Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

All the meeting to order.

Okay. Denise, I am here.

Okay.

Hold on.

I'll turn the volume up.

How are you doing?

I'm actually a few hours. One second. One second.

I do have one question in mind. Can the people in the back see this? Can you guys see it in the back?

Well, we'll ask anyone who can't see it to come forward. We have seats in the front if we need them.

If you need to sit in the front, you're welcome to move forward.

Okay. Perhaps you can kind of do a summary. Yeah, someone's going to speak to us. I'm old, I can't say stuff.

Give me a second. We're fine, we can take your time.

Are you ready? No, he needs a minute. We need to be able to share the screen again, so just give me a second. Yeah, but we have stuff that happens. Why don't you start the meeting and I'll catch up. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Okay, we'll call the meeting to order.

I'm Denise Savageau. I'm the Vice Chair of the Zoning Commission. And we have to my left, Jim Quattro, who's an alternate, Bonnie Reem Schneider, who's a full member. Maybe Joe Nozzle was a member. Jane Marsh, who's a full member and our secretary. And Michael Barnes, who's an alternate. And remotely, we have Paul Orzel, who's the chair. Because it's hard to chair the meeting remotely, he's asked me to step in and chair the meeting. So we'll do that. We take public comments at the beginning, and I just want to go over that quickly. Public comments is to comment on things that are on the agenda. You have three minutes for anybody who wants to do public comments. If there is something that's under a public hearing, so two items, 85 Halls Road, 6 Johnny Cake Hill Road, those are public hearings. If you're commenting on those two things, hold your comments till the public hearing piece because that's where you would comment on anything that's under public hearing. but otherwise we'll take public comments. I wanted to start with a comment on our process for the zoning update and rewrite. The commission is in the process of doing the zoning rewrite program. We're in the beginning phase of that. We are in what we're calling the data gathering phase. No decisions are being made at this time. So the data gathering phase is about, we've held several different community workshops. We had one on the environment, we had one on housing, and tomorrow we have one that's being held on the commercial, industrial, and waterfront business zones. And that's a chance, those workshops, the interactive workshops with our consultant to get input from folks on all of those types of issues. When we had the one on the environment, which was held in June, and then we had a follow-up with the different commissions. So we're doing a program where we have the community workshop, then we bring in the commissions that work under that. So for example, under the environment, we had the commissions like the Inland Wetland Commission, the Flood and Rosary Control Board, Conservation Commission, the Open Space Commission all come in and say, this is what we heard from the public. What do you guys think about this? So we were still gathering information. The one thing that we've tried to make perfectly clear is that this is an ongoing dialogue at this point. There are no decisions to be made. There will be no vote on anything at the meeting tonight. So just want to make sure people are aware of this. When we had the meeting on the environment and then the follow up with the focus groups, the flood erosion control board had given us some very specific wording and language. We were at that point, looking at bigger picture stuff like, okay, we need to look at flood erosion control rings. We need to look at maybe something with open space. We were gathering the bigger picture things that people wanted to talk about. We weren't getting into the specifics. That said, the flood erosion control board had given us some very specific things. And that's what they're here to talk to us about today in terms of just to go over that. It will be the first time that they're really presenting orally to us on this. And it's the first time that the commission will have a chance for any dialogue. So all of the information that has been come into the commission in terms of the zoning rewrite, whether it be something from a commission like the flood and erosion control board or something from a resident, every single comment that's being submitted to us on the zoning rewrite is on the zoning page. You can go to the zoning commission page on the left-hand side. It says, zoning commission regulation rewrite. If you click on that, you can look at every single comment we've received to date and also summaries of the workshops that we've had. So all the workshops are summarized there. So you can look. So in that, if you haven't seen the full information that is, for example, with the flood and erosion control board, it's everything is posted there. So just to let you know, that's where we are. We haven't started having a dialogue with our consultant about what we want to do with all this information that we've collected. We're going to be starting that after we finish the workshops this month in terms of on the commercial, industrial, and waterfront zones. Then we're going to be starting to have that conversation. Oh, what did we hear? What's important? Where should we go first? And so I just want to make sure everybody understands where we are with the process. The idea is to make sure that we continue to have an open dialogue between the commission, residents, and the boards that serve you so that it's a give and take until we have the regulations drafted, which we expect to have drafted. We'll be going into a public hearing process at that point. We're expecting that to happen in like February and March that we'll have those drafted. But between now and then, there's a lot of time for dialogue back and forth. So we want to make sure we said that. And then I just want to, because of the public hearing, we did receive a comment that I just wanted to read for public comments from our selectman, Jim Lampos. And he said to the Deer Zoning Commission, I note that the Flood and Erosion Control Board's recommendation for zoning updates are on the agenda for tonight. While I understand this is an introductory discussion and no action will be taken on this question tonight, I respectfully request a referral be made to our resiliency committee and to the Soundview Commission. Our resiliency committee includes our land use and emergency services representatives who can offer additional insight. In terms of the Soundview Commission, perhaps a joint meeting could be held with zoning and additional interest parties where the specific implications of these changes for affected property owners in the flood zones can be addressed and their recommendations offered in advance of further formal discussions and potential decisions by the zoning board. All the best, Jim. So just that's the first public comment we've received in terms of the bigger thing. So that said, is there anyone who wants to come up and make a public comment? And just state your name for the record.

Yeah, my name is Josh Dean. I'm representing the mills of O-Line. We recently purchased O-Line Arena and we're making a significant investment in the property and in the community. We want to be responsible owners and good neighbors while making improvements that benefit the facility and the town. We support updating the zoning But we are concerned that some of the proposed changes could make it difficult to properly maintain and improve the existing marina. We are now looking for development without restrictions. We simply want to maintain the existing facility, make responsible improvements, and keep the marina viable business for the community. We look forward to working with this town to find the best. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any additional comments?

Would you ask them to speak to us?

Yes, and if you could come up, and we actually really need you to address the commission, and that the microphones pick it up as well.

Thank you. My name is Sandra Lintelman-Delarippa. The Delarippa family owns a beach house at 10 Fifth Avenue since 1976. and the house next to it since the 1930s. So we care very deeply about old line. We have deep roots here. We just had the fifth generation dunk her feet in the water at the shoreline. So we're very proud of that. Fundamentally, I support the town's participation in the community rating system. It's attractive for property value, insurance savings. It can provide meaningful financial benefit to residents. But the changes proposed for the zoning regulation rewrite are before they're adopted. I do need the commission to take some of the questions that I have. I have four or five of them and consider them in your negotiations, discussions process that you're doing. First, CRS is a points-based system. The commission should tell us what I'd like to know is what CRS class is online targeting. What's our goal? Where do we see the town being? How many points do we currently have or expect to have And Jane, I could leave this because I have citations to it too. So you can leave that.

It would be really good if you could send that to us so that they could post it. Yeah, so that I can post on there. I mean, you can give it to Jane too. It's the secretary.

How many points do we currently have or expect to have through this? How many points does each proposed restriction actually earn? And critically, what is the estimated annual flood insurance savings for an average old line homeowner through this process? I think we deserve to know what giving up substantial flexibility and property value will save us. Is it going to save us $100 or substantially more? Second question, the 10 year look back for substantial improvement. That's a long time. And I think we need clarity on two points. Will this be applied retroactively to improvements made over the past 10 years or only prospectively? Exactly which valuation are you considering to be used? Is it the appraised market value, replacement cost, or something else? And will land value be excluded because it's separated on our textbooks? These details dramatically affect which properties are going to trigger elevation requirements. Third question, I'll make it quick. The right to inspect at any time clause When I read FEMA's own training manual, it shows that this one option is one among several. So you can earn 90 points for the annual inspection, as it's listed. You can earn 60 for the unrestricted right to inspect, or even 30 for a really simple non-conversion agreement. So I guess the question is, why did Old Line choose the most, in my view, intrusive option? Why can't the regulation require reasonable notice and inspection to pause? And what additional CRS benefits justify this level of privacy intrusion. The fourth question is the 500 year floodplain expansion. The FECB itself notes that this is a matter of practicality and ease of administration. Administrative convenience isn't really the same as showing necessity. So how many old line properties become regulated by adding zone X? That would be something that I'd be interested in seeing. Has the town prepared a parcel level impact analysis showing owners what new restrictions will apply to them so that we can consider this as you're going through this process and that afterwards? And then finally, there was some ambiguity about the design flood elevation in the documents you said. In one area, it said 500-year elevation, and then in another, it said 500-year plus two feet of freeboard. So can we just clarify that? I'm not so sure that we should be treating this as an all or nothing. And I was really encouraged by your comments that we're still in the process of discussing it. So that's good. The measures where the benefit is unclear, I think we need to quantify that through your process so that we have real clarity and not be imputing. And if we can't yet tell the residents how many points we're earning or how much money we're saving or anything that we've talked about, I'm not sure the regulations will be ready to adopt. So I would encourage us to get that cleared up before we move to adoption. I will leave these with you, but I will also send them to you. Let's translate. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you very much. Anyone else have comments?

Hi. I'm on your question. Yes, you can ask. Todd Havik. I have five buildings at 49 Seaside Lane and Old Line, White Sand Beach. I'm the third generation owner. Hopefully the fourth generation will be able to take them over. We just did a substantial amount of work, pulled permits, resided, new plumbing, I still did some outside electrical work. I have more to do. This is since 2024. Now the insurance company tells me I need a roof. If I put a roof on, I got to raise my house already. So I can put a tarp over it for three years. There's got to be some, if you make this 10 years, it's going to be brutal. I don't even know how to begin. I won't be able to maintain these. I'm worried about the scenic landscape of the shoreline of Connecticut being elevated like Galveston Island. It's horrific looking. We're going to end up with either a blight situation where people can't fix them. These properties have been through the hurricanes in 38, 54, 60. Gloria, Bob, they're still there. And I really struggle with a 10-year plan because I'm not going to be able to keep these. I could never afford to buy them. They were part of, passed on from family members. And my job is this generation's caretaker. And I'm going to struggle doing that with this. If this goes to 10 years, I think we're in big trouble. I personally do. Unless there's some sort of caveat or some way that hardship case can can do something. If it's mandated by insurance and I can't get insurance, I can't get flood insurance, period, because I'm on the ocean. They won't sell it to me. And when you have a hurricane, your deductible goes up to 10% of the value. If you incorporate the land, the land's worth a million dollars. The house is worth 130. So if the house gets destroyed, And I sell the land and somebody puts up a monstrosity on stilts in front of the beach line. I just, it blows my mind. I'm sure I'll be dead by the time that happens. I don't see this 500-year plan working. I mean, another 30 years, I'm sure I won't be here.

Come on. You're ornery enough to be here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jane.

Okay. this other lady that talked about the enhanced credit, I don't know the difference of what we have now and what we're gaining by being enhanced versus a regular rating system, which is something that would be interesting to me. I haven't, I don't know where to find the maps of where the a hundred year, 500 year is in the stuff that I read online. Um, I guess I really want to know what the end goal of this restructure zoning is. Uh, if it's too, um, gain more income like the national highway system won't pay you unless you do certain things in your with guardrails or entrance ramps or whatever the town gets monies from different entities i'm sure so i don't know what the end goal is for this whole rewrite with the floodplains and the 10-year plan um i do know that a building was put up next to me that did impair my view And I spoke to the assessor and they devalued my property because of a limited sight line after this structure was built on stilts. So I just want, you know, there's a flip side to this. If we start blocking other people, there's going to be less revenue. And if people need to get permits to supply this stuff properly, you're going to see a decline in permitting, I believe. So I mean, it's catch 22. How do you enforce it all? You got to building official, zoning official. They're going to be busy piece to piece. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments.

Any other comments? Hearing none, we'll go. Sorry. Go ahead. Come on up.

Mark Mangiolo, 26 Clifton Street. So I can safely say that probably 90% of the people here live south of 156. So there are a lot of things that are being considered in this zoning rewrite. And I'm not going to go through the litany because there's an entire list here. I'm asking the question, since, you know, one of them, the expansion into a 500-year floodplain, considering that our country is only 250 years old, how did we come up with 500 years? I'd like to understand that. 10-year cumulative look back, when it's currently five, I think the gentleman just mentioned the fact that you're basically putting a burden on homeowners that they can't do anything. Now, when we consider the beach communities, and I'm sure you're looking at it, the beach communities contribute 40 to 50% of the tax base here. So, You put these restrictions in place, are you going to lower our taxes? Because we can't do anything with our property. You're basically saying, live here, we're going to tax the hell out of you, but you can't do anything with your property. So please consider the fact that 50, 40 to 50% of your tax base comes from the beast communities. We are O-line's industry. You have no industry except us. We are providing food on the table from stores in this town. We are providing contractors in this town with work. We're doing a lot of things here. And to put these restrictions on people mostly south of 156, to me, is totally unfair, unjust, and really not morally correct in my eyes. I think you need to all consider that. and keep that in mind, especially about the taxes. We pay high taxes, and we're really not getting much for those taxes. And I know that's been said time and time and again, and you probably might give me other notions from other towns that, oh, other people don't get benefits from all the town taxes. But we are higher priced than everyone north of 156. You need to consider that before you start restricting and putting all these restrictions on us in this community. Thank you.

Any other comments?

I'll stand here.

Yeah, we do need you to make sure the speakers hear you.

Good evening, Zoning Commission and the FECB. My name is Abe Chris. I live at 21 Seaview in O'Line. I've lived there for many years with my family. First, I want to thank you all for your efforts on this commission and board. I know it's a volunteer position, and it requires hours of your time, so I appreciate that. Although I'm speaking now as a private citizen, I have served on the Point of Woods board for the last eight years and the last five as a chair. Again, these are my own beliefs, my own comments, not the board's, so I do understand and appreciate the time you put into it. I have only recently read the new proposals, unfortunately, and I'm not here this evening to object specifically to the eight provisions that are being discussed tonight. However, what I'm here to do this evening is just simply to suggest that the Commission and the FECB move slowly on the implementation of these as you collect more data, as you just referenced. These provisions have potentially huge unintended and intended impacts on the shoreline property owners and they should not be entered into without more community understanding, involvement and engagement. What I understand the last and maybe only feedback event, I'm sorry if I'm not clear on the details of this, had a very limited number of residents attend earlier this year. And so that's one of the reasons I'd like this to be continued conversations with those of us south of 156 in particular. So in summary, my request is simple. Please consider approaching this at a more measured pace that includes more inclusion of shoreline property owners who are a large part of the tax base of Old Lyme and potentially have some very practical concerns. I appreciate your time and I thank you for your consideration. Thank you.

Any other comments?

Being now we'll go on to the rest of our agenda. We'll close the comment period. As I mentioned earlier, we have a meetings. So we're gonna just give a brief update or well, an update on the phase two zoning regulation rewrite that will include a presentation by the flood erosion control board, which won't be brief, the other stuff will. But just starting the meeting schedule. We have a meeting scheduled tomorrow. September 15th at 6.30 at the Lyme Senior Center. That is on the commercial, industrial, and waterfront zones. That is a workshop that's interactive. Our consultants run that workshop. Again, the commission will be there to listen and get that feedback. And then we'll be following up and having those discussions more with our consultants. in terms of that and also continued dialogue with all the various commissions in town as well as some of the neighborhood associations and some of the other nonprofits that do work in town. So for example, in housing, we might be talking to the senior center, folks who are involved because housing for seniors is one of the things we've talked about. So there's a whole host of things that we'll be listening to with the zoning rewrite, but that meeting tomorrow is going to focus on commercial, industrial, and a lot of front zones. I'd like to bring up the Flood and Erosion Control Board. Damon?

Where do you want me to sit? I lost your page here, so I need you to stick you back here. I can type that in.

Okay, so let me share your screen again.

Just for everybody here, I'm Danny Coppola. I'm a resident of the town and I'm a Justin Delacruz, Member of the flood and erosion control board, along with that capital and. Justin Delacruz, i'd love the questions that everybody has because I think that this process has to be something that it has public comment it's, this is about all of us it's not about us in the weather ocean control board like everybody else who's who's providing summits and all the other boards, we are. advisory and we are providing insight, we are not making decisions. And so, you know, some, you know, one of the comments was why the town decided to do this. The town hasn't decided to do anything. We're all working together to find what is the best path forward. And so the things I'm going to be talking about tonight are specific to what the Flood and Erosion Control Board's opinion and our opinion based on the studies that we've done and the work that we've done over the past couple of years.

on flood risk in the town are to address what we see as a major resilience issue. The recommendations, we put that information out there so that everybody could read it. And I know that this process is ongoing and so everybody can continue to read it. We aren't making decisions, we're just making recommendations. And I'm going to talk tonight about, you know, what are the pros and cons of each of the things we recommended? Why did we do that? what are the possible negative implications and what are the trade-offs? Why would we recommend something that had a potential negative implication so that people can, you know, continue to provide input and ultimately the people at this table make the decision, not us in the flood and erosion control board. And so I think at this point, procedurally, I think I have to talk to them, but, you know, I understand that the This room is probably filled with a lot of people who want to hear what I have to say. So if you don't hear anything that I'm saying, please let me know. It's important to us that you do hear all of that. If it's easier, I can sit sideways over here.

Yeah.

Would that make more sense?

Is the microphone over there, can he use that microphone? Can everybody hear me?

No. No? Okay.

I hate microphones, but okay.

While he's getting that ready, I do want to say, well, someone asked about the 500-year flood. FEMA came up with the term 500-year flood, 100-year flood, because saying a 0.01% annual chance of flooding was something that it was hard to conceptualize sometimes and 0.02% annual flooding was also hard to conceptualize. Every year you have a 0.02% chance of flooding in your 500-year floodplain. So that would statistically come out one every 500 years if you extended that over 10,000 years. But you could have 2,000-year floods in one year. Because it's a statistical risk. It has nothing to do with how much time it was. And... Yeah, sure. Okay. So I do have some slides up there to go along with what I'm saying, but I'm going to not give you too much detail with what's on the slides until we really get to what our recommendations are. I do want to tell you, if you can go to the next slide, the first slide, So again, I'm David Poglow. I'm a member of the eight-member Oline Flood and Ocean Control Board. We are a mission board of the town. We are established because of a Connecticut General Statute.

All right. Let me go over here. Go right there?

Okay. We could walk seven in with the store attached. Then he can't see his slide. Our goal with resilience, think of us as public health to the medical community. So our job as a flood and erosion control board is to look at, make a picture of the issue. If we don't look at specific properties for flood and erosion risk, we look at ways to address flood and erosion issues that affect the town as a whole. And so, whereas the zoning commission looks at the back doors in the public head example. They work directly with the homeowners and with applicants and businesses. And so, we have a broad expertise that has accountability to flood and erosion control issues. So, we have members who are structural engineers. I've been a disaster risk manager for 25 years. I provide as governance and communities, nation-wide progress, but any one of the members of the group could stand up and speak with the same background about these issues. We are here to answer questions.

Just for clarification, we're not going to be a Q&A except for to the board. We're presenting to the commission. We'll ask questions. We'll have other time for dialogue with everybody in the room.

Yeah, and we, in the planning, direction, control board, and visit board, we meet monthly. And so if you can pose questions to us directly, if you see anything in those regulations, the recommendations that you want to send to us, you can send it to our board. So next slide. All right, so flooding is the town's highest risk. That's not something that we came up with that's in our customer mitigation plan. It is statistically what is most likely to cause damage to homes and to infrastructure in the town. Our town has seen $8.2 million in flood insurance claims. That's flood insurance. A lot of people outside of the floodplain don't have flood insurance, and some in the floodplain don't have flood insurance. And so that's just the claims that we made. It's a lot higher than that. So one of our goals is to bring that down, make sure that it does not be contained in a spot of change to increase the amount of water that we're hitting with the rain. I'm sure you've seen that. We're having king tides, blue sky flooding. We've got some serious issues, and part of what we do is try to find ways to move water where it needs to go and where there's less damage to properties. Our town has a lot of repetitive lost properties. We have 46 at present, as far as the count that we have. If we go above 50, that puts us in a new category for FEMA, and we put our flood insurance access at risk. We're trying to do what we can to make sure that, as a town, these states don't push ourselves into one of these high-risk towns that have difficult access to not only get flood insurance, but just to get insurance as a whole. and also see the bond ratings drop. There's a lot at stake and flood insurance control board, flood and erosion control board is working to address those issues. Eric, next slide. So I want to tell you a little bit about the process. We were asked as one of the boards to look at the zoning rewrite matter. We are, someone was talking about the community rating system. One of the The efforts that we're looking to do is get the town into the community rating system. And what this is, is a FEMA program that gives everybody in the town, whether or not you are in the, I'll say floodplain, but it's whether you're in the 100-year zone. Just saying everywhere it rains, it can flood. So it can flood anywhere. If you have flood bans on your property, you do not have flood insurance. You are not getting a loan from your insurance company. And flood insurance is expensive. The community rating system gives a discount for people. The efforts that we're looking at, anyway, I'll just take you back. Every 500 points that a town learns is a 5% discount. Everybody has a lot of insurance in the town, a team of life insurance. So 500 points, 5% off every year. 1,500 points, everybody gets 15% off their insurance. Different too, as long as you stay in program. These... We're looking at, I think one of the questions was how much are we looking to get? As it stands, we're going to, we're looking to get about 1,300 points as an entry, which is great. We could get up to 7,000 points. About 1,000 points. It's a lot. If we get all of them, it'd be a lot. We aren't saying that, hey, take all of them wholesale. That's not our decision. That's Zoning Commission's decision, but we're presenting those things that we feel have the most value. Now, we looked at 30 potential zoning updates, and we assessed them based on, you know, is there going to be, what's the impact on homeowners? What's the impact on property values, on community vision and values for a beach town? You don't want to take away the beach. So we're not going to do things like, what are the things that give us a thousand points? One thing, everybody 10% discount says, Prohibition on all floodplain construction. It's 1,000 points. It doesn't make sense. It would be great for us to have it. We wouldn't recommend it, because our goal is to protect the town from human values. But we looked at benefits, too. We looked at what premium savings would people have in their policies, what would the long-term results be for the town, reduce disaster and debris, that each of those hurricanes that happened in the town did have a financial impact from that. The needs of the implementation preserve bond ratings. Moody's has begun looking at what we're trying to do to reflect this. It's our bond rating that we're down. If a disaster happens, based on us not having enough to put in place to address some of these risks. And we're also concerned about non-minimals and insurance blackouts. That's We hear about it happening in California because of the fires, but Connecticut's had kind of a little bit more legal. Sometimes Connecticut has had kind of a good hump. It's usually the coastal areas. You don't want anybody to get stuck in a situation where their shares are coming over. They need to go to the city for a good place. So next slide. I do want to say that I think that this has some . There's no mitigation of mandates on existing homes. This recommendation does not, it doesn't affect your home in any way as it is. Nobody has to do anything to get into compliance if you're in the 500 year and the zoning commission decides to adopt the 500 year as a design plan zone. It doesn't affect typical repairs and updates, renovation or maintenance, and it doesn't create any new designations. You're already in the pattern of your floodplain if you're in the pattern of your floodplain. Nothing that any of these changes would do would change your designation. For instance, if you looked on Redfin, there's something that looks out at Zillow and you have that new flood, that flood risk at the bottom. What is your flood risk? Some changes, that's based on a flood risk that already exists. And we're just working with those risk factors. The recommendation do apply to new construction. Now, they do apply to substantial improvement, as some people mentioned, as already defined in the regulations. And if there's a disaster and your structure is damaged beyond 50% of that building value, then just like it says now, if you're 0.1% in the list, how many people are planning to apply in the 100%? That's the next slide. So we looked hard at property values. We did not want to present with property value. We also considered that one of the main threats to property value in the United States right now, based on what's happening with climate risk and insurance, is unmitigated risk, not regulation. This wasn't that concern. Insurance are already pricing in all risks. I'm sure you've seen We have water from four sides. It's not coming from the river, it's not coming from the ocean, it's coming from the lake, it's coming from rivers. We're a town that has to deal with water and insurance. And so they're going to be looking, as a market, at what we're doing. Buyers are already looking. They already know what we're doing. It has nothing to do with what the regulations I'm told is, they see on Zillow, they see on Reddit, that metric of what your risk is. So when you see a property is at risk, ultimately over time, people are getting smart about what is going to pay for them to be able to get in that house and report it back. And so as the idea for these is to over time, get properties that are at risk into a more resilient, and less sustainable situations so that we can preserve property values. And like I mentioned, lenders and rating agencies are asking communities about what they're doing. Moody's currently asks towns directly when zoning along the waterfront has been adjusted to mitigate this. And so we need to be able to answer these rating agencies to be able to keep the towns lending capabilities where they are. Next slide. So a couple of questions you might be asking, will my property value then go down? Like I said, not from this. Overlay changes, what can be built that now the buyer can learn? So the next change is already printed on the flood maps. There's someone who asked, where can I find that? The town is a great GX. And anybody who's been buying is now going to go to that site, and if your property is in a flood zone, put a spot here and run it through your AC. What happens to my existing house? Nothing, unless you build new substantial improvements. If you build a new house for a substantial improvements that exceed 50% in 10 years. And I'll talk about that 10 years in a bit. 50% of value, repairs, maintenance, salt projects, if you see that issue today. Will this force more residents to buy pleasant chairs? No. FEMA's regulation is only in the hundreds . I think everybody should have flood insurance because more than 50% of flood dams in the United States, the floodplain does not absorb. What is our CRS payoff? Zero right now because we're not in the program. We have to get into that program. To get into that program, we have to show FEMA that we are making concrete action towards becoming a resilient town. You can get up to 45%. We're not going to get 45% unless you really push out as many towns in the country that buy. But East Lyme is 10% worth it. That's a lot of money. In a town like this, I think it's 800,000 a year who are paying flood insurance in this town. That's 80,000 a year from 10%. That's not the town that gets it with us. So it would just be nice to get into this town like that. What does this cost the town to adapt to? It should be. But it's, you know, the biggest increase in the work with the cross city desk. But we consider that in what we look at at the survey. We do not want to create a cross burden to the town. Can the commission adapt some of the others? Yes, absolutely. We are not, we are giving a recommendation. These are the things that we feel should happen, but we are not the deciders. All right, next slide. Let's get past this one, because this was, you know, we're not recommending this, so. All right, so now the recommendations. So, there's eight recommendations, but those are four things. We looked at, where would we recommend it? That came out the five-meter above line. How high? Floating city on its way, and then glasses closing the loophole. So the first of these, if you go to the next slide. Expanding the floodplain zone. Now this is sort of the one that wraps it all together. This is not the fabulous thing that we're doing. The state of Connecticut is already going to be done. So it's coming to another, whether we do it or not, In two or three years, it's going to be pushed to Connecticut towns. They've already decided they're going to adopt the American Society of Civil Engineers 24-24 standard, which says that the 100-year front plane is completely inaccurate, and the 500-year is actually not accurate. And so, because it takes a few months to post their maps regularly, ours in 2013 was actually pretty good, but still, it's old. 13 years, and that was, that's from data that was published in 2012. So we voted, I'm sure everybody here has seen the changes with sea level rise. It's also the water levels are rising, there's a lot more rain. The land in this town that is in the zone of 1% chance per year, the 100-year flood rate, that is bigger then the map show, and ultimately the regulations are going to catch up. And so we can get our regulations in place ahead of time so that new houses that are being built, or if someone's going to do a major renovation, if the regulations put them in place to guide development in a way that when that happens, we're in the right place to be able to address these insurance, these financial, The mortgage access is tied to your ability to get flood insurance. So you can't get flood insurance. Anybody tried to sell a house during the furloughs when flood insurance wasn't being extended during that time? You can't sell your house if you're in a floodplain and people can't get flood insurance. You can be in the flood zone, raise your house, and you're not in the flood zone. There's two ways to get out of a flood zone. You can move your ass horizontally, or you can move it vertically. And when you raise it, you can be in a zone, but you're no longer at blood rest, because you're not in a plug zone anymore. You're in your property. So that's the first one. The purpose of this was to address future concerns and concerns that are coming, recommendations of the FEMA Climate Change Center and of the state and also of the American Society of Civil Engineers, who are all recommended to be adopted as a township. What place are we? So, so these two is how high and how new we built. So then I'm going to skip to the third of our recommendations, which is Freedborn. One flood in Freedborn, two feed in Freedborn. And so one foot of Freeport, so Freeport, I'm sure most people know what it is, but Freeport is the floodplain rules. If you are in the floodplain, the maps will say how high above sea level the flood zone is actually on property. It could be 17, it could be 11, it could be 13, it could be 79. And Freeport is an amount above that, recognizing that floods don't, You know, hit those lines exactly. And you can create in a buffer zone to protect your property. And create that, again, increase in resilience by adding trepidation. Sometimes go up to four feet. We're at one foot right now. We're recommending, based on Connecticut, the state of Connecticut's recommendations are two foot bench lines, but it's size equals the boundary. I think that's sort of good. And also HUD has a minimum property standard for FHA financing. We're recommending to go to two feet. Not go to three feet or four feet, as sometimes in Connecticut we're doing. And then also the theater, next slide, is encroaching below elevated buildings. And I know this is, This is tied to elevation. Now some people in the, in the, in the peace communities are already raising their, their homes because they did money for it. There's grants that you can, you can access and do this. There's a member of the board who did that with this on me. To raise it though, you now have all this space. It's useful space. And it's, I do like to close it up and use it for some purpose besides parking. This area gets destroyed when even a one-foot flood comes through in a house that is flood prone. And so the recommendations of FEMA are that, whether it be breakaway walls, and that's a requirement for us to have this recommendation to give earnest points in the system. The limit of 299 square feet That's part of recommends to do some research based on inclusions in the blood volume. That does not include area that you can park your car or keep open. Again, we recognize all of these do have implications. Next slide. This is also P2, how high and how we build. This is a prohibition of fill and compensatory storage. So the problem is that fill is prohibited right now only in the coastal high asking. So what we're asking is that be included in the entire fill, which is what you typically see, not just coastal flood, but all of them. Fill reduces flood storage. Where do you put fill? You make your neighbor flood. But if your neighbor does, you know, they want to raise their house so they can fill instead of using silt, well then their water's coming in. And so this just prevents that increase in flood runoff from one property to another that deflects water where we don't want it to go. It accelerates erosion when you spill in the flood zone, and it integrates various and more volume. All right, so now I'm going to the meeting three. which is protection of critical facilities. I don't know if anybody said anything really concerned about this, but the recommendation is don't put our critical infrastructure and facilities in a place that's going to flood. So it does, again, like everything else, it doesn't affect certain properties. It's just we're going to build a new fire department somewhere. We're going to build Anything infrastructure-wise in our town that our town is going to, we'll see that in the club plan. All these are paid by recommendation. This was specific. I think some of these have the amount that's 80 points. We kind of see how these differ in terms of how many points they provide. Also be free because there's a lot of joy outdoor and hazardous material storage. So right now we do, as a town, prohibit the storage of hazardous materials in places where if it floods, that's just going to go into the water. So the idea here is let's have regulations in place so that your neighbors or you, if you don't understand, you don't know that you are in a place where water can come in and spill those hazardous areas, let's keep them out of the place where we're going to potentially, in this situation, one of the town faces a flood, create a bigger problem than we're already. So again, so restriction right now is only in coastal high-hazard areas, but there's nothing in Zone A and B, which is riverine flood areas. There's flooding from groundwater. This just extends that to the rest of all the floodplains. Next slide, PH3, also . So we recommend, this is for subdivisions. Now subdivisions are divided. This is saying that subdivisions should, that'll get the floodplain, not the floodplain, If you're going to build a subdivision in the floodplain, that 50% of the area in the floodplain should be preserved. And that... Oops, I don't want to get this one. And that preserved land is read as, of course, open spaces in the town. This is one of the ones that I found. Open space is the other main area that gets you more I'll tell you right now, that 1,300 points that we have is mostly open space, because we can't count these regulations, because they haven't been voted in. If these are all voted in, and together with the open space, because this town has a ton of open space, and there's just a ton of crowd, and he even promotes this as a way to keep housing that, and it's the right way, the other way, is through, to reduce resistance through zoning or venues, and we've done that. One of the best, one of the highest rate of contaminants embedded in it. We, in addition to our open space preservation, also address some of these regulations. Our velocities, so that is a cumulatively substantial improvement Teddy, look back. I think that came up the most in your questions. Yeah, this is one of those ones that we recommend. We are talking. So if you're in the club and you're already doing five-year, that count's already happening. 10 years is the standard. 10 years, it's not unreasonable. It's what the other towns are doing. We're teaching the best. We're not the only town that does less. And if doing less allows, we said doing less is what allows people to continue doing what they're doing, we're not going to stop in that. Five years is what we need to do every five years. I think that we do need to look at, we need to take seriously what the implications are so that we are not limiting ourselves from interventions that could have very high resilience results for the town because we haven't had the consultant that's looking at these provisions, if you look at what goes beyond just . So those of you that were looking at, like I said, there's another one, two to 25 that we didn't recognize.

Damon, why don't you come over and join us if you're wrapping up and then I'll ask the commission who has questions.

Absolutely.

We do have other stuff on our agenda.

People know we have a flood and erosion control board now. We didn't for a couple of years and it came back. We're doing a lot more than just this.

But this is the big one for us because zoning is probably the The most effective way for a town to address flood risk, our mandate is non-structural flood mitigation. And that's what this is considered. Even those things that sound like they're structural, zoning regulations are a non-structural mitigation measure. It's a lot. And I know we did provide a lot. It's like 80 pages. It's there to read. The reason it's 80 pages isn't because we want to add 80 pages. It's because we wanted to be as clear as possible of what was coming out. Let's see, it's redlined what's coming out. And there's underlined what is going in. Thank you for the chance to go over this with you.

Thank you for giving us a really detailed explanation. I'm going to open it up to commission members who would like to ask the question. Maybe I'll start with Paul just online. Paul, do you have anything you would like to ask?

At this point, I'm going to say no, but it was a very interesting presentation indeed.

All right, thanks. Why don't we start over here? Anybody have any questions back and forth?

I don't have any questions. I just want to comment that it's very thorough explanation and certainly even a lot of the thoughts that people came with, you were thinking about already, it sounds like. So I appreciate the explanation and look forward to looking at the details of it and making sure that it addresses those concerns and includes people as we make those changes. So thank you very much. It's good to meet you.

I agree with Bonnie's comments, but, um, Is your presentation going to also be online?

Yeah, I'd be happy. This actually is online. Okay.

I had not seen it.

I just saw it.

It should be entered into what they're presenting. We'll be on the zoning rewrite page. Great.

That's great. Thank you. It was very thorough, and I was really impressed that you were able to answer some of the questions we heard from residents tonight. That was awesome. And I know this issue has come up in the past over the previous administrations, but without an active flood and erosion board. There was nobody to actually pull the many pieces of this together for the town to look at. In your work, have you done any analysis? One of the questions we heard was how much savings the town would get on a whole, and I don't know if you mentioned that or I didn't hear it. Did that come up at all?

So Like I said, the town right now has about $800,000 a year in policies. Now, there's a lot of people who don't have policies simply because they live out either, they own their properties outright. And if you don't have a mortgage, you don't need flood insurance. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have it. And it's the high cost that's keeping people from having it. And the reason that some of those numbers on the disaster damages are low is because there's a lot of people who live on the coast, they're multi-generational, There's no mortgage. They don't have flood insurance because it's like $6,000 to $8,000 a year. So if you have a flood policy that's $8,000 a year and we get into the 15%, you're targeting $1,200 a year that you saved. $12,000 over 10 years or $36,000 over a 30-year mortgage.

You can pass along where you're getting mortgage insurance for $6,000 to $8,000 a year. I'd be very interested to hear about that.

I'm not talking about mortgage insurance flood insurance that's a bargain my friend let me know I'm talking just the flood part yeah and so all of those figures are online at data.gov GovData. And so that's on a monthly basis. FEMA does say how many policies are enforced in every NFIP participating town, which we have been since 1973 or so. And so our goal is... in CRS because FEMA has slowed down their process of allowing us to make jumps to higher level. We want to come in at a high level because it might be four or five years. If we come in at a 5% level, but we really deserve to be a 15 or 20, it might be five years before we get a chance to jump up. And so what we would really like is to be able to come in at a 15% and have four or five more years of people benefiting from those gains.

Another comment that I do have is FEMA is not the only place to go now for flood insurance. There is a large private market that has got into it, and they are, right now, they are significantly beating rates versus FEMA. And if you do have an insurance provider, you might want to have that discussion with them. But private market offers a lot of options nowadays.

They are. I would do the research on – there's been articles written about the solvency because they aren't spreading their risk far enough. So you could have a situation like what happened in – 1979 with Hurricane Betsy hit Florida and all the insurers had all their risk concentrated in Florida and people got nothing. And that's how the flood insurance program came to be. But when flood insurance got very, very high, they started allowing small companies to come into the market. And it's early, so they don't have a lot of policies. So if they get hit with a big enough event, you might not get anything. So just if you are going to do that, because they can be a lot cheaper, just make sure you go to the company that has their risk diversified.

Exactly. Absolutely correct.

Any other questions, Paul? No comments.

Okay. Go ahead. I'll hold. I remember a while ago that there was discussion about no longer subsidizing the flood insurance program. Is it presently subsidized?

So FEMA came out with something called Risk Grading 2.0. And I know it was October of 2020. You didn't have a policy in place that subsidized you. And you bought a property starting in November of 2020 or 2021. When did COVID start? 2021? 2020. So it was that year. So in October of 2020. If you have a policy in place, you're not subsidized anymore. What you're working with is something called the annual increase regulation. So you can only see an increase of like 10% a year. And so if you were subsidized down to $1,000 a year and your insurance was going up to $8,000 a year, well, you're lucky because they can only raise it 100 a year. And then $110 the next year, $120 the next year. but if you are a new policy owner, if you're selling your house to somebody and someone new is coming in, they are probably going to face that, that higher rate. And so the subsidies are kind of baked in, but they're not, the new ones aren't going to be there. And a lot, what it comes down to is this FEMA risk rating 2.0. And the, the heart, the thing about the risk rating 2.0 is it has to do with how close you are to water. So you might not be in a floodplain. Whereas before in 2020, you would have a $600, um, policy on a house, all of a sudden you have a $4,000 policy in the house. And you're not even in the floodplain, but it's because the new algorithms recognize that flooding doesn't stop at that hard line. I mean, if you're 50 feet outside the 100-year floodplain, you might be in the 101-year floodplain. It's not that it's like an on or off thing. And so the That was the issue that addressed. Rates are going up. It is no doubt going to be a factor in property values in this town in a way that we're going to have to address before a major disaster happens and we're suddenly faced with having to elevate all the houses because FEMA is saying, you know, you're a if you want to stay a compliant member of the national flood insurance program, we're going to come in and make sure that, you know, this is where, where Eric's job gets very hard, um, that, you know, you, you've addressed all of your look back at five years was, was correct because the second that they find out that we haven't done it right, um, you get noncompliant, you get violation properties. Um, Eric could explain that better than I could. Um, The violation properties are a threat to the towns being able to retain membership in the National Flood Insurance Program.

And that affects everybody.

It does. We do want to stay, I think it's a Class B community. We're a Class B community because we're below 50. Class A is better, but we have 46 repetitive flood loss properties. We're dangerously close to that, having 50 repetitive flood loss properties and dropping into a high-risk class.

Does the amount of properties in the town offset that equation, or is it just 50 is a hard number? It's a hard number. The interest properties in the entire town, no matter what town you are. Well, it's repetitive loss.

So they had to have – if it's a property that hadn't flooded before – then that would be a new loss. But we have 46 properties that have flooded multiple times.

I don't know if that's a good time. Do you want to keep going?

Yeah. So we have a limited amount of time spent on it.

Yep. That's what I do. Yeah. So the gentleman that brought up the 10-year look-back concerns, and that's one thing that I'm struggling with for the community because I know what it costs to raise a house. I mean, right now, on average, it's about $300,000 to raise a house, at least in this coastal zone, being what's in the ground, what needs to be done. That's a lot of insurance payments to get to that $300,000 mark for these people who live in the beach zone. So I'm stressed that if we make it a 10-year look back, that gentleman, the generational properties are going to stop transferring to the next family down if they're obligated to take on these type of... construction projects, right? Because so exciting house doing a roof. That's I have a structure. It's only worth $80,000. So if I do $80,000 improvement or $40,000 improvements, it's siding in a roof. That's going to cost me 240,000 to 40,000 because I'm going to have to elevate my house.

So, so the, the federal government has a lot of money for support for houses that are compliant. Um, and you know, one of the, one of the members of the board, um, could tell you a lot more about those grants and how they work. Grants turn on and off like the weather. Grants turn on and off like the weather, but if you're not in a regulated zone, you're not eligible to get them. So if you're in the 500-year floodplain and you want to raise your house, that money is not available to you if we're not regulated.

No, I understand.

So this also... opens up the door to people who do want to elevate their house and aren't in a zone that is already eligible to funds that they would not otherwise have access to.

I guess it's a juice for it to squeeze in that extension to that zone.

And time's got to decide. I think that what this comes down to is, so one of Eric's jobs is to calculate the look back, or maybe that's, is that yours?

Mine.

Yeah. And so, like I said, there's other towns that do the 10-year look back. It's not something that's strange or cavalier. If it's something that would have a significant impact on homeowners in this town, I wouldn't recommend it either. Yeah, I think that single-handedly will turn this into a nightmare. So all that we're asking on the flood and erosion control board is let's use data. If it's not going to be a large number of people and it comes down to somebody might, I don't know. I don't want to get into the details of what it might be, but, um, you know, for zoning commission, I think that if you had the heart data on exactly how many houses that actually would impact, but how do you get that data? How do we extract that information? Eric's been, Eric's been tracking it year to year. Um, one of the great things about artificial intelligence is it would be able to potentially look out, look across all of that and, and give some of those numbers. But because that five years always moving, it's not like it's, I assume it's not five years and you've thrown away everything older than five years. I think that there would maybe take a sample of houses, uh, would be one recommendation and see, uh, how many houses, if you look back across 10 years, instead of five years would have triggered the, the 50% rule, uh,

That would be a good way to... Yeah, I think in our beach zone, because the houses are so small, the dwelling structure value is substantially less than the property value. So that's, to me, would trigger that a lot easier as opposed to a house inland that might be 10,000 square feet or 5,000 square feet. It's going to take a lot more improvement money to make that happen, right? Whereas those structures that aren't a lot of value because they're seasonal cottages are going to be triggered a lot faster. So I think that's... Yeah.

Well, and it's 10 years worth of appreciation too. So you're set back 10 years previously when the property hadn't appreciated, but you're trying to buy materials and that kind of stuff nine years later that has expanded in cost.

So you're saying if it's based on the value 10 years ago? Yeah. Eric, how's that assessed? Is it this year?

Yeah. We use whatever the reval number is from the assessor. You're allowed to come in with your own appraisal, but it's Absent that, I use the structure value as calculated by the assessor. Ten years ago. No, whenever the reval comes.

If someone was concerned about it, they could get a new assessment for that.

We just had a reval last year, right? So as of right now, the reval is last year's data.

How do you determine the value of the improvement? So if somebody is going to do their own work, that calculation is not complete.

It is fair market value.

Exactly. So you'd have to expect to hire a contractor to –

The building official has a calculator for fair market value for every improvement. So when you come in for a permit, because he collects his fees based on fair market value, he plugs what you're doing into his calculator and comes up with a fair market value for what that should cost. He collects his building fee based on fair market value of those improvements. And we use that number for the FEMA calculation as to substantial improvement test.

I'm going to just pivot real quick as I know we got a tiny issue here. The no fill prohibition on the flood zone. I think that's also another important discussion matter point, especially for the people in the coastal zone. So if you're doing a septic system or you're even the town infrastructure, we have town waterfront facilities we have. We're doing a sewer infrastructure project right now in the flood zone. So are we going to be eliminated from having the point system because we're consistently doing improvements into like our, like right now, if you guys implemented this, would that cost against our points system because we're actively doing an infrastructure project in a flood zone?

So we, again, we're not implementing, you guys implemented it. If, considering that's a large infrastructure project, is there a fill? Because of the sewers?

I would imagine there's going to be fill someplace somewhere. Any fill? But should not topography change?

I guess what's the fill? If you dig a hole in the ground and then put the same dirt bag in the hole, it's not fill.

Sometimes septic systems.

Or mounded, yeah, a mounded septic system.

Sometimes they raise them up, but that may be considered a health and safety thing. Not the sewers, yeah.

No, it's just a critical.

They look at, you know, how much, you know, how much cut you do and how much fill you have. And are you bringing in more fill?

Theoretically, the sewer project should be neutral. Yeah, I don't think it's a homeowner. And theoretically, the sewer project isn't a town project in any event.

So I think that's more implied. I'm not saying that there aren't details that should be watched. But it's more the idea of like there are properties along Shore Road that took out houses and brought in tons and tons and tons of dirt to bring themselves out of the floodplain and then build a house on top of the new elevation that is no longer in the floodplain. And now because they brought their elevation up locally, that changes the topography for all of the neighboring

But I guess if you're working in a tidally influenced area, is there no expectation for the contemporary storage if the oceans of water is infinite? So if you're raising a property in a flood zone?

Not on coastal. It doesn't go like that.

Once it goes into the ocean, that's... We're talking about the ocean water coming in, right? That's the flooding that we're talking about?

If someone is raising theirs, now we're talking also about rain that comes down from the sky. that when we have a rain like yesterday, all that rain that would have been at this low-lying area that was in the floodplain is now above the floodplain, and now these neighboring properties are being affected disproportionately.

It's a stormwater retention question, not a flooding question.

But it's on how fill is looked at in terms of...

Same topic or no?

Yeah, in the fill.

Because stormwater is part of the flooding issue because then you...

This flooding issue?

In general. Understand our flood regulations are about the coastal zone and about the rivers.

And FEMA has risk rating 2.0 changed because it brought fluvial flooding, flood that comes from the sky, and sheet flooding into the insurance rating system.

Okay.

And so the maps are changing to include that. And so you'll see flooding in places. You'll see flood zones in places where you might not see rivers.

Also, like Rogers Lake has a flood zone, right? And it is clearly not tidal in any way, shape, or form. It gets flooded because water falls out of the sky.

Yeah, I mean, if you want to bring up what the flood zones look like on there, we are not talking a south of 156 issue. Our flood zones are all over. This town is like made of water. So our flood zones are everywhere.

Any other questions? Because we do need to, because this, like I said, this is just the beginning of it. I guess just a couple of things that I was, is I'm really interested in how, when we're talking about the 100-year versus 500-year, how this relates to what Circa's doing. So, you know, circa is, you know, and this is what the state of Connecticut, and that's why the state of Connecticut has looked at the 500, you know, 0.2 percent. But, you know, but how does this relate to that? And, you know, so I'm looking at what the resiliency committee is doing and how this might relate to that information. And then I did have, and I'm very concerned about the gentrification piece. You know, the gentrification piece is that you have a flood, you know, or we have a flood and all of a sudden people who need to, you know, they can't fix their house because they meet, you know, the substantial improvement stuff. So with that, it's like all of a sudden you can have gentrification overnight of neighborhoods. So I really want to make sure we avoid that. It happened during standing, super standing in Connecticut. It happened in Greenwich, happened in Stanford, happened in Milford. So we saw this in Connecticut, where we had basically gentrification overnight, where the people who lived in those neighborhoods could not afford to elevate. And so what they ended up having to do was they sold their properties, and then people who could self-insure and afford to do the bigger buildings. So that's gentrification overnight, and we want to avoid that. We want to make sure that people could get out.

The flood control agrees with you entirely, which is why we think this should take place over time outside of disasters. using zoning regulations so that if people are going to spend half of the value of their house to make a renovation, that they make it resilient so when a disaster happens, they're not stuck without insurance and having to deal with.

But a lot of times what happens is they've done some improvements. Now they've had, now this is what happened. They've done some improvements over five years or 10 years, however many years your town says, and then you have a flood Now they've got damage that has to be taken care of as well, and that triggers that they have to elevate as well as take care of that damage, and they can't do both. So now they've got a damage property that they can't sell, you know, that they either have to sell to someone who can afford it, but they can't afford to do the repairs, and we just want to make sure we avoid that. So just think about that. To say that it happened, I was part of that. I was the conservation director in the drainage. I was in charge of the flood mitigation program. I handled over 40 grants for people elevating their properties. I saw a lot of stuff. And because one of the things you have is You know, everybody thinks Greenwich, a lot of affluent people, but a lot of the properties on the shore, of course, the ones that flood were the people who, like, if they didn't, hadn't elevated yet because they were the people who couldn't afford to elevate yet. Because anybody who had come in and had money came in and elevated their properties because they did that as part of really super, you know, a lot of renovation. So I want to make sure that we're protecting those folks who, have the generational homes. So I'm really looking at that. So it happens, I saw it happen.

We absolutely would hope that you would, how do we incorporate that into your assessment? How do we accomplish that, Golden?

Yeah, well, it's not an easy one. It's one of those things you have to look at it and say like, oh, because you do have to treat everybody the same. I can't know what your financial situation is versus this when I'm talking about zoning. But that said, I think we need to look at, and we can do an evaluation. And I don't know if we've done this as part of the hazard mitigation process, program with River Cog or whatever, but it would be good to know how many homes we're talking about, what the base flood elevation is, all of those numbers.

There's something called the increased cost of compliance, where if a person has flood insurance, they're in that zone, and the cost of bringing their house into new compliance is higher than the replacement value of the house that the FEMA federal funding will support increased cost of compliance. And so bringing them into a regulated zone introduces access to money that could potentially avoid some of this overnight gentrification you're talking about. In a disaster, there's every kind of situation that happens. There's people who have to leave a place because developers come in and they can buy that property for more than a buyer might be. And there's also situations where the property value goes down in that area. And everybody flees it, and then you see blight in that area because it wasn't addressed. And so I think the bottom line is it's a complex issue. We're going to make our recommendations. we can provide answers to questions like this.

So I guess I appreciate that you've said you've made your recommendation to us, and we're really pleased at that. And it is ultimately our decision. You are correct on that. But we really would love to have you take this information that you've heard, not just say, oh, we presented, we're done, we did our job. We'd really like you to take all of the recommendations that we're hearing and these comments back and look at this because I think we'd love to have a continued dialogue with you and not just say we're done because that's our role as a board.

And I think that one of the things that I've loved about this, this whole zoning rewrite process is I think that the boards aren't talking more. And so we're learning about what other boards are doing. And I think that people are learning what different boards are doing. And that's what makes for a good outcome that makes everybody makes, you know, for an outcome that people can be happy with and accept. But we're here. Flood and Ocean Control Board is here to answer questions. We meet once a month. And we have a website that you can submit questions to or concerns to, and we'll address them that way. But otherwise, all of these are online on both Zoning Commission's site and on our site. And thanks for the chance to talk about this tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So just as a selectman lamppost indicated, we will be making sure that there's a resiliency committee that includes multiple commissions in town, as well as our, you know, folks like our fire department and. you know, first responders or whatever, as well as some of the neighborhood associations. Soundview is on that, I know. I don't know all of the folks who are on the Resiliency Commission. They're going to be looking at that. And we will certainly, I'll have a discussion with Eric and Paul in terms of, you know, Jim's request in terms of, you know, having a very specific meeting, you know, with the Shoreline communities on it. So we'll Like I said, we want it to be an ongoing dialogue. Hopefully you've heard the presentation, have some questions, learned stuff. Make sure you go online and read all of the stuff online so that you know what you see. This presentation will be online as well. and we'll be able to move forward with that.

Denise, since the environmental workshop already is closed.

It's not closed.

Since the environmental workshop was already completed, does it make sense to potentially have another environmental workshop as more of this data is being presented?

We could have another work. It probably wouldn't be a workshop in terms of data gathering. It would be more, we're looking to have some, once we start saying like, oh, where do we want to go with this? But we're looking at taking this particular thing where we have... proposed regulations to the people so as we're looking at what's coming out of that yes well that's that's what that's exactly what we're talking about is have it you know possibly having a meeting it sounds new or whatever sorry okay all right so um the next thing on our agenda is a river hog housing committee update and

I did not attend the last meeting because I had just been appointed and my summer schedule had already been in process. So I can't give you an update on that. As far as the Housing Strategic Planning Committee, I attended the last meeting. I was not appointed to it at that time. But there was some good ongoing discussion. I will be attending it from now on regularly. Yeah.

And so I also attend the Housing Strategic Planning Committee. The minutes get presented, get posted on that. So we'll make sure. I think I had asked that those minutes get sent out to the commission. So I don't know if they were, but let's make sure that we send those out. They just had a meeting last week. And I asked the commission to really take a look at those because it gives you a kind of like, okay, this is where we are. And a lot of times the report, the River Cog Housing Committee report is also there and it will be captured in a minute. So, and not to say that Bonnie, who's our rep, won't be able to provide that here, but it also will be in the minutes if she has an update at that.

Do we have any questions on any of those? I will say I did attend the River Cog conference that we had. in Essex, where they did sort of roll out the tool that they're preparing for the calculation of how housing will be looked at in our town. They didn't do it town by town, they sort of did it generically, but they are working on the number that's gonna be given to us for how many housing units we have versus how many housing units we need. So that process is underway and we'll be hearing more from them as that process continues, so.

But when is that date that they have to, we have to?

We have to decide in June of next year whether we are going with their numbers or generating our own. So they're going to be working on creating these numbers between now and then and giving us the numbers sufficiently ahead of time that we can pick by June of next year whether to use those numbers or come up with our own numbers.

Okay, public hearing. We'll start the public hearing. And first public hearing on, oh, go ahead. Yes. Thank you.

I would like to read the legal notice of the public hearings. We have two. The Zoning Commission of the Town of Old Lyme will hold a public hearing at a regular meeting on Monday, September 14th at 6.30 p.m. at Memorial Town Hall to consider and hear comments on the following. The first is 85 Falls Road special permit application to amend existing special permit to allow for sale of grocery beer sale from within store. CPD properties applicant. And the second is 6 Johnny Cake Hill Road special permit application to renovate the existing three bedroom single family dwelling and convert the existing pool house to include an additional bedroom for a total bedroom count of four and a total floor area of 10,876 square feet. Property is in Gateway Conservation Zone, Beth Ann Collins applicant. At this hearing, members of the public shall have the opportunity to appear and be heard. Copies of the full application are available for public inspection at the Old Lyme Town Clerk's Office during regular business hours at 52 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, Connecticut And this is dated August 31st, 2026. So that's the legal notice.

Thank you, Jane. So we'll start with 85 Falls Road.

Good evening, everyone. Amy Suchens here representing the applicant. As I had described at the meeting back in July, when you set the public hearing. This is a very simple, straightforward application to add the opportunity for a grocery beer permit at this location. There are no physical improvements involved in the application. This is simply internal as shown in the application materials. There will be an area of the coolers that are designated specifically for the beer sales and then a separate register. One of the questions that came up during the preliminary discussion was about the operations and how that occurs. There is, in the regulatory process, there is the opportunity, I think the question was about how does the grocery store and the gasoline work. It is internal to the, licensing process that they look at for how the entities and operations are structured with respect to the gasoline sales and the rest of the sales. I think the other question, and this sort of really goes into what liquor control looks at, less so. But to answer the question, I did just bring the copy of the form that will be part of the eventual state application process that outlines what needs to happen. So by way of overview, the in order for, assuming your approval, because obviously if you don't approve, we never get to this point, in order to qualify for grocery beer, as you see in the middle part of the form, there are a variety of categories, one through 12. One through six has to be, and the word that's used is primarily in the statute, and that is defined to be more than 50%. that more than 50% of the total sales that occur in the store are within categories one to six. So if you had something that was just a seafood store, the easiest example in the area is Flanders Fish Market. If you just think about the market part, because they're probably predominant sales while they have some accessories, seafood, they would never qualify for a grocery beer permit because their total sales of everything else don't exceed 50%. And then, as I said, the categories seven through 12 are the things that are outside grocery. And so to answer that other question, the issue with gasoline is a little bit of how the department looks at which entity is operating which portion of the business. And as I understand it, it is something that consumer protection will look at in the course of evaluating the application. I think the only other question and issue, obviously, we will comply, if approved, with any kind of limits on alcohol sales hours that are regulated by the state. Current legal alcohol sales are Monday through Saturday, 8 to 10, Sunday, 10 to 6. And there are specific holidays, as I think we all know, where sales are and aren't allowed. So those are all, again, regulated by the grocery purification grocery beer permit itself. And then again, just to note, this does not allow any kind of THC products. That is something that is a separate endorsement only with a package store license. And as I said, we don't anticipate there are no changes associated with the building. We expect this will just be sort of another beverage choice that people coming in and looking at the cooler but happy to answer any other questions you might have.

I think this is an easy one. The 50% was our own reg or a state reg? State reg.

So if for some reason you could approve and we didn't comply, we can't get the grocery beer permit license. And I appreciate that.

I think I brought that up in July and that was kind of, we weren't sure, but I appreciate that. Thank you.

So just general question. So you're assuming, and you'd probably know, that the sale of those six categories exceed the total monthly sales of gas. Is that correct?

So my understanding is that when you have gas, I have another client who is exploring package store options. And there's a whole process that I guess DCP looks at as far as how much space literal physical space is operated as gas, if that's technically, and they look at the entities that are running each of these things. So as I think there was a question, you may have asked it about how exactly does that work? It's part of consumer protection and liquor controls analysis. So here it's likely that there is an entity that runs the gas and there is an entity that that runs the store. And all of that is the process by which DCP looks at where these sales fall in. And then there's also sort of going beyond that. My understanding is something like cigarettes are also treated differently in those categories. So it is all part of the liquor control review process.

But to be allowed, these six categories would have to – 50% of that would have to exceed the gas, correct, as a general – Sort of, but I think the issue is that there are circumstances in which the gas would be called out separately because of how the entity operation is.

And that's what consumer protection is looking at when they look at the – We're certainly not looking at it. Right.

Yeah.

quick to talk about.

Anybody have any other additional questions?

No comments from the neighboring businesses? Did we get anything?

I should have mentioned at the beginning, we did our mailing. The copy of that was posted on the

the website but no we didn't hear any back hear back from anybody and no one has contacted my office about this either it's been remarkably quiet considering what they're asking to do i was expecting somebody to say something but there's nothing from anybody on i think it's that unorthodox i mean i understand um the uh paul just quickly um because i know it's hard to jump in from online do you have any questions

I did have which is. Which is kind of new in. There's a cooler designated section of a cooler that just can drop down drape or is it a lot cooler.

My understanding of the regulations is it does have to, and I should be clear, not your zoning regulations, the liquor control regulations, that does have either, has either one, like I think we've seen in traditionally in sort of the larger grocery stores has the drop down. Other locations, it's just the door locks. So I think here, given it's already closed,

uh in a separate part i would expect that it would be locked but either way it has to be inaccessible after hours okay any other questions from commission members a hearing oh i just have just because this is the first time i think i've gone through this being on zoning anyway um if this is approved um What happens? What does the town do at this point?

Well, from a zoning standpoint, it's like any other special permit that gets reported. However, the store doesn't change until they go to liquor control and sort all of that out. At that point in time, it's pretty much going to be handled through the building permit process because they're going to come in for whatever internal modifications they need, probably not very much. And then they're going to – I would review it as part of that. There's not going to be a separate new zoning application at that point in time. So, yeah, like any other special permit, the appeal period will pass. We'll report the special permit. Unlike any other special permit, nothing will happen until they finish at the state level. Presumably at that point, they'll notify me that they finished the state level and that they'll be making whatever the improvements are. But it will happen through the building permit process rather than separate zoning program at this point in time.

Great. I think the one thing I would add is that I believe the actual form to consumer protection. So this form plus like the more formal application page does require some indication that the town has approved the use, you know, and it just depends on whether sometimes that's just the zoning enforcement officer because it's a use that's allowed. Here, we'd probably work with Eric about whatever was necessary if it was the special permit or, you know, if he needs to issue a zoning permit or signature, you know, much like happens with some of the other things that require a state license.

Most of these liquor control forms have a line on them for me to sign and I would sign it given the fact it's been approved. You would also probably go to fire marshal official always other people will also sign off on it before it gets into state.

Thank you. Anything else? Okay, I'm gonna open up. Are there any public comments on this application? Any public comments? No public comments on the application?

She's no public comments. So we have a motion. I'll make a motion that we close the public hearing. Second.

We have a motion on the table to close the public hearing. That's been seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. The public hearing is closed.

Do we just want to act on this right away?

I would suggest we do that, Denise.

All right, thank you.

Is that a motion, Paul? No, he can't be. I'll make the motion. I'll make the motion that we approve it subject to whatever the normal special permit format applications is that we made all the necessary findings. Okay. And I didn't hear that there were any restrictions that we imposed.

There are no restrictions. Again, as was mentioned, they're not changing anything exterior to the store. It doesn't require a can. It doesn't require a gateway. Most of the things that would have additional restrictions are not really applicable here.

Yeah, so that's my motion. Second.

Comment? Go ahead. Comment.

Do the hours of the operation of the store...

Did the umbrella of those hours of the liquor sales fall within that, correct?

Yes. The store. 5 a.m. to 12, I think. You approved it for pretty broad hours at this point in time, through midnight, like it's 5 a.m. to midnight. So, yeah, there's no hours where theoretically the liquor sales were allowed where the stores were otherwise open.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comments? Okay. Al and Traver, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries. Thanks, Paul.

Thank you. It's Johnny Cake Hill Road. Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Thank you. It is a state forum.

Hi, everyone. Raymond Malinowski, Nigo Land Design, representing our property owner and project, Bethann Collins. So just for the purpose of orientation to get us started, this property is on a Johnny cake Hill Road and the reason that we're here is for a special exception application because we're over the 4,000 square foot. I guess it's not really a maximum you know per per code anything beyond 4,000 square feet within the coastal I believe it's within the coastal gateway zone requires a special exception. Currently, the property has about 10,544 square feet worth of floor area. I do want to point out that the maximum floor area that the site is allotted because the site minus the wetlands has 12.2 acres worth of area. The max gross floor area of the site would be about 1.8 acres. which, you know, we're not at. We are at over 10,000 square feet, which does require the special permit application, but that's really all that we're here for. For starters, we did go through Gateway, and we do have a rather positive letter. Part of the reason behind that is because the scope of our work is rather limited. What What we were proposing to do is a renovation of the existing house. Specifically, there is a pool house right here, northern part of the main existing house. And then there's a proposal to add a conservatory. It's a rather small, want to say, should have it somewhere here. We're only adding about 332 square feet. So it's within that general scope of we're only adding 300 square feet worth of building. to this existing house. And on top of that, the renovations are adding a bedroom. However, we have also gone through health approval, and they are okay with the existing system to be utilized for the increase in flow. Other aspects of this project, so as I was discussing, the location, Duck Creek does go along the north end of the property. It is a tributary of the Connecticut River, as are its tidal wetlands. Therefore, we are in that gateway zone. What you can see here is we have two lines. They're both in blue. The 50-foot, we're calling this the tidal wetland buffer, but it's also off of the It's the 50 foot, we should have this as well. I guess we don't. The 50 foot title wetland buffer is something that we cannot encroach. That's something that the Gateway Commission has expressed, but it's far and away from any part of the building, much less the scope of the work that's being done. The 100 foot comes out a little further. The 100 foot, we also do not approach. None of the existing buildings do. We obviously were proposing the reserved area within the 100 foot, but because that's just a reserved area and it's just for conceptual purposes, it does not exceed anything that the Gateway Commission would be opposed to. And then going off to some of the other features we do have.

That's a new reserve area?

That is a new reserve area, yes.

Where was the old one?

That, I'm not sure. This property was done in 19... The existing house was created in 1980. So any reserve area that was done was based on 1980 technical standards, which I'm not too familiar with. I'm not sure if they even had reserve areas back then. I'm so sorry. But yeah, we do have that existing leaching field present here that is currently in proper working order. We did discover really great soil conditions on site. But yes, the reserve area was placed there. Another pretty great location right at the edge of the brush line, which is delineated over here. But generally, we are staying out of the 100-foot upland review area. We're staying out of the 100-foot and 50-foot Connecticut River Gateway setbacks, which is part of the reason we got the favorable letter, and we have received health approval. So in general, you know, the scope is rather small in nature, but because we are exceeding 4,000 square foot, that is why we're presenting in front of this board today.

I can read the letter from Gateway if anybody wants me to. Please. This is the findings. CRCG reviewed the application at its August 27th, 2026 meeting. CRCGC finds the proposed development conforms to Gateway standards and old line zoning regulations, section 13.2.13, and CRCG is not opposed to the application. property owners within the Gateway Conservation Zone enjoy the beauty and traditional riverway scene because of preservation efforts. CRGC works to ensure that beauty and tradition endure. Property owners are expected to respect the preservation practices put in place by the Gateway standards to prevent the deterioration of the riverway scene, including no new or expanded permanent structures within the 50-foot riparian buffer or 100-foot structural setback, preserving trees and replacing trees that are removed or dead with a similar native species, using non-reflective glass and windows and doors, minimizing impervious surfaces, and planting and encouraging the growth of native riparian vegetation along waterways to improve the ecological health of the Connecticut River.

Thank you.

So that was what they said. Thank you. So do we see trees or anything on this plan?

There's no disturbance to any of the tree line that's present right now. All of the construction is being done within the existing footprint of the building itself, you know, the renovation of the pool house and then the construction of this rather modest, you know, give or take a

Is there a tree plan in your group?

No, there's no tree plan because there's no disturbance proposed. And this was also discussed with the Connecticut River Gateway Commission, and they are aware of this too.

Don't I see trees or something along?

Oh, those are existing trees, yeah.

The trees that are there are shown on the plan.

Oh, yes, yes.

So I have a question on farmland.

conceptual leaching system, and I know you just need to show that you can have a extra leaching area, but is there a reason that it's where you would have to cut down trees?

Yeah, good question. Really, what I think was done there was When you enter the property right so long gravel driveway this survey doesn't really show the extensive property. But you come down and there's this really nice on play if these test holes are you know they're showing well within the tree line, but this tree line is also canopy line it's not really like. where the start of this brush begins. It's more so just to denote where the leaves and the canopy of the tree are. We dug two test holes along that tree line. Obviously, on the plan, it shows well within. This was primarily just because it was well out of the way. We wanted to create as little disturbance to the property as we could. Of course, you know, this testing that we found was like amazing. You know, I mean, the percolation rate was great. Depth to ground water was great as well. This is in a lower spot than over here. realistically, or I guess central to where the house would be. Realistically, if we were to do a septic system design plan, we would most likely look in this higher area, primarily because you have more area to work with. And just being higher up gives us more depth to groundwater. We can do a lot more with that. For conceptual purposes of the reserve area, we did just want to minimize any disturbance to the property.

So in terms of that, Eric, let's say they had an update deceptive system. Does that just go to LED light or would they look at it from a zoning perspective?

Usually, I have to sort of look into the gateway regs and see if that gateway regs give us sort of additional towers because of the fact that there would be disturbance. But if they're not changing their square footage of house at that point in time, it wouldn't usually come back to you for a new review.

So I can answer that because we've done a bunch of systems near tidal wetlands. And anything within 50 feet, so like a structure, like you're not permitted to place any structure. That includes a septic tank. In the 100-foot, at least, you're allowed to place a septic tank. But a septic tank would require a variance. So your board wouldn't oversee that. It would be the Zoning Board of Appeals. And they would not... I realistically would not grant approval because there's just so much space that you could place the system.

I mean, I understand you did it for ease, but I have to say, I don't like if somebody puts up with those up, you know, it's like, it's, it's not where you would want to put your septic system, you know, for a whole host of reasons, including, you know, close to the water, cutting the trees down. So I have to say just from the conceptual plan, I don't like that being shown like that. But I appreciate that you just went in and did some test pits there so that you weren't disturbing the property.

So the pool used to be in the pool house.

Yeah. Because there's no pool. It took me a while. I was looking for the pool. I had to pull up the aerial photo for the pool. Okay. So...

And it says that the pool house already had window openings, but you're changing all the windows in the pool house?

Yeah, so all windows that face Duck Creek per the Gateway Commission will be non-refundable.

So does that say something on here? anywhere?

Yeah, so there is a kind of like a master architectural set. This was just primarily to show dimensions. The true set, the construction drawings that we have on file are right around 90 pages, which, you know, typically I send an email link to Eric Knapp. No, I mean, the 90 pages would be way too large to send. Of course, we will be providing these.

Could you do that and then highlight the things that are on this letter? See, we're not going to actually see the things that they've specified that you've complied with. We are the ones that give you the approval.

Right.

So can you send that set to Eric and highlight where those things are?

Absolutely.

Because somebody's going to have to be able to look at those plans in order to review the permits.

We need to have a hard copy on file, so you should provide us with a hard copy. Because if somebody comes in and wants to see what we have moved, do you want to have a hard copy?

Honestly, what we would be doing with it is putting it in LaserFish anyway. We don't keep a lot of the hard copies. We don't have the space for it anymore. It's a little out of the way.

so if he sends it electronically we will immediately put it into our laser fish and people will access it as long as people have access that's what i want to make sure okay we don't physically have the paper topics anymore and we can also have a condition of approval that everything every window meets the connecticut river gateways letter you know just to make sure they're not actually saying that in here they're expecting us to do it if you read the letter so

We do require that. So if you could highlight the ways in which these items, so, you know, when I asked you about the trees, if those are actually the only trees on the site, right there, what you've got drawn in.

These trees right here. So these are the trees.

One between the two buildings.

So these are trees that are present on the survey map. This site is 13 acres. There's a lot more trees than that, and these limits themselves denote the trees on the property as well.

Okay, so what we're supposed to be looking at is what it looks like from the water side. So as long as in between those two building structures and the water, you've shown the trees that are there?

No, it has tree lines.

So there's a lot of trees. Yeah, this is all trees. The house really is.

These are trees in the lawn, like here. Okay. But this is a tree line. So these are the tree line marks here. And then here.

Okay. So... those are going to be your women's. So there's not going to happen, anything happen outside that.

Yeah. Yeah. Nothing, nothing beyond the pool house, as well as that conservatory. Obviously we do have silk fence that we've proposed to ensure that there's no

Is this something that sticks up?

Not at all.

So it's just flat?

Yeah, it's one story.

No, I didn't mean the house, but the site itself.

Oh, yeah, no.

It's kind of repressed. It's like right when you go onto Johnny Cake on the left. Okay, you're not really seeing it. It's not like the ones up on top of Johnny Cake that you can see from the river. This one's actually down in the Depression, almost overlooking the Duck River Cemetery area. Okay.

Yeah, if you were able to get on, you can access this by a boat.

Yeah, you can't see this from the really the non reflective glass in the windows and doors are probably and the fact that you've shown the area of trees is is probably the only thing that relates to our approval.

What about lighting? Anything like that? There's no proposed lighting. No proposed lighting changes.

If you'd highlight that for Eric on your The plan that you submit. Yeah, the windows.

And I think, you know, saying that there's no proposed lighting, just, you know, if they're not approving any lighting, they'd have to come back to the lighting. Okay. And tree removal.

Sounds good.

What do you mean tree removal?

Well, tree removal in terms of the, well, you know, especially trees that are, you know, facing the river.

Or within the 100 foot repair and buffer.

Here's like an aerial photo. Because all of a sudden you don't want somebody, I'll say you have the people who are in there now, somebody new comes in and decides to clear cut because of the water. And we have seen it. That's why there's no tree removal. Any tree removal needs to come back to us.

No tree removal is proposed.

The fountain is, no, the fountain's over on that side. That's it.

Yeah, Felton's right here.

Yeah, right here. Look at that. Here's the aerial photo. Yeah. And so the river's down here. So what I'm saying is I want to make sure that there's no tree.

Right, right. So maybe just some note on the plan that those trees are to remain or whatever.

Yeah, well, usually what we do for site plans is we have an existing tree line and any proposed clearing would... have a, we would have a proposed clearing limit. Because we show the silt fence beyond the tree line, there's no proposed clearing whatsoever.

Yeah. And I would say just maintain, you know, they need to maintain the existing tree line over.

I will make sure that that's on whatever plans I get here for. Yeah.

Well, we still at least make the appearance of doing our job.

Is there any other, you know, anything else?

Paul, any thoughts?

No, I think a lot of questions have been answered. Okay.

All right. Any other questions from the commission before I ask for public comment? Okay.

Public comment on 6 Johnny Hill. Johnny K. Hill. No public comments? Okay. I'll take a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. Second. Okay.

We've got a motion that's seconded. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes unanimously. And we'll get, it's on our next thing on our agenda anyway, so we'll just take it up. Can I have a motion to, so we can put it on the table to approve?

I'll make that motion. I'll make a motion that we approve the plan as submitted on condition that the full set of plans, all 90 pages, be supplied to the CEO outlining somewhere on there and showing him where that is in the 90 pages. that the provision of non-reflective glass and doors on the area facing the water and no clearing beyond the tree line in the area facing the water.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Second by Bonnie.

Any further discussion? That there's no lighting planned, I'd like to add to the... Okay.

No lighting is approved. No change in the lighting. We'll make that as a friendly amendment.

Yep.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion opposed.

Thank you.

We don't have any new applications. Actually, you do. Oh, we do have a new application. Something came in.

Yep, last minute, and it's 100 full road, I think.

Nick Fulton.

How was that?

Harrison's directed me to bring extra copies. Okay.

Anna Tanner, Realty, LLC.

Son and daughter names.

Really got into it.

Yeah, very.

He didn't have copies this morning, so he brought copies to hand out.

100 Shore Road?

Yeah, it's the old Blackhall Grill.

Okay.

It's only been a couple of years since I first came in and talked to you about this.

Which we already approved some stuff for him. Reg change. You had to amend the regs to allow this to be a use that was actually usable in that zone.

I wondered what had happened.

Treading water.

I got really good at it.

Let me interrupt here for one minute. Whereabouts are we on the agenda? Is this under new applications? This is new applications.

Well, right at the beginning, Paul. G-I-I-A.

It was a little bit garbled, and then the next thing I heard was gentlemen speaking, so that's why, yeah.

Okay, so we're rolling numeral six. This is a new application. We're going to set a public hearing for it.

Okay. Thank you.

Well, that's really all we're doing.

Yeah, I mean, I asked just coming to give you a very brief introduction about it, and then we have to set a public hearing for presumably the new introduction. Sure, sure.

I'm proposing or would like to open a funeral home in 100 Shore Road. It was originally a restaurant, obviously, for a lot of years. Oddly enough, unrelated to this, my father tried to do this in 1986. So interesting. So my proposal is to do that. A special use permit is needed. I'm here to discuss that or when we get the hearing to go over that. In that packet, I've done my best to put together from the checklist that was given to go over all the details, the good idea of the parking plan, working on some other things that I'll have ready for the hearing, like lighting plan and that sort of thing. To go over the overview again, it's pretty straightforward. 43 zone parking spots are much improvement from where I currently am. Some agreements with a neighbor to allow me to rent if I needed more space for parking. I don't know the address of the place where Holland Farms was. I've got to look at the address.

Reserve area.

Yes, it's Rick Badalino's owner. We discussed with him about using that if necessary for additional parking. There was, again, a lot of work between two years ago when I first came to you and now between the banks and plans and architects, or I shouldn't say that, not architects, but builders, to come up with a building plan of what's needed in order for it to be a funeral home. The conversation when it came in a couple of years ago, just to recap that, was the Zoning regulations said that you could not have a room where chemical embalming was done on premises, and that contradicted the Department of Health's basic definition of funeral home. That was what was discussed, and that room, that sink, that train would go to a holding tank that would be pumped out, and I reference it in there by a company like Clean Water or Clean Harvest. Clean Harvest does that for hospitals and such. It would be a stretch for them to do it here, and during the hearing or now, referencing what's said in my outline, I would like to go over the amount of business I plan to do, which is minimal with the discussion of traffic patterns and things like that. We're hoping that we could keep in tradition of what's going on to 40 to 70 a year that services that are done here. And of that around, we're going to have the historical numbers, the year around 16 or 17 services that actually use the building. And those are always done during business hours with much better hours than a, uh, restaurant would have, to say the least. Again, I don't know what outline you're looking for, but I think I'm... Is there a site plan?

We don't have a formal site plan yet. That's one of the things that's going to be coming in between now and your next meeting here. And he knows what that is, right? Yes. And we did get a sort of sketch from him on the GIS, and I said, do you need something a little better? And so part of the process here has been negotiating with him, making sure we have everything in time for whatever you set the hearing for. You should have, obviously, well in advance of October, but if you don't for some reason, we'll need to get the hearing to be on that. I would like to ask a question about site plan for what I'm looking to do and get a definition so I can be specific.

It's been great, or Greg can explain this to me. I'd like to know what you're looking for in a site plan. I'm not changing the building, the layout, the plan. Not changing anything is the existing. All I tend to do is you know, line the parking spots and repave the exterior. And everything I will be doing is just cosmetic, really. What would the site planning like to see?

There was a survey done in several of the pre-approvals. So you could take that existing survey. See, the state line goes through the middle of that front parking lot.

So... State line for... Oh, yes. Thank you. Got it. Yes.

And so I remember that came up in the previous approvals because... they had parking spaces on the state land. So we needed to see that. They made some changes to the front of that building. I don't know if you're going to leave them there or what, but we need to see the parking. If you're going to have offsite parking, we need to see something about a sketch of that. So we could approve that too, but we're basically giving you the approval for all time of what it is that you could do there. So, and it, is generally in a picture form rather than just a verbal form, because that's how enforcement goes. So you don't have to have a new survey. I think the property then surveyed umpteen times, but to take that information and draw on it where your parking will be, if there's gonna be any outside like places where you put your monuments and things for people to look at and stuff like that, anything that'll take place outside the building And then I guess we have to Eric, what's about the interior of the building?

The part that I hadn't quite appreciated until tonight, if you do have an agreement to use off-site parking, we're going to need a copy of that agreement as part of this application, because theoretically that involves a property that is not part of this application yet. So we need to understand how they're being brought into this application. So If there is some sort of agreement, we don't need the numbers. We don't need to know what you're paying. We need to know whatever the term, whatever the length is, how many spaces you have, the conditions that are going to go along with this offsite parking, should that be required. Okay? Okay.

All right.

Yeah. And one of the things with the survey and showing what's, you know, giving us something that is existing conditions, even if you're not going to change it, it's like, okay, here's what the conditions are on the property right now. It's really important for us because You're not owning it. Now you decide, I want to sell it to someone. They do something. Eric needs to know, like, oh, they did something to the property, but he needs to have a map to know what was the existing conditions that we approved. So even if you're not proposing any changes, we need to have that, and it needs to be as part of a survey. So like I said, there should be a survey on file already. People have submitted that. So just use that and build off of it. The one thing I would be looking at is if you are proposing anything, so do you need a new septic system? If there's anything that, it might not be a new building per se, but if there's stuff, if you're going to propose any new landscaping, if you're going to propose lighting, those are all the things we'll be looking at. Signage. So think about those types of things that might need to go on there. You know, because if you're going to do lighting, it might be that. You know, neighbors will come in and say, we'd really like to have the parking lot screen. So think about if you're going to need to do landscaping, that's one of the things we'll be looking. Those are the things we'll be looking at. And if we have a plan to start, we'll say, this is what we're proposing. But somebody suggests something, we can say, you know what, we're going to require landscaping or we're going to require lighting or not require lighting.

Those are the things we look at. To see something. Is that more of a perspective drawing, a 3D architectural piece?

So I think maybe you get a copy of the old site plan or the old survey and then delineate any changes you want to make to that.

See, if you're not changing the building, you're not changing any of the exterior appearance of it, the footprint of the building probably would be adequate. But for example, where do people go in? How do they come out? You know, the circulation of what you're going to use for people using the site. Because that's what we really are interested in. What could have an effect on the other people in the area or not, depending on if it's good. I'm sorry.

Is some of the parking lot on the state line? It is over. In the front. So does the state have to look at this? I know when we did

sidewalks and things on it's his it's kind of his risk because if you make an important part of your site plan on state property they can say out you go right they you don't and i think they do have some kind of a uh agreement, but it's sovereign, so you may come kind of a deal with the state of Connecticut. They can change their mind.

I think in this case, they're not changing any of the entrances, changing any of the existing parking. They're going to reline the existing parking lot as it sits.

But if he's changing the use of the building so that he might have different... Then we have to say, like, okay...

we're approving so much parking what if the state doesn't allow him to do park there anymore then we need we need to be looking at like what the parking no i understood yeah make sure that he has enough spots within contained within his own property exactly right now he has an agreement with his neighbor which will give us the accessory parking that he needs for that and we and that's all and that's all the stuff what i'm trying to get for him is is that is there an ability for him i think and maybe this is a question he's trying to get for him to complete that without the hiring of an engineer

I've already talked to him about who he needs to hire. We've been having this conversation now for over a month, and I think we're pretty good on what he needs to come back with. I've said most of what you're telling him. I've already been telling him already. So I think we're all sort of coming back more or less on the same page here with what he needs to come back with.

The better your drawing is and the better your submission is, the more sure you can be that you get it approved. And then we can refer to it later and say, well, you guys said I could.

Understood. All right. Very good. Again, let me go back to just get some clarification on that accessory parking. I talked to Rick in the bank in the line. I mean, there was no formal discussion of this, no contract on. We were talking about it and he had heard through the grapevine of the be working with them to buy the property. And he said, if you need that, hey, I'd be willing to work something out. That was the extent of the conversation. I didn't have any intention. Maybe now is the time to confirm it.

Yeah, so if I was you, because he also has a lot of extra land there, and you don't want to preclude him from renting out the other space that he already has now that was rented out to Holland Farms, but he still has a lot of excess acreage behind the building there. It's already flat where there used to be a tow yard in there. Yeah, right. If I was you, I would try to craft some agreement to give you, don't go into his existing spaces. Maybe try to find parking in the back spaces that won't interfere with his business ability.

See, it's important for you because you have, you know, a very popular person who happens to die.

So just a basic lease agreement, I would imagine, would be something that would be sufficient for you guys to lay out on the property line?

Again, given concerns about the state tankings and with the parking way and whatever the number of spaces that would not be potentially lost, knowing that there is a reserve area that is under contract or something firm would be important because obviously an oral discussion that just says, hey, it'll be available if you need it, that doesn't get reported anywhere. That doesn't really make it into the approvals. It can always be rescinded by the next person along the way. So we're really gonna need something fairly firm to go along with this approval to make sure that it all gets tied together going forward.

It's in your best interest. Oh, absolutely. Sure.

I've done a lot with a lot less in the past. How many parking spots have you got over here?

Twelve.

Well, I think if you count my yard, we're up to 18. All right. Well, thank you very much.

It's a little quieter neighborhood where you are right now.

So do we need to make a motion to formally accept this?

To accept this in a public hearing, yes. I'll make a motion to accept it. and to set it down for public hearing in October 12th.

Does that work for you? October 13th.

October 13th.

You're right. That was the better.

Bonnie seconded. Bonnie seconded.

Okay. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye. This is not a public hearing. I'm sorry. It's receiving sit. So the public doesn't get a chance to talk. It's all some people out here.

All in favor say aye. Hi. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay.

Make sure you're on your toes there. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Anybody want to give me back?

I was on my toes. I know it was a 13. You pointed it out earlier, and I still didn't catch it.

That's all he gave us. Okay. Coastal Site Plan, 7 Old Bridge Road.

I don't have to print it off. I don't have to print it off.

We're getting there. Sorry, it took us a while to get here.

Yeah, that kid, 1980. That was only 10 years ago, right? I wasn't born yet, but he was trying to make me even feel... It's unbelievable. You can really insult somebody like that.

Back then...

I think second time in my life I've been through this, but I'm Bruce Dowd, my wife Sherry. We own 7 Old Bridge Road, which a lot of people don't know where it is, but it's two houses up from the Baldwin Bridge. On the left or right? We are on the right-hand side of Old Bridge Road.

Right at the intersection.

Yeah, I just didn't know if you were the only house on the left, which I should have.

No, we're way up at the intersection. No, we're the second to the last. Alan is at the end, and he hasn't been around in a couple of years. But he has a good caretaker. Good neighbor. Anyhow, we are proposing a 360-square-foot breezeway. and a 27 by 30 two-car garage attached to the house. We presently have a building permit approved for that. It's been through ledge light zoning. So we're ready to go. And then we have to go through this process, which is great.

Did you not realize that you had to go through that?

I did not realize that, but Eric blessed me with it. Like, what's that? Well, first you pay money. And then you move forward, if you're lucky. I was going to say, if you're lucky. So I don't know what, you probably have my application. I did submit drawings.

You do actually have the application. Yes.

And the drawings are basically the same site plan that I... that I submitted to Ledge Light. We just also put an in-ground full end that's not done, that did not trigger the cam for some reason. But...

I don't know a good answer for you. This one did trigger the cam. Okay.

This time we figured it out.

With that said... My pool contractor was not very resourceful when it came to erosion control and things like that. Like, who's taking care of that? Well, that's your job. Well, it wasn't his job, according to him. And so I have worked with my excavation contractor, who has been in business since the 70s. I've used him since 78. And we now have... 475 feet of silt fence deployed in five different areas and 128 hay bales. And we've just planted grass just before the rain on about half a fish. And with the silt fences, I have no ravines, but we did just buy some more grass seeds.

Sure you did.

Yeah.

A lot of grass right along the fence.

Yes, exactly. And I have two tree wells. There'll be a bunch of grass down in there. But at least I got a pretty good approval rating that everything we did, about 90% worked. As Eric said, we can't stop the water. I'm not in a flood zone. We are at elevation 40, and we're 150 feet off the river. So we have quite a bank. I have some pictures. I didn't put them on a poster board. But in this, we can pass it around. I have my building permit. We also are getting a pool shed that certainly is not like the last pool house that we had. It's a barnyard building, but very pretty. And we applied for that with Eric. Yeah, that's correct. Coolstead is right here, and it's 192 square feet, and it encroaches slightly into the setback, I think three feet, nine inches into the setback. And the rule is, I guess you can encroach half of the setback, which would be seven feet and a half feet. So that's over and done with on... June 18th, minor accessory structure approval. Building permit, Eric checked the box on August 26th, and so did Mark. So copy of the building permits here. And there's some pictures. It shows... Yes, absolutely. It shows what we've done to mitigate... The bank is just as important to me as it is everybody else. I actually trim the bank yearly of saplings, you know, little growth. I didn't do that this year because the more growth, the better. Right along the bank's edge, I have 100 feet of silt fence and 35 hay bales. And that's doing a good job. It's holding everything. The last picture is where the water's coming down on the very last page. And you can see we found some rocks. They're for sale, by the way. But yeah, we're going to do something with those. But the rocks placed there are doing a really good job. Like, where else do you put them? Ultimately, a lot of them will be buried right there and turned into a retaining wall that's about three feet high. There always was a wall there. So we're basically relocating the wall, and that was outlined on the plan. What else? The rain yesterday was a bit challenging. With our new silt fences, there are about two areas where it's getting under the silt fence, which I will repair. One's on the top layer. We put it across our driveway, which is stone, so the water found its way under the silt fence. It wasn't damaging in any way. But we put in a trench, about 125 feet long, lined with rock. The trench is 12 to 18 inches deep, and there's a sediment pond at the end of it that's four feet deep, about four feet around, where the water gathers, and hopefully the sediment will. We've had to clean that out once already, so it's doing its job. The water out of that sediment area has to travel about 100 feet before it goes down the bank and it's following my stairs that go down to the river shore. And that's where the water is going. And the last picture shows, it depicts the under the stair area, which shows no evidence of sediment or anything like that. So I think we've done pretty good. The pool guy got an F. But we've been, I think, very proactive. And half of the reason is the pool already has happened. So the silt fence was up way before the pool construction started. The breezeway and two-car garage, of which we have the building permit for, is pretty minuscule as far as the square footage that it affects. And essentially, It'll be better once the foundation's in because it'll act as a, you know, now I'm getting all the water. So post-construction, I have drains going in front of my two-car garage that will accept water. That's the peak of the property. We've been working with elevation changes and things like that. It's a little difficult to plant a pool and make it look right on a six or 7% grade, but we're just about there. On site already in and ready to function are three yard drains, actually four yard drains. I have a geotext fabric over them now, and I'm not accepting water into those. A, they're not at the right elevation and, B, I don't want everything to silt in.

Do those drain down at the slope down there?

Yeah, they will go into a dry well that's there now we put in. The dry well is four feet deep. I think we have five tons of stone and a three-quarter inch stone. So, yeah. And, of course, at that time, there'll be grass too. Never had any evidence of washout erosion prior to any of this. I don't have any now. And I think we're getting better because providing in a couple of weeks we see some green grass, about half of the area that was affected because the pool construction created material. And, you know, the pool guy was like, what do you plan on doing with all that? Well, we did a good job, plus it – It settled dramatically, and we just put four 16-yard loads of topsoil on top of it, and probably picked the wrong day to seed and hay, but that's the way it is. Yeah, we got 2.46 inches in what, you know, maybe three hours, so it rained about an inch an hour, as it did once in August and once Memorial Day, so. It'd be nice if it didn't happen again. And fall is usually, so maybe it's still summer. I don't, maybe it's the latter part of summer. So I'll do my best to answer any questions you have. I think that's about it. We moved here in, we moved into the house 2020. We bought it in 17. And then, you know, we went through the whole COVID thing and We moved in right before COVID, didn't we? We're originally from Westbrook, myself and Sherry, and we lived in Killingworth for 38 years. And my sister is Marsha, and her sister's Debbie Wade. They've been here since the 70s. And yeah, we like the town. We like the spot. And the house is not a McMansion. As Harry Plough said, it's a hobbit house. It's a pretty small house.

So the- The best sunset.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's what we need, which the taxes were, you know, the structure's worth that much and the land's worth that much. Yeah. We had a loss in Florida and that whole thing that they were talking about before with the value of the house. Our condo is not fancy at all. No gated community. It's 1,100 square feet. But in today's world, it's worth like 600 grand, which I'm ready to sell. But beside the point, it's assessed at like $66,000. I don't know how it works, but the 50% rule. We had a toilet supply line go leak for about six weeks. And you wouldn't believe mold and mildew. I never saw it. like this. But we did $40,000 worth of, so we had about $190,000. So it was about $140,000 worth of damage from this event. And the contractor had to do some real finagling because it would have had to be brought up to today's standards. They have the 50% rule also. So the unfair part of it is they use the old price, which you brought up, but you're buying materials and paying labor at today's price. So there's no correlation between the two, really, but one's a standard, and it's what they go by.

People don't usually come into town and ask them to assess it higher.

That's right. That's right.

It's not the first question they request. That's for sure.

And with all the talk today, I couldn't believe the room was so full, but... I wondered why people were here. We don't have to have flood insurance. And that was, uh, when we first got homeowners, they said you're coastal. So you need flood insurance. I said, really? Okay. Here's my benchmark. You know, our basements at elevation 40. So, uh, but you're coastal, you really need flood insurance. Okay. But that was one of our things shopping for a house somewhere. Um, was flood insurance, was the big thing.

Even your regular insurance, though, at least if it's like mine, even though you're above flood zone, you still get whacked.

You sure do, because there's winds that they equate to being on coastal. And with the definitions that I had to look up to make out that eight-page report, the Connecticut River in my area is not coastal, it's tidal, it's called. Went over that with Eric, and south of the Baldwin Bridge, It's coastal. So Eric, I have a question for you.

Are we looking at approving this with the pool so that we have everything in compliance? The reason the pool is not

given a can application was, I don't think he pulled a permit for it when he first came in for the pool. So I never saw it.

The contractor did the whole permitting for the pool. I just paid.

I never saw it. Okay. So I would request, as part of all of this, you review the pool as well and just give us one approval.

Okay.

And so, you know, a couple of, I'll just start off some of the questions. Okay. So we're approving the pool and the garage and the mudroom. In terms of construction, is that going to be on slab?

The garage will be on slab. The mudroom will have a full basement.

Got to look for a full basement.

As long as the digging's good.

And so one of the things I'm looking at from an erosion sediment control is that, do you have where you're going to be putting construction materials so you know where you're going to have the construction materials? And if you're going to be digging out a basement, where are you going to be stockpiling the materials so that we make sure that we have that taken care of?

Yeah, we already have that figured out. We're putting it on the high ground where there's grass now. And any piles of material, I've actually tarped. Up to now, we wouldn't.

It needs to be shown on the plan so that we know where the stockpiling area is. So you should show the stockpiling area. Because then it's like, show us where the stockpiling area is. This is just basic sediment erosion control. And you'll be glad that you're on top of this ahead of time. In terms of grading... We're obviously having different contours. The thing I'm mostly concerned about is that it's all going to go eventually downhill. We know that. My concern is that we're not grading so that it drains to your neighbors on one side or the other. If we're continuing the grading downslope and whatever, but I want to just make sure that we're not grading anything on the size of the property as you're trying to take care of drainage issues, then no. is that we're not doing any grading. So I really want to limit any earth moving or grading, you know, on the sides of these properties, you know, so that we're really limiting the construction area to where it needs to be.

The down slope, once it hits the bank, there's only one direction that's going. It's certainly not going sideways.

But if you change, what I'm saying is if you change the grade, so I just want to make sure that we're noting, don't change the grade so that the water goes... It needs to go down. And I'm looking at that. So, for example, you've got the garage coming in. You've got the pool. I don't want you trying to change the drainage so that it goes around. You need to figure that out without draining it onto your neighbor.

Yeah, we have that figured out. And in addition, I took all the elevations of the existing property, and we actually have the high side. Well, we have the... the garage side of the pool is elevated, and where the back of the garage meets that part of the patio, that's virgin ground. That's the same exact elevation that it was. And where the garage is going, where we enter into the garage, it is six inches above present grade. So there's no dramatic change to anything. The part that we planted was lawn, and this goes back to last fall because to gain the 25 feet, we had to have Cheryl over and we got to move our septic system. So we got through that, and this pool project really got prolonged dramatically. So that was an event, and we were able to retain our four-bedroom designation for our septic system. It was all approved by Ledge Light, and as built was accepted, and that's all done. So, you know, we had an upset area from that. And that's where some of the excess material was put, probably six inches. Now it's capped with topsoil. So our yard in that area, yeah, used to be a grass area. Now it's going to be a grass area, just probably, what would you figure, about a foot higher? And it's actually better for water because the water used to pool there. right around the galleys, it was like this, and it doesn't anymore.

So usually from a stormwater perspective and whatever, like we want to control during erosion during construction, but also make sure the water quality running off the site. So is there any vegetation? I see some vegetation on the slope between you and the river. Are you keep maintaining that vegetation? Oh, yeah. So that vegetation line is being pretty much maintained.

Yeah, and I let it go. I cut it in April, but I usually cut it. It grows crazy, especially with the rain that we've had. But I purposely didn't cut it again this summer because right now it's high. It's shoulder height. And I'm going to probably leave it that way until the whole construction project's done. Because, you know, we all know vegetation. Plus, that yellow rope that was in the pictures depicts where our retaining wall is going. And right there, a whole bunch of growth has happened that's working real well to mitigate any sediment runoff. It's doing a pretty good job.

Yeah, I mean, I think you really do need to maintain the integrity of that slope.

Oh, yeah. Like I said, it's just as important to me. We can't have that disappearing. But all the rocks I found, well, that's why that knoll is there, because there's something there.

Anybody else have questions? Any other types of questions?

So in the gateway zone, this house is under the 10,000 that come to us. But do they have, are there 4,000? I mean, excuse me, 4,000, but it's under 4,000.

Yeah, I'm at like 3,992.

Oh, there you go.

Calculated, calculated, calculated. And unbeknownst to me, decks count.

That's why you're so close.

Patios don't. So the eraser came out, and we called the granite guy back.

He came in originally over 4,000, and I told him, you might want to come in under 4,000. Okay.

That was the first day of my vacation.

Eric just looked at it and saw that, right?

Yeah, it was like 4,300, but, you know, the depth.

Yeah, so that's when it comes to zoning, but is there things that you have to comply for just coming to you as a member of the building department within the Gateway Zone, or only when it's over 4,000?

Only when it's over 4,000 does it come to you, though. I couldn't remember that.

Yeah, that's a magic number. I've had that in my mind for a couple of years.

So we're looking at it from a coastal resource. Yeah, coastal resource.

Not a gateway thing, this is just a coastal resource. And that's why I'm really just looking, you know, that's why I was really just looking at the erosion and sediment control and maintaining that slope, the vegetation. So I think that would be my, you know, is that let's make sure that we've got the erosion sediment control plan including a location of sediment piles and that type of thing, as well as maintaining that vegetative slope.

Yeah, the sediment piles are in a flat part of the property that there's no water running through there at all.

Yeah, I mean, I want to maintain sheet flow. Are you anticipating that you're going to need to do something with downspouts off of the house?

Yeah, yep.

And are you putting those underground?

They're already in.

They're already in.

Yep. They go into that dry well.

They go into that dry well. So that's all existing. And you're going to do the same type of thing with the garage and whatever. Is the dry well on here?

No. I don't think so. It is shown on the end of the rip-rap... The rip-rap... trench okay existing pool pull shed and um now where's the riprap trench uh i'm drawing it on there right now because it when i drew this it wasn't it wasn't there so that's okay okay what would you call it a sediment uh

But yeah.

The dry well is actually right over here.

Friends will just go right in here.

And I had the property surveyed by Bob Simone. I know it's the wrong scale, but it was the only survey that showed the coast and mean low watermark and all that jazz. So that's why I had to use that. Oh, yeah. YD is yard drain. Okay. Awesome. Thanks.

And so when this discharges, because this is where the water is flowing through, when this discharges, you're not getting any erosion at the bottom?

No, no, it's staying this side of the silt fence and this side of the hay bales.

Yeah, well, what I'm saying is, so I understand you're not going down the slope with it, but what I'm saying is now when you discharge, are you starting to get any gullies on that side?

No, no. The last picture is the picture under the stairs.

It's right, going this way again. Yeah, there's one more on the back there.

Yeah, it's not much of a picture, but that's where the water has found its way down. And there's no, I'm actually starting to put some rocks in there.

I have to say, I am, you know, usually when you have an outlet, you know, a structure like that, it's like, well, where's the outlet?

Yeah.

And outletting at the top of a slope. You don't want to all of a sudden lose the slope. Hell no.

It's just as important. It is just, to me, also, my rickety stairs around that, I can't lose those.

Well, that's what I'm saying. It may be that because we did have a lot of rain, but we didn't have the work as bad as it was the other. The earlier rain we had was five inches of rain. What does that word say?

Is that sediment? Yeah, for sediment. Should I put sediment? It's a sediment ditch where this riprap drains into. Okay. About five feet deep, which I call a sediment pond, sediment basin. Yeah, you can sediment basin.

Sediment basin.

Sediment basin.

It can be vegetated to be what they call a rain garden type thing. There are ways to handle that that are very aesthetic.

No vegetation is growing in there right now.

By the way, trees... You can design them to do that.

We planted 165 arborvitaes there. They're doing well. We planted them in three different areas three different times, 65s and another 70, and the deer don't touch them.

I'm surprised at that.

They're the green giants.

There's so many of them.

They're the green giant arborvitaes. They're supposedly the only, and there's a speck, Truilla, T-R-U-I-L-A, or something like that. It's the one species that And Marsha told me she's got them. And she also spreads that deer repellent stuff. But I've seen the deer right out there. And they're looking at them. I've never seen the deer. I mean, we don't have a gun. We don't have a BB gun, anything. Slingshot. So I don't even know what I do. I go open the door and we yell at them. Or we have a seven-pound dog. The dog will go after.

Deer resistance. Yeah.

Yeah, no, we got them from this place in New Jersey that's out toward Pennsylvania. And they came and they actually plant them with no machine for $25 a tree. Yeah. They're on Facebook. Yeah, they're on Facebook. I thought it was a jive. Yeah.

I don't think unless they get them from the Amish. I don't know.

No, I think they own some nurseries down south. But I bought six to seven footers two years ago, and they're about 11 feet now. Really? I bought 65 from Kogut and Meriden. They're doing just as good. But we planted those. Me, the excavation guy, two days labor. My brother, you know, that wasn't the way to do it. So this way here, yeah, they planted them. I just got 10. I ordered 9 to 10 footers, and they came, and I got the call, and the guy said, I don't know how we're going to move these. I said, well, they're 9 to 10 feet. He said, they're bigger than that. Yeah, it was like 4 feet. I have a John Deere tractor, almost tipped the tractor over. And the trees were 14 feet tall when we got them, not including the root ball. And they're very healthy. So this place is a bargain and they do exist. My neighbors have bought trees from them, different species too. And they run up through here, you know, quite regularly. Show up with four guys with pickaxes.

One more question. So one last question is where you drove, yeah, where you drove, the sediment ditch and whatever. It's like it's close, it's within the 35 foot, you know, setback.

It's in the setback.

It's in the setback area. How are we making sure that, you know, where the outlet is, that it's not going to drain onto the neighbor's property?

The outlet of that travels south 100 feet through past... the 100 feet of hay bales that are in front of the silt fence, and the out of that is over by my stairs, which I believe are on the right. So the water flow comes down here, and this is temporary. We're gonna fill that in. So the water flow comes out of that sediment basin, and travels along the soap fence down to here. So it has 100 feet to travel through all of that high grass and things like that.

Can I write temporary on it?

Sure.

Yeah. I didn't realize that's a temporary structure just to

I don't know.

So you're looking to pull that out and... And then things will go over to the yard drains, which go into the dry well.

Okay, so you're looking at that being temporary, just during construction.

Yep. Yeah, I mean, we couldn't run it down through here because that's right where everything is happening. And sideline from the garage is 63 feet, so we're way past the setback on that.

I guess the main thing I would respond to is just to make sure, you know, and if you would, you know, really pay attention when we check it after rainstorms, make sure that you don't all of a sudden start eroding the other way. It's like you'll have to deal with the erosion on your property, but don't let it drain onto the neighborhood.

Oh, it doesn't at all.

This will be temporary until the yard drains, right?

Yep, yep. And I think because of that, when you're going to pull that out, it would really be good to make sure that this area needs to be restored and vegetated.

Have me out there to inspect this as you're going along here so I can make sure that I can report back to the commission what's going on.

Yeah, you can stop any time. Mark's been there a few times already.

Does anybody have any other questions or concerns?

Nope. I would say it was a great presentation and I appreciated the lightheartedness of it. It's great.

What were the last ones? Would you like us to stay for yours? Thank you. If you'd like it to be exhilarating.

It's got to be pretty quick because we're just about going to be finishing up here.

Without any other questions, does anybody want to make a motion? I'll make a motion that we approve his signing with his additions on his plan that he's presently initialing or signing.

Second. Second. Do we need any conditions?

I don't think we need any conditions. Based on what I've been writing down here for adding on, I think you're okay. Again, I will just indicate, please have me out there to do routine inspections to make sure that all the conditions of approval are being met.

Sure. It's easy to say that any runoff is not going neighbor way.

I know it wants to go downhill, but we just don't Water will seek the path of least resistance, so we don't want all of a sudden it going where we don't want it.

I fully understand.

No, we keep far away from her. She'll come out with her gun at us. Okay, we have a motion and a second.

Have fun, Eric.

You might want to get a slingshot.

She pulled a gun on her other neighbor on the other side. All in favor?

Any abstentions? We got the eye on the delay. We're good.

Thank you very much.

I think we'll miss the site visit.

When anybody comes up, they bring an old lime cup.

I didn't realize we had a pre-application discussion. Is that why you guys are here?

I came up with two women from the town hall.

It just says pre-application discussion, but I didn't know if that was real or if it was somebody here. The other one's left?

No, the other one came and he took a picture of it. So... It's a BB gun, right?

I guess it was a long BB gun, I guess, but it was a gun.

Long rifle BB gun.

All right, we've got to get going, people.

I'm Monica Santos. I'm the owner of the Behavioral Approach for Davis Road West. I provide educational and clinical services to kids with special needs. I'm looking to expand my adult services program to 60 Lime Street. So I'm under contract with them in doing some research and speaking with Eric. It's a residential property that has historically been used for commercial purposes. So I would be looking to have a retail shop that my adult services folks would run. So it would give them job skills and paid employment opportunities that we just haven't been able to find them since I've been here. Um, so there's a couple things. One, it's residential property with commercial use. Um, and the other question I had was we've had some job training at Swell and Old Saybrook. Um, they provide smoothies, acai bowls, healthy stuff. Um, some of my kids have worked there. They've learned how to make a couple things. We'd like to carry that over here, um, by just having a select like or smoothie option for, you know, the kids after school when they get out. So that is kind of the wrench. Is the site in Gil's property? No, 60. What was the building?

I don't know the name. It's the one right across from the Lime Juice Service Bureau. This used to be a seamstress.

Yeah, this is like fabric sales. They had the wall in the back that they used to sell samples and such out of. What hasn't traditionally been there is the food service. That's the wrench. And so I told her I could sign off on the other things she was doing, but the food service was an expansion of the nonconformity, and it's a residential zone, and therefore that was a problem. And I said, look, you're free to come and talk to the commission about it, but I didn't think I was able to sign off on this new use of this site. So that's what she's here for this evening, to discuss with you whether food service is consistent with what's traditionally been there and whether she'd be able to do it without going and getting a use for it, which I don't think she would be able to get.