Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

It's 29, one minute.

We're looking very well. Yes.

Oh, you got him for an hour. That's good. All right. Ready to go? All right. You ready? Good evening, everyone. If I can have your attention. We're going to ask you all to settle down. We're trying to get you in and out of here in two hours. We've got a lot to do tonight. So if you can settle down here, we're going to give Paul a brief introduction and then kick off the real business part of the meeting, okay?

Well, good evening again. We have a very special meeting of the O-Lime Zoning Commission this evening where you will see the O-Lime Zoning Commission, and that'll be it. We're not going to be running anything. We are going to have our consultant, Francisco Gomes from IMG, who is our consultant for the, what is it? IMEG. Oh, IMEG. That's right. He's for environment. Who has been working on the process that is guiding us along. So it's going to be their meeting tomorrow. We're going to be doing some unique things here. One of the big things is we are going to be breaking out into either two or three groups. That's up to Francisco. These are breakout groups. These are to capture your thoughts on this. Again, this is residential housing. So we expect lots of ideas to come out. They will guide you. The Zoning Commission will probably intersperse in these groups. We will not lead any conversations. We will not engage with you in trying to discuss the merits of your idea. Every idea is a good idea, and we want to make sure that we capture it on the flip charts. So with that, we should be here for two hours, 630 to 830. Francisco.

Well, thank you very much. Hi, I'm Francisco Gomes with IMAG, and I'm joined by my colleagues at the back of the room, Tony Pignatelli and Rory Jacobson, that will help us in our meeting this evening. We did make an attempt to accommodate people online, so we do have people joining us online. This workshop has been designed to accommodate people primarily in person, but we do have people online where we're trying to accommodate folks as best we can joining us from home. So I have a presentation for you that will provide some context for the workshop and for the project. And then as Paul noted, we will go to breakout sessions where we really just want to have conversations with you about the residential zones and residential zoning and housing. We're working on the feedback. We'll get that taken care of here. So as part of our presentation, we are going to do an interactive survey. And if you joined us for the last workshop, you should be familiar with it. Given the size of the turnout, and this is an incredible turnout on summer evening, so thanks for coming out. We only have about 50 survey clickers. So I'll just ask for people that came together to share one, and that way we can spread them around the room. But before we do that, I have a presentation to help explain what this project is and our process and what this evening is designed to do. So first of all, our agenda for this evening, as Paul noted, we have two hours and we're gonna try to make the best use of your time. We have a fairly brief presentation, about 20 minutes, We'll spend about the same amount of time on the survey. And then we'll go to the breakout groups. So we'll spend at least an hour in discussions. And given the size of our crowd, I think we'll do three groups. We'll have one group of roughly 15 people stay in this room. We'll have another group of about 15 people go out into the lobby. And then I've been informed that we have space in the mezzanine for a third group. So I'll be leading a third group up in the mezzanine. But then we'll give you more direction when that time comes. And then we'll get you home in a reasonable hour. So we'll conclude by 8.30. Okay. So I briefly introduced myself, but just to explain a little bit more about iMagnar's firm. We are a consulting firm of planners and engineers. Our office is here in Hartford, Connecticut. We have offices across the country, but our local office is in Hartford, and our staff is based out of that office. We've been working with the town for over a year now, about a year and a half, on an update of the town's zoning regulations, which had not been updated in many, many decades. We are now in phase two of that process. We've successfully adopted phase one, which refreshed, updated, reformatted, and corrected a lot of issues with the zoning regulations. We're now in phase two, and I'll explain that a little bit more in a moment. First, All of the information relevant to our work in this project is available online. There's a link, you don't have to copy it down. Just go to the town's website. There's a page dedicated zoning update that will provide more in detail about the update, the purpose of the update, and materials relevant to our work. The purpose of the update, as I mentioned, your zoning regulations were decades old. They had not taught, kept pace with changing practices and land use, development pressures, changing statutes, case law. They had fallen way behind all of that. So we needed to really get them up to speed with current land use practice. And more importantly, with statutes that have changed considerably, particularly in the last few years. We've done that. We've done that part of it. The second phase is now to open up the dialogue with the community about very intentionally making changes to the zoning regulations if they are needed. And at our prior workshop, we talked about any potential needed changes to better protect the environment and your natural resources. At this workshop this evening, we will talk about any changes that may be necessary to your residential zones. or changes necessary to other zones to better accommodate housing in the community if needed or as needed. So that's the focus of our workshop this evening is to talk about housing. As I mentioned earlier, we've been at work now for over a year and a half on your zoning regulations. Phase one was adopted in March. So that new set of regulations has been in place and has been working for you as a community for over a couple of months now. Now we're taking a step back and we're looking at these broader issues to consider making changes to your zoning regulations to support your vision for the community. So where we're at in that process, as I mentioned earlier, in June, we conducted a workshop on environmental resources, conservation, sustainability, resilience. There's a summary report of that workshop online. We learned a lot of valuable things that will contribute to our work as part of this phase two. We're now focused on residential zones and housing. And in September, we will conduct a similar workshop focused on commercial and industrial zones. And then other areas that we are going to tackle include site design, landscaping, parking, signage, plan and permit requirements, and administrative procedures. And we'll likely do because those are very targeted areas. The commission will likely lead some focus groups for those. So here we are in this process right here. We're in the middle of phase two, but thus far we're just in the community engagement portion of phase two, meaning we have not drafted any recommended amendments to your zoning related to these discussions. We are still taking it all in. Once we complete this series of workshops, We're going to get to work with the commission as we had in phase one on making decisions as to how to handle all the feedback we've received and making decisions as to whether or not there are changes necessary to your zoning regulations to respond to the concerns and ideas of the community as a whole. So I want to just do a very brief overview to provide you some context on zoning. If you weren't on our last workshop, or if you may not be familiar with zoning. Your zoning regulations are part of your municipal ordinance. They control land use and development in the town. And that authority is given to the town by the state of Connecticut. And the state of Connecticut places limits on that authority. It tells the town what it can and cannot do. So your zoning regulations have multiple components. One component is the geographic aspect and that's your zoning map. And those are regulations and rules and procedures that vary across different areas of town. And the other aspect are the zoning book itself. The regulations were commonly referred to as the regulations or the tax, the zoning tax. We've updated that zoning book So now it's got a proper format and organization and it's compliant with what the state requires you to do and limits you to. But we're now going to explore ideas and a discussion about actually changing that tax and potentially amending the zoning map if needed or as needed. And I've talked about the town zoning authority to go into that a little bit more detail. The zoning authority is limited, it allows the town to control what kind of development occurs, where it occurs, the density of that development, the scale of that development, how much off street parking is required, basic site design grading and landscaping standards, soil erosion control standards, stormwater management requirements. and specific regulations surrounding uses, what different types of uses can do, how businesses can conduct their business as related to land use, development form, and activity. So zoning is fairly broad, but it is limited in some sense. So our work is focused on zoning, and there may be some areas that you're interested in, that go beyond zoning, that are really policy-based issues or may be controlled through some other municipal ordinance outside of zoning that is created by your board of selecting. Your zoning regulations, your Planning and Zoning Commission has the authority to draft those. And it is an ordinance, but it's a subset of your ordinances. Connecticut general statutes, as I mentioned, essentially requires that any zoning regulation be designed to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. And it gets much more detailed than that, but that's the basis of any zoning authority. So any amendments made to your zoning need to be checked against that responsibility and that authority, that it's in the best interest of the public health, safety, and general welfare. So what we're going to talk about this evening, and it's not showing up very well on the screen, and the screen's washed out, but as we get to our breakout sessions, we have some very nice maps, and I think you'll be able to see better. But we're going to talk about your residential zones. Most of your town is zoned residential. You do have some commercial zones. You have your C-10 zone, your C-30. The C stands for commercial. You have a marine, a waterfront zone. you have an industrial zone. Outside of that, your zones are residential, whether they're rural residential, smaller lot residential, or multifamily residential. So I wanna walk you through that. There's your list of zones. So you have several of them. You have two rural residential, three smaller lot residential, and wherever you see a number next to a couple of letters, The numbers represents the square footage required for a lot. So that's 80,000, 40,000, 20,000, and so forth. 80,000 is just short of two acres. 40,000 is a little less than one acre. So the RU80 zone, which covers much of your town, is close to a two-acre minimum. It's what we would call a large lot zone. The moral of the story here is most of your town, roughly 90% so percent uh that that's not an exact calculation it's a ballpark is zoned residential and i'll walk you through those your rural residential zones cover most of that and these again are one or two acre zones and and you are limited within those zones and what can be built it's limited to single family Community residence, and the state requires that wherever you allow single family, you allow community residence. It's a group home. And the state requires that across the state. Wherever single family is allowed, community residence has to be allowed. But you also allow convalescent and nursing homes, and they do differ a little bit in their licensing, and a planned conservation development, which is to form a subdivision. Those are the only... principal or primary uses allowed in your rural residential zone. So it's very limited. And I think it's what you would expect. It's what you see around. It's mostly single family homes. And this is what your RU80 looks like. A lot of very narrow rural roads with homes located on fairly large lots, many of them set back from the road. And there are a lot of roads in town that look just like this. The RU40 looks very similar. You would have a hard time telling the difference between the two zones if you're driving down the road. But as we get to your residence districts, which are your smaller lot zones, there's a higher density of development. And the residential neighborhoods around here are your residence districts. These are zones that require only half an acre or less. And those are more scattered. I know it's hard to see here, but they're very scattered. There's not many of them, and they don't represent a huge amount of areas. The R20, believe it or not, that's a home. So what you see is the homes are a little closer to the road, and they're a little closer to each other. The R15 as well, the homes you'll notice are much closer to the road. So as we go down in number, we have smaller lots, and the homes are closer to the road and closer to each other. And the R10, we see a lot of R10 zones near the shore, where we have smaller homes, smaller lots, and closer to each other. They do have a variety of neighborhood types and zoning districts that enable those neighborhoods to differ in their character. You do have multifamily residence districts as well, but there are very few. There's a handful of them. They're limited, and there are very few developments within those zones as well. But they do allow single-family, two-family, community residence, convalescent, nursing homes, so all the uses that are allowed And your other residential zones are allowed in these zones, but they differ because they allow for multifamily development, hence the name MFR, multifamily residential. You have a couple of different types of zones, MFR-40, MFR-20, and MFR-80 as well. So there are three in total. And here's an example from the MFR-80, MFR-40, and MFR-20. Again, I just showed you probably half of the developments that you do have that are multifamily in the town. Okay, so that's some context for you. Now we're going to go to the interactive survey. I find people like this tool. They like this exercise. Sometimes it can be a little technically challenging when we've got big tenants like this, but again, we are going to distribute little clickers to you and Rory and Tony are starting to distribute them. Given our turnout, not everyone is going to be able to have a clicker. Unfortunately, we only have 50. Again, if you came with someone, please share, please share. This survey is not scientific, right? We are not going to make any decisions based upon the results from this exercise. This exercise is intended to get you thinking about housing and your residential zoning. It's intended to provide us with an understanding of where you're coming from and what your thoughts are. And it's really just intended to prime the pump for our breakout session discussion. We are gonna report all the results and it will be part of our report from this evening, but we're not gonna be making any policy decisions based upon the results of this survey. And I see a question in the back of the room. Go ahead.

I think there's a little question on how to share literature, like if each one person has literature and they... You have to agree with each other on the response.

You're going to have to... You're going to have to... Whoever you came with, you're going to have to discuss with the person you came with as to how to respond. Okay? Yes?

So does your colleague say the lead...

have too many stables, they've got to work out their answer, read their names, and even though they don't know.

No, no. We're going to try to make sure that everyone that came by themselves gets it quick.

We're going to do our best.

We didn't anticipate this turnout. We had about 30 people at our last workshop. So this is great. This is a good problem to have. Again, this is just an exercise.

You may not need more residents. The next meeting, we're starting with a board meeting.

Well, good, good, good.

Just a heads up.

Thank you, thank you.

Is that signed?

We've got a sign on the sheet that's passing round two.

Oh, and thanks as well. I want to make note, the affiliation is if you're a resident or a homeowner or a member. Yeah. It's not politically affiliated.

Yeah, we're not concerned about that.

All right. Let me apologize now if there's someone that came by themselves that does not have a clicker. I still just have a group. If there's anybody who would like to share a clicker, potentially, you know, let me.

Or is anyone comfortable with foregoing an exercise? Yeah, and this is, again, it's just an exercise. It's intended to get you thinking. We do have an online survey. We do have an online survey that asks almost the exact same questions, and that survey we're going to look to heavily. We're going to place a lot of weight on that survey because we've had over 600 people participate in that survey. We want to get that number even higher. So if for some reason you didn't get a chance to fully participate in this interactive survey, please take the online survey. It asks the same questions, asks more questions, more and more detailed questions. Okay. Yes, sir. Is that survey available? There's a link on the town website. Right on Zooming and I think on the main page as well. Okay. Okay. How this works. We're going to move through this quickly. Right? Again, it's just an exercise. The only buttons you need to concern yourselves with are these numbered buttons up here. I don't know what these do. All you have to do is press a number that corresponds with your choice. And I'll walk you through that. We'll have a test slide to make sure this works. Okay, so the test slide is, if you live in Old Lyme, we may have people that don't live here. If you live in Old Lyme, how long have you lived here? And I'll read these in case you have trouble in the back of the room. One is zero to five years. You lived here zero to five years. Two, six to 10. Three, 11 to 20. Four, more than 20. And five, you don't live in Illinois. So again, how long have you lived here? One, zero to five. Two, six to 10. Three, 11 to 20. Four, more than 20 years. Five, you don't live here. Just press the button right here.

If you're not a resident, should we take you to the service?

Sure, but I would ask if you're not a resident, I would ask you to kindly, if there are people that did not get a clicker, to kindly surrender a clicker to arrest, okay? So all you have to do is press a number. If you change your mind and you hit the wrong button, you press the right one, it'll cancel out your first entry. Yeah, you don't have to push enter or anything.

So let's find out if this is working.

It's working. 60% of you have lived here for more than 20 years. So we have a very invested group, but we do have representation from folks that have lived here for various ranks. So welcome, everyone. All right. First substantive question. Do the existing zoning regulations, to the best of your knowledge, do the existing zoning regulations adequately and appropriately regulate development in the town's residential zones or districts, if you want to call them? One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. And you may not be familiar enough with zoning regulations to answer this and that's okay just click not sure and again you don't have to have intimate knowledge you could just look around and feel that i think we're doing a good job of regulating land use and development in our residential zones or i don't think we're doing a good job the implications are that your zoning regulations are either working or not working Okay, let's find out. Again, one yes, two no, and this will be the pattern.

One yes, two no, three not sure. All right, okay, half of you no, and then we're split.

Okay, that's good. That's good for us to know. That's not necessarily good, but good for us to know and suggest that we have work to do.

Does Old Lyme need more housing?

One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. And I know we're not asking about what types of housing, just number of dwelling units. Do you need more dwelling units? We can get into the specifics in our breakout discussions.

One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. Evenly split.

Oh, wow. You folks are going to be work. Okay. All right. Does old line need to allow for a greater diversity of housing types? Right. So single family, small and larger single families, small and larger lot properties, two family, maybe multifamily, condos versus apartments. townhouses across the board. You need a greater diversity of homes. You're primarily a single family dwelling community. One, yes. Two, no.

Three, not sure. Yes, interesting.

A little more skewing to yes than no, but 42% no. Does Old Lyme need more housing for seniors, such as age-restricted housing and assisted living communities? Age-restricted is 55-plus neighborhoods. And you know what assisted living are, nursing homes and other various levels of assisted living. So do you need more of those types of facilities? One, yes. Two, no.

Three, not sure. Okay.

Yes, tracking similar to the prior response, but even a little more, yes. Okay. Should a higher density of housing be permitted in areas where infrastructure can support it? So in areas where the roads and there's water supply and maybe sewer or the soils are adequate for septic, In areas where the land and the infrastructure can support it, should higher density housing be allowed or considered? One, yes. Two, no.

Three, not sure. Very evenly split on this too.

Okay, there's consistency here, which is good. It makes things a little more clear to us. Should the development of housing in coastal areas be more restricted? Now, any housing in the coastal area management zone has to go to site plan review for deep and not all, even single family homes have to go deep for coastal site plan review. And there are obviously flood hazard area restrictions. So there are a lot of restrictions in place. I think our question for you is, do you feel like things should even be stricter with respect to the type of development or the scale or amount of development that is allowed in postal areas. One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. And if you were at the earlier workshop here, I'm sure this ties in directly with some of the conversations that were had earlier today for the resiliency workshop.

Okay, this is our strongest yes response.

Two-thirds, two-thirds yes. Okay, should the regulations be changed to allow for the development of more accessory dwelling units? You do allow accessory dwelling units. That's a small unit built on your property. But the regulations are, you know, there are some restrictions, so they're not incredibly permissive. Very few accessory dwelling units have been built. Does the town need more? Should you change the regulations to make it more permissive to allow more? One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. And I realize there's a lot of conditions surrounding that, but just broadly speaking, what's your gut feeling on it?

Oh, interesting.

We keep climbing in response. 69%. Yes. Okay. That's good to know. We're almost done with these types of questions. Should more housing be built as mixed-use developments? Now, for some context, you may have heard of Connecticut Public Act 25-1. It requires now that every town allow mixed-use development or multifamily in their commercial zones. up to nine units per lot. So the town has now amended their zoning regulations. They're now currently effective that allow up to nine units of mixed use development, which is residential units with a commercial use, are now allowed in your commercial zones as required by the state, as mandated by the state. The question is, is that something you support? The state didn't give us any choice in that. But is that something you support? More housing in the form of mixed-use development mixed with commercial, either in the same building or on the same lot?

One, yes. Two, no. Three, not sure. All right, we have more work to do on it.

53% no. So I realize there's a lot to dig into that. So let's talk about that at our breakout sessions. Should the town allow multifamily residential to be built in more places? Again, we have a handful of MFR zones with only a few developments in those zones. Should you allow more areas to be zoned for this or amend the regulations to make it easier for multifamily to be built? One, yes. Two, no.

Three, not sure. Okay, no. So a strongly no.

But 39%, yes. Okay. All right, the next part of this is visual. And you folks in the back room, I know this is going to be a little more difficult for you. Again, this is just an exercise. We want to get your gut reaction on images of housing that we're going to show you. We've got about 15 images. And my question to you is, as you look at these images that we show you, do you feel like what you see would be appropriate in Old Lyme? In some cases, I'll show you images of houses that you may think they're actually pictures here from Old Lyme. These are stock photos that we use. So in some cases it will likely be yes, because you already had those types of homes. I think what I'd like you to think about in the case of the types of homes and buildings you already have is, do you think you need more of those? Would you be comfortable with seeing more of those built? In the case of buildings or homes that you don't see in town, are you receptive to seeing something like that in town? Is there a place for it in town? Is this the right town for it? So that's how I'd like you to approach these. Now, this won't be a yes or no exercise. This is going to be a scale. One to five. This is like the star rating system. One to five stars. One is lowest rating. No, no, no, no. Five is, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I like it. Three, obviously, in the middle. Two, you know, we've got a range. So, again, we want just your visceral response to the images that we show you. Don't concern yourself too much about, well, is that actually a two-family or is that a single-family or is that a multifamily? Just look at the scale, the form, the design, the setting of the picture. I've got 15 pictures. We'll go through them quickly. First one. Again, one, not good. Five, you really liked it. I'm sure you have. This picture may have very well been taken on old line. I don't know. Again, all right, you have this now. Would you like, are you comfortable seeing more of this?

One, no. Five, yes, you like it. All right? Okay, let's see what you think.

Okay, that does, I don't think that surprises anyone in the room, right? It's going to get harder from here. Again, maybe given the previous slide, I think I know what to expect. Sometimes we show you very similar images, and maybe there's something that you respond to in one picture that you don't respond to another. So we'll show you a little bit of variety just for the sake of trying to understand where you're coming from. So, again, one, you don't like it. Fives, you really like it, and there's a place for it. For more of this in a long time.

Okay, very consistent, as you would expect. And how about that? And I apologize, it's a little washed out.

Yeah, it's better on, I know some of you can see it on that monitor. The sky is really blue, by the way. Okay. A little, a much bigger range here. That does look like homes along the shore.

How about that?

You can probably tell that's an accessory dwelling unit, right? Or a tiny, it could be a tiny home. It could be a tiny home, too. This could be the principal unit.

Okay.

All right.

So we're shifting to no here. We're shifting to no. And maybe that is just too modern or who knows. Those are manufactured homes, but it's very tastefully done. I think you would at least agree to that, right?

Yeah. Yeah, we're just going to have to keep going.

If you have any questions when we're done, feel free to ask us.

No. Okay.

Shocking. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. That's right. Oh, no.

Not currently. Not currently.

No.

In case you can't tell, it's the parking underneath the first floors up here. This is very obviously a coastal flood hazard zone. And I realize there's a number of things you could be responding to here, right? It's that these homes are sandwiched right next to each other. It's also that, you know, the way they're elevated and the way that's been handled may be an issue. And we can dig into all these things in the breakout session.

There's two front doors, one there and one there.

I'm seeing some consistency now.

We've shifted right far to the left. Okay. But not everyone. That's only 51%, right? We do have a diversity of opinions here.

And you'll notice I'm turning up the temperature as we go, okay? Okay. Okay.

All right.

It'd be interesting to compare these two because they're both duplexes, so we'll have to kind of read into that. Again, it's a little washed out. These are duplexes, and they are on smaller lots. They're obviously very close, very small setback, tiny setback, so it does suggest at the density. But you'll notice, you know, it's nice lighting on sidewalks and trees, so it's nicely done.

Okay, that's very strong. Two-thirds, two-thirds, no. How about that one?

Now, these are single-family homes, which you have in your lives when we started. So I think I'm understanding it's the density that's the issue, right? It just doesn't look like online. That's the issue.

Okay. Okay.

Again, right, 57%, but we've got a very, we've got distribution of, we do have distribution of opinions. You notice all these images I show you, I mean, these properties are well cared for, they're well maintained, they're fairly nicely constructed, so that's not the issue. And these are townhouses, so they're all next to each other, they're not spaced at all. And they're obviously oriented to some sort of courtyard or something like that.

All right.

And that is a residential property. I know it looks like it could be an office building. As to whether or not it's... a bunch of apartments or how it's organized. I think the scale, I'd like you to consider the scale of it.

All right, so you don't think, how about this one?

I'll go quick on this one. I think you've made up your mind. Wow, this one you really don't like that. Okay, okay. I know exactly what you're referring to.

And that's washed out, but this is...

This is one big home where there are definitely multiple units on it, and there are other homes, and it looks like there's actually a diversity. There's some maybe smaller single-family homes, so we've got a mixture all kind of tucked in very close. The sidewalk's right there, so we're obviously, you know, higher density.

All right, two-thirds, no. And we've got, I think, only two more with this second-to-last, I believe.

And if this helps you, this is a 55-plus condo building in West Hartford with very pricey units. I think maybe 15 or 20 of them.

It's designed by an architect. Okay, more than two-thirds, no.

So even though this is kind of pricey, It looks like the issue here is the scale, right? Okay.

And this is the last one.

Wow, you're laughing. Excuse me. They're very proud of this in Brookfield. They're very proud of this in Brookfield. This was a tremendous accomplishment in their town center, in their town center.

Yes. All right. We're going to flip the clicker sound.

Please hand them to Tony and Lori. They will not unlock the card. Okay. So...

I need about 13 to 20 people on this side of the room, this front two-thirds of the room, just to stay here.

I need this one chunk of room, this side,

Right here, there's one and two-thirds or so. Follow me upstairs, and that's me. And our chair's up there, and I'm going to follow you up there. We're going to have to take a couple of minutes, if you want to get some water, go to the bathroom.

We're going to give you a few minutes until we get set up and get going. For you folks on both sides in the back, the very back, the last three or so rows, 15th and 20th year,

Please go out into the lobby. We're going to do a session lobby. We did two sessions in this room last time, and it was tough. The two sets were really tough. So we're going to do one here, the back on both sides, the back three or four rows on both sides, and this lobby here. And you can bring your chairs with you. And then let's try two-thirds of this side. You're upstairs with me. Okay. We have one hour, and we'll come to you.

We have one hour. One hour. One hour. Well, I know Dan. I know Dan. I don't know any of them. I don't know any of them. . . . . . .

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Now, you can see that we've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. Thank you. Okay. Now, you didn't see what I was going to say. Thank you so much. Thank you.

This is it, yeah. Are you talking? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Thank you all for coming out tonight. We really appreciate it. We're excited to hear from you all. Hence the structure of the meeting. So I'm here to take notes. I ask sort of prompting questions when I know the answers. Or maybe I might know your line of thinking. But I'm going to stay a little bit, you know, in the back of the group. We're all kind of digging in, so to speak. All right. My name is Tony. Yes. I think that would be fantastic.

Yeah, people comfortable. All right, we love it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So the idea here is that we're trying to craft a vision for the residential area. We're going to ask some questions to help us get there. So what is your vision for the residential areas in Old Vine for the future? How is it different or not different from what you see today?

Hi, Jill.

Okay. I was getting from our earlier survey for exercise. Okay. So the preference for no changes. Okay. Can I ask What is it that you like about it now that you want to preserve and not in the future? What would it feel like?

I know a lot of students, lots of students. What's one of the little ones?

Quiet, quiet students. World, quiet. Tea and... Worldwide and points. Okay. All right. Yes. I think I see a need for more multi-family houses. A need for more multi-family. For the building.

Okay. So.

And I will say that this segment of this discussion will bring up a map. And for comments like that with the class awareness, that can be appropriate. Okay, so multifamily housing for affordability. And when you say multifamily, what do you think of when you say that?

Is it? I think something between two and six plumbing units.

Okay.

And

The state has made proposals for the cattle to consider being a transit-oriented community. I think that should be a consideration as a zoning committee. A transit-oriented community would be defined as a public area of such as Okay.

And I will say, in Francisco, you mentioned this earlier, she was recently changed to apply to seats for fires in a second multi-family, mixed-use, residential, and permitted in commercial districts. So that is a change that has to be made.

In April, it was down to the international standard. Yes. Mixed-use. The problem with this is that it was down to mixed-use in certain commercial zones. The property was, as we've heard before, has been interconnected. Yes, indeed. So, that means that the commercial zones that I've been talking about, you know, up near the area, those commercial zones are like Sherry Stoneman's in Connecticut. Yes. And, and, I mean, that's a great option. And that area was on Route 196. for someone to put a commercial on the first floor, in that area, would that be a project on incident? Now, if you don't have public transit, if you made that upon your transit, you can have a transit district in Olson. You could actually be in a local transit district. But that would be, that would be a consideration, because you're basically you know, we've made commercial use, we've made mixed use available in those areas, but from watching businesses in that area, it's very hard to put commercial on the list. Okay. All right.

So I think I captured that. So if commercial districts for the state has required that you provide for mixed use residential, you would like to explore, consider just multifamily, no requirement of commercial in person. Yes, yes.

That's what I'm saying. You might want to consider state as advocating as a transit-oriented community. Yeah. And you would define where that community exists. You would define, here's the location, like Halls Road would be good, Southwood District might be another place. You know, right next to the old line police station, we don't have the transit bus stop connecting to the railroad stations. So that would be a good location for something like that.

Well, the police should consider it. Okay.

Yeah, so I've added that in the videos and that's like, you know, mark up where you think those locations would be appropriate on that.

Thank you. And just curious if you're willing, what your vision, we're talking about vision, kind of seeing what is our vision for that versus what needs to actually be changed first. So what do you envision as an implementation of or center for what are the qualities that, to hear from you in terms of the vision for us to move forward with that?

Let's say the next use holders notice this problem.

I also take this out of here. If someone was to build right now, let's say on the next use, you have to have that version component on the first floor. But if you allow this in the building family or a transit, we said that's a transit area. It would allow those Someone could build a multi-family home there, or a child house there. Multi-family homes can take different types of construction, but it would allow that use.

Right now the state is offering incentives for parents to do it.

Yeah, I'm just kind of curious.

In other people, do you have a vision that a landowner wants to add? I'm just trying to get a sense of how you see that in the vision of the old line.

In that vision, I see the state providing parts of the sewer system as a soundproof area because part of the benefit of putting forth both the I'd like to see less restrictions for existing homeowners. For example, they should be allowed to There was an accessory dwelling unit, you know, consistent with health and safety. You have a 4,000, 5,000 square foot home, and you could section off part of that and have that be an in-law apartment or another rental unit that would, you know, continue the existing character of the neighborhood and yet offer the creation of More housing.

So you are talking specifically about the accessory dwelling units, so they're next to the primary residence. You're not talking about dividing lots.

I'm talking about both. I'm a host, two acres. I'm still a little in-law dwelling. I don't have much. My income is limited. Maybe I want to split my big house into two because the majority of L.E.Y. are three and four bedroom houses with two people living in them.

Okay.

And it's just a mismatch of opportunity.

Yeah, understood. But you're not talking about splitting lots. You're talking about like mean or home breeding.

Well, that's a consideration too.

Okay.

If you have five acres, four acres, three acres, maybe you'd like to split your lot. But, you know, that would be permitted under the zoning regulation, which probably isn't allowed. I mean, right now, we're in the subdivision.

So I'm going to, so I have that down, and I'm going to, so the ABA, bus return performers, ABA permitted, whether it's detached or within an existing building, and then I feel like what you're suggesting is smaller and off-sizes. permitting smaller lot sizes, because then you could potentially divide a parcel, but not, you know, break out of the limitation of not doing that. And a lot of times it's just an existing resource.

Yeah, yeah. Imagine if an existing resource couldn't be there when it comes to the draft safety move, but starting small.

I mean, obviously you couldn't off a smaller lot if the zoning didn't permit it. Right, right.

But I think that's what we're trying to figure out. Is zoning working? Is it not? What would you want to see? And then how would zoning change the legal level? Thank you.

I think the town needs smaller scale housing for two classes of people. And it needs it in a big way. The first is older people who are looking to downsize from their three or four bedroom house. Their friends are here. They've lived here their whole life. They don't want to have to know what's in their safe or safe or something like that. They'd like to get a nice place.

They've got money.

They'd like to get a nice place that's small. And they're just, and frankly, they'd probably like to be near town. You know, they'd like to be walkable to something that's worth walking to. Not, you know, hidden out in the woods so nobody else has to look at. Something that's nice. something that was near town. That's one of the key holders of tremendous commitment. If that demand was satisfied, if a lot of those people could stay in town and move out of their big houses, other people could move in and have families. And that's the other group that's not really being served is people who have gone sort of step by step. There's people who are starting families, people who are younger, The town really needs people like that. The town has got twice the national average, people over 55, and it doesn't have nearly the number of people in the middle of their life who are physically fit and able to do the jobs of our all-volunteer fire department and other community organizations. If the town as a whole is to have a vibrant life, it needs to have accommodation for young people. One way to get some of that accommodation is to move the older people into something smaller scale, because they won't be able to move anywhere. So I know a lot of people are against change, but the idea, my idea is a lot of certain types of change is so that the town remains viable, I should say, basically. I don't know the sound of what he's going to speak about. I have 38 acres that I'm trying to do multifamily. I'm also trying to do as apartment buildings, but also with penthouses for exactly that. People that want to downside it. I'm one of them. I'm 65. I'm a senior. It's like, you know, it's the whole idea. I don't need my big house anymore. I want to go with something smaller, beautiful, nice, something that is on the other side of town, five and a half miles from here, four miles on the road. But there's only 24 units I'm allowed to do in your current zoning regulations. And that is a, I can't take from the infrastructure, a town road is excessively expensive compared to My pilot road that I live on currently on the other side of town here, it's what's done in the 60s. It's not in code or whatever like that. But to build roads and the infrastructure is incredibly difficult and economically impossible to do in development. You need to have more units to amortize. And the other thing that people haven't really thought about is, I don't know if everybody knows it, much of both hiring and transferring 45,000 people to the Crystal Mall location being renovated and changed. Where are these people going to live? They haven't figured that out. These are people with security fences and well-paid. They have nowhere to live.

So without doing anything specific, is it fair to say that you would like to see Increase. Increase. Departments and. Units townhouse. But I'm only allowed to be 24. Describe something.

I think the related issue is affordability. And the issue with affordability is twofold. One, not many houses and they're expensive.

And two, the lack of houses. I mean, Niantic is clearly the opposite extreme from O-Line. But realistically, when you look at the tax rate at O-Line, you're paying off a lot more taxes here than you would in a town where there were more residences to share the taxes. So it's a function of you want to keep people out and pay higher taxes, or is there a little ground that says a few more people in certain places will bring those rates down generally across the town?

Okay.

And also, one of the things I think we do not need in this town are more single-family, four-in-a-week family housing. Okay. I mean, I know that's obvious to most of us, but I think it needs to be done with. I think the only thing, you know, that has been built, you know, in this destroyer is a very large, big, giant house. Because that's what's going to make a lot of money. I understand the need to be proud of what you're doing, but the need to have housing set up as community districts is another big piece of this, which is Where we put it in multi-family, it should be set up already so that people can get to know each other. I mean, we have a shopping center that people drive from one place to the other. They never walk around. They just meet each other. So those are the things, you know, where we could walk down one street and not have anybody go. So there's a need to somehow accept it.

Thank you. Also, supporting a little more density, I'll ask the businesses to survive that. Right now, they're barely making it and presenting this on these. It's nice to have shots. They need people. So I take a little bit of my friends to be supportive. It's non-directional. Yes.

Yeah, I'm just curious and appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments. And there just seems to be a lot of assumptions. too, and I'm curious if there's an example. You know, is it that the businesses are dividing, or are we not supporting? Are we not willing to spend our money there? I mean, that's how I work outside of online. A lot of, you know, just casual conversations with my clients are talking to me. You know, that's their impression of online. It's like, we're still not spending money. Anyway. I can't speak to that. I'm not going to speak to that. Absolutely. it's just interesting to just ask that question and see like what is what is that our burden back to what Evie was saying like these are we're solving trying to solve problems right now and I'm just curious back to your original question of the vision of like what are our strengths here do we are we even grounded in what our strengths are offline and then seeing okay where are the gaps and how can we mobilize those because Just a place, you know, I lived in Portland, Oregon for a long time. And at the boom of when they were doing commercial on the bottom and, you know, living up top, and it was great. And then everything was empty. And it wasn't so great. There wasn't a community. There wasn't things. So I'm just curious around the assumption that, like, if you just build it in that kind of creative community, are those the values? Like, what are our values that we are trying to create? And then what part of these things would donate we keep going towards and i feel like that's not clear like that we as a group are not clear on some of those things and those aren't being presented in context for some of these things so i i guess i'm just curious it probably just felt so my own preference but i'm curious how people feel like our strengths are in alignment what do we want what do we want to build off of our strengths versus always identifying the weakness first or what absolutely needs to change because i think That is the quality of the volume and it has so much strength here that gets washed out by just trying to jump to solving the problem really quickly without knowing our assumption and without knowing what our true strengths are. So I'm sure, I find, I agree with you, we need to find the rural part of it really nice and quaint. I also, again, I have one in Portland, Oregon too, and I love being in the city. So there's, I go both ways, but I do think there's some strength to be the only rural zip code still left on 95 corridor. And the benefits of that, you know, our neighbors, their kids got to apply to college using that and they were able to go to college and get some help with some of that too. There's all these other benefits with that as well. I do enjoy a walkable community with my business and health and wellness. And I love to be able to walk around the community and it's do those businesses. So those are some of mine, and just really curious what other people really find is our strengths in life.

Well, I agree with the greatness and the moral, and I just don't think it's even wrong.

And like you were saying, there are, and when you show us the math, maybe we'll understand that, but there might be neighborhoods that would be a dancer at a school. Because I've been around for so many volunteers. And I do agree with you, I can't always, and maybe more, and more people.

Yeah, I'm listening to this. I see that three, four, and five are all sort of the same. Some more affordable housing. I know there's a lot of residents who've lived here a long time They can't afford to stay, either with taxes or their house is too big. They'd love to have an in-law suite for their kids to live in, or live in a home made or even rent part of their house. They're not subject by any plan, they're not really getting more use, and there's no accommodation. You can't have them in the unit right now. If you have a house that's called a guest house, our parents, we might have them live with others that we can't do on a whole lot. So slight loosening the restrictions to people who live their own lives and can stay in either an existing house or have family members and do that.

And I didn't write that down. I'm just kind of circling it.

Could you just maximize this team?

And you posted a question to the group.

I'm just going to go, I'm going to grab a series of questions, but you can post that question. So if anyone wants to just take a moment now to answer that, I think that would be great. And I will be right back.

We're just going to continue on.

and questions, but did I miss anything about what I'm hearing to sort of your claim with your framework, regular affordability, or what sentiments that have been shared, at least for like three, four, and five. Making the community affordable so that people can stay or number of families specifically with

What is considered affordable? Hello? We have online participation? Yes, we have a lot. What does this group consider affordable?

Question for the group?

But isn't it based on what the median income is? It's not something we can decide on. Yeah. I mean, that's not entirely true. I mean, yes, they do establish it by that. It could be like 20% of the median income. You could do, like in Boston, they'll have a community that might be incredibly low income, but they'll set 20% median income for the metro Boston area. So there's a... I mean, I don't... Yeah. So I'm just saying, but as an example, like it isn't... You can kind of... It's not encouraged to play with the numbers in some ways. So, but I think, I'll ask this of the group. I mean, when we say affordable, it's not necessarily that a site is affordable. I think it's, we're all talking about a diversity of housing types. Some of them more affordable relative to a large thing, a large home on a single thing. A large thing would be a lot more.

Yeah, they're supported by housing.

Yeah.

Talking about the property community. I think people are also looking to have a case that are sort of affordable in fact. They don't want to figure out. The state is only making mandates about portability. It's kind of like portability, right?

Is that what the last part you said? The state is only making mandates?

The state's mandating things in terms of covenants and portability and it's described in other things. it would be an incumbent population.

That is said by the state law.

Right, that's the state.

That's what I'm saying. That's very much my advice. Whatever, what is called state-informed, but everything.

It's the council of governments. Right, everything is state-informed. Right, so I know it's also just basic common use of the primary affordability, just housing stocked, types of housing. I mean, if you have a 4,000 square foot house and I'm gonna tax it to a 10,000, you know, a rent of three or 4,000 starts to look pretty good. You know, you don't have to have maintenance, you know, you can pay your rent. So affordable doesn't necessarily mean up to state German support, though it is. And even according to the state standards, it's not super cheap. I mean, it's not. How many people right now have just invented to allow mixed use in commercial solvents in this town. So I'm going to look at this one particular area. So let's say, what I can say, what I can say is that we went from, let's say, Roman camps at the church, some choose to be a restaurant. I don't know if you've heard of that. You've heard of some of those? They went down east of there all the way to the old line by a police department. They just recently installed an investment. So in that area, that area, we've now applied for mixed use. But we also, I think, we've realized that mixed use, we provided commercial on the first floor, and then we worked in a place like a cherry store. So those got to be repaid, okay? But how many people could see some type of multi-family construction, whether it's townhouses or some other form, you know, in that traditional commercial area? What would you say? Yes. I'd like to know. I would like to know.

I don't mind the interview. That's a great deal of property and land behind it.

between Shore Road and the railroad tracks. And that's why I was using the term define a transit-oriented community. Define it is to say that area. And when you define that community, you could define allowed use within. And so you could solve some of that control perhaps what to some degree gets built in there, but it also becomes something that may attract someone to go do it, because you've got to attract someone to go out there to do that kind of thing.

And that would be okay.

So I think just for the benefit of the group, do you want to jump in?

The state law provides that

towns must accelerate or favor or accelerate it permanently for up to nine units of either housing or mixed-use housing and commercial in existing commercial zones, right? The same, the same law says one or the other, or both. It's not clear. In all mine, the zoning commission has been required to state law by July 1st to amend the existing zoning regulations in order to provide that accelerated permitting in the case of mixed abuse in commercial areas from non-commercial just housing. Whether a state law actually requires both to be allowed or not, I think there's something that people still are not totally agreed upon, but a whole lot could come back and do both under the state law, whether it's required to do that or not. I think people might disagree about that. But that is the issue you're raising, whether they also believe that State law should be interpreted to require accelerated purgatory.

Thank you.

For either the siree, ground floor, and upper floor, all have a safe or adjusted excuse.

And I did note that there's a preference for that, which would already be housing and excuse. But thank you, that's helpful. So with this increased density in whatever areas,

What does that do to the volunteer fire department? How are services addressed? How is the school handling more children? You know, can the town, the infrastructure handle that additional population?

So services and infrastructure or both? Okay. Right. You have to start again.

Because if they don't, the story ends and they would go down.

If you were watching this, they would stop. Why are the standings kind of open in our schools?

Right.

They're looking for students.

That's because we don't have gun families. They're shopping. And that's because we have problems with the fire department volunteers because we don't have gun families. I mean, this is what we have to do. We have to trust those issues. Part of it is true.

As a member of the fire service community, I will just say that recruitment is down for volunteer fire departments across the shoreline, across the state. So that is a problem that actually expands beyond young families. And yes, we did have to expand upon our schools due to population increase. So families in town is not necessarily the issue there. But I do agree that the volunteer fire department will struggle if we add more. And I think we should be prepared to look into it, not into it becoming no longer a volunteer. Because that's the way the tides are turning.

And so I just want to translate this to people in the room. So the idea is that for the. What was the issue? I'm so sorry that there's this statement.

The statement was made that younger families coming in will help the fire service.

Yep. And you're disagreeing with that? You think it needs to be shifted to a full-time or?

No, I'm just, no, I'm saying that recruitment is down for volunteer. Okay. Sorry, I keep getting muted. Additionally, if you, I'm sorry, I guess the chat keeps me, it keeps muting me, but.

Yes, so what we had said that people could listen in But we're comments. We're not taking comments remotely. And that, you know, people were asked if they could listen in because there was multiple rooms. But it's very hard for the moderator to do this because we have three different rooms going on. So we've let folks know that if you're online, it's a listen only. It's not to be able to comment. And that's why it keeps clicking in. So we're sorry for that.

Why are we listening to this? Why don't we try it all over again? It has nothing to do with us. But a general comment. One very tangible, very easy thing that can be done to enhance the population, et cetera, is to allow accessory dwelling units in the larger zones in the top. Many times I've done that. You've got a picture. one there before, you know, they're not facing prohibited this time.

Well, I know someone knows more about it, but this year in the state legislature, I don't remember, the House and the Senate did pass a bill that really expanded that kind of thing. And a shot thing, plus it was totally but then I think it was in the Senate and it didn't come to a vote. And so it's out there and it will come up this year. We should all pay attention. I don't know the particulars, but it was very exciting because it was really allowing the town ultimately still has the permanent authority.

There's clearly things that the Town Zoning Commission can do on their own to deal with every one of the issues that have been raised here. The town, for the most part, has been trying to dodge whatever restrictions the state is trying to put on because they don't want to do anything.

Well, Eric, it's always really nice to see that O'Brien has the most restrictive ADU regulations in the state. No doubt it does. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's definitely ways to elect some of those.

And we should be looking at the states to change the thing. I mean, they're going to have little pieces as best they can as a result of success. You can do all of the changes you want to do in this town with the town zoning people. It's all within our hands to do. We don't have to deal with, you know, what we're doing is, what can we do to avoid what the state wants us to do. Nobody's saying, what can we do to enhance the population of the town, to bring down the mill rigs, to make it a more vibrant community rather than one that's probably the average age is higher than almost any town in the state. And I'm fired. All right.

I'm on the Planning Commission. Okay. So I've been on your side since the time you were interested in listening.

Yes.

And I was earlier a member of the Planning Commission and started, you know, planning. Planning probably hasn't been planning in years other than, right, you know, conservation and development. And that's partly because, I'm not saying, it's partly because we're a small town. We ought to have volunteers from several boards and commissions. That's another issue. If you're really interested in preserving the way the town looks, in my opinion, what you need to do is set aside more open space. We only have 900 acres protected through the pound and another 900 or 1,000. So the open space, the land trust, they really want the rural look to the town. They sort of figure out a way to preserve open space. And a lot of knowledge needs to be able to help. And there are a number, we have some ability to do that through zoning, through conservation zones, where you, okay, if we do not, there seems to be a lot of interest in doing nothing. Every lot will be developed to whatever the zone is. So there'll be a house, big house, two acre lots, One acre lot will have a house. Everything will have a house. If you do a build up, you don't want to plan about it. Think about who can fill out. That's what will happen. If you lose whatever open space left, who should buy it? But if you did something with conservation zone, where you allow some smaller units to be developed, you can preserve some of the open space and link it all together so that you can actually plan about preserving farmland. or critical water resources, or whatever the look of the town, because you have to do some really significant planning to do that. And we would need help to do that. So we really need professional help to help us think that out. You can do it now with AI. I mean, you can look at the town and look like you've done nothing in 15 years, and we wouldn't want to live here, probably.

So you're saying doing nothing

And something else would create or erode the world.

We would have houses on everything. Large houses on everything because Iceland is accelerating. So expensive, okay, I'll just limit who gets it. But if you really design and thought about it, you could have smaller lots or small units condo type things, but preserves to get an ounce of the open space. And if you link those types of developments together, you could create large amounts of open space, which will disappear with our current zone. Will just disappear if we do absolutely nothing. But I don't have the expertise to do it as a citizen, you know, an older citizen who You know, there's going to be that many more years. But, you know, you can do it.

Well, also, if you look at what happened in the 60s and 70s on Mount Creek, none of that stuff was developed. There's over 700 one-acre units, meaning 700 acres of single-family homes that were developed in 20- to 30-year periods. they continue, every last little pocket they can find, every now and then there's a little tiny piece of, you know, Montcrie, preserved, and this or that, but most of it is felt. And that, you know, when I was a kid, no, no, it's just preserved. You know, that's huge, you know, planning, I think, started at one time, because they didn't know about people about that, and there's nothing about one to call a site or another, which is great for families, and and community in both groups. But it also is what triggered a new school in Sloan Creek, with a new fire station down there. I mean, those are the things that people are worried about now. Things that we're suggesting to help fill our schools with students that we don't have. So it's a good thing. And we do have conservation.

But you might want to expand that. And I realize that land has certain ingredients. We have to be able to dispose of the sediment. We have to have water. So that it would have to be well flowed out. And the analog is getting good to preserve open space and still allow development to get more folks without losing all of our open space. It gives us the feel of the town.

And I feel like a lot of communities would just literally get autographed and put that, you know, a desire to be limited on their recognition that not doing anything will really, I'm worried about the open space that we miss. And so that's a problem for us. There's many communities that we work with. I have a map here, hopefully that we can shift gears a little bit. I'm hearing from the group or from many of you that there's an interest in potentially multifamily or I guess I'm curious, where in your mind would that go? Or any other changes to zoning based on the existing zoning and this provision for when you want change? Can you show us the commercial zone? Yes. These are all residential. So there's the Halls Road, which is That's like over here, right? So there is no commercial on this right now. Do you want to talk about the commercial for me? Oh, there's C30.

The Carpings, Falls Road, San Diego, those are the main. So you're saying specifically you would want to see, well, what was the question?

I just wanted to know where, right now, there are merchants. So here, C&E, Rogers Trade. And then, folks. Yes. And just, you know, if you know, there are decals so expensive now that have probably free for that, which means they were developed more recently in the 80s and 90s.

But you could really define, based on soil type, where you could get better septic systems. You could do better septics. But you certainly know where there's shallow soils and where there's lots of ledge and where you're not going to be able to really get septic systems in. But then they'll also package those to your plants. A book that worked today that could do, you know, it's assigned to the developer and you're more densely developed areas that could deal with that. The limits are probably going to be, where can we get water? I mean, my, the area that I live in, which is like off Rose Lane or the Oak Line Inn, I had three houses lose water last summer. The wells went dry. So, I mean, obviously you have to have water. And a lot of the houses that went dry, the shallow wells, Okay, but we're not really monitoring that. Someone, one of the things that I think is very important. I have a family, a small, a new family, two young kids moved in and they had no water plants. Some, the well went drunk because of the combination of drought and shallow well. They had to bring in a tanker truck, but luckily they were able to open things. They got a bunch of water back in, they had a drill. Then I had another family The drilled well went dry. They had to drill another few thousand feet to get water. So those types of things have to be analyzed if we're looking at, obviously, density. So it's beyond our capacity.

I want to just back in what you're saying. I have a little and I like having a little. I love little. I don't want to switch that. I want to keep that. And it's just, you know, me and my cat. So we're doing all that. But I do worry about density. How would that affect mile-three road levels and just those in general?

Yeah, I mean, so when we're analyzing where to put the increased density, it needs more sophistication than we have available at the municipal level. Or, you know, you develop water systems and You can map out, and these are all mapped at large, at the barriere, because they're in this town and they're protected by state statute. And that's where you would put your community wells. And we do have community wells in the province. There's actually a map of them that you can see and look at. It's doable, but it needs work and thought. And I think you can do both. If you keep the way the town looks now, and preserving the more open space, we don't have the funds to buy, but naturally nothing will change the way the town looks in the future.

I think we can maintain the character, but still have affordable housing, more housing for seniors.

Yeah, have a variety of housing for all. I think it's important. I mean, that should be our goal. Hopefully we can. Right now. And then.

My mom's. She likes the fact that she's my mom's.

Small house.

And like the fact that she didn't walk to town. She was in a house that a family owned. And then she moved closer to me and into a small house where she didn't walk to town. So I think that is.

Yeah. I think that's what most older people would prefer to be in a community rather than building a house in a corner.

So just in terms of where the house would go as long as it's environment.

It would be closer, yeah.

you know, considerations, but then there's also sort of what the demand is, you know, it sounds like there's... And for older populations, it's nice to have the activity around them, and you can get out, and you can walk around, see your neighbors, and stuff like that. And we went through the visual preference, you know, survey, or the exercise earlier during the presentation, and so I'm hearing that there's an interest in through smaller multifamily dwellings. So what does that look like? I mean, I think a lot of the images that were shown were voted down very quickly. So like, what are the characteristics of multifamily housing like? And I know I've emphasized it also may differ depending upon where you're considering it within the community. So I encourage you to also mark this up.

Just something real quick is that we have graces We have a limit of two bedrooms. Why not make it three bedrooms? Master suite and they want to put grandkids upstairs. You can only put one bedroom upstairs.

There's a limit to two bedrooms. in multiple districts.

Okay. Interesting. Thank you.

Also, there's this whole thing, you can't have anything over three stories in a land because most of it is on the, what is it called? The watershed. Okay. The commission ruling. Okay. So you've got to find out how many highways there's around the whole Especially anywhere near that Gator.

So it's another child's grand Gator. And it's another of his brothers on the Gator. Hartford chose parts of town that would be in the Gator. And Seabrook chose other parts of town. Seabrook chose a few parts that we should practice with everything. To keep those United States.

So that was, and so do you, I'm sorry, that was chosen. Do you support that?

No, I wish they had done it. I wish they'd made an exception for one place, but they didn't. This happened long before I was here.

Yeah.

But they did, and it's done, and changing that will be very good for us. Yeah. If you have your own pitch room or something,

when you see it right in the . You know, they have that .

Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd like to see that. . . . . Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Sparingly, a minor detail is the way we have to think about the quality of our families, and the opportunity for our young people to be valued. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes. Yes.

Thank you.

That is the case. Right to you, Mark. Okay.

Come on in.

We want to get to you.

Okay. Okay.

Can I have everyone's attention?

Hello, hello, can I have your attention?

I've got eight minutes to send you one more time, like I promised, and I wanna get it done. Come on in, come on in. So first of all, you are all fantastic, thank you. I think the conversations were very productive. I learned a lot. I know people are passionate about this community, and I understand that that's where the energy is coming from, is that you love this community, you want to protect it. And we know that we have some different perspectives. Our challenge of working with your commission through this work is to understand what is right for your community going forward. And in many cases, what may be right may be making no changes to your zoning regulation at all. However, we do understand from people that there is a desire. There is a desire for things. A briefly described discussion we had in our room, and I will ask Rory and Tony to take two minutes to do the same so you have a sense as to the conversations that were held tonight. In our room, there was a lot of discussion and concern surrounding 830G, and that is that Connecticut statute that requires that any community that does not have 10% affordable housing allow developers to build affordable housing and to bypass the zoning regulations in doing so. We talked quite a bit about that and its implication for Old Lyme. We talked about the fact that Old Lyme is only at 1.36% affordable housing, I think, far off the 10%. and how it's really challenging for a community like Old Line to ever hit 10% affordable housing. So while that is a concern and is relevant to our discussion, our focus shouldn't be what can we do to get to 10% because that's far off and maybe impossible to do given the lack of infrastructure you have, whether it's water or sewer, and likely maybe undesirable because the scale of development you'd have to have. So that was kind of the foundation of our meeting, but we went beyond there. And we talked about the need for housing that is affordable and available to younger people and seniors. How aid use could be part of that solution. How smaller, well-designed neighborhoods of smaller homes could be part of that solution. But that was countered and balanced against the legitimate concern people have about adversely impacting what makes this place special, right? The environment, the character, the nature that you have, and there's a real concern about larger-scale development really turning this into another town. And so that's what we have to balance in our work. So I can't say there was one clear directive with respect to zoning. We'll take a look at ADUs and some other opportunities. I think the general counsel that we receive is be very careful to protect what we have, and we're receptive to some ideas, but we need to protect what we have. So that, we talk obviously much more than that, but that was the central theme of the discussion.

Yeah, I think, Francisco, it sounds like your group had a very similar discussion to our group. You know, it was quite a bit, the desire to make sure that we're preserving old line as it is, you know, people, level one with this and, you know, why it's her name, you know, this moral character. We also talked about, you know, considering, you know, if you're adding multi-family larger units, the infrastructure required, the impact to the schools, all the things that need to be considered. Like you mentioned, the diversity of housing types, thinking about, you know, cluster type developments or ADUs, different options. And then, you know, we talked about there is some, you know, you know, Invest in things that are already built. The right field development came up. There's a question about potentially, you know, maybe is there opportunity to add some housing to the senior center? Mine was discussed. So, you know, again, you know, using what's already here, but making sure that the seniors and, you know, young families are accommodated.

Would you say there was stronger sentiment to preserve and protect the old line and keep things the way they are now and regulations the same? or was there a lead towards some of the things you discussed?

I think overall, you know, keep what makes O-line, O-line, but just discussing options.

Receptive to some ideas provided. Provided. Right. Okay.

Thanks.

And Tony, where's Tony? Go ahead, please.

So we started with, you know, what do you value, what do you value about Old Lyme, the rural feel, that it's quiet, that it's quaint, and there was a sentiment, you know, shared, I don't want change. And then the conversation evolved, and we started to explore, okay, well, if we did nothing and we were to build out the community in the way that the existing zoning is, you would theoretically lose some of those things that you value, that rural character or the rural nature of the community. So then the conversation sort of moved into, okay, well, what are the types of developments that might permit reducing cluster development so that we could preserve that open space? Because truly that is one of the things that I think the entire group valued. You know, affordability for people that live here who would like to downsize, affordability for families who could come in and sort of help with the economic vitality of the community. Those were values that were expressed. And the leap was then, well, we need more diversity in terms of our housing types. It can't only be single family, large plot home properties. So, you know, and there was an idea that, you know, multifamily is, at least in our group, I felt like there was There was mixed perspectives on it, but I think that, again, like Rory's group, people were set to the idea and recognized that it had value both for economic vitality, walkability, that was something we heard. As people get older, they want to come into a community where there's the ability to walk. There could be greater support for businesses, potentially. But that was all sort of, you know, framed against or presented with recognition that we do not want to erode our natural resources. Those concerns for well water, not depleting those types of resources, being conscious about where the development goes. So I think that pretty much all the ADUs came up, absolutely. You know, desire for less restriction when it comes to ADUs. And also changing the limit. This is a very specific request to change the limit to bedrooms and the existing multi-bedroom zone. That was interesting.

We had a very similar discussion. I failed to mention all the references to water supply and that you talked about, because we had a very similar discussion. Okay, so where do we go from here? My team will have the challenge of trying to capture all this lightning in a bottle. And we'll be doing that over the next couple of days. We'll be writing a summary report of the discussions that we had this evening. And we will very soon make that available as a document on the town's website. And it's not hard to find the page. If you go planning and zoning, there's a page, a link there that's dedicated all of our presentations and meeting summary reports are provided there for you. We will conduct another workshop, as I said earlier, to this effect. The subject of that workshop will be your commercial zones and economic development. And we'll have very similar format. We'll be here on September 15th. So please attend. This attendance was tremendous tonight. So thank you for coming out. We would love to have you for that workshop. Additionally, I mentioned this earlier, We have an online survey that asks many of these questions and offers you an opportunity to provide open-ended responses. You can write us your thoughts. You can provide more detail than maybe you were able to express this evening. Please take the survey if you haven't done so already. There's a link right on the splash page of the town website. There's the QR code and link there as well. This presentation, along with the clicker survey results, will be made available in addition to the workshop summary. Our work with the commission will get going this fall as we complete our next workshop. We sit down with the commission and basically walk through everything we heard from you and start making decisions regarding, are there changes needed to your zoning regulations? And if so, What kind of changes can we make that are consistent with what the community has told us and respond to some of the needs? Whether it's strengthening the regulations to better preserve and protect open space or to make the regulations more flexible to create opportunities for housing. All of that would be on the table with the commission. That process will take no less than a year. We've got a lot of work to do. And before anything gets adopted into your regulations, it's going to go through the public hearing process like any other amendment. So you'll be afforded an opportunity to review it, to provide a comment, to attend hearings on it. But we are months, if not a year away from another round of amendments. We're just getting started with this space to work. So thank you again, everyone, for coming out this evening, for being very thoughtful, for being patient with us. And I'm going to let it go. And if you have a question, I'm happy if you just come to the front and we have the answer for you. Thank you.