Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to a special meeting of the Old Lyme Zoning Commission this evening.

It's a special meeting for two reasons. Number one, it's going to revolve itself around the zoning regulations rewrite. And the second thing that makes it unique is even though the zoning commission is here, we will be in the audience with you and not running the meeting. We are going to be having the meeting run by our consultant for this operation, Francisco Gomes of the IMEG group, who is going to be leading this conversation this evening and going to be capturing all of your thoughts, concerns, suggestions. So before I turn it over to Francisco, I'm going to ask just in general, is there any public comment? That one went first. Edie, Edie, you were first. Public comment, yes.

Well, good. I should use a microphone, not a hearing defective.

We have a hearing defective. Paul, is this public comment in connection with tonight's hearing?

We normally do a public comment, and I'm not sure if it's about the hearing or it's a general public comment. About zoning a regular, it just says public comment.

Okay.

But primarily, it should be about what we're going to be doing tonight, and that's the regulation rewrite. Okay?

Okay.

Katie, you want to? Sure, come on. Is that mic on over there? Yeah, we're going to just have you want to use that mic over there, please.

And for everyone's benefit, we've got a two hour workshop planned for you. And the intention of the workshop is to spend at least about an hour and a half of that time engaging in discussion with you about issues. So. Well, public comment is invited at this period. This entire workshop is engaged. It's designed to receive your comments and to engage in a conversation. So I'd like you to keep that in mind.

Okay, is this working?

Yes.

I'm a trustee of the O-1 Land Trust. And I just have something to read to you guys. My goal at the O-1 Land Trust is to reinforce my belief in the importance of preserving and protecting open space in O-1 During the 1960s and 70s, more than 700 acres in the Wild Creek Road area were developed into one-acre residential lots. This pattern of suburban sprawl created the need for a new elementary school, a second fire station, expanded road construction maintenance, additional public safety personnel, and increased municipal services. Population growth and single-family home construction reached the highest levels in the world's history. At the same time, the commercial strip center model began to replace the traditional mixed-use development patterns that had long defined intent. For more than 300 years, Old Lyons Town Center was located along Lyons Street, where people lived, worked, shopped, and gathered. It was a walkable environment that fostered community interaction and supported locally owned businesses. Today, much of that activity has shifted to the online marketplace, the online shopping center, and the other commercial establishments along Walsh Road. This corridor was designated primarily for automobile use. Parkability is limited. Storefronts are often hidden behind parking lots. An opportunity for community interaction is largely confined to the space between a parked car and a store entrance. The dominant visual experience is one of asphalt and parking rather than a vibrant town center. As online evaluates more than 60 years of established zoning regulations, it is important to consider how they can be updated to meet 21st century needs. There is growing demand for smaller-scale housing, multifamily development, and downsizing options for seniors. At the same time, your residents are finding it increasingly difficult to locate affordable housing within the community. This question is weird. The question is where the future growth should occur. Does it make sense to continue extending single-family development into the remaining undeveloped areas of town, or should we focus growth where infrastructure and services already exist? Preserving open space and accommodating future growth are not competing objectives. In fact, both goals are best achieved by directing new development towards areas that are already developed and served by existing infrastructure, rather than consuming additional open land. Concentrating housing within a random commercial center offers a more sustainable solution. Thoughtfully designed mixed-use development along Walton Road could help create a new town center for Albany. Smaller capital housing requires less land, makes more efficient use of municipal services, and a mixed-use neighborhood encourages greater community and interaction. It will allow the longtime residents to remain in town as their housing needs change while providing other people with opportunities to live and work in the community. Rather than continuing the pattern of sprawl over the last buildable land, mixed use development offers a way to preserve open space while strengthening the social and economic vitality of worldwide. Thank you.

Thanks, Nadine. Joe? Yes.

Commissioners, thank you for inviting public comment. I'm Joe Cammie. I have been in town for over 40 years. Please accept my comments and my intention to provide constructive suggestions for the betterment of these zoning regulations. I ask your attention to two concerns. First is exterior lighting regulations, environmental and aesthetic concerns. The Connecticut River Gateway Commission three years ago reported on how excessive night lighting affects our health and dramatically harms nature. The updated regulation made an effort to respect the requested avoidance of light pollution, but more work is needed for it to be enforceable. Numerous towns have joined a Lights Out Connecticut movement aiming for a nighttime dark sky, in part providing very specific guidance for types of exterior light fixtures. Gold Line needs to join the Lights Out conditions. Our zoning ordinance persists with lighting's requirements peppered throughout rather than one comprehensive section on exterior lighting. The disjoint attention to lighting has numerous conflicts and requirements and has historically not always been enforced, resulting in many violations of the intent of the regulations and not in keeping with the character of our town. particular neon signs and commercial windows, backlit large commercial signage, linear strip lighting on storefronts, and an abundance of property owners empowered with super bright LED lamps over-illuminating their properties, being the light that trespasses across property loans. The Shoreline Gateway Committee, of which I'm a member, As forwarded to your commission's suggested language for a comprehensive exterior lighting ordinance, please consider this information as part of the ongoing regulations update. My second point is sewering of the beach communities, saltwater intrusion of groundwater. The state's mandate for sewering our beach communities is resulting in well water extracted from our aquifers never being recharged into the ground. In the claimed spirit of environmental protection, our groundwater is being insensibly pumped for 15 miles to New London and dumped into Long Island South. Old Lyme is surrounded on two sides by saltwater. Numerous coastal communities, Long Island, New York, Cape May, Salinas, California, and the whole of South Water has run the hard way that depletion of groundwater ultimately results in saltwater intrusion. Climate change is resulting in sea level rise accelerating this process. Cape May has actually had to incur tremendous costs to desalinate seawater so they can maintain their water supply. There is no mystery about sewer points. Old Saybrook has successfully preserved their groundwater through decentralized wastewater systems. Additionally, Old Saybrook's solution costs less than the primitively dumping our fresh water into a saltwater body. We need to stop the environmental damages soaring or obligate the state to pay all future costs of desalination and the fantastically expensive deployment of a town-wide public water system. Thank you.

Anyone else that would like to make a public comment before I turn the meeting over to Francisco? Thank you.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Paul. And thank you for those comments.

Can everyone hear me okay? Or should I speak at the microphone?

I'll continue to project. So as I mentioned, the workshop this evening is intended for us to share a little bit of information with you about the zoning update process, where we are at in this process, and what we are trying to learn now. And the focus of our efforts now is on regulations and issues surrounding the environment, which is actually very broad. So our agenda for this evening is I have a brief presentation for you just to orient you with where we're at in this process. It involves an interactive survey where we'll hand out some quickers. And this isn't a scientifically valid survey. perspective on a lot of different issues. And then the bulk of our meeting will be dedicated to breakout sessions. And I think given the attendance here, we'll do two different sessions, maybe one in this corner of the room and one in that corner. And those will be conversations with each other about issues as related to the environment and your zoning regulations. We'll report back on our findings and we'll send you home hopefully by about nine o'clock this evening. So, first of all, I'm kind of jumping ahead. Paul introduced myself, but as he mentioned, I'm with IMEC. I'm joined by my colleagues, Rory Jacobson and Tony, as well, from IMEC, who have been working with me on this project, and they'll be helping to facilitate things this evening. IMEC was selected about over a year ago now. to help assist the town with updating and zoning regulations and that effort's been led by the land use department primarily by eric as well as by your chair zoning by paul in guiding us through this process and we've been working as well as you would imagine with the commission uh through the course of the update and i'll i'll explain to you where we're at in that process in a minute Phase one of this update process, those amendments were adopted into a new set of regulations earlier this year towards the end of March and are now effective. But that phase one was very limited in its scope. And I'll explain to you why in a moment. And all the information regarding updates, documents, presentations, et cetera, is being made available at this link on the town website. And if you just go to the land use page and town website, you can get to that information. So the purpose of the update is that the zoning regulations were adopted, originally adopted in 1941. Over the 80 or so years since then, they've been added to our content, removed content, moved around by multiple authors, by commission, by staff, by applicants and their attorneys, And so you had a set of regulations that was very disjointed and incoherent with a lot of issues. And so it's really critical to comprehensively update that document to be more usable, but also to correct errors, omissions, inconsistencies, redundancies, vague and confusing language. There's a tremendous amount of technical work that really needed to be done as soon as possible because there were a lot of issues with the zoning regulations. In addition to that, there have been a lot of statutory changes over the past several years, and the zoning regulations had not kept up with many of those changes. So our focus was to get a document that corrected a lot of those issues while being careful, very intentionally, not to change what you allow and how you regulate development in the town. In this space, the process is intended to consider those changes because we knew we needed to do far more engagement with the community before we thought about changing what is allowed, where is it allowed, how dense it can be, what permit is required, et cetera. So through the course of this work, now as part of phase two, we're starting with environmental issues and concerns, but we want to think about housing, development pressure, and other aspects of your zoning regulations. So phase two of this process, we're working in sequence and we're at the very beginning. We are, and we're starting with environmental regulations because they're connected to just, they're foundational to just about everything we're doing. Your flood hazard regulations, your wetland regulations, which is a separate set of regulations before some separate commission, Outdoor lighting was raised as an issue. That's an environmental issue. Your flood hazard regulations and any conservation requirements and open space requirements, it's all connected as foundational. So we want to have that very important discussion first because it really transcends all aspects of your regulations and ensure we understand what your concerns are and what direction we want to go. And then we're going to more or less work sequentially through your regulations from front to back We'll address residential zones and housing and those issues with housing that were raised in the public comment. Your commercial and industrial zones, which connect back with those comments as well. We'll revisit your site design, landscaping, parking, and signage regulations. And that's exactly where we'll address outdoor lighting. And then finally, the administrative aspects, your plan and permit requirements. And that's going to take place over about the next year and a half. So it's a little hard to see, it's kind of faded out. But phase one was a process more than a year. It was adopted in March. Now we're beginning this phase two process and with three workshops planned between now and most likely September and October. The next one being residential zones and housing. And towards the end of July, we haven't secured a date yet. That's the timeframe we're looking at. And then in the fall, commercial and industrial zones. Following that work will be these other aspects that I had mentioned. We are aiming for a spring of 2027 adoption. So through the course of this process, we will be amending sections of the regulations, preparing drafts of those amendments, the language restructuring them, making those available to the public to review, and then setting them aside and moving on. And our game plan, as it stands currently, is to when we get to the end of the process to bring all those forward for consideration of adopting and really have one adoption action for all those changes so that we have another version of the regulations made available, as I mentioned, as early as spring of 2027. I'd like to talk about, and I apologize, our colors are really washed out. Those should be circles. I want to make sure you all understand, for those that aren't zoning commissioners, what zoning, the scope of zoning, what it's intended to do, and what it can do, and some of its limits as well. So zoning comprises a set of standards, rules, and requirements. And then you have zoning districts, and that's where those standards are applied. Some standards are universal. They're applied equally across the town. And others, many are unique. to individual zones, whether they be residential or commercial or industrial, some other type of zone. And then how those standards are conveyed, that's the document, how the document is organized, how it's structured, how it's presented. And so we've done much of that work. We put it into a new format that will provide a solid foundation for anything that we build upon it. So that technical aspect is completed. And then finally, how standards are administered and enforced. And some of that's a matter of policy, but that's also laid out in the administrative section of your regulations. And as I mentioned, we have not made any changes to that, any changes to procedural requirements, to permit requirements. But all of that should be on the table for discussion as to do things work the way they should work or could things work better? And if so, what kind of changes do we need to make? The Connecticut general statutes and the legislature gives towns their zoning authority. That's where the authority comes from. And it's very prescriptive. Zoning has the authority to control the location of buildings, structures and uses, how big those buildings can be, how tall, setbacks and lot coverage, open space requirements. And in some aspects of a building's design and construction, although that is somewhat limited through zoning alone outside of a village district. Furthermore, the statutes require zoning to be designed to address issues like congestion in streets, public health and safety, ensuring the adequate light and air and protection of cultural and historic resources, and to ensure the adequate provision of infrastructure and services to communities. And furthermore, zoning regulations also have to consider things like housing need, efficient and efficient and timely review and approval of applications. It's a very critical aspect. They have to further the purposes of the Federal Fair Housing Act. They have to consider impacts on agriculture, make provisions for soil erosion control, as increasingly now stormwater management as well. Protection of groundwater and other public drinking water resources. and protect and manage impacts of Long Island Sound, which is really incredible as both a riverfront and a coastal community on the Sound. So when we think about the environmental aspects of zoning, there are some major topic areas that have received a lot of discussion in planning circles. And that starts with environmental resource protection and conservation, which has been central to zoning for a long time. But the issues and topics of resiliency and sustainability are gaining more attention and zoning regulations are increasingly being amended to address these very important issues. And I'll briefly walk through those. So when we think about environmental resource protection and conservation, it's probably everything that jumps to your mind. It's protection of your coastal resources, water bodies, forests, ridges, habitats, et cetera. And there are a lot of tools within your zoning regulations, as well as other sets of regulations across the town that protect these resources. There's a coastal management overlay zone. It's a state creation, but everything in that zone, it's required to go through review if it's over a certain threshold. You have the Gateway Conservation Zone, which plays a similar function for the Connecticut River. You have flood hazard regulations as part of your zoning regulations. You have site design lighting standards within your zoning regulations, soil and erosion control standards, stormwater management requirements, and, of course, your wetlands regulations are a separate set of regulations. So there are already a lot of tools for protection of the environment and for conservation. So our work involves seeing if those tools can be more robust or if they need to be improved in any way. And then sustainability is a very broad concept. It's generally defined as our ability to meet the needs of the future by continuing to do what we're doing now. There's a couple of more eloquent definitions there, but the concept of sustainability is, can we keep doing what we're doing? And a sustainable practice is one that can continue indefinitely without depleting resources or damaging the environment. So as we think about sustainability, That's kind of our understanding of what it means, and we need to think about how to apply that to your land use controls. And sustainability can take a lot of different forms, whether it's something like a solar array as regenerative energy, invasive species control, green infrastructure, pedestrian facilities, stronger tree protection and tree planting requirements, it can manifest in a lot of different ways across your zoning regulations and through other town regulations and policies. And then resilience, it's typically associated with flood resilience, but resilience can also be resilience to environmental change, to heat impacts, and there are a lot of different aspects of resilience. I think with respect to your zoning regulations, we'll be touching upon topic and the issue of resilience primarily through your flight hazard regulations, but there are other opportunities as well. In terms of zoning for resilience, I think it's important to call attention to the fact that Old Lyme has recently been awarded the EPA Resiliency Planning Grant for a resiliency action plan, and I believe that's starting up soon if it hasn't started already. So that's very timely and could be informative to our work. Very often those plans will make very specific zoning regulations. So depending on the timing of that work, it could inform what we're doing. But zoning for resilience, as I mentioned, it typically manifests in flood hazard protections. But there are other ways to be resilient, like zoning, having stronger tree planting requirements as part of any site plan approval. can help with resilience in terms of addressing urban heat island effect and stormwater management control. So we also want to think about resilience as we update the zoning regulations. And the importance of this, and I'm probably given the fact you're here on a beautiful summer evening or late spring evening, feels like summer. I'm sure you understand this, but the importance is that We've got a warming climate and your coastal community and sea level rise is a real threat. The fifth national climate assessment, which came out three years ago, projects by 2050, the intermediate projection is close to a foot of sea level rise. And on the high end, it would be over foot. So that's a very real threat for a coastal community. And of course, what's driving all that is increases in average temperatures. And so with the impacts of that, and here's just an example for Old Lyme. Is this the shore now? Of course, Great Island, and here's Soundview. And under a 100-year storm event, currently, Great Island's completely underwater, and much of the Soundview area is as well. The issue with climate change isn't just sea level rise. At the frequency of these events, they're no longer 100-year events. They're becoming 20-, 25-year events. And that's the concern. So when we look out at a foot of sea level rise, which we know is projected by 2050, as much as, if not more, we see Great Islands completely underwater. So a foot of sea level rise in 2050, which isn't that far away, looks very much like, if I go back, a 100-year storm event now. So this is the context that we're planning for. And hopefully this is not realized. But we should be thinking about it and planning for that context as we consider your land use regulations, including your zoning regulations. So as I mentioned, we're primarily interested in hearing from you. So at this point, we're going to hand out little clickers that will enable you to participate in a brief survey. It'll take 15 minutes at most. We've got a dozen or so questions. And the beauty of this system is you can do it in complete anonymity. You can quote exactly how you think. And we're going to see how everyone thinks on a range of issues related to your zoning regulations and land use and environmental regulations. Yes, sir.

While you're passing it on, can I ask you a quick question? Yeah. You brought up some good points. I'm on the Board of the Housing Commission. You mentioned nothing about the integration with the deregulations. PA 25 S1 comes into effect as we all arrive at all local zonings, which is a little bit scary considering we've got that to be for a small community.

I'm happy to, it's just not the topic for our discussion tonight. We plan on addressing housing in July, but it is timely because that does go in effect on July 1, as you know. It's probably helpful that I let you know that IMAG has been working through Rivercock. We were hired by Rivercock to to work with the towns in the region. We're working with 13 of them, including Old Lyme, a true river fog. And just coincidentally, we happen to be working here in Old Lyme anyway. And we are working with communities to amend their zoning regulations in response to the requirements of the Ohio Act. There are two important components of that. It's a huge public act, but with respect to your zoning, there are two aspects of it that are non-optional, compulsory, and effective July 1. One is that you have to allow mixed-use development or middle housing in all of your commercial or mixed-use zones, and by nothing more than what's being called summary review, which looks a lot like a site plan approval, but not a special permit and no public hearing. And so that's two to nine units. of residential development and you can require it to be mixed use, but it has to be up to nine units of residential. As of July 1st, you have to allow that in all of your commercial zones. The other aspect is, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but you bring up an important issue and I want to make sure everyone understands where this community stands currently. The other aspect is that the state is selling communities for any residential development, now not just middle housing, any form of residential development, single family, two family, multifamily, townhouses, condos, any development with 16 or fewer units, you cannot require off-street parking. Your requirement has to be zero. With 17 or more units, the state is allowing you to require off-street parking as you currently do, but the state is setting the limit that that minimum amount and which is one space per unit with one bedroom or fewer and two spaces per dwelling units with two bedrooms or more. The exception to that is that communities can adopt something called a conservation traffic mitigation district, and that's nothing to do with conservation, nothing to do with traffic. It is a mechanism to control parking in some areas. You're limited to two of those. You can create two of those. Each should be up to 4% of your land area. no more. And if you establish those through your zoning becomes an overlay, you can continue to require parking for any scale of residential development in those zones at the ratios that the state has set. So through our work, through our River Park work, working with the town, we have amendments that are going to be going, recommended amendments that are going to be going forward to public hearing soon that draft Mixed-use middle housing regulations that would allow mixed-use middle housing in the SBDD, this is the mixed-use zone, and your C zones as well. It limits it to nine units. It limits it to one building per lot. It requires a lot of conforming. We have a bunch of other standards that needs to comply with. We require commission approval. We require a site plan for it. So we provided a lot of mechanisms. So you do have to maintain a measure of control, even though you have to allow that type of development. We also have to allow... You do. Yeah, you do. The other aspect, as I mentioned, that the parking districts, we're calling them a parking management district, which makes a lot more sense. We've drafted two of those. One would cover this area and extend up to Halls Road area. We've maximized the 4% to the greatest extent we could. And the others, the shore, we're kind of surrounding the Soundview Village District area, and we can actually capture much of that. And the intention, and it travels northeast up to one of your sea zones as well. The intention there is to capture your highest density residential areas so that you can continue to require off-street parking where your on-street parking is already at its limits. So we've proposed those, and those have been drafted. Those will be moving forward as part of the amendment And Eric, when did we set? For July 1st. So that's on everyone's radar. And we prepared you as well as we could for that issue while trying to keep this work moving at the same time. All right. So I think everyone has a clicker. So let me explain how this works. The only keys relevant to you are the numbers, and for the most part, really, just numbers one through five, because we only have up to five or so choices. I don't know what the numbers, what the buttons at the bottom do, so you're not going to ruin anything if you press them. You don't need that. All you have to do is press a number associated with your chosen response. We'll have a test slide so we make sure this works. And if you change your mind and weren't sure you pressed the number, you can press it again. If you change your mind, you can press another number and it'll cancel out the first one and it'll go up the last. So we'll have a test slide. And the test slide is how long have you lived in old Lyme? And item number one, it's not 1.0 to five years. It should be option one is zero to five years. And I'll read these out loud because I realize you're kind of far from the screen. 2 is 6 to 10, 3, 11 to 12, 4, more than 20 years, and 5, you don't live in old line. Maybe you're here because you own property or something. So you just press the number, and then when it looks like everyone's settled in, I'll advance, and we'll get real-time results if the system works as it should.

It's a little finicky. Okay, let's move ahead. It worked, that's a good thing.

Okay, so nearly half, more than 20 years. And so we don't have any newbies. We've got people that are well invested in the community and a handful that actually don't live here. Okay, so that was just to make sure it works. Now we wanna get into the real subject matter. How familiar are you with town zoning regulations? One, very familiar. Two, somewhat. Three, a little. Imagine this kind of spectrum here. And four, not at all.

You've never looked at them, right? Okay, let's go ahead.

Oh, very even split. Okay, this is going to make for an interesting discussion this evening. Good, good. Okay. Okay. Next, this is a real big picture question. We asked it in most workshops we do, regardless of the topic, because it helps us understand where you're coming from. So please select the statement that best represents your thoughts about old line. Number one, I like old line now. Keep it like it is. Not necessarily freeze it in time, but keep it like it is. Number two, I think old lines should continue to grow and change, but incrementally, okay? Number three, I think old lines should be open for significant growth and change. And number four is some other, maybe none of these fit your perspective and we're giving you an out, okay?

All right, let's see where you landed.

Incremental, this, This is usually where most people land, but sometimes we see people strongly on the side of, let's just keep it the same, which gives us a lot of information. It tells us that, yeah, let's maybe fine tune these regs, but let's stay away from anything that might actually change things. Okay, this isn't, and we're kind of a little more people on keep it the same and real small on significant growth or change. Okay. What are your thoughts on land use and development in Old Lyme today? Number one, very appropriate across the town. Number two, good in many areas, but not others. Number three, it's just okay. You don't have a strong impression one way or another. Number four, not good in many areas. And number five, poor use of land and regulation of development.

Okay. Oh, wow.

We've got four of you. Okay. Well, we're going to hear from you in our sessions. And we do want to hear. We want to understand why that is. How much of a priority is an updated town zoning regulations to address issues surrounding environmental resources, sustainability, and resiliency? And based on the fact that it came out this evening, I'm thinking it's a priority, but give us a sense as to a high priority. So number one, high priority, two, moderate priority, three, low priority, and four, maybe just not sure. So we're giving you an escape clause here.

Okay. Right, it's not a big surprise, high priority.

Okay, let's continue. Is land use in development in Old Lyme's coastal areas consistent with your vision of how that land should be used? And I realize the coastal areas vary considerably. So we're talking about the areas that have been developed for the most part. Is it consistent with your vision of appropriate development? So one is yes, two is somewhat, three is no, and again, four, not sure.

We don't need that to happen.

Adobe has decided at least to do some sort of update, which I'm just going to have to escape out of this and let it know. It's not being offered right at all.

You hear feedback? Shut the button on the panel. Oh, yes, there is. Okay. Is that better?

Yeah, the hum is better.

I always hear this thing. So, all right. I think we're good. I think that magically fixed it. Usually that doesn't work. So again, you know, postal areas are presumably a chance to make your selection. So I'll move forward. No. Okay. Wow. So a little shy of two-thirds no, a third or so somewhat. Only 4% yes. Okay. Well, let's dig into that in our discussions. How about this? How concerned are you about the impact of storm events and potential sea level rise on Old Lyme's coastal areas? And I suspect this ties back to the response we heard just now. One, very concerned. Two, somewhat concerned.

And three, not concerned. Okay. Very concerned.

Yeah, that connects back to what we just heard from you. Okay.

How well does the town, through its zoning regulations, protect environmental resources? One, excellent. Two, good. Three, okay. Four, not good. Five, poor.

The ranking system, one, the best, five, the worst. Very even distribution. Okay.

All right. We're going to figure out how to get you guys mixed up in our breakout session so we don't end up with completely, or maybe we'd be interested. We have completely different conversations at either station. All right. Should the town offer incentives for sustainable, resilient development? Let me describe what I mean by that. It's possible within your zoning regulations to not Well, you can require certain things, but you can only go so far mandating requirements for sustainable and resilient development before ultimately the developer is going to evolve and challenge it. But you can load up your regulations with as many incentives as you want, encouraging sustainable and resilient development types. You can allow more coverage if pervious pavement is provided and more density, more height. There are a lot of There are things you can give away in exchange for sustainable, resilient practices or land uses. So the question is, should we be thinking about incentives in support of sustainable, resilient development? And one is yes. Two is maybe or depends. Maybe you want to condition your response.

Three, no. And four, no, I'm sure. Okay. Very favorable. That's good.

Should the town discourage development in flood hazard areas? And that, of course, goes beyond the shore is the most obvious. But you have other areas along the Connecticut Riverfront, some inland areas where you have flood hazard areas. Now, FEMA, your flood hazard regulations in FEMA does completely restrict development in the floodway itself. The 100-year flood hazard area is pretty highly regulated, but you can build commercial in that and build residential if you're up above base flood elevation. And the 500-year is not strictly regulated, which is a flood hazard area as well. And we know based upon severity of events combined with sea level rise, the 500-year area is going to continue. It's going to have more exposure in the future. So should the town... discourage, do more, I should say do more to discourage development in flood hazard areas?

So one yes, two maybe or depends, three no, four not sure. Oh wow, okay. Yeah, all right.

Should the zoning regulations be stricter For development near water bodies, you know, right typically planning or scientific around from all these riparian zones, whether it be river, brook, stream, adjacent wetland, lake, pond, it's possible through your zoning regulations, in addition to your wetland regulations in your upland review area, through your zoning regulations, it's possible to require setbacks from these resources. So there's more you can do in addition to your weapons regs to require development to be further away from these water bodies and to control things like pavement within proximity, not just buildings, but pavement and other types of land uses. So the question is, should your existing regs be stricter? Right now, you really rely upon There's some gateway commission regs that apply to the Connecticut River, of course. But you rely primarily upon your wetlands regulations and some coastal management site plan review for coastal management. But there's more you can do through your zoning regs. So one would be yes, two, maybe, or depends, three not sure, no, four not sure.

and talk to it to death, so let's just get to the results. Yes, okay, all right.

You're supportive, okay. There's a lot we could explore with that. Should the zoning regulations be more supportive of small-scale solar energy systems? So now we're not talking about solar farms and Connecticut siting council jurisdiction type of projects. We're talking about whether it's residential, rooftop, ground-mounted, commercial, maybe solar rail or parking lot. Would you like the zoning regulations to be supportive of the deployment of more solar and more than just a few panels on a residential roof? So one, yes. Two, maybe or depends.

Three, no. Four, not sure. Okay, somewhat favorable, a few of you, no, all right.

Should the zoning regulations require the conservation of more open space? So there was a discussion earlier about subdivisions and the impacts of the development of subdivisions. And through your zoning regulations and to a lesser extent through your subdivision regulations, you can require more open space to be conserved as part of any subdivision development. And there are other opportunities through your zoning regulations as well, whenever you have any form of development. So the question is, should that be a focus or should there be more attention given to that through your zoning regulations? One, yes. Two, maybe or depends.

Three, no. And four, not sure.

This would be for new development?

Yeah, typically for new development, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's mostly applicable to subdivisions, but it could be applicable to a larger scale commercial development, right? Having some sort of requirement that not only do you limit them in coverage, that if there is open space, like a forest or something like that, it'd be conserved in some way. So it can manifest in different ways.

But typically we're talking about new development. Okay, let's see what you think. Okay, strong support.

I believe this is our last one. Do the zoning regulations adequately protect drinking water resources? So Old Lyme doesn't have a level A aquifer protection area like some of your surrounding communities. And for those communities, the state requires aquifer protection area regulations as part of your zoning regulations, or they can actually be a standalone set of regulations. And it restricts uses. within that area. You don't have one of those designated zones here, but you do have groundwater in the community, even though it's not a level A off. So there are measures you can take through your zoning regulations to help better protect your drinking water resource. So the question is, one, is do you feel that your existing regulations adequately protect groundwater? One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Isn't that handled by one? Yeah, on a property where they may be approving a drink water well or a center or sewer system, that's kind of a minor scale. But you can, through your zoning regulations, have regulations that's really important and use policies that better regulate groundwater as a whole. extending beyond an individual piece of property.

All right, let's see what you think. No, okay.

All right, so maybe there's more we can do, which it doesn't mean that there is more that we could do, but we want to explore that. All right, you've completed the survey. Congratulations, thank you. and we need to return these clickers because they will not unlock the bar. We will, we will. This presentation along with these results, we're going to put a PDF of it up on the town website and make it available to everyone. We have an online survey. Currently, you probably... The one you have online isn't this. It isn't this. It contains many of these questions. They might be kind of formulated a little different. It covers all aspects of your zoning regs. So this is a little abbreviated. It's rich in the online version. But we're touching upon many of these issues. And we do have a lot in the online version. Yes, sir.

Sir, do we still know?

Over 200 people have participated. It's open, so we're not going to publish any results until we close it. We're going to keep it open at least through the end of this month. Once we close the survey, we'll put a summary. We'll make a summary of all the results available. We'll put that online as well. Is that complicated? Is it what? Complicated? No, not at all. As I mentioned... This is for our purposes this evening, and it does inform us, but it mostly informs our discussion this evening and on this specific issue. The survey we have online is much broader. It covers a range of issues. So it complements, doesn't conflict with, but complements this. Oh, sure. No, we're going to make it all available. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to make all the results of that. Okay. Okay. Okay, now here's the part where we're looking to you to do a lot of the work. And so I'm gonna ask that we break up into two groups and I have, we've got a group here. So we're gonna form a group here and feel free to move your chairs as needed so you're comfortable or stand. We're gonna set up an easel and we're gonna have a conversation. And so let me walk you through what that looks like. We'll spend the next, at least an hour or so, as I promised, we'll watch the clock for nine o'clock. We'll get you out of here by nine o'clock. So we'll adjust accordingly. The first discussion, we're going to talk about issues. What are the challenges? What are the problems? What are the concerns regarding environmental issues? Everything we've been talking about up to this point. And let's hear what the problems, the issues, and the concerns are and the threats. We'll spend, I think, not 30 minutes. We're running a little late. We'll spend 25 minutes. I'll go to the next slide. And we've got this will automatically time us, you know, keep us on track. So we'll do that, and then we'll report back each group, because we'll have two groups, one back there, one over here. We'll report back our findings, and then we'll have a similar discussion about, well, what are your ideas? What should we do? What should we be looking at? What should we consider? to address a lot of those issues. So we've got a solid hour planned for you. I don't know where we're at with time here. Yeah, we're good, we're good. It's not quite 8 o'clock, so we have a solid hour, and we'll get you out of here hopefully by noon. And I do encourage you to, this is the, we're done only with the front half of this workshop, so please, please, if you have time, please stay for this part. This is the real work here. So I'll just have you try to evenly split up. It looks like it's going to work if this side of the room goes to there and more or less this side goes to there. If you feel one side is a little more crowded than the other, just balance out if you could. The basic rules here is that everyone has an opportunity to speak. We listen to what everyone says. and no one person dominates the conversation, and we're all having a conversation with each other, but one conversation, the side conversations would be very distracting. So one conversation at each forum.

Does that sound good? Okay.

All right, thanks. . . . . . .

And we start to point you to that.

We need to make sure. Anybody wants to speak up? We're not sure. Okay, so I really want to start. I mean, you were saying this was people not here for a long time. I always want to make this discussion. And it was a play which was chosen because it's not what it seems to be yet. So I'm not a favorite of the commission. I'm a favorite of the commission chair. I'm a real fan of the commission.

I make some recommendations. All right, thank you. Yes, start wearing a hat. Yeah, I'm still not a fan of the commission.

Okay, good. That would be. He said he made recommendations. What's an example? Anything again, try to tie this back to environmental issues. Is that an environmental issue? Okay.

So it sounds like maybe it's just some of the coordination and how things work.

So, yeah, so, and I think we've got some questions. Do you guys have any questions? Yeah, at any point, we need to point this to a map, or do you feel like you want something on the map?

I mean, like, there's a road on the floor, but if we need to do it on a map, and it has, you know, a coastal zone down there, Yes, yes.

There it is right here.

So the Gateway Commission was formed about 50 years ago by state law.

It is a group of certain loans or the value counts plus a representative of the U.S. Well, it's not. So, that's what I'm talking about. So, that's what I'm talking about.

Just as a reference point, I don't have a plan for anything.

I think we should have a plan, you know what I mean? Because I don't know if you know what I'm saying. I don't know if you know what I'm saying. And I'm concerned about, because of that, you guys are going to be doing a lot of greater things. So we'll be having some division, right? We should be all out. It's not so difficult now in the open space. Yeah. We just spread it somehow. We need a mechanism either to encourage the planning commission to amend or work on. I don't know how to say it. It's not going to happen.

It's not going to happen. It sounds like coordination.

So I think we plan to. We plan to give it to the teacher. Well, we meet one teacher.

I mean, it's fairly longer than 30 minutes. Wait, I didn't.

This month, we're going to be doing some decision response.

So the planning commission is for the American person.

We're not going to have the plan. We're going to have to do it every 10 years. We're going to look at some divisions, and there are some that are sometimes a while. We're not going to have to do all of that. I know that we're going to have to do it in some ways.

My initial, when I got elected to the Planning Division, it was an amnesty for me to receive a speech.

So the Planning Division is a foe, and it's only nice for me to replace the Councilor Dr. McManus.

A better coordination, a minimum, combine the two at best, because saving staff time and those huge expenses, we wouldn't have to come to as many meetings. services. And you could enlarge the zoning commission with certain issues.

Is that a recommendation from the zoning commission?

It's a different...

Yes, yes, yes. And then it's the regulation, for example, where you'll comment on things closely in respect to the rights and supplies of the ATR plan consideration at all times.

So just to point out though, so if they were something and the zoning division denies it gets approved, the zoning division would be a super majority as opposed to a regular majority to control the plan.

But that is a challenge.

But that is a reversal. If we deny something that they really want to do, they have to have a super majority get approved. So it's tiny to a lot of people.

I've got two-thirds of communities in the town that have a combined I am the founder of the commission.

And that's been my experience with the founder of the commission. Are there any other sides to that? Or is it just...

I personally like it, but... Yeah, it's... There's no coordination, and you have to get in silos, and people don't talk to each other. And you can't... Potentially, we're soft. going in different directions.

We're working now on the housing issue because we don't have a town planner.

So there's no planning.

And it's not interested in the county because we're so small.

We don't have staff.

It's too expensive to have staff or hire consultants. So that's the interesting thing. I'm also on the web. Okay. And this idea belongs some of our more sensitive setback would be very, very valuable commission because we don't have the expertise to, you know, ourselves to receive things.

We don't know, for example, resources to help us evaluate our staff.

If we had someone to help us really evaluate the significance of our rivers, like somebody had really like water quality, very important to them. Yeah, definitely. supporting water, you know, our well and drinking water systems. Or they have a work trap, native work trap. Well, maybe a setback in that water course should be bigger than one that doesn't have its unique resources. I mean, we have, if you know the river, it has a run of river air to break the sun here. So that's a unique Resolution is very valuable as a volunteer commission.

We have sort of administrative support. We get paperwork and stuff done. We have capacity. We have significant analysis.

It's only when you're really helpful and serving people are questions. Or at least to do a design, not just you. And I'm not saying for city walls, because... You can't really do that. You have to be flexible enough to allow the analysis and stability. And so you should be able to make a very... That's interesting. I didn't know that. And there's where there's some overlap with the Oakland review area.

But the Oakland review area by itself doesn't have certain distance from the water quality well.

It doesn't restrict self-management. It just requires that there be review. But again, if you don't have staff or resources to really have someone with expertise on what our space composes in that area to evaluate it, to determine whether it's compatible, it won't be adversely impactful. And I'm not saying that it may overwhelm the development of both. It's just that we don't necessarily get a detailed weapon-bound deployment on every application. On the bigger ones, we shouldn't really.

So we have a problem reviewer, a hundred and four weapons, and then if you have one of the pools, of course,

which is probably the largest in the state, essentially. We don't necessarily know if it's a Burma pool or if you don't have a mountain.

We don't have a mountain. We don't have a mountain. We don't have a mountain. We don't have a mountain.

We don't have a mountain. We don't have a mountain.

We don't have a mountain.

I wouldn't say it's a concern, I would say it's a concern on behalf of the property owners, because we have six title records that crisscross our very short span of the map. Whereas like, we have to be able to make sure there's property rights that are involved. There's a lot of unintended consequence sometimes with certain conservation areas, right? Or sometimes things can be done from an engineering standpoint that people just don't like. So they use the environmental resources as a reason to fight development and things they don't like. So that's one thing I have a concern. Honestly, the Gateway Committee, that's one of my concerns, is that it's established for the community of the river, but it goes in as far as Bookwell Road, right? Because that's miles from the actual gateway area, but those rules now apply to everybody on the whole road and all those other communities, the three-mile river, the four-mile river, the back river, the tent river, all those things go very far. And all about protecting the resources within those areas, but at the same time, you've got to have a balance for substantial

Sure. I would just say to that that in the same way that people think that they have private property rights and think that you're just upset about something and so you're claiming environmental concerns, there are very legitimate environmental concerns that shift property rights as they currently exist in this country.

I don't disagree with that. But sometimes, in my experience, I've noticed that that sometimes feel a change in environmental concerns are raised. I'm not saying that people don't bring industrial complaints, right? I've been allotted from zoning meetings throughout the year, so I've got to hear all sorts of

I would say that a lot of times environmental advocates definitely feel like they're pushing against the rules that will not really be the best. There are property rights and people have rights to do what they want, where they want to do it. And most of the time it does not feel like it doesn't matter how legitimate your concerns are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and then actually stage it in sort of, that sort of, you know, must, must go into a process. And so it's sort of maybe to balance the programming on a rate where maybe it's just a matter of centralizing the rate to get people to move in that direction, implement the piece, that sort of stage kind of thing, and things that can be selected. So that's the main thing that comes to the table, which is also that, rather than the black and white, all sort of opportunities.

So there's not that whole idea that we can actually, you know, some movement, right?

Okay. Well, I would agree with that. I would also just say that there tends to be talk about the compromise, which makes people who have farther views on either side, right? So for instance, I want to bring up the hill and retreat, because I do believe

in retreat, and I do believe that just because we have allowed the development on the shoreline does not mean that if something were to happen as a result of a flood or rising sea level, that people should be allowed to rebuild the houses that they own on that property. And that's something that a lot of people are really upset about, because they just want to have land where they have a house there.

Sometimes for generations.

Exactly. Retreat is not an option. Ideally, it sounds great, but I mean, everybody has the ability to retreat.

They have no choice but to live where they are.

What's that? It's in the water. In the water, I'm saying. It's not a luxury to be able to. It's a luxury to be able to. Everybody has that luxury.

No, they should not be converted. Why don't some of that? This is what they still can do.

This is why. There should be a bunch of barters and bottles and things like that. obviously has been impacted. Congress has been, you know, they went to the address as well. It's been a relation in case with an issue, with an environmental issue that's moving exponentially fast. What do you mean?

to protect themselves.

Currently, the only thing that can happen is if you're traditional, you raise your house, and that is not sustainable, and that is not, and I know what we should be looking at. That's what the regulations require right now.

If you improve your house over a certain value, or it's destroyed, you have to go out and stay in the same spot. Yeah, these are incredibly important issues that I can't tell you. We worked in Stonington to rewrite their zoning regulations over a four-year period. It's a process that's here. We'll figure it out. We explored issues related to the solution for treatment. We explored the idea of a patient transfer development rights program.

written into the zoning regulations that would allow density and development grants to be transferred from flood hazard areas to other zones in town.

We drafted regulations, we crawled over the table, and there was spot reluctance. So we moved forward some basic things, but there was more ambitious ideas, like increasing the base flood elevation from return on plus one foot, which is the lowest in the middle. We had a discussion about plus three feet. We explored that regulation for that. Ultimately, a tremendous amount of distract from people from coastal communities to table those.

They didn't walk away from them indefinitely, but they tabled those. We moved forward a bunch of other things like a beach

sustainability incentive and a bunch of other things that were really important to get some work done. But I want to use all of that information to get this done and explore them and draft regulations for the construction building.

It's very broadly named as a step sheet.

Our step sheet was amended for not that long ago. It's going to be named a Tracework Development Plan. It's actually a good time to move property rights from one area to another. I'm not sure about the regulations. It seems like we are fairly relaxed. in requirements of preserving forest cover in new developments. Most of all the new developments I see, they look pretty much clear-cut, which I understand it's easier for developers in terms of road placement and grading and everything else. And then they replant some trees, but it's 25 years before they'll develop any of this at all. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of description on how much Forest guard needs to be maintained. You know, sometimes it's much worse than that. We have a forest that comes through. I've been trying to get big tree stands and sort of things, and not to be cut. It seems like we don't do much of any of that, or it doesn't seem to be important to me.

I mean, we have a driveway front. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, that's something.

Incredibly simple, and we do it all the time. We get provisions for planting, we get restrictions on invasive species. Invasive plants working group maintains a very nice inventory of those species. We don't even have a practical list, we just reference that. They also provide a planting list as well.

We're going back to a discussion about subdivisions and preservation of space.

We're also looking at the town of Glastonbury. They have what's known as an ultra-space subdivision, right, where you can build on a small block by a certain amount of space.

And the language was, the change that we're making was really just one part One operative from May staff language said that the Town Planning and Zoning Commission may authorize an open space subdivision, suggesting that that's an alternative form of development that they can allow in discussion with the commission.

Why don't we just require, just require

all subdivisions because they were built in space. Let's just change the name of the channel. So now if you were to change the number, it would say it's shallow required. If it's one-word, now it's mandatory that any future subdivisions are built.

We'll have to follow up with a new cluster of subdivision open spaces that are small.

where a significant portion of that is a short-circuit, as an open space, and either a cable circuit, if it's a land trust, or given an outright town.

So, if you're trying to do this, there's one more area. You probably want to think about including the highway part of the impervious road.

I just finished last class and then we're going to report back to our discussion. We'll have a second half of this discussion. We've kind of gotten into it. Let me give this.

Because we haven't traveled this year, in my opinion, it's about 25,000. And I think we should have some sort of evaluation of by looking at how robots in each community and maybe do things to encourage restoration of groundwork. And on some side of the day, if you imagine just releasing an hour with two young men, it's us now. It's a random where you get to thank each other because they have shampoos laughing about it. And then we'll move on to a second half of the whole discussion, which will, and I expect to, like, this group over here, you're already talking about ideas, because we had them on just the end of the school truck. But the second half will definitely be able to talk about what's going to be done by the shallower. We're talking about these issues. What exactly should be done?

They said, they said, I'm going to mail them to you and give four values, five minutes, and then another half, just to add to what they talked about. thus far .

Okay, Lori, I need, I need, I need this group, this group's gonna report on what they've been talking about. So we're gonna take that in and then we're gonna report and then we'll go to the second half of our discussion. So .

Real quick, just a couple of minutes. What are the folks going to talk about?

So we hit a lot of different topics. We've led to a development.

Thank you. Concerns. Tracking generation.

Risk to the aquifer.

It's a particular building area. I haven't seen a flood zone. And also some light pollution concerns that came up. I'll just talk a bit about the importance of, thank you, surveying for critical habitat and wildlife so that as you're evaluating for development and looking ahead to do a sense of what the existing conditions are with the American soil risks are or not of development. We talked a bit about particular use of mortuary cross-identity where there's concerns about some of the chemicals that were The use of that facility was approximately in the water. Sea level rise came up. There's an interest in ensuring that there's thought that's being given to maybe arrival of future uses, such as data centers, and making sure that the town has even thought to that and has possibly some protections or at least an approach to that in mind. We have Talk of alternatives for current section design, where there will be an individual section set of individual properties, must be at the community level. If there is an acknowledgement, there's, in some instances, a cultural mentality of asking for forgiveness as opposed to coming forward, going through and working the process, you know, the example that was given is the driveway permitting process. Because there are environmental impacts. So we raised the driveway and we wish to run off with them. Thanks for that. And then pervious surface, pervious surface discussion, as well as landscape game.

Good. Great. Awesome.

Yeah, so in our group here, you know, there's talks about there being silos between some of the commissions and the committees. You know, namely, you know, there's separate planning and zoning commissions in the town, which is very different than many of the towns in the state. You know, there's the gateway recommendations sometimes being ignored. So just, again, just siloing and better coordination within the committees needed. You know, we kind of went back and forth between issues and ideas here, but, you know, need to really look at the subdivision regulations more, more stringently. Also, setback zones from wetlands would be helpful. You know, the lack of staff available to help the commissions, you know, making recommendations. So just needing staff to help evaluate impacts of wetlands and rivers when some applications come through in the water course regulations. We did hear that the mapping of wetland areas is not always accurate. It's changing, you know, especially in the burner pools and things like that. The need to balance, you know, the rights of property owners with environmental concerns and making sure that both, you know, are are taken into account because there are definitely legitimate environmental concerns. The need to look at successful examples from other communities, case studies was brought up. Consider retreat. Think about that and some of the regulations that's limiting ability to rebuild after there's been an event of destruction. Maybe thinking about policies for that. Sometimes it's not always financially feasible for people to retreat. We discussed that too. We did hear that it seems like the regulations are fairly lax regarding tree clearing. So when a subdivision comes in, it's usually clear cut and they're going to see more regulations requiring some preservation of tree cover. And, you know, recommendations for native plant species in developments was something that was, you know, it is needed. And then also heard that There's some areas in town where private wells are just running dry, especially with extreme heat that we're having. So we need some kind of policies about some of those things.

Okay, fantastic. So in the second half of the discussion, let's pick up on some of those ideas that emerged from the first half, and let's focus on ideas. What would you like us to consider and look at and potentially draft And while our focus is the zoning regulations, we realize this connects to a lot of issues surrounding town policy and other regulations, whether it be subdivision regulations and weapons. So it's all connected, and we appreciate that. So it's fine to talk about those, but again, our focus is zoning. So let's get into it. Tell us what we need to do and what we should be looking at, okay? And we'll spend another 25 minutes or so on that.

So I think that there should be a decrease in accountable services and that certainly needs to decrease the long-term care plan. In terms of native plants being planted, that's logical.

It should also be non-sterile. If you plant something that doesn't have seeds, then it's not going to grow. Then wildlife is not going to get it. How about pollinators? 100% of the media is paid. Limiting, as in not allowing any planting as a basis reason. Why those care treaties continue to be planted on roads, I do not know.

They are awful. Yeah, I know. I think that there should be permits required, even on the size of the property. to renew a freshman.

What do you think about the circle caliper? We all saw what happened that day five. The trees are gone. It's going to be 50 plus years before we have anything.

It's going to be there.

We should. Let's talk about that a little bit. No, there will be actions. I am the member of the zoning regulation. It's going to be a conditional. All those areas are just out of those. I'm not going to say forceful through some of these books.

There won't be any violations or anything.

and they compile them, and they can be acquired to replant trees, and then they say, you know, we have an idea, we can send it, but you can do it through municipal ordinance. And zoning is one aspect of your municipal ordinance.

You have a municipal ordinance that requires placement of the trees, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, or a tree, We have a tree warden.

Well, that's good. Because that would be the capacity of a tree warden.

So you don't have the orders, right? The tree warden has the responsibilities.

So the other thing, I don't think that any context would be allowed in questions.

There may already be discussing the financial environment within the unit that might be on the driving range.

I don't understand that because that is clearly delineated as weapons and whether or not we say weapons are going to move and obviously they aren't. It's still weapons. It goes to the drainage that we put in there. It's not going to be a home fragment anymore. It should be removed. Any development within 500 years of what is done should be required to submit a water industry report to the center where the water is going to flow. That's some of the requirements for 100 years.

Treat it to 500 more like the treatment of 100 years.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's just taking a while for, you know, SEMA and state agencies to talk.

So what we are definitely going to do as part of what we're about to do is your flight has some regulation problems, and they need to be

brought up today. In addition to considering to make them more robust, they have very recently brought up today the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection's model of less-hazard regulations that are based on the newest state building code standards.

The state building code, several years ago, they adopted the International Building Code, and that has more restrictions, more controls, and less fairness. So at the very least, We're going to update the flood hazard regulations based on, in line with the EAPS model, flood hazard, flood zone regulations for coastal communities. While we're doing that, we can think about being more robust in that as well.

And I think we haven't seen that before. I think one comment has provided part of their commission. They aren't aware of all the comments that we gave to you about what we said, All the comments we receive on these posts on our website are comments we receive on what we're following or already posted. So if you go into, for instance, Zoe and Lover's Mansion Sundays on the website, you'll see those comments. It'd be really good to hear from you. Oh, good. As you can find, you have not one of those millions. This will so far impact for anybody on that planet. for that individual, I'm sorry, the potential to lower the pledge and celebrate. So they are losing the edge of their life, and it would be who of us, there's no electric, all of us would be right to figure out where we are. Yeah, change your rating.

Yeah, that's true.

The more you do, the more you do, the more you do.

I don't know how this would work from a zoning standpoint, but I assume you've done something at this point. I saw one of your slides that was showing how photovoltaic rail is part of the party. One of the beauties of cutting all the trees down, the big one, is that we have vast expanses of asphalt. Is there anything they can incentivize landowners or Well, at the very least, you need to make sure it's allowed.

And by example, in a lot of communities that we work in, they do allow ground-mounted solar, but they limit the height to like 10 or 12 feet, or in some cases even 15 feet, which isn't enough to put it over a parking.

So we've rewritten the regulations to allow them to locate it over a parking to be up to 20 feet tall. And there are multiple advantages of locating the long and older parking services. Obviously, it's very basic, like solar, but you help to reduce urban heat on the fire as well.

So we want to make sure that zoning regulations enable that type of use. And along that line... This idea that you can...

anything having to do with town putting in charging stations?

Yeah, there is a minimum requirement, not for town installation, but state statute a few years ago that requires any development over a certain scale with 30 more spaces that you have to put in the infrastructure for the station.

You have to actually put in the station, you have to put in the infrastructure, all the conduit, supply of power to it,

Provided to add to spaces.

So there's a minimum state requirement now, and that is paying your rents. But you can do more than that. You can serve your apartment like that. And we should go for that as well. Another very simple thing that costs next to nothing. dollars in most communities that don't touch it at all, is to require a bicycle rack.

You know, it's a bicycle, yes, it's a recreation, a lot of recreational users, but for some people, it's a mode of transportation, and it costs next to nothing to install a bicycle rack, and it's a secure place to park your bike. And typically, local rights and something require a rate of one bike rack or one Well, actually, one ramp serves two bikes, so at a rate of one bike parking space for 10 automobile spaces created, and that's really . So we need to think about multiple forms of transportation, particularly the more sustainable forms, like walking or bicycling.

So that would be required for residential developments and commercial zoning, that they be required to put in the sidewalk.

You can. You can do that. You can absolutely do that through zoning. Typically, that starts with kind of a strategic plan. You know, at the far-reaching corners of the town, there's zero sidewalk network. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It might not be a priority. But where you do have a network with gaps in that network, like an extendable network where it makes sense to start building a network,

That's a very reasonable requirement, and a lot of zoning regulations do include a sidewalk.

There's also the idea that similar to what we have on the subdivision side, it would be collecting a fee in lieu of sidewalks so that you can then take that money out.

If you want to build sidewalks. Exactly.

Part of the problem with building sidewalks is you don't get to build sidewalks, but collect money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

fire and ready to start again.

Yeah, we should absolutely consider that inherently, but it brought a point and part of the end of the book.

Does it make sense to locate a sidewalk in the area? Put that towards building sidewalks.

So we're not going to go out and do something big. And we want to do something big. What's that? How do we do it?

The idea to get from the idea to the actual issue.

Yeah, I think that there is quite a reason for all trying to get those tree roots.

Because the more they die from three years, the more it's going to die from three years. They just every had something to do with the night. Yeah, that would be more of an engineering standard requirement to enforce that, because we're the ones dealing with those types of construction projects socially and medically.

But tree protection, let's say, and wind and wind in front of, like, sidewalks.

No, it's 36 acres.

No, it's 26 acres. No, it's 26 acres.

After this, I don't know what you're doing. After that, all of a sudden, we're putting out the fence, and you're like, here's where I can take these friends from the zone. It's just, yeah. They don't show how well they're doing. So, yeah, that's it. There's a lot more, as I mentioned, all this basic.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

is unfortunately

But.

uh uh

And then, since you mentioned that agreement, I also know that we have a series of the end result. And so the number of underage first-time workers is not very low. Counting where the number of first-time workers is higher, which is a bunch of your labor and you. And you, the equitist you. Okay. Any new factions that are, I'm just going to go back, and then you'll discuss it.

I'm not in college here. So, for example, we stole our animals. We stole our animals. We stole our animals. We stole our animals. We stole our animals. We stole our animals. We stole our animals.

We stole our animals.

Populations are in trouble. Great and dense land buildings. This is going to produce an effect on the environment. Every single one of these plants. Yes, something comes out of them.

Okay, we've got to advance our slide. I noticed it didn't advance, but please continue.

Whatever it is, it's already averaged to what it is now. This is going to be a much different environment. I'm going to be stressing this out again. There's also a lot of lighting where they should clean it down and all over and we'll live in it. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of those. are basically water people would also . I'm having trouble imagining. Did you complete the survey for blood and water? It's kind of a generic question. We did. No? Yeah, we did. So did they get a sample before they came on board and did they get a full sample? How did they get that survey? I don't even know how they did it.

all those concepts collectively.

So my predecessor, she was on the right, and she was putting in the credits, and the construction company had more of a problem. They had to say, we'll do this. No, I get it. They do want to get less discretionary and more.

I don't know if it would happen in a larger balance.

We need to.

developments that can be standards for stormwater management for drainage i don't know that we have a drainage manual properly but we we don't have any plan if we have flood prone areas are there steps in that version we should be taking a controlled storm here or at least to renovate somewhere before it's discharged Certainly, it's something that the left of the agency could do. They haven't thought about it yet.

We don't even see that.

Well, in the larger stuff, it's going to be handled by some. There's the MS4. I'm not sure.

It's a big application there. It doesn't affect us that much. We look at it. We look at it. We look at it. But it should be, for instance, it has maps too. He mentioned one of the maps. That was maybe four or five years ago. It was underwater. And it's a long drive. So then you can do this. That means that making the river up into the bay. Okay, say again. So here's the resilience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

First slide. One of the challenges is people are not good.

So the coastal ones are good, the riverbank ones are good, but they're not really good.

And that's how it ends over here in a place like this. So the one thing that, you know, what that's all about is, you know, obviously the stormwater being here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. at least the works of the developer that they're going to have. Right. If they're in a certain situation.

Right. As an example. Right. Unless that was just That's a huge issue environmentally. It's terrible. We did, as I mentioned, we wrote a very strong set of, not for lighting,

uh the schools and uh to not use chemicals on planes and uh Organic treatment. And in the course of that, the Conservation Commission was getting a lot of information from people that hold on to a cancer high spot in terms of cancer rates. But they were citing things like wine chemicals. We have a wealthy community and so many people use chemicals to drink their wine. Has this ever come up in any towns where they actually try to include chemical treatments in water? So within the groundwater, within an aquifer protection area, it's not a problem.

You do regulate the use of chemicals.

And it's not uncommon to restrict the use of on chemical surface herbicides. It's interesting because we're, except for Point of Witch or whatever, we're all using the same water here. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's interesting. I would need to dig into that and see what I might be able to do outside. Because as I mentioned, we don't have a level A oxygen.

And you're not limited to creating groundwater protection regulations through your zoning by those state-funded areas. You can create them wherever you see fit.

And you can regulate use and use of loopholes in those areas. The real challenge is the matter of enforcement. Enforcement, and I don't suspect it would be Although they would keep bringing this to us in conservation, it's not a probably a popular sentiment.

So if there's some others you're kind of related to that, I'm going to include a couple of them.

Can you give us an example of an incentive that you've learned from your own research? You put on a new watch, it's a new system.

I think it's part of a lot of the One minute still. One minute still. One minute still.

One minute still. One minute still. One minute still.

smaller size one smaller smaller smaller smaller smaller smaller smaller smaller smaller smaller

um um um um um

There's still centers and we pay attention to people. I don't need to write about something like this. Oh, very much so.

And please see as an area. If you're on my website, I'm just watching. No, so please do discuss it in your commission.

I put it on your agenda for discussion or what we discuss here. We are going to... We will make that available as well, so if you want to report it to someone before the commission meeting, please do so. And if we will receive, send them to Eric. But we are happy to receive any sort of letters or direction, any summaries of discussion you have, ideas that are now in the name of the River Forge Commission.

We're happy to receive those and take all that into consideration for a solution.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it's just one of your classes. So he is.

You'll be adopted on the zoning commission. Where would you be? He's all about it.

You know, looking at things that are sort of standard. It starts a public hearing, it's a presentation, so it's all very specific. So it's going to be a presentation. It's going to be a public hearing about that night. But after the presentation, it's going to be a notary public hearing. It's going to be a notary public hearing. It's going to be a second public hearing. It's going to be a second public hearing. have the regulations first of all you just want to listen if you're ready to speak that's fine too social um Yeah, they're kind of going off here. But they're also, you know, they're a little bit different. The challenge that we always wrote is, it wasn't the clinicians, it was the application. So we were limited in how we were going to describe it.

We're willing to have a spin on the report of that. But we don't win. We're not tied by the strength of time of how much information we have. And how much deliberation we have. But once we go through the hearing, and then we'll get to that. Don't move forward on this.

Okay.

Step, step, step.

All right, Rory, can you report back? It's getting late, so let's report back. All right, over here, Rory's going to tell you what to do. I'm sorry, I told you to go ahead and finish your thoughts. Rory's going to report that on what we talked about over there, and then we'll have Tony report.

Yeah, so she talks about the need of overall across town to try and increase pervious services, so in terms of like pavements, limited impact development, talked about, you know, encouraging the use of needed plant species, not planting invasive species, consider things that are currently required for certain tree treatments, but, you know, a tree that's the size of the tree, it's large, consider municipal ordinance related to trees, know really trying and you know can hinder you know prohibit development wetlands um if you know if if a um property is no longer being used the the um driving areas example you know if there's piping and things like that under a property that's no longer there i mean you know trying you know encourage regeneration of the landscape um more make update and make the flood hazard regulations more robust Old Line is a community rating system community. So the homeowners in this community get points, you know, the whole town gets points and it incentivizes, you know, doing things to, you know, for resiliency and sustainability. Consider incentives for solar, over-parking, you know, the big Y Plaza was brought up for this. You know, make sure it's something that's allowed. Vital parking was seen as kind of a loading, something that could be required for developments. Think about requiring sidewalks and using the Feed and Move program, so paying a fee for putting sidewalks where they're needed, not just randomly. Think about tree protection. Again, we talked about trees quite a bit. Things like staggered plantings, and this gets into borders and screening requirements, so don't just do a row of single species, the cheapest plant you can find, a real child, and they get a nice planting. need to have you know an archaeological phase think about things you know the cultural resources the cultural landscapes and stone walls um be be cognizant of that um you know do a comprehensive flooding review um and that that we mentioned will be part of the resiliency study um again emphasize led um the better lighting standards and regulation abilities yeah yeah and then consider and look into maybe some kind of policy for long-term use, so pesticides are used to think about things like that.

Okay, fantastic. Tommy, how about your turn?

All right. Thanks, Rory. You've got a number of topics that are also covered, so I'll touch on what you mean here. We discussed overall the idea of encouraging greater densities for enabling greater density in village areas to allow for preservation of open space in other areas. We talked a bit about the poster development, where this is already, or standing is already in place. So just are there opportunities to implement something similar that might have, be able to encourage that consolidated vesting. We talked a bit about just including and updating metrics within the zoning. So if we, for instance, one of the suggestions was reviewing Some of the site standards, site plan standards, like when it comes to landscaping, what is it that we are requiring? It shouldn't just be up to the discretion of the commission. We really wanted to define that within the regs so that there's guidance, it's clear, the expectations are clear. Let's see. Definitely about walkability, the importance of encouraging that. both the health of the community, but also it does, you know, it can facilitate admissions, it can get people off of the road. There's a lot of talk about the dark sky requirements that are not currently in place, and there are, like, actually locations presented around town that that's problematic. It sounds like there's some interest in exploring that. Let's see. We talked about some stormwater assessment in planning. Well, that's more of, like, on the assessment, you know, Assessment study planning side, there is a certain needs for more and what's learned is actually promote and there's an opportunity to regulate it. Or you get information that would inform some potential new regulations. I think that's it. Anything? All right.

Well, we've got it all written down. Yes. Yes. Yes.

All right, well, that's fantastic. We covered a lot of ground. So what do we do with all this information? As I was discussing earlier here, we're going to produce a summary report for our findings from this meeting. We're going to do our best to write all this down, make it coherent. It'll include the results of our survey. We'll make that available as soon as possible, definitely by the end of next week on the town's website. As I mentioned earlier, we are planning for some point late July, probably a residential zones and housing focused workshop, similar to this format, but on those topics. And as soon as we secure a date for that, we'll get promotional material out so you can save the date. And I've been reminded to let you all know that the zoning commission itself is going to start coordinating focus group meetings on this topic and other topics with other boards and commissions. So look for that correspondence and coordination coming from the zoning commission. And one last plug for our survey. You have the flyer, I think, that we handed out at the signing desk. Please take the survey yourself if you haven't already and encourage your friends, neighbors, and family to take the survey as well. It's just one more source of information, one more opportunity for more people to participate in this discussion for us to learn from them. So look for communication from us and check the town website for more content. And thank you for coming out tonight and for your thoughts and comments. Yes.

It'd be great to know the deadlines for, like you mentioned, interacting each of these areas ahead of time.

Yeah. What's the deadline for getting input outside of these workshops?

Yeah, that's a great question. We're just starting this phase two process, and this is at the very beginning. We have a rough schedule that we're following right now, so we haven't identified a deadline for these amendments. But given where we're at in this process, I would expect that By the time we get to September, we would have some amendments drafted and made available to share, responding to everything that we heard here this evening.

I guess what I'm asking is not the deadline for you, but the deadline for town residents.

Do you need more information than you might have got tonight? Oh, okay. It's going to be on a rolling basis. So keeping in mind that once we complete the environmental-type topic area, even though all of this work really connects back to these issues. Our focus is going to shift. Come August, our focus is going to shift to your residential zones and housing-related regulations. So the best time to share with us information for us to consider as we start drafting content is now, is into July, and that would be best for us. Definitely by the end of July. By the end of June would be great. Sooner to the better.

The truth is, the adoption is not until the spring. It will be public training then. So if you have ideas based on the adoption that you want to submit, we will put them on the webpage. We will try and consider them. Certainly, you want to incorporate it into what IDF is drafting, but sooner is better. Don't feel just because IDF already drafted something, your comments will no longer be considered. Your comments will be considered right up until the moment we close the public hearing. Okay, so we are trying to be as open and inclusive as possible with your comments. If it doesn't get into what I'm extracting, it can still be captured by the zoning commission and incorporated into the fine writing.

Was any of this recorded? Because this would have been a great thing to have recorded then on the YouTube. It's all on here.

The separate groups, we didn't record that well. But all of the initial stuff, all of the stuff being here, anything that was being spoken, allowing them to be picked up on the mics, it has been recorded since you started at 7 o'clock. It's still recording then. Maybe for the next session, we should take the Sonos system over there and

So it'll pick up more, I don't know, more audience for those discussions. Again, we're going to write a summer report of this workshop. We're going to do our best to capture all the thoughts shared with us so that we've got a record of that.

And it's not once.

If I could just quickly on the, if anybody's involved with other commissions or boards or also just organizations in town that may be interested in We talked, we're going to be using focus groups. We wanted to make sure we had the public first, so that when we put a report that we got put together, we can work with that.

This is what the public told us. Now, you know, as much as we said, the Open Space Commission, this is what we heard on Open Space when we think of that.

So we're going to be having focus groups with that. Your chairman should have received an email. So if you are not the chairman of your group, who should have already received it, came out.

And I believe LASA was gonna get out again and let folks know, make sure, and we're hoping to have a liaison to help us from each commission so that we have someone so that we know that information is going back and just not LASA, but there's someone interested on each commission, so our agency. So just putting that out there that we're in the process of coordinating this. It's not something our consultants do, so the commission has to do this itself. So a little bit, we're trying to, but we want it to be within, so that we get comments, you know, to IMEJ before, you know, they start drafting, it will be like, okay, once we get comments back, then we're going to sit down and coordinate a couple of meetings with different groups, starting with obviously also work on the departmental.

Well, thank you, everyone. Paul, Eric, you're closing to me.

Before you folks go, I want to thank you very much for all of the input you've provided to the Zoning Commission this evening. And I do want you to know that your input is very valuable and it is going to be considered. I would like to thank the Vice Chair of the Commission, Denise Savage-Oak, Michael Fuliano, who's not here, and Mary Gardner. They're a subcommittee, and they have put together what I think, I think what we think, is a very robust plan to capturing any and all data from the town, from the boards and commissions, and I do want to thank you, Denise, for all that work. And you've got a great, I think, capture of data tonight. Plan is going to, with the assistance of IMAC, is going to continue to help us capture all that data. So again, thank you so much for your participation. We really, really appreciate it. Have a great night.