, in an apartment building, as side-by-side townhouses, as a duplex, as a triplex, as a cottage cluster, which are single family homes clustered around open space at a density of a minimum of four units per acre. that is also included in the middle housing definition, but it's two to nine units. And the middle part is intended to mean middle density. So not single family, somewhere between single family and high density, you know, 20, 50, 100 units.

That's helpful, thank you.

Sure, yeah.

You're seven minutes over your time.

Yeah, you know, whatever it takes. I'm sorry, I'm a little constrained this evening, but. I'm happy to spend a couple more minutes if you have any other questions.

Anything else?

So just the last question, could, and this is for you and Eric, we need to adopt something, get to public hearing. Can you turn around that, add in that little bit of language?

I could do it tomorrow. I could do it tomorrow. Is that okay for you?

Yeah, if we approve it with the language, he'll... Remember, we're just sending it out now to legal notice for public hearing. Yeah. We're going to post it with the town clerk in the amended form, and we'll do that, and that'll be fine. That's what I'm saying, but you have time. So if he gets it to us tomorrow, okay. The thing is, we still have the 35-day referral period. We have to send it out to everybody. Oh, I'm just, I'm looking at what you mean. We will get the amended language from Francisco. We will file it with the town clerk. We'll be good to go. And again, if there's anything else tonight that comes up that you guys want to amend, I will relate that to Mr. Gomes. we will get that in and we will get the amended language filed with the town court as soon as possible. Okay.

I think the big piece of this is going back to the discussion we started with is do you want to allow either or, right? Is it an and? And do you want to allow this in the form of just residential development, what we're calling middle housing residential? And if that's so, I would encourage you to think about each zone I would encourage you to think about the zones individually, and do you want to make a distinction between what you allow in those zones? So the C30, the C10, the SVVD, all the zones where this is applicable to. Even the WF20, because that's a mixed use zone. This is applicable there as well. So with all of these zones, I would think I would also appreciate some direction on, is it a blanket type approach? and you treat all the zones the same, or do you want to distinguish between each of these zones? So if you came back with some real changes on that, we're kind of introducing middle housing. I can turn that around pretty quickly too. I can't promise it'd be by the end of tomorrow, but I can try to get it back to you by the end of Friday to keep things moving along.

Francisco, if we did not do, if we didn't do a blanket, would we be, at the mercy of the legislature to be in some of those zones, we do not do that? Would they turn it into an and instead of?

No, no, no, no, not at all. Not at all. I fully believe you can pick and choose and you're in compliance. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, it's a matter of policy in my mind as to what you would prefer to see. And I started out just kind of very conservative in that I'm trying to stay as closely aligned with the purpose of your commercial zones, which is primarily for commercial development. And so that's a starting point. But as we discussed, you'd be well within, I think, your authority to regulate on a zone by zone basis. And additionally, I don't want to suggest that This is like there's a window. There is a window that's closing in terms of if you want to have these regulations in place for July 1st. That's certainly true. But this isn't a sunset type provision where if you don't get it done now, you never have an opportunity to do it again. So these regulations, you could amend. You could amend later this year. You could amend next year. If it occurs to you this is not quite working the way we want it to work, you can adjust and amend them in the future.

The town planner in Madison, because I was speaking with them about some stuff, that's exactly what they're doing. They're adapting it immediately and then going to go back and make revisions just so they meet the criteria. But they're doing more of their control through review, like aesthetic review. Okay. I don't know if that's applicable to us, but you basically are able to dictate the type of buildings that can go.

Yeah, I think it's better to write it into your regs as specifically as possible. The issue with review is it makes you subject to what's called a discretionary zoning action because what's actually allowed and required isn't codified in your regulations. You're kind of dictating the terms with an applicant through a negotiation. And The real intention of this legislation is to make something very procedural so that someone can look at the regs, understand what they can build, come in, and as long as they do everything you said they have to do, they can get it approved and not have to go through lengthy negotiations and make a huge investment with a really unclear outcome. That's true. Okay. Okay.

Okay. We're good? Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for your time.

You're welcome. Yeah, I'm happy to help. And I look forward to Eric's email with, you know, the direction that you provided after your discussion this evening.

All right. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, everyone. Have a nice evening. You too.

Okay, guys. Now it's just us. Okay.

At the risk of, I think we should do as much of our deliberation as possible in the context of a public hearing so that it's on the record.

Yeah, the deliberations piece of it, I agree. But again, if you're thinking that the language needs to be adapted in a major way, I would certainly start off to make the decision before we go. Yeah.

But we can do that in the public hearing. But we have to put language out. So if we want to change language, we should change it now.

The only risk you're taking, and I'll have Matt here next time, hopefully, is if you change it in a way that is different than you legally advertised it, you then need to re-advertise and have another hearing on it.

As opposed to waiting and then changing it at the next meeting so then you don't have to re-advertise it?

The point is... you're allowed, you can do three things with text change. You can approve, deny, you can modify and approve. But you can only modify and approve in ways that are consistent with the way you legally advertised the document. So if we go out and we show it for the parking, for instance, with the map that Francisco gave us, we can make that district smaller, but we can't cover more land that was not in the legally noticed, you know, provision because then the people who would be covered in the new area are going to say, wait a minute, we didn't know. Likewise, if we say we're just doing mixed use, that's one thing, but now if we're going to change it and we're going to say, and now we're also allowing two to nine units in every commercial zone, That may, and again, I'll leave it to Matt to say if it does or doesn't, require that we essentially modify our application and come back for another public hearing with the modified application. And it's sort of a nuanced area, and again, I'll rely on our attorney to give us final judgment or ruling on whether we've changed it so much that it would require a new hearing or not. So I'm curious to know if there are some general thoughts about what we're thinking. But again, if you want to wait to the public hearing, that's okay too.

The other factor I was going after too is just transparency with the public. So people will be here to hear it.

This meeting is going to be on the record.

The deliberation will be on the record. Yeah, it's not an executive session, so everything here is going to be on the record.

It will still be. Anything you do tonight, and I change, the public hearing will take into account, okay? The other piece of this, Michael, is I have to take this to the planning commission. So I'd like the planning commission, if possible, to get as close to what you think you're likely to be adopting to review whether that is consistent with the POCD, as well as all the other agencies that I have to send it out to. You know, get old St. Brooks industrial regs. I'm not having you review them tonight. They're the only ones that have already come in among our neighbors with regs because Chris Costa tells me that there are people who on July 1st are going to be in the door. We fortunately don't seem to have that here. So we have a little bit more time, hopefully, because we're not going to be able to get this done by July 1st because of our referral period. We're moving as quickly as we can on this. And as, again, Francisco said, You're probably better off getting something on the books and then going back and amending later.

We have to do something tonight because that's on the agenda.

Well, we don't have to do anything. Here's the question. The question is, do we want to go out? Is this the document that we want to start our public hearing at? Or do you want to make another few changes to this? And then that becomes our starting point. Tonight, do you want to make anything tonight, or do you want to start with this and move to the public hearing?

Denise, we're talking about the stormwater piece of this here, and I can go back to him and say, please incorporate the stormwater piece of this. I'm looking at the two documents. This is my take. I'm ready. I think with the parking, I'm satisfied with the parking the way it is. I think to do it, if we need to clean something up afterwards, but I'm very comfortable with the parking.

Again, The map is in small form, and I will try and get it blown up so we'll have it in a bigger form for the public hearing. But who's covered and who isn't covered is going to make a big difference. So we probably need to look carefully at the decision of why he picked where he picked. For the town center, it's pretty clear. He picked the multifamily. He picked the town center. He picked Halls Road on the shoreline side. But Point of Woods isn't covered, but the area along the border with East Lime is covered. And do we want to potentially flip that around? And do you care whether the other Point of Woods has a parking restriction or not? So we should probably think... in the intervening month or so.

And the point being is, we're updating the regs, so we can change that. We can say, you know what, let's look at, do we need to do more stuff with the parking? But at this point, I think that's what we'll hear at the public hearing, but I'm comfortable with that. With this one, I think our big question is, what he brought up. Do we want to just go with the or? Do we want to accept that interpretation? I have a copy of the Public Act if anybody wants to read it. But, you know, it basically says transit middle housing development as defined in Section 11 or a mixed-use development. And so you can kind of interpret that two ways. You can say you get that This is allowed or this is allowed. Or you can say that we get to pick one or the other. Or both. Or both. But they change it from an and to an or. I'm comfortable at this point starting with the or and just doing one.

So we all agree on that. So when you say the or, so you can do or, mixed use, or the residential. Yeah.

You want both use? No, it's saying you can do this or this. When we say what's allowed, we could put both in.

So what is your preference or opinion that I brought up about the residential? My concern was the mixed use, right? So do you guys have any concerns about or feelings about the mixed use component of this as far as losing out on commercial space versus... taking commercial properties and having them just be solely residential?

Yeah, well, that gets into what, you know, we're definitely going to do the mixed use piece. It's just a matter of should we also do just residential, allow something that's just residential. I'm thinking we're going to get into this whole thing during the update of the zoning regs, and we'd love to hear from other people on that. So I would love to, I think I'd love to keep it at the the narrowest interpretation at this point.

Because we're going to expand.

We're going to start off here, and then if we have to, we can always expand.

We have to do something. My two cents on this is as follows. For towns like Old Saybrook or Madison or whoever else that has a very long, vibrant commercial strip, you can lose pieces of it to residential, and it wouldn't be as problematic. you guys really have a really limited... And if Halls Road starts going residential and you can't stop it, then it's too late. If the side of Halls Road with Dunkin' Donuts and all those lots back there start getting developed for nine units... Oh, they're waiting for that, for sure. You're stuck. So I would be really careful allowing unrestricted residential development in your commercial zones.

So I'd encourage you to start with the narrowest, least impactful interpretation and then take it under advisement in phase two if you want to expand it.

I think that's it. All coming down more or less in the same place. Michael, I understand that potentially. I mean, I don't know.

My concern really, actually, I don't have a concern. I just wanted to articulate because I just didn't want to see. I noticed that there is sometimes mixed-use buildings with vacant shop space because retail is a dying trend in some towns.

Again, my fear is that knowing that's a possibility, someone might deliberately blow out their commercial space. And then come to us and say, it's empty, so I want it for residential. So I'd like to incentivize that commercial use to the greatest extent possible. I will tell you that we've been having a big issue down at 100 Halls Road there, the condos at the intersection there. I'm sure if they could all come in for residential, they would tomorrow come in for 10 residential units there. And you wouldn't be able to do much about it. So I'd really love to try and keep mixed use as a requirement there so they would only be able to add most convert half of that building to residential use. We just don't have a lot of commercial space. No, I know.

We've pre-zoned a lot of our land to be less commercial than we had. We lost all the commercial over by the Old Lyme Seafood, and now we'll ask Old Lyme Landscape. So he just bought that. That's all C30 that's now absorbed by a residential owner, and he has no intention of being any commercialized.

For years, we've heard that Old Lyme isn't business-friendly, our zoning banks. This is one way of saying we are trying to incentivize economic development.

I just think that there should be, and I agree, because that's my concern, is we're going to lose commercial business. At the same time, I also didn't want to see vacant spaces. But at the same time, in addition to that, I think that figuring out a way to include some sort of first-floor residential is paramount to accessibility.

And I guess what I'd like to do is, because we want to get this on the books as soon as possible, is that we're going to be updating our regs. We're going to be having a whole workshop from the community on housing. let's take that piece then and let's move this forward. And the one thing I, you know, and so I would say that this is my recommendation that we put the parking stuff forward as presented to us and that with the housing piece, the mixed use piece, we put it forward, but to include stormwater management, under number three of the mixed use in the SVVD zone, and that to include that number three somewhere in the mixed use housing, just to make it clear that they have to meet water, septic, and stormwater management requirements.

I would ask that we add at least some set of objective health and safety criteria to the parking.

Okay, but

We're not going to have that between now and... Yeah, I was looking at why don't we define that more.

Not for tonight. We don't define them tonight.

Yeah, but I'm looking at that we might want to do that, but to get this on the books.

So we can work with it. If it's got a stub in the application, then we can work with it.

If this isn't finalized prior to July 1st, somebody can come in on July 1st under either one of these.

Yes. I am telling you right now, because of the 35-day referral requirement, that you're already behind. You're not going to have it in place by July 1st. Because 35 days from today is- So somebody in ResterSec can come in regardless. Well, in the brief period between when we adopt and when it goes into effect, which is going to be about two weeks into July, there may be a gap in there that someone can sneak in before we have the regs in place.

And then we're subject to that.

Yeah, at that point, we're stuck. But again, that's why we're trying to get this through as quickly as possible. And again, so far, I have not heard of anybody who has- come to me and said, I'm looking to do this. Again, Chris Costa and Old St. Brooke knows that they're already coming in the door. So I suspect you're not going to get a rush of people rushing in on July 1st to do this. But I think we should obviously keep that window as short as we can make it. So again, 35 days from today would be July 1st. My recommendation is for you to hold your public hearing on July 1st. And then we would have the regulation effective July 15th. And then you would just add that two-week window there from the 1st to 15th, where there's the possibility of someone coming in before the regs take effect.

And the health and safety thing, I think Francisco said he could put something together so we'd have something to work with. And then the health and safety criteria. Yeah. But that's also subjective.

That's the problem with the health and safety, right?

I will ask you about that. I did, and he said he responded that he could put something together. Okay. What's the first? Is that a Monday?

No, it's a Wednesday. It's literally 35 days, five weeks out from today.

You want to do the public hearing, you said, on July 1st? July 1st. But this has to be effective on July 1st.

You're not going to make it. We have to give 35 days for agencies to respond.

All right.

I'm sorry, but anybody can file between now and July 1st.

No, because the statute doesn't take effect until July.

Gotcha. OK, so you have a five day window after that.

July 1st is a Tuesday? Wednesday. Literally, it's five weeks from today, 35 days, because by statute, we have to give agencies 35 days to respond. I can't do much about that 35 day window. I have to give a 35 day window. So if we send it out for referral, in fact, Craig's already sent it out. But if we send it out for referral, as of today, when we receive it, because we received it tonight, we have to get 35 days theoretically for them to respond. The public hearing would be on that 35th day. And then if you act on it that night, you can set an effective date essentially two weeks later, because I had to put it in the newspaper twice.

So we can't have the public hearing after the 35 days? We can't start the public hearing?

You can start it, but you can't vote, right? Yeah, but we can vote. You can leave it open, and you can have a second hearing at that point in time. You can have as many public hearings as you want. Selfishly, I'm saying I don't want more public hearings, but I need to. But you can't vote on this until after 35 days, which means you're leaving the public hearing open until after 35 days. The first possible day you can close the public hearing is July 1st. So you can have another hearing between now and July 1st. That's up to you.

And we can vote on it, but you still have 15 days after that, right? You can't vote until July 1st. That's what I'm saying. On July 1st, you can open it, close it, and vote on it. But then there's still a 15-day grace period.

The 15 days, well, until I get it in the newspaper, and the newspaper then has that notification. So, yeah, again, I'm trying to schedule this with fewer public hearings. If you want more than one, that's okay.

Well, I just didn't want us to… you know, just do it and then say, like, okay, public hearing, here's it, it's done, boom, and we all have to, you know, if we needed to extend the public hearing, I didn't want it to, you know, I was trying to figure out, like, do we think we'll have a lot of people come out? We may or may not. I mean, it's one of those, it's a weird thing. I don't know how people are going to react to this.

I mean, my suspicion is we're going to get a lot of people.

Developers.

Yeah, I mean, Again, if you want two public hearings, I will set two public hearings. But remember, I need to get notice in the newspaper for even the first public hearing. So you're going to need to give me essentially two weeks to make that happen. So we're looking at essentially into June to do that. And also keep in mind, you have your first public hearing for the revision next week, July. And then you have your regular meeting. And then you have your workshops. two weeks after your public hearing. So you've already got three meetings on the book schedule going forward. And then you're looking at, I understand.

I thought if we had the public hearing during our regular meeting, if we could do it, but I wasn't sure what the timeframe was.

It looks like in time for your regular meeting.

So we can't, we can't do it. So we might as well just have our, just the one.

I'll make a motion that we have public hearing on July 1st to accept the amendments to the parking and housing. No, just a public hearing on a potential decision on July 4 and potential decision on July 1. So will we need a forum of commission members then on July 1?

I guess I'll just for decision. Yeah. Correct. So I'm just flagging that because of its proximity to the holiday, and I, for one, will be out of town on vacation. I may be, too. I mean, I don't. We're not going to have enough commission. If we know in advance, we're not going to have enough commission members. I just want to. Is that the date, July 1st?

July 1st. We can have it some other day. No, but I'm saying that's the earliest we can have it. It is 35 days from today. It is literally five weeks from... I mean, you could wait until the irregular July meeting. Or you could wait another week, but then again, that's extending the week.

No, it's not. It's the 13th. It's the 4th of July holiday. No, because of the way the calendar works. Because the 1st is a Wednesday.

The 1st is a Wednesday. There we go, yep.

So, yeah, no, we need to do it July 1st.

Yeah.

So that we can get this on the books, because then it needs to be published before it gets to be... Because then it will be...

effective, what, two weeks after? Well, theoretically, if I put it in the newspaper the 3rd, which is probably the first day I can do it, there's a 15-day appeal period from the 3rd, so you're looking at the 18th of July for it to be effective.

So anyone can come in and apply between the 1st and the 18th and not have to use these rules.

But that's, again... We can't do anything about that. Again, so far I'm not hearing any rumors that there's people out there who are looking to do this. So my expectation is that there's not going to be this mad rush of people coming in during that gap. If I hear anything else, I'll let you know. But I think it doesn't matter. We're moving as quickly as we can move. And we're just going to have to accept the fact that there's going to be this gap and take it for what it's worth.

So Mary Jo made the motion for July 1st for public hearing and possible decision. Second. Second. Second. Mr. Poliano, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Oh, we didn't see.

We don't really need one.

No, we got four. Okay. So all opposed, abstain. Okay. Motion passes 4-0-0. All right.

All that's left on the agenda is adjourning at this point. Okay.

Thank you for all your help there. Appreciate your help.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Adjournment at 7.48 p.m. Okay. Yeah.