Zoning Board of Appeals - Regular Meeting

early meeting time on March 4th board of appeals called the order um to talk about annual town meeting articles so can I have a motion to open the meeting so move second all those in favor so we have one two three four five right so we're all set yes sir one alterate okay all right so um as with every town meeting we wanted to give you all the opportunity to review the town meeting warrant see if there's any articles that you had particular interest in and wanted to make any recommendations on for for town meeting so we can um get your recommendation in the fincom book um so there's to I believe 24 articles uh we also put in here uh one particular article that may be of interest of this for is a presentation of the planning board juster yesterday relative to article 20 which is the specialized energy code we have some folks from the clean energy sustainability committee here uh today if you all had any questions about you know what's going on with this uh particular article um what would the impacts be uh in the town were to adopt it um so we have folks here from the clean energy crew here if you have any questions there any other article you want to discuss this evening Jeff and I are here okay um I think the new stretch code clean energy thing is kind of the what foremost in our minds um I think at this point in time in the town of Westford given the power requirements or the lack of power requirements that the town may have I as one member of the board don't feel that this is the right time to adopt this

um I think what exists today under the stretch code um I think uh people can build an energy efficient house at a reasonable cost and um I just think this uh no fossil fuel is something that I don't believe has been researched enough um you know I'm old enough that in the 70s uh there were tons of houses built with electric heat I owned one um and and Jay Snicker because he worked for the electric company yeah oh boy uh but the difference being at that time you had a j what they called A J meter so the rate was different than your normal electricity and it was just it seemed good at the time and it just didn't work out and I just think that the same thing is happening here is that this seems good however you know we've been made been made aware lately of the lack of capacity that the town has and so I I don't feel um good about saying to somebody you have to abide by this new no fossil fuel um and you have a piece of property you'd like to do something on or do something to your house and of course if you ever go Beyond 50% of what you have or build brand new now you're saying you have to do this but we're not sure you're going to be able to do this because the power company can't Supply you the power um so that's my Spiel I'll open it up to the board um I know everybody has

an opinion of it so I wear a couple different hats I wor used to wear a couple different hats um from the public safety side I'm l a fan of putting the rooftop solar on we've actually had incidents in town where debris collects underneath the panels and the nice little chipmunks and squirrels get up there and they start nibbling away and we've actually had some fire St so because of that plus there it they've changed the code a little bit so they give the firefighters more access around the perimeter the eve of the roof and whatnot but I still think it's a case that it shouldn't be a mandate thing if someone wants to put solar panels in the roof they should be able to as it is now the house has to be framed so that it'll support the weight of the panels I think that's as far as you need to go if someone wants to put them on they're more than welcome to I don't think it should be mandated um as far as the energy codee kind of piggy back on what Scott was saying um International Energy code is already reduced they were were saying that this uh code cycle they you going to need r60 in your attic or roof and now they' come back and said it's not economically feasible and they've already cut that back to r49 or it is now so everybody's got these great ideas but I don't think they're really being thought out and tested enough um so I'm not a fan of it either okay well obvious I've been in the industry for a while um and a lot of the at least from our perspective if the company was a lot of it was regulated by the state and pushed by the state um you

know as far as providing incentives and things like that and uh there was a extremely large push to do electrification you know put heat pumps in all the homes um and I guess to Scott's Point um that push is that is the the the capacity you're going to eat you know match the demand um and that could be a question that you know a lot of town should ask uh and had that answered but one of my concerns too is is that fed Federal Regulations kind of pushed a lot of this in the past and now it there seems to be somewhat of a change with the federal Direction and is that going to have an impact on fossil fuels um to me I think the market should dictate what people do not the government to tell tell them what to do like if the market says the best thing is to put a heat pump in then that's what they'll do if the market says it's cheaper to put in natural gas that's what they do so I just think that sometimes you got to let the market take over and not sometimes have the government push us in the situation that's anybody else from this end of the table not FL at all I don't I don't like solar I think solar is um is a Band-Aid and some of the you're not going to be able to build affordable home in town with this with this super stretch

code the numbers that I heard last night at plan meeting they don't add up and I I think it's just going to push everyone right through the roof especially if we're trying to gain affordable housing units gain affordable housing units exactly it's it's not going to happen going to happen that's the problem we're running into down in that powers Road Corridor is that you know there's proposed MBTA housing down there and there's going to be some affordables involved in that project um you take the big houses down off of um road yeah if that one all those houses went all electric You' be looking at a 600 amp three-phase service to each house just to supply the electricity to you don't have that kind of infrastructure down there on that road that put on Brown yeah so I don't know if everybody was aware but um the NBTA housing projects that were down on pow's road kind of at a stand still I guess right now because um Mass electric or ever Source or whoever the hell it is National Grid is kind they went to them after the fact instead of going to them before the fact and said um we don't have the capacity to supply your power to do what you want to do all right Jeff you tell me the story it's not not a story so there's been two uh applicants for uh multif family housing the 37 Powers Road application that is actually going before the planning board on March 17th um they were told that they do have adequate capacity it's the Regency uh site who also submitted a work request um they were told that they lacked

capacity and our understanding is that the 37 Powers Road one was told yes because they were the first ones to put in the work requests so of this circuit at that time the way they analyzed it they determined they had adequate capacity for that project but they lacked adequate capacity for a second project of you know significant multif family housing so it was the Regency that was told no and it was 37 powers that they said adequate to the table what's that the first to the table head it's like first come first Ser so it's a vicious cycle you know we're mandated to do this MBTA housing we got one possible the other sites that we've kind of like car narrowed in on and said okay you can do it here here and here may not be able to and then so what do we go to the state and cry because we have no electricity we can't build them we are um engaging in dialogue uh with the governor's office and with trying with the utility companies to uh the first step would be to have a study done we're trying to get as large a study area for Wester as we can um but the study has to be funded right now um naal grid was looking for each individual project to fund their own study and we thought it made much more sense and clean energy supported this approach uh to ask for a group area or larger study uh that would look at the problem more holistically because our overlay district is the same there's a lot of overlap with the underutilized commercial office space it's in proximity to to the commercial recreation overlay District that would be New Growth so we thought it made a lot more sense to look at this bigger picture than one particular lot at a time so we're aggressively trying to pursue that but we're still early in

that process and it'll be some time before we can give you a meaningful update and so what's the cost of the study uh we were told that for one particular site would be $50,000 to do the study it would take approximately six months then the next step would be to engineer a solution and that would take sometime between six months to a year Y and then um one there was a solution that it could take an estimated two years to implement provided that it was funded and there were no exact numbers given for the upgrade or improvements um there was a a range suggested but until you do the detailed study and have the the solution engineered you don't know actually what the fix is but they estimated somewhere between three and $10 million to do the upgrades for the Regency to get the capacity but we don't know with that only help the Regency would it help the whole circuit part of the you know we don't have that information yet then who pays for that they would they would be looking for the project applicant to pay for that right now the applicant pays for it that's what they were the direction that they were given so we're looking to find other funding sources to do a more holistic approach rather than a one at a time F that study I couldn't quite hear did you say 15 or 5 5 Z thank you that's for that's going to take six months yes typically that just they do a study the engineer ter what the capacity is and what the demand is down the future and then after that then they would have to determine cost to provide that yep and once the cost provide that's there then actually implementing takes time Construction which is time but it usually is cost it doesn't get passed down to

the rap P that would be unless things have changed but that would be the responsibility applicant because they that's what they they need that particular power and that in order to get that capacity to them so they wouldn't have to do that if it wasn't for them you know cost of the unit be at the Regency if the the construction cost the cost now they're throwing another 10 million construction potentially up to 10 million but again so we don't those are presumed to be rental units at this point so it's it's not I mean you could take 5 million rough and divide by 300 and you know get but I mean the reality is I don't I don't think there would be a project in that case like right they're still working through septic issues and to have a call it un foreing million three to 10 million is your investors will not you know it's a lot of money for 300 units right ton of money it is but what we don't know is would that fix also help with b and c and d or is it you know so we we just until there's a study we don't so have that information so this study the $50,000 study this is covering more than one this covering an area not just one prop right well no we can't say that either so this one applicant it would be $50,000 for their study okay and when we had a brief conversation with National Grid they you know it may or may not solve other people's problems it would be the solution to get them their capacity if someone down the road if they determined they didn't have capacity they too would have to do a $50,000 study so we're just trying to

say look we we know there likely be some potential development in a concentrated area does it not make sense to do a larger study and but we would need to get multiple enough uh locations to sign on to do that study but obviously if applicants have investors investors maybe are not keen to pay $50,000 to find out how many million it might be out for you know it's a big terrible for them it's not just on the housing side I mean it also impacts anybody looking to commercial development vacant properties along that area new like the proposal for n Valley Ski was proposing to add both housing and new recreation opportunities in town that's all new demand interesting the AO has come up with the suit against what middle was strapping with the audit saying that this funding was unfunded so the legislature go to the legislature I guess it's a cck case saying that this whole MBTA legislation is basically undefined therefore illegally according to what the auditor said to Middleboro Middleboro is going forward with a suit on it because it's undef funded legislation basically another court case coming out on the whole NB Comm legislation don't know where but well underfunded was a big word that come all the time this whole legislation it's time this just takes time so I see some members of the audience um anybody have any comments Pro con please give us your name with the microphone hi uh Mike ber chair of the

clean energy and sustainability committee uh thanks for letting me speak um I'm very excited to see the interest of the board uh given that I think it would have been great to schedule some time for our presentation because I think you may have shared with it but we do have a presentation we've been uh sharing with different boards and committees and then had time after our presentation to uh answer questions or to you know receive this kind of feedback um having said that I did want to make a few comments just to clarify some things that I heard uh tonight um so with the grid issues was one of the first and and major topics of tonight we agree that it's it's a big concern a big problem and our committee is dedicated to working with Town staff and other committees to try to get more information and and um address the problem we actually think adoption of the specialized code will help the problem not hurt the problem because it encourages more energy efficient buildings so it should reduce energy demand and reduce the burden on the grid so that's why we think it's part of the solution not not the problem um we can get into some of the details with time in terms of is it Peak demand or average demand and if there's solar on a building when does the peak demand occur but again in general the specialized code is for very energy efficient buildings which reduces uh demand so we think that's a good thing not part of the problem but then there is a question about are we talking about all buildings and so again just to clarify the specialized code does not only allow all electric buildings there's multiple paths in each segment of the market so you can do mixed fuel or all electric so it's not only um all electric under mixed fuel there are some requirements like uh solar and pre-wiring but but there are there are choices to to to go multiple paths so it does not only require uh all electric um for cost there is some uh information that it may

be slightly increased cost or maybe neutral um so um also there are incentives to bring down some of that upfront cost but then again being energy efficient um being very uh resilient with lower operating cost so there are other benefits to the to the occupants um yeah so and so again yeah solar is not mandated but solar is required for certain paths that mix F sorry so yes I just wanted to to share those point and again it's in our material based on the uh State Department of energy resources material and other research we've done again 48 cities and towns in Massachusetts have adopted the specialized uh code we actually spoke with a select board member in Acton today who was one of the champions of of that Acton is one of the early adopters and they haven't had any um you know opposition or regrets on that Aon actually is one of 10 Towns that went even further than the specialized code to do the no no new fossil fuel uh code so so there's 10 cities and towns in the state that actually went further than the specialized code acon is one of them again we heard no regrets from the select board so that actually does not allow fossil fuels in uh new development under certain conditions but but atmin actually has gone a step further again no no regrets from the select board there so specialized is one step down from that where you do have uh different options so thanks again we're here and uh Beth and Beth Perkins Tom tell here and have more of the details if there's any other you know questions any of the details thank you thank you does anybody have any other questions doesn't appear to be um so the purpose of us tonight is to say we

either support or do not support this um special energy code so can we have a motion to say we support it we have a motion to say we do not support it we have no motions at all I make a motion but I can't it's okay um actually I don't believe unless he's seated he can make okay so we need a motion from someone else I'll make a motion not to support okay we have a second second all right um discussion okay we'll take a vote Scott did you did he did you want discussion on the motion is that I said is there any further discussion on the motion is there no further no further discussion so what are we voting you're voting to either support the new stretch code or not support it so we're voting right now not to support it I agree okay Jim I do agree Dan Jay I agree and I also agree so 5 Z we do not support it okay were there any other items that we need to address tonight no sir okay short and sweet thank you all for coming thank you for your point of views we appreciate it and um we'll see what happens motion to motion to adjourn second all those in favor I okay