 Let's rock and roll I got 630 welcome everyone to the what the heck December 9th 2021 planning commission meeting for the town of Essex let me get to an agenda which I do have any adjustments to the agenda we do actually have a something under other business other business okay so we'll note that there's other business that is a letter to review and there's actually two letters to review so that is all that we have at this point so before we get started I'm going to ask for everyone who's online and everyone who's here in the room tonight if we can just you can just swear that any testimony that you present this evening will be truthful to the best of your abilities thank you it's hard to capture but we appreciate it for folks online a process when we get going will be to use the raise your hands function on teams to let us know that you need to speak during the public hearing portion comment portion if you don't have access to the teams I think Darren Nersley says you know speak out if you get if you need to or yeah we'll try to get to you if we miss you do apologize there have been times that we miss folks who wanted to speak because just because um with that moving on to the first item on our noting for the record that commissioners furlin and mangan are uh come virtual correct and at this point the first item on our agenda is public comments so if anyone you're online or in the audience night has anything they want to share with the commission or items that are not on the agenda this is the opportunity try to keep track of online as well I don't see anything there so hearing none let's roll on to the first item on our agenda yes yes sir public comments for anything on the agenda no not anything not on the agenda the agenda items we'll get to as we do each item better to ask now so the first item we have is the discussion presentation from Mia Watson and Mark Bredman housing commission inclusionary zoning there you want to tee that up are we so is that it well we have that ready uh Mia is here on teams and uh mark was not able to make it to my due to conflict but Mia do you want me to run the presentation or would you like to yeah I think that would be really helpful so people can see me as well Darren um if that's okay um just let me know when you're ready hopefully I can get this to work you you can you can start talking before Darren's ready if you want sure yes six housing commission um I'm going to be sharing a presentation um about inclusionary zoning and just to get you all up to speed um we presented a similar presentation on inclusionary zoning to the um the select board and the board of trustees um who indicated their support for the housing commission to begin serious research on inclusionary zoning to see if it's a viable option for Essex and I have been working with mark and Darren and we so and also um Ned daily of the planning commission and Patrick Sheldon the the junction planning commission to try to start researching inclusionary zoning so um during my presentation if you have questions um it's a little hard to see everyone but please um Darren you could let me know if someone has a question and I'm happy to uh to answer any questions or answer um questions after we're done so um let's start with the first slide so let's start with what is inclusionary zoning and why do we think it's a good idea for Essex so um as you all know Essex is facing increasing pressures on both home and rental prices that's making it really challenging for the average Essex resident to afford to live here and that's something we've been seeing throughout all of Vermont inclusionary zoning is one possible option that the housing commission is exploring to make housing in Essex more affordable so inclusionary zoning is a strategy where um it incentivizes private developers to sell or rent a certain percentage of new units in a new housing project at below market rate levels um obviously crafting and inclusionary zoning policy is highly dependent on the local development context and the specific policies but research shows that it's one of the most effective options to develop affordable housing inclusionary zoning can be voluntary but 80% of the programs nationwide are mandatory for all projects above a certain threshold that's typically 10 plus new homes so that would be a rental building with 10 or more apartments or a you know single housing development of single family homes or say duplexes or condos that also have 10 plus new homes and this is already a strategy that's in place in Vermont Burlington South Burlington and Hinesburg all have inclusionary zoning and at least part of the town and Winooski is I've told seriously considering it as well and inclusionary zoning was recommended as a strategy to explore in the recent Essex housing needs assessment and in the town plan so next slide so typically as I mentioned you give developers incentives um this is a national study of inclusionary zoning and generally the the biggest incentive the most commonly used incentive for developers to do inclusionary zoning in either mandatory or non-mandatory programs is a density bonus which Essex already has in place for affordable projects but this would but an inclusionary zoning policy incorporates it the density bonuses into its structure most of the incentives for developers are also based on some sort of zoning as you've mentioned and we would definitely consider a variety of these strategies to see you know what would what would give developers the biggest incentive to comply with inclusionary zoning into offset some of their costs that would occur as a result of offering some of their units at lower than market rates but as you can see in 30 percent nearly 30 percent of inclusionary zoning policies nationwide there's no incentive and municipalities simply require it next slide so the biggest question is can inclusionary zoning work in Essex um the biggest question with inclusionary zoning is if you're requiring all these extra things from developers is there a chance that they'll just decide not to build in that town at all and build somewhere else well as you can see inclusionary zoning has been implemented in Burlington and South Burlington towns with pretty similar levels of development to Essex and actually combined between the town and the village Essex had more development of new units over the last five years based on building permits than either South Burlington and Burlington separately the two areas are lower but still are are fairly close um Williston and Winooski areas that did not have inclusionary zoning um are actually lower in development than Burlington and South Burlington the available academic research suggests that if you implement inclusionary zoning in an area that does demonstrate you know reasonable um desire to develop the policy doesn't tend to crowd out development demographic data from our most recent census showed that Essex had the largest population growth in any single town in the state and much of the growth in Vermont was in and around the Burlington metro area so developers are definitely going to want to continue to build in Essex I think the question for us is can we do something to ensure that at least some of those homes that are built are affordable to people in our community next slide please Darren so this is our this is what our working group has sort of considered as the basic framework of what an inclusionary zoning policy is likely to include for Essex um it's absolutely not set in stone and we're definitely open to changing our mind if something um should you know convince us otherwise but um for starters we think that an inclusionary zoning policy should be mandatory for all new development projects that are above a certain size which I'll come back to the the size threshold question later um inclusionary zoning tends to work a lot better when it's mandatory um the towns that the cities that have successful inclusionary zoning policies that are voluntary tend to be um cities like New York City that are able to offer very substantial tax incentives which are not really feasible for municipalities of our size so we think it's likely that to make it work it's going to have to be mandatory and as I said Burlington and South Burlington have mandatory inclusionary zoning policies we also feel strongly that inclusionary units should be perpetually affordable um in South Burlington and Hinesburg it's perpetually affordable Burlington it's affordable for 99 years but this is the tested policy and we see no reason why the inclusionary units shouldn't be affordable forever as a condition of their creation and finally or secondly we think that it should apply to both new rental and new homes for sale providing both rental and home ownership opportunities to meet Essex's needs we when we spoke to the select board and trustees they expressed their support that we should consider home ownership as an option and we also feel strongly that in order to build an inclusive um communities it should apply to everybody and because of this we feel that the ordinance should likely apply throughout the entire town in the entire village um inclusionary zoning could you know since it's included in the zoning code could be implemented wherever we wanted so it's possible that we could have had it just in the village center or the town center however looking at that we realized that if we wanted to include home ownership housing very little home ownership housing has been built in those areas and in order to include home ownership units it would be really difficult to find sort of areas that aren't just the entire municipality um that would um successfully include home ownership so we feel at this point um although we will study it further that the ordinance will likely need to be adopted as part of the town and village zoning codes in their entirety in order to craft a successful policy next slide so um this is the anticipated income targeting we feel that it's likely that the rental units would be targeted at between 50 to 100 percent of the area median income and that units for sale would be probably targeted to between 80 and 100 percent of the area median income as a broad boundary it's possible that we would offer options within those so for instance you could do fewer units targeted at lower incomes or more units targeted at slightly more moderate incomes it's really hard to reach below um 50 percent in in our experience without pretty significant government subsidies so I think 50 percent reflects the boundary of what we're likely able to have developers successfully do the large majority of programs nationwide set affordability limits somewhere between 51 to 80 percent for both rental and home ownership um this isn't a very deep subsidy um this won't be able to assist extremely low income households um but as I've described that's really difficult to do without you know significant help from a government source or a program like section eight um an inclusionary zoning policy is intended to create at least some moderately affordable homes without discouraging development and just to put some of this in context um current at current HUD set rates if we were to serve a household at 60 percent AMI for rental um that would be a little less than 1300 maximum for a two bedroom unit um the median gross rent in Essex is actually 1353 for a two bedroom unit although that's that's old census data since we don't have newer stuff so that's from 2019 and I suspect it's gone up since then um that would be $57,500 as an income threshold if you had a family of four and the income threshold is based on how many people live in that household conversely if you were to serve an 80 percent um AMI household for a home ownership home that would be a 252,500 maximum uh sale price for a two bedroom house and again that's um still out of reach for a lot of people but when you consider that the median new home in Chittenden County sold for $446,400 last year so it's very difficult for developers to build um affordable home ownership housing and they tend to build at the higher ends of the market so that's why we've sort of suggested that we might need to go as up to 120 percent of AMI to do something that developers will find palatable um or possible we definitely don't want to discourage development from happening altogether so that's something we'll be taking a really close look at um as part of our plan we um would like to convene a group of developers to get their feedback on sort of our initial thoughts and the AMI limits is definitely something that we want to consider more closely uh I'm just pulling up my notes um the other communities in Burle in Vermont um South Burlington ranges from 80 to 120 percent for both rent and for sale and Burlington the income thresholds are 65 percent AMI for rent and 70 percent AMI for sale so the ranges that we proposed we think are pretty reasonable boundaries for who we're likely to serve but obviously it will be very important for us to get that right and to make sure that we can serve as many Essex residents at the lowest incomes we can without making it unfeasible for developers next slide please so we still have a lot that we have yet to determine and that we welcome feedback from the planning commission um among the features to be determined you know what is the number of units for a new project threshold above which inclusionary zoning would apply we really don't want someone who's building like a duplex or a triplex you know small infill housing to be subject to this because it would be really unfeasible for a very small development to comply with inclusionary zoning so usually the threshold is 10 plus in in most areas Burlington it's five plus and we just think we need to research that a little bit more to figure out what that would mean for home ownership and you know what the typical new home ownership development in Essex means so again we can capture that activity without essentially causing a chilling effect on on home ownership development also be to be determined is what percentage of units must be inclusive um nationwide 55 percent of inclusionary zoning policies um have between 10 and 19 percent of units affordable so that's probably somewhere we'd be looking at but again we really need to look at home ownership a little bit more closely and see what's feasible I mean since developments in Vermont are so small compared to nationwide developments even you know one or two new units really makes a difference when you're talking about percentages in a in a development so I think we need to think about that really closely as I mentioned we need to narrow the income targeting limits and figure out what's feasible another big question that our inclusionary zoning working group will have to determine is should we allow developers to make a payment instead of complying with inclusionary zoning in some areas you can either build the inclusive units off site in another development or you could make a payment to say a housing trust fund if there were one or to the town for some other purpose in lieu of complying with inclusionary zoning that's definitely something that's worth considering because the housing commission is also considering a housing trust fund which will need revenue but at the same time that definitely chips away at our ability to build really inclusive communities that serve a wide range of income levels so that's something we're going to have to determine and again I welcome your feedback on that what incentives can we offer developers to offset the cost of inclusionary zoning like I mentioned we already as you know offer density bonuses you know some areas offer reduced permitting fees and expedited permitting but when I've spoken to staff our fees are not extremely high and we do tend to process applications really as fast as they they reasonably can so that's another area where it's going to be difficult to come up with incentives that are that are meaningful develop meaningful to developers but are also feasible for municipality the size of Essex and then finally how will we incorporate inclusionary zoning into existing zoning and manage managing compliance luckily we do have a really good guide from the South Burlington and Burlington inclusionary zoning so we know it can be done but we'll definitely be looking for feedback from the planning commissions to make sure that we're doing it correctly and we're creating a system that's actually workable and doesn't offer more red tape because we will need homes you know as I mentioned before we don't want to crowd out development if you make development harder generally that causes prices to ripple throughout the market and building more homes in general is important a factor to solve our housing crisis in general so the last slide thanks so this is our implementation process and it's also open to feedback from the planning commissions we're definitely at stage one still we are reviewing the inclusionary zoning literature and case studies we've already done work with staff and now I'm currently meeting with the planning commissions and we'd like to also soon have a round table with local developers once we get I think a little bit more criteria settled for the inclusionary zoning plan we'd like to get some feedback from them pretty early in the process as you can see from the next several stages we'd like to take all that feedback and research and create a plan it's not the draft ordinance but it's a plan of basically the things I've described what income levels will be included what are the thresholds what are the areas and what are the basic developer incentives we're going to take that plan and bring it back to the select board and trustees and then hold community forums to share that plan and learn about needs after that stage once we've all agreed on the inclusionary zoning basic features we would then draft an ordinance I anticipate us hiring a consultant to review the language someone who's worked with inclusionary zoning before and might be able to spot areas where it won't work well with existing zoning codes and iron that out and then that would be presented to the boards again we would open the public comment process and incorporate edits and then finally it would be adopted by the town and village planning commissions and approved by the select board and the board of trustees before being incorporated into the the ordinances obviously the separation has made this a little bit uncertain our commission for housing is a joint housing commission so we serve both the town and the village it's our intention to hopefully complete the inclusionary zoning implementation process before any separation happens we're very eager to get this policy in place to serve Essex residents as soon as possible but you know since it's part of the zoning codes whatever happens it can it can basically become part of the two new municipalities so I definitely welcome your feedback and the best way to do that but as of now we plan on just continuing and trying to get this done as soon as we reasonably can having carefully considered all the factors and part of my hope in coming here was both to answer your questions about inclusionary zoning but also understand more about how the planning commission wants to be incorporated in the implementation process and where you'd like to be consulted because of course we want you as partners in making inclusionary zoning happen so I'm happy to take questions if there are any commissioners I have a question so I have a question and a comment so the comment if you're going to allow developers to pay a fee would you consider this applying to any new development even duplex where the the the fees scale down below the cost of one unit and then it we don't get a bunch of applications for nine units if the limits 10 yeah that's definitely something to consider I think it was Darren's idea to consider for smaller units potentially some sort of housing impact fee in order to sort of capture some of that lower sort of the lower level developments and that could potentially go to a housing trust fund there certainly I mean the risk with inclusionary zoning is as soon as you put this policy you you don't want to create sort of unintended loophole so yes I definitely don't want someone to build nine units instead of 10 so that's something we're going to have to consider for sure okay and then the question I had is the income limit what happens when a family's income start growth grows it exceeds the limit and is that limit index to inflation or anything so my understanding and I'm not an expert in this is that the income limits are updated every year they're set by HUD for so that would be something that would grow with household income um usually there's a whole harmless amount between a certain percentage so like even if your income goes higher up to a certain point um you you are not um you know force you know usually you have um a certain threshold being uh above which you can still stay um and obviously you know leases are usually for a year so I think um to the best of my knowledge that would be something where if your income suddenly grew dramatically that wouldn't um uh you wouldn't be able to be counted as an inclusive unit for that um for the next year it's also possible that the developer would work with you or the the property owner would work with you and allow you to stay as a market rate unit if you're able to pay those prices so um I definitely hear that as a concern um and I think we'll need to look at that carefully but I do still think it's better than not having any inclusionary units okay thank you thanks sir in the back if you could state your name um just so we can come right up to the front as well we have a microphone here thanks sorry my name is mike wager um I'm an sx resident and you started off your presentation by stating this was one possible way to help growth for lower income what were the other possibilities you were looking into um yeah so there's a couple things the housing commission is doing um one um we're sort of developing some outreach in general I'd be happy to connect to you with our board chair our commission chair um to sort of reach sx residents and sort of learn more about what they're facing in general housing quality is definitely a huge concern another issue is we're considering a housing trust fund and that's basically a pool of money that can be accessed for affordable housing initiatives sometimes that goes to affordable housing developers who are building you know a subsidized development and that offers them a little bit of money for them to put towards a project um I think that project is still in the early stages but we're also considering potentially grants to households for things like down payment assistance or improving homes so you know um like I said I'm happy to connect with you about um the commission's ongoing work um but in you know in terms of options there aren't a ton of things that municipalities can do you know offering say your own rent voucher program is something that's not done in Vermont um you know in terms of municipalities big cities will do that sometimes but it's really difficult to directly help um renters in that way just because it can be very expensive so that's something that Vermont tends to rely on from the federal government um and in terms of what we can do at the local level I think it's policies like inclusionary zoning and also some of the zoning reform work that's going on in the town in the village to encourage development in general hoping that will reduce some pressures on our housing market okay and uh my other question was um you said you would hope to do this before any potential separation of Essex town and Essex Junction if this was not put in place would you abort this inclusionary thing no I don't think so um it obviously makes it more complicated because like I said the housing commission itself is is a joint commission um so we as a housing commission haven't decided what that's going to look like but it would possibly you know be complicated as our own commission separates um my my plan for this is to get this policy as far along as we possibly can if we can um enact it in both the town and the village before separation that's fantastic if not I hope to be able to um pass along those ordinances to whoever is um is able to implement them and I'm happy to support the work in both the town and the village um in order to get this done all right thank you yep thanks you have Katie online Katie go ahead you're muted right now thank you Katie Ballard I'm actually chair of the Essex Housing Commission thank you so much for all that information Mia I do just want to say that the work of the housing commission right now is very much intentionally looking at both the town and the junction so that when separation happens if and when it does we're able to to continue those works without that much delay as Mia mentioned so we are actually taking steps to be prepared for that for both the town and the junction and would not work thanks Katie okay so I think we haven't anybody else in here in the audience or online have questions Mia thank you very much for the presentation I don't know that we have more that we're going to get into on this tonight no and if anyone on the planning commission has any questions either the commissioners that aren't here that might review the um the recording you can get questions to us and we can convey them to the housing commission I think this will be worth you know as this gels let's let's you know keep keep the commission as a whole up to date yeah so as as the the effort goes through the process let's just stay tuned to it thank you yeah um just briefly um yeah I'd definitely welcome feedback from um the planning commission on what you've heard so far if you have concerns or if you have suggestions about what you'd like to see an inclusionary zoning policy definitely send them my way um I I would really benefit from your experience with the the practical implementations of zoning and then I think that the planning commission can really consider how much you'd like to be involved I'm happy to to come here frequently um to keep you updated um you know in terms of how much you want to be involved in each step of the process so feel free to contact me um or or talk to staff and and let me know what that looks like for you thank you I think that's well we'll bring this up again when we have a full commission on hand because it's not really it's not effective as a commission to have when there's only four of us here Tom thank you for you know bringing the questions up to get things started and you're one of the the the folks who generally drive a lot of the questions so but we'll bring this up and then we'll work out how to keep in touch with this process and how to um provide input I look forward to hearing from you thank you so much thank you okay we'll roll on to the next item on our agenda which is a continued public hearing from March 11th and May 13th for Nagesse and Juanita Gutma yes I get it close close okay Darren you want to give us a a staff overview and then we'll kick over to the applicants and see where we're at thank you that's me okay yeah uh switched over here all right I'm gonna hopefully share the plans on theme so everyone can see that okay so um this is as we've seen um a plan that has been reviewed a couple times before at the last planning commission meeting there was a lot of discussion about uh whether this was a really qualified as a PUD whether it met those standards or whether it was a little bit more of a conventional subdivision uh represented as a PUD we did have a lot of discussion previously about uh how many units could be on one driveway and sort of the overall design of the roadway um so after that meeting uh the planning commission directed staff and the applicants to work together on revised plans that everyone felt would meet all the standards and uh definitely look like a PUD um so that's what we've done and what the applicants have done and a lot of work into uh that design behind the scenes so what you see before you is uh 37 roughly 37 acre parcel um large open space log including both wetlands and flood plains uh so that's something to zoom into the overall plan so this is the parcel it's located um at the top of towers road uh both geographically and elevation wise um and between old stage road and shape and road uh there is an existing house on the property that's um inhabited by the applicants and the proposal now includes a total of um seven or sorry eight units including that existing house uh four of those would be on separate landed lots uh and then four of them would be two duplexes on footprint lots down here in the bottom of the screen so zoomed in view shows a little more detail so changes from the last plan um these three new houses were also were included in the last one but they've now been arranged around this um uh driveway and a little more of uh relation to each other with some common land in the center that would be used for a walking path garden sort of landscape area um all of that lies outside the wetland buffer um put you over here uh the new part of the plan is these four units in the um meadow closer to towers road um those would be duplexes they'd be uh oriented facing the um east towards the mountains uh and would have access off of the uh road private road built to town standards but maintained uh only by the HOA um and then separate driveways coming off of that again with a common land use area between them the staff feels that this is a far um a large improvement in terms of uh cohesive element that is not just you know convention a lot but uh shows some uh connection between the units uh shows if you're on the line if you could please mute yourself until we recognize you to speak we've got a few folks who are online is there a way for folks on the phone to do it daren there is if uh well if you're on the phone i believe it's star six to mute and starts and same to unmute but i think we are okay again good all right so um staff feels that this is a much better design overall meets the PUD standards maximizes efficiency creates a new housing opportunities a little more diverse than just a single unit lots okay um no you're not good almost done um there are still some issues that needs to be worked out mostly at a preliminary engineering stage these include uh making sure that fire access is appropriate and make basically making sure that that driveway you serving units one through four is 20 feet wide all the way uh to the back and not narrowing which is shown on the current plan the other issue is about um concerns about water capacity this would be on-site wells and septic systems and in the area um our public works department has noted there are some issues with well yields or particularly with well contamination uh in the past and if that's going to be a concern the applicants may have to bring in a public water line but because that's regulated by the state we'll leave that to the preliminary engineering and the applicants to work out we just want to raise that as an issue at the stage last thing there is a section of the staff report that talks about a buffer um to be required between units five through eight and the adjoining property uh with the johnson's um in reviewing that with the applicant and comparing it to some other puds that we have seen we want to uh withdraw the recommendation for a 50-foot buffer that is landscaped we feel that's excessive considering what uh the impacts may be however we do want to recommend some amount of landscaping between uh those new units on the existing house because it could be a little close and there is a need for the uh butters to maintain a buffer on their side for their use so we would look for additional landscaping but not a full 50-foot landscape buffer so that's something we want to correct in the staff report and I have suggested language for you uh Ned, Tom, John, any questions for staff? Not yet. John? No. No, not for me. Okay so let's move over to the applicant I'm assuming you're up you're up. Yeah Doug Gulatt from Lamarone Dickinson Engineering uh Darren did a great job giving an overview he's covered one and a half pages of my notes which is a good thing to keep keep everybody moving forward here uh I just would point out uh beyond what Darren said is the four duplex units would be on common land and it would be on the actual in a large open space common land which is 25 acres so so now two-thirds of this project site will be open space and common land it will contain two duplexes but the remainder would be accessible and usable to to all the homeowners within this project area. Having said that I want to just touch on a few things in the staff report that we would like to comment on specifically page nine section seven talks about the possible need for sidewalks so a couple things Darren and I did talk about this so the type A paved rural road which is what we are proposing for the first 250 plus or minus feet to the cul-de-sac in the public workspecs does not include a sidewalk in in its standard cross section as you know towers road or any other road in in the general area don't have sidewalks at this point lastly the scenic resource protection overlay district that we are in specifically discusses the desire to reduce road widths impervious surfaces and such again to reduce the visual impacts in this area so our opinion is that a sidewalk wouldn't be necessary or appropriate and would somewhat contradict the scenic resource protection overlay goals so moving forward we would like some feedback on and whether that's something that the planning commission would support not to have or if you would like to see those also on page nine section nine Darren already talked about there's a discussion about the 50 foot buffer I think we're on the same page that that requirement kicks in if we were proposing multifamily units defined as three or more units in a building which we're not proposing so that's why staff and ourselves decided that wasn't a regulatory requirement for this project lastly page 10 section well section 11 page 10 excuse me talks again about as Darren mentioned the concerns that public works have over the aquifer quality in this area we need to look at that they strongly recommend that we bring an eight inch water line up from Douglas road which is about a thousand feet away that would only get us to the entrance we'd need to run another thousand feet all the way to the ends of the unit so that potentially could be you know cost prohibitive in a project killer so we're certainly going to still pursue the drilled well option the Goudama's well has a 20 gallon per minute well drillers yield that could provide this whole project with water but as Darren suggested here we're at sketch we really haven't looked at that we haven't done extensive evaluation but we would I ask that going to the proposed conditions line 510 that states an eight inch municipal water extension shall be added with line serving each dwelling that that be struck until we know more about the options that that are appropriate for this project similarly 513 of the conditions as Darren mentioned with regard to the landscape buffer we'd ask that that be struck too is all I have commissioners uh yeah I just I'm a little confused between what staff wrote and what you're saying about about the water line because they they sort of contradict each other a little bit here it says the condition says you need a water line and yet I go back in earlier and you say that the town's consultant would review that so are we jumping the gun are we jumping the gun on that are you okay and I guess the question would be for the the engineer are you okay with letting the town's consultant evaluate the water system or the water supply in that area I wasn't interpreting the staff report as the town would would have a consultant I mean in general to be honest I I'm not sure the town has the legal right to dictate that we extend the water we're not in an area currently served by a water line if the water line uh was going through a neighborhood for instance that you know the water ordinance would require you to connect that's not the case here so I'm not you know I'm not I'm not I'm not opposed the other way I just to say somebody somebody works it out and I'm right you have to get it you have to get it right anyway we're opposed to the any sort of suggestion of mandating that we do it at this point is there Darren is does this water water supply if it's not if it's not municipal on-site water on-site septic that's something that that the state we have to look to the state to manage correct correct so um the public works department strongly recommends uh municipal water given the history of um well issues nearby and in the same you know um aquifer and the soil situation I do want to um agree with uh applicant on striking the condition 3b that requires that at this stage that's something that may be required between preliminary and final and I apologize for including that okay so that that's what I want to get to is that the water the next step on the water is for the applicant to get go through the state process correct and if it's if the quality volume or whatever doesn't measure up then it's then it's back to this correct okay so then we're we're everything's good just cross borders here that's my apologies for that okay John Tom any questions I'm good now I just want to confirm so basically the only two issues I'm reading in the staff report are the width of the drive and the water issue are those pretty much it in the fire at this stage yes we feel that design wise um the project meets the PUD standards maybe need to deal with some landscaping for units five through eight but that should be it the major issues are engineering um the driveway should be uh solvable in terms of if it's wide into 20 feet all the way to the back and the turnarounds uh staff will be satisfied the water will be dependent on uh preliminary engineering and then the other question you have before you've posed by the applicant is whether a sidewalk is needed on that uh 24 foot wide road uh the initial road serving all eight units so that so the staff report 291 looks like it's requiring an easement so are we looking for I mean at this point per staff recommendation is it for it to be built or that to have an easement so there's two separate uh bike head elements one is an easement a long tower road for future um bike path sidewalk whatever um and that would not need to be built this time just an easement uh but in the subdivision regulations it requires that uh all new subdivisions have a sidewalk on new streets because this road meets the definitions of streets as opposed to a driveway um we feel we recommended that that be included in the design the applicant is correct that the type A rural road uh does not include sidewalk designs and that's in the public work specifications so planning commission does have the authority to require sidewalk it's not in the design specs recommended by public works but that's a question that you want to we want the appointment and to confirm that that section of the road that we're discussing for this is going to be a private road not a public road a private road correct and the other question and I think this is a memory thing that I'm losing it but the development that we did on 15 two developments on 15 on both sides of the road one for the chase and the one for prior on the other side did we have sidewalks require sidewalks inside both of those developments we did uh those were in the r2 zone so a higher density than this this is r1 and ar low density and agricultural residential I think a better comparison would be um milk bush lane which was formerly 50 Chapin road and I would need to look if we had a sidewalk I don't think it's specifically with prior because there's no connection to any other sidewalk if sun in the development that would be more reflective of what we're looking at here right because there is nothing on the other side of that road yep or on along 15 yep one other thing you could consider is um making provision for future sidewalks similar to the 15 foot easement along towers road and saying you know put it in uh or sorry put in space for it so they could be built in the future by the HOA at this in this situation um but not required to be built at this time okay Ed anyone John Tom I'm looping you both together because you're both jumping in so I'm good I'm good all right well this is a continued public hearing so the public hearing is still open so at this point to be I would take questions from the audience either online or here in the room Nancy and Les Johnson have raised their hands online all right Nancy and Les Johnson please go ahead you're muted at this moment hello good evening um so we're a little concerned about a couple of things one is the four units that are directly adjacent to our property line that the the closeness of that and the second thing is that with that that number of units there's probably going to be a minimum of 16 to probably 20 cars going in and out of there every day um most most households are going to have two cars um and with uh the four units so close to us that's going to be eight to ten cars um it seems a little bit excessive and the fact that you're indicating that you want to reduce the buffer um and when we developed our property we had to have a hundred feet of buffer between ourselves and the neighbors with no houses um just the fact that there'd be some children playing um a few days a week it seems that uh to put four units that close to us and again the other concern is uh impact on on our wealth um we we were well over a thousand feet uh from our closest neighbor at the time and we had to go through a 72 hour pump test to prove that um we would not affect our neighbors well on the other side of Douglas road who apparently didn't have any water to begin with um so that's a concern um the third point is um when we developed our property we had asked to put our driveway a little bit further closer to uh old stage road than where it is currently and we were told by the town that the line of sight um that rise in the road uh was too close and then obviously when Gudima's developed theirs their driveway is closer to um that that rise in the road than ours and now you're going to look at 16 to 20 cars going in and out of there on a daily basis that um would have that same issue that apparently is no longer an issue that was an issue 30 some years ago uh so those are our initial concerns right now thank you so let's uh let's continue to see if we've made some notes here and you daren's made some notes so we'll circle back for that in a moment are there any other questions folks in the room hearing none let's let's let's let's talk about the buffer again yes a little raise in their hand david bruno online okay david go ahead oh thank you i just have some concerns about what three in the house placement and the only concern that i have there is there's a huge tree that if it was to fall would fall right on top of that house so i'm hoping the Gudima's will either work with me to get rid of that tree before they start anything or move the house closer to their driveway mr bruno while we have you just want to ask said this is for a lot three the one i'm showing right in the center here and you're concerned that there's a tree on your property that could affect that yes it's massive but i don't feel like i should have to have it removed when there was nothing there before i'm just hoping they'll work with me if we can work that out yeah we don't have a problem with that okay thank you you have also margaret smith i believe online and smith go ahead please yes hi thank you um just a question uh as far as the sidewalk it may not be required but will there be children living in those units who will have to walk down to tower's road to be picked up by the bus just something to think about thank you thank you okay so let's hold and let's let's circle back to i want to talk about the buffer a little bit so let's first you know let's first say why why it would normally be there and then talk about why it it's it's it's this point for this report is acceptable to wave it um let's let's just flesh that out a bit and i don't know if it dug it by he's digging if you have any thoughts you want to share on that as well i mean we're not really waving it it doesn't exist because uh we're not proposing a multifamily any multifamily dwellings so so we default back to the standard setbacks so so discussion even the introduction of a buffer here is a sort of a red herring then at this stage so um there let me explain why this came into play in the first place um so under section 6.8 h of the zoning regulations which is page 135 and i should get that language up on the screen so we can all see it uh i mean just a second all right i'll go for you where multiple family dwellings are proposed in the location which is adjacent to existing single family dwellings a buffer area of 50 feet in with shall be provided along the peripheral boundary of the project said buffer shall be planted with trees evergreens or landforms as approved by the planning commission and said buffer may be required separate and apart from any setback requirements so again this is for PEDs specifically um additional buffer on top of normal setbacks but only for multiple family dwellings so as Doug mentioned these are duplexes a multiple family dwelling is three or more units so it doesn't quite need that definition on the other hand they are using footprint lots which are used for multifamily townhouse developments so because of how close they are you could argue that it meets the sort of feel of a multifamily development however we're proposing a compromise where we would look to see some landscaping in the preliminary plan for not a full 50 foot landscape buffer which would be excessive perhaps and as Doug may have mentioned would impact the actual placement of the units and the ability to actually use that space but we do feel that some landscaping is appropriate considering the location of the jason house and the fact that these are denser than the normal area the normal density of the area so I'd add you know I think we are sensitive to the johnson's concerns we have I mean it's a nice open meadow but we do have wetland buffer constraints as well so there's not not a huge amount of north south uh flexibility to to put a duplex um as you know the prds you know encourage uh diversity of housing and that's why staff and and the applicant is are excited about providing that uh secondly going back to the 50 foot buffer uh the johnson's is not a single family house it's a duplex with an accessory apartment so again it doesn't it doesn't meet the definition and that's from their property visitors card that this information was so just to jump to the end end line on this thing would you would it be out of line to require that staff applicant work to provide an adequate screening between the adjoining residential properties with no mention of 50 foot buffer I don't know what that means yet but this is this is sketch so it's well we don't know what that means either we're not going to commit to anything significant but I mean there's some you know fairly substantial vegetative buffer along the property line now but we would have to take a look at it I think that's that's what I mean for me I think I would like to just say that we're not going to create a situation similar to the gentleman who mentioned there's a tree on his property that could be in a danger point make sure that there's a that there's an adequate separation without necessarily a huge burden right and I'd like to see what that might look like on the next version of this where I'm sort of thinking we'll certainly try to be respectful of that I mean the 50 foot buffer would basically take out the entire driveway down to the lower two units so I think I think we found that I mean I don't think the 50 foot buffer right I'd like to make sure some buffer might be appropriate landscaping we we certainly understand that we'll and again we have suggested language for the staff report and the findings and conditions but I think we're not we can we can you know strike the the reference there and we're concerned about leaving the reference further don't remember the line here I had it a moment ago 3 30 yeah you know that that you know you striking language there and in the conditions and the rest of the rest of what 3093 whatever 308 talks about you know vegetated separation so okay John Tom do you guys any additional questions no I'm good without a sidewalk on the internal road I'm all set okay so I think that you know the the the questions about from from fire and so forth what works for that's all preliminary it's it's it's work it out in preliminary yep I am I am wondering about the this you know this the whole sidewalk thing I mean we've I've been here a while and we've traditionally requested easements even if we haven't thought an as-built sidewalk is appropriate and there's been I can I can find sections a road that have an easement that probably never have a sidewalk but we still have the easement so this is different because it's on a private road right so even if we got an easement it wouldn't be anything there'd be no nothing back on the town yep to put that sidewalk in if there isn't an easement it's still in the HOA to put in a sidewalk in right so would the easement even provide any benefit to to this project long term yeah and that's the question you need to answer is really about requisite improvements for the subdivision at the time that it's built as you heard from the public there's potential need for that given the scale it may not be you know appropriate to pull full put a full sidewalk and it's these are the questions we need to answer no that may be something that we can talk with the applicant about and again look at with a preliminary design but we'd like direction from the planning commission about whether something should be there is this this goes in as a private road is the way it's going in with the length and so forth could it ever be shifted to a public road could the town ever assume ownership of it as a dead-end road no under our current standards it means it's at the maximum for length of a dead-end road and we don't anticipate future development going beyond at the driveway for units three one three and four to be able to connect to another road and not make a dead-end so no we do not anticipate additional development on this parcel for this road I think you know along with Tom I think I'd lean more towards leaving it to the HOA to determine whether or not they want sidewalk on the internal layout as long as we have an easement along powers road to deal with any future town sidewalk infrastructure that's I mean that's what's coming up in my mind so there will be because it's shared road for eight units you know there will be on the final plat driveway easement whether it's 56 50 60 feet we don't know yet but but we certainly could make it wide enough so that if the HOA as you suggested wanted to do something in the future there would be space to do that as opposed as opposed to having to negotiate with lot two for instance whoever owns lot two to say jeez we'd love to do this but it's on your lot so I mean I think that would be that would be prudent if the potential for the road to be taken over the town was there I'd say put an easement in now so that there would be no discussion in the future and no need for negotiation and I think it would be prudent but I don't know that we would have to require I mean that sounds really like it's an HOA Peppa we could suggest it that sounds like something to be worked out for final for the next stage yeah that stuff would be open to the idea of a wider driveway easement so that that could be put in for the future yeah I don't know if we put language specific to a future sidewalk but if it was 60 feet wide there would be space in the event they want to do that or do something else whatever that might be I don't know but I think the applicant's fine with granting the easement for the town along the frontage of towers road for potential future town projects yeah that's fine John is that sound is that fit with your thinking we lose John you know you're talking to me Dustin no I'm good you're the only John on the commission tonight yeah no I'm already I'm good okay um are there any other questions from from folks attending you did still have um questions from the Johnson's about traffic volume light of sight okay line of sight so that I think that that's thank you for reminding me about that that we're doing to lose those um I know line of sight has been an issue in other developments and so forth is that did public works you know specifically address that is that something we we need to defer to the next line next next round yep typical public works and not address that specifically in this review and typically that is done at preliminary okay but either the driveway for the Gudimas is already there so presumably that had review at the time of the curb cut that would have identified any issues with line of sight traffic volume is also something that's typically reviewed at preliminary it may not require a full traffic study given the number of units that's proposed but there will be some evaluation of traffic um at that stage including possibly impact fees for uh road maintenance if that's being necessary about public works so I've got I mean basically everything fire road traffic volume line of sight is all the preliminary that's game for preliminary sidewalk I haven't heard any the four of us here tonight looking to have a sidewalk built but I I would encourage preliminary to have adequate spacing on the road so that one could be put in by the HOA if they determine the need for it or even a designated bike lane within the development whatever process works um and the buffer is a non-issue and water goes to the state first what do we miss lesson Nancy still have their hand up I'm not sure if that's walked over or additional comments hi I just want to point out one fact that we want to be protective of those trees that we were required to put in and we don't want you know the driveway being widened to impact the root system on those trees um that's one concerned is this driveway that the new driveways that they're putting in are they going to be asphalt or are they going to be stone I believe the private road the 24 foot width would be paved um the driveways to individual units I'm not sure I believe that the shared driveway for units one through four would also be paved and I'm fairly certain the public works um none mentioned that for units five through eight as well um we did want I do want to point out that um we did call out in lines three ten three twelve uh the existing hedge on the Johnson property that should be preserved we won't include conditions about that until final but it is acknowledged so we're restricted that we cannot put in an asphalt driveway but other people can I'm not aware of any restrictions on you putting in an asphalt driveway but we can check in about that uh uh afterwards after this meeting okay because that's that was one of our restrictions okay so public works and applicant will be will be the specs you're going to be doing the road to public works specs you're going to be public works is going to have to agree and so forth so um we will leave that in the hands of staff okay thank you I think we we're we're not going to lose your your questions on this one we're we're going to capture them and there'll be much more in-depth review uh all these items for the next round assuming it goes that far are there any other questions from the public hearing none yes sir I just want to make a point here was um uh Les Johnson and the question about the tree roots those trees were uh planted right along the property line on the right on the stack line so there is no buffer there for them so in a sense that trees are overlapping over to our property because of the way they grow would be very difficult for us to look after their roots when they're actually on the property um I just want to make that comment I don't want this to come back and become an issue later um and from the get go the trees are already intruding on our property frequently falling on our driveway because there's time there about seven or from that block the driveway we're neighbors so we worked it out together and you know he let's remove them I just want to make a point those trees are growing too too big now and they're very soft white pine winds and all the storm during the storm time they break easy they fall I don't know if that has anything to do with the roots but we will it will be very difficult for us to to guarantee roots of trees that are already on our property I just just want to make that point so I would say that would be something you know the the fact that it's in the staff reporter at this point has an item to be to be addressed as something that you can work with staff to come up with the right approach and or the right language to address that existing um line of a line of pine and I don't know what that would be maybe there's it'll that'll be up to you folks to to come up with some uh on that I mean we will have to provide adequate drainage for the road so there will be ditches and such so right we'll have to we'll have to deal with it but I wouldn't give the Johnson's the impression that there'll be no no root impact that that probably is unlikely but having said that I'm not pretty expert and I don't know the extent of the root systems for the trees we haven't obviously gotten into that level of uh analysis on the impacts but I would so noted that we know that that's a concern yeah it doesn't benefit the gudamas to to kill those trees either so you know we have we have no choice to do enough all right with that um Nancy and Lessa you all set your hand is still up do we get more I just I just wanted to say that we were required to put those trees in where we put them so um that was a a town request okay um thank you with that I would ask one of my commissioners to offer a motion to close the public hearing so I'll second moved by Ned seconded by John all those in favor high high opposed motion carries four zero which is a reminder we all have to carry four zero tonight um commissioners what are your what are your thoughts at this point are we ready to roll this we're ready to go to a vote on this anybody ready to make a motion with help all right I'll move that we approve the Towers Road 137 PUD sketch staff notes with the change to remove sorry I'm scrolling down to condition three three b and c and associated language in the report can I offer a week to that another bullet under our findings yep sidewalk it just just underneath the findings another bullet that are that the items covered tonight that we'll expect to see addressed in in preliminary which would be the road basically the items that we've already covered the road with my note the road the line of sight traffic traffic assessment the fire chief the landscape buffer landscape yeah and the internal sidewalk and I think from a discussion point of view the internal sidewalk is um as accommodated as might be required by future AOA HOA AOA oh what that would be probably shouldn't go there so just to clarify here are you striking the language on buffers in the pd section and he got talked over a little bit there so I didn't hear everything but what lines so hold on a second I want to clarify are we also striking the language on buffers and the pd criteria 445 to 450 yep or do you want to replace that with something different I would I would say we we need to strike the point that says it treats duplexes as a multifamily townhouse developer I agree I'll have suggested language if you'd like it um uh so zr section 6.8 h a 50 foot landscape buffer is required between the multi unit dwellings and existing single unit dwellings in this proposal all structures include fewer than three dwelling units and meet the pudr setbacks required for single unit dwellings in the r1 district both between themselves and the existing single unit dwellings on adjacent properties therefore community development staff do not recommend a 50 foot buffer in addition to the required setbacks however it is recommended that the landscaping plan include retention of existing vegetation along the exterior boundaries of the parcel to the extent possible as well as additional landscaping enhancement of individual units um sounds good I'm sounds good great thank you any other items that we need you want to roll it roll in there tom no that's all I know we have a second Ned seconds it so just just to go back we've added a number of notes in the planning commission findings um that's normal process for going from sketch sketch to preliminary any additional comments questions all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries four zero all right thanks for your time onward to our next entry gotta find this is a site plan public hearing four-stale heights incorporated uh proposal for a multiple multiple self storage unit buildings located at 23 and 24 corporate drive and there's more words after that but I'm running out of Darren are these guys are settling in yes you want to get us started yeah you catch up with you guys too all right this is a 23 and 24 corporate drive two separate lots at the end of corporate drive at the end of the cul-de-sac a corporate drive is located in the resource preservation district industrial zone otherwise known as saxon hill uh so route 15 is here center road alamarton drive corporate drive extends off of that or the very end of the road here so these are two separate lots um that were proposed to be combined sorry for the zooming issues um proposed to be combined as part of this proposal um if you not need a separate subdivision approval to combine those lots it will just be acknowledged in the site plan approval um the proposals for mini storage seven separate buildings enclosed by a chain link fence um and with some light internal lighting no water or sewer but on-site storm water treatment um there are really no concerns from staff at this point the staff report summary mentions issues of lighting but there was confusion with the police chief about um security in general it did not realize that there was uh the whole site was enclosed by a fence so the recommendation for additional lighting from the police chief originally was to address activity on the outside of the building but there will be none so that should be ignored but the rest of the staff report is uh accurate as written um so uh no issues okay great commissioners any questions for staff no not for me john no this looks good net shaking his head all right let's go over to the applicant we don't have anything to add unless commissioners have questions um no issues with the proposed conditions yeah just so Sharon doesn't holler at all of us later and you just state your name for the record so she can get get it sure she's going to do that andy row with limerow and dickinson plan comings okay thank you all right uh ned can i get a motion to open public hearing move we open a public hearing john or tom second second moved by ned seconded by tom all those in favor hi hi proposed motion carries four zero public hearing is open so folks if you're on the line and if you have any questions or are you here in the room and you have any questions for the for us on this you're in the room please raise your hand if you're online please raise your virtual hand i'm trying to get back to the meeting so i can see if anybody's questioning seeing nothing so far this is one of the few okay this is an application lighting really isn't we're good pretty much all the way around yeah buffers are being maintained so no need for waivers even doesn't happen often all right uh there are no questions anybody i'm moving i'll take a motion to close the public hearing move public hearing okay moved by tom seconded by john hey they over spoke to you okay all those in favor hi hi i oppose motion carries four zero who's ready to make a motion on this one john let's say i'll move well i'm taking notes at the same time on sherm's behalf so for margaret smith is on the line this is the mr villamere approach to getting a volunteer i'm hoping she might remember that so i'll move we approve the site plan public hearing on a proposal for multiple self-storage unit buildings located at 23 and 24 corporate drive tax map 72 parcels 323 and 324 with conditions as written give a second second second ned got to a first seconded by ned by john seconded by ned any additional discussion all those in favor all right i i opposed motion carries four zero thank you very much thank you first of that was easy button easy button i got the easy guy thank you guys thank you guys good night good night next item on the agenda is the sketch plan public hearing don weston business as jmw investments this is a proposal for a 32 unit pud residential at 87 pinecrest drive darin yes yes switching gears again i want to burn out my clutch here hey keep the pedal down this is 87 pinecrest drive um this is a 32 unit plan unit development um located in the r2 medium dense the residential district zone um is an existing single unit home on the property which is approximately my numbers here um 30 20.12 acres um the existing single family home would be retained with its separate lot all other new units would be on footprint lots as duplexes except for the odd one out at the end of the road here um this is uh this generally stays out of the areas of wetland and flood plain that include through which indian brook runs so well outside of those areas there's a small area of wetland buffer that would be impacted by these new roads um it's class mostly class three wetlands some class two wetland buffer that's been addressed by the state wetlands program applicants have been in touch with them and would get a state permit for that so no local zoning board review is needed and generally staff is very supportive of this project um the new the longer road would be required as a public road the shorter road uh would be recommended as a private road built to town standards just like the last application but to the urban standard as opposed to rural standard um and uh the one um there are a couple of engineering issues that will need to be worked out um this parcel does not have sewer allocation at the moment uh so they will the applicants will need to obtain that from the select board um we don't anticipate that being an issue but it's a process um they will also need to find a route for the actual sewer lines public works does not recommend that they use pinecrest drive because that was recently repaved and a better route may be found by going through the chilling for crossing development um if we can find storm or find easements to be able to do that and tie directly into the village system uh in that way um let's see my notes here the applicants are including a request for a 25 density bonus under the PUD standards for the provision of two affordable housing units permanently affordable all of these would be owner occupied units so we would look for some um feed restrictions covenants and ideally working with a non-profit or land trust in order to make those units permanently affordable um that can be looked at at future stages and uh sorry going back to engineering briefly um we'll also need a connection to the existing sidewalk network along pinecrest drive from within the development and currently that lies on the opposite side of the road from the parcel so we'll have to look at some sort of crossing um there is a proposed community uh garden area within the property or within proposal connected to a the end of the road by a trail parks and recreation director asked if there would be water service to this community garden area hasn't been addressed yet we just would like to see that address in the preliminary design because it would be better to have the ability to water that garden otherwise nothing to discuss and support the sketch plan commissioners any questions for staff at this stage i do not have any thanks john okay tom you're good i'm good okay so let's roll over to applicant you're uh david berke oliri berke uh dan hylo oliri berke jeff weston so uh jeff is part of the owners jmw investment the weston's and uh as darin said uh thorough staff notes and it's a 20 uh 20 plus acre parcel it has approximately 80 feet of frontage on pinecrest drive and uh that goes back there's a driveway that currently goes back to the existing home as he said the existing home will be retained on a single family lot originally it was all duplexes um this project does require act 250 we've already had all the state agencies review this uh river corridor wetlands fisheries wildlife non-game natural heritage and historic preservation there will be some archaeological testing that will be required uh the between the wetlands and the river corridor the unit what's now unit 25 that used to be a duplex so that had to be uh eliminated because it would have proposed some impact to that corridor uh so the um we're in the medium density residential district we're also in the sewer core we had we did have initial conversations with dpw at the beginning not unusual that this parcel doesn't have allocation before it's to be developed um so that's just a standard step we'll need to do municipal water is out on pinecrest natural gas and all the other utilities are out on pinecrest have also had discussions with dpw understand um the continued conversation on sewer and and we'll go there um if if it has to go pinecrest that's still a possibility the manhole would need to be upsized the the connecting manhole but so there's there's there's options the base density for this parcel as darin mentioned uh once you take out the wetlands the flood plains the greater in 20 percent is uh 27.49 units rounded down to 27 your section 6.4 k is a inherent bonus it's not a it's not a planning commission planning commission doesn't need to weigh in on it provided that at least two of the 25 percent are 25 percent of the additional units are perpetually affordable so in this case the density would bump up to 34 units 32 units are proposed of which one is existing and two of the total units two of the 32 would need to be perpetually affordable um on in the staff notes uh darin hit on it in his overview but on line 41 uh it does say all new dwellings would be duplexes just to note that that one that one unit is a single these would be carriage units town home footprints and uh everything outside of the public roadway and the footprints would be common land the common land for the calculation in green uh is the contiguous area that represents 40 40 percent 40.9 percent of the parcel there's more common land than that but that's kind of the the bulk of the contiguous area in the r2 zone um what we looked at here with the number of units that are available uh one thing we looked at was you've kind of got the divide of the wetland that comes into the parcel uh immediately east of the house and runs in a north south direction um and so that's the the green area that runs up the page is in the north south direction it creates it creates two plateaus of that portion of the parcel and then the area going closer to shilling bird the side road that's that's a uh relatively flat area also uh we did look at uh trying to put in a whether it was feasible to put in a road uh to the west of the existing house it is feasible but you would be putting in a short road and doing two duplexes of which you can do one right off of the main road so we're not we decided that it was not conducive to propose it there and it was also um you know in reasonable proximity to the existing homes there so so again uh 32 versus the the 34 that's um that's allowed with the the two density or the two uh perpetually affordable uh in the conventional district you've got a 20 foot front yard setback 10 foot side yard setback and a 25 foot rear yard setback um and that's what we are proposing uh we're not asking for any reductions on those even though this is a plan unit development in fact we have a 30 foot um behind unit 1 through 10 you know along that property line and uh what we tried to do with the spur road is on units 9 10 11 12 the two that are closest to shilling bird crossing we tried to get those as parallel to the property line as we could so that their backyards didn't you know it wasn't a backyard to backyard uh thing going on with the closest houses behind unit 10 uh it's approximately 90 feet to the back of the existing house on the smith property uh the unit as proposed is about 30 feet to the closest point of unit 10 again that's uh base that's that actually compares to a 10 foot side yard conventional setback the reason that's important is that single family and duplexes are permitted uses in this district even outside of a pu d um multi family three and up are permitted in a pu d not not outside so so really it uh it could be as close as 10 feet there per the regulations we've elected because we can provide a little bit more room to go to the 25 the other unit that's the closest is unit 11 11 12 the back of unit 11 is about 27 feet the front's about 37 feet from the property line and that gives about 105 feet uh to the closest point to the wager uh back of the wagers home so we've tried to do what we can recognizing that we're up against another development exceeding the um the requirements by almost a three to one uh ratio there we can do a little bit more um if the if the drb gives us a little bit of feedback i have talked with uh erin about his suggested recommendation that this side road probably not be taken over as a public road and um basically i said we're fine with that as long as we don't have to do the 60 foot right of way everything's common land so i know that the hearing two ago you were talking about right of ways you don't really need one in a in a pu d um if it's a private road it's on common land so what we would propose or like feedback on is if that's going to be a private road that we remove the right of way which would allow us to do a little bit more clustering there and get a little bit more setback um from the uh common line was showing third crossing um the initial conversation with erin was positive on that but kind of wanted to get a if possible some board feedback the other thing we'd like board feedback on is that uh in public works uh they commented that the the main road that ends in a cul-de-sac appears to be longer and 900 feet and it is longer than 900 feet and um that's my fault not that it's longer and 900 feet but it's my fault that i didn't include the rationale in the initial submittal it is in the staff notes now um darin entered my reply on that issue again we've got those two plateau areas and the the green area that comes up where you see kind of the dark um which one do i push it in where you see the uh the dark patches there those are wetland symbols and those are along so there's a very thin band of wetland that comes up here and then associated with it there's the 50 foot buffer uh so pulling you can see that pulling this back this is at uh uh 1088 to the center and uh the rationale is already in the staff notes the first 200 feet of road doesn't have any units on it uh most towns uh for history most towns that have the 10 times the setback or the 900 or 10 times the frontage 900 feet all in that range it's always been kind of predicated on 20 homes being served and once we do that let's let's scale it back so there's less than that served by this directly served by this road the first section has no homes on it um but the main reason is the rest of your regulations so you always have competing things but to pull that cul-de-sac back to 900 feet or less would create wetland buffer and wetland impacts so that's what we're trying to avoid we are going to look at it to see if we can pull it back a little um Aaron's comment was he'd certainly consider it but the uh closer to the closer to the 900 the better um so we know that that's going to be a continued conversation um and maybe we'll be able to pull that cul-de-sac back a little bit without proposing wetland and buffer impacts uh we we went uh Jeff Severson was a wetland consultant Tina Heath the state uh came out verified uh verified and modified and then we jumped through hoops with wetlands to get to where we are today um all we've done a lot of homework ahead of time compared to some of the projects that you see because of the time of the year so we're getting started before we got started in uh you know late summer kind of or mid summer and it's like let's get let's not go to sketch and then find out that we're outside of the growing seasons we might have snow on the ground uh let's get the state agencies out there first so um in that respect we've got a very defendable plan from the uh state agency uh perspective so if the if the board feels compelled um I know it's public works that uh is the one that we have to continue to work with but it's always nice for us and I think nice for public works if they know if the board is generally okay with it or generally not okay with it and that would be both the question on the private uh road with no right away and the uh the greater than 900 feet the um uh conditions so on the the line items I talked about line uh 41 uh line 169 to 172 talks about that side road and again provided that there's no right away we won't push the issue um I feel that we could a public road is a public road so I figure I I feel that we could push that that's a public road uh but we don't need to it benefits it benefits all parties apparently public works and I think it would benefit us and I think it would benefit shilling for crossing because we could um just give a little bit more set back there on um lines 241 to 245 it uh states that we meet the minimum parking requirements for clarification there is going to be garages for each of these units so we'll exceed the um exceed the uh the parking requirements uh we're okay with conditions one through eight uh with um the comment on number six that uh that I already said that we're okay with working with DPW but we would like to get a some planning commission feedback uh my uh responses on the greater than 900 feet show up on your lines 190 to 205 and that's it no way okay we'll jump in before he gets to find something else commissioners questions at this point for staff or applicant Darren you look like you're sort of twitching oh I was finding some buzz on my thing on my shirt but um I have things I could save it all I'll wait okay so I mean for commissioner it it it it seems like the question on on the short road is about is a really good one to put on the table because we can pull those units away from shilling for crossing that just usually that's a good thing um and if it's the private road then really the room requirement is fired isn't it I mean fire chief has to sign off an access we probably would still uh either the legal documents would need to accommodate for it or maybe it'd be something like a 30 or 40 foot easement because the town's still going to take over the water main that's going to be on that road and like you say fire wants to have legal access not that anybody's going to stop them so I think it could be covered one of two ways either the legal documents are very clear on it or there's no reason any a 30 or 40 foot easement whichever ends up being appropriate is probably the way to go and then that allows us to just gives us a little bit more room to to move those units um give give a little bit more distance from uh Shillingford so Darin saying that this is a sketch um that would be something that we could we could say we'd like we'd entertain a a lesser lesser easement if it can create a greater buffer with the Shillingford properties yep and as long as you know as Dave mentioned you know we can get public services as well as we would otherwise no objection and we definitely would support greater clustering yeah I think that way we we leave it to you guys to do the engineering and the get public works and fire on board and then that's um Tom John what are your thoughts just to be clear the proposal is to eliminate the the easement for the sidewalk no it's to do a private road instead of a public road whatever that entails for the short for the short road yep yeah right okay so there still would be an easement for a sidewalk or an actual sidewalk on the public road well on the private private road right now on that road we are showing a sidewalk um I would like to have that as part of the conversation with Aaron as to whether that's necessary um but the easement I think I'll back off of the association document covering it at the easement would be wide enough if he's okay saying that it does not need a sidewalk whatever that standard is we would still provide enough room for it but right now my main thing is not the 60 foot right away it wasn't really it's not that I don't want to don't want to do the sidewalk so that'll just be follow-up with public works so as your language to choose a lesser a lesser easement and all that entails we were not aware of the lesser easement conversation before tonight so this is new information but again conceptually it seems like it could work we do want to advocate strongly that a sidewalk be included as you know constructed um not in future you know not to be done in the future that's a pretty essential part of the design for the subdivision and there's concern from public works about connecting with existing sidewalk networks so we see that as important to retain but as far as legal easements rights of ways and all of that those are flexible as long as the infrastructure is there and the design is the same so online 187 188 I did I did uh say that we didn't have an issue with this and raised the the no right-of-way meaning the 60 feet okay so Tom you'd well look um yeah what Darren said is fine with me okay sir we want the sidewalk but we want to look at a potential lesser easements to be able to provide really greater clustering yeah yeah when you said eliminate the right-of-way I thought you meant the whole road no just the 60 you know the 60 park on the sidewalk you have to be 20 you have to be at least 20 feet back from the 60 feet so got it you you can shorten the driveway lengths without the 60 feet and it just it just gives us more space to move around there okay commissioners any additional questions before we ask staff and I would ask for a motion to open the public hearing moved by Ned second second seconded by Tom gotta be quicker John all those in favor opposed motion carries 4-0 public hearing is open so if anyone would like to offer comment either here in the room or on on the line please let me know by raising your hand the first person we have is someone named Christine hi um Christine so can you state last name as well uh yep my last name is Erickson and I live in Schillingford crossing and I just wanted to point out um as far as the sidewalk issue that the school bus um I don't know if it would have enough room to drive in to that area to pick the kids up and currently it just kind of loops in and kids have to come from all the streets to certain pickup points so I'm I'm just throwing out that you may want to consider putting sidewalks in so the kids could get out to where they would need to pick up a bus yep and that that that goes along with what Darren was saying earlier about we need sidewalks are a pretty crucial part of this development proposal okay that's all I had to say okay I have to admit I'm not sure how to pronounce the last name first name is song hi that's me it's song when okay you're up and I will turn my camera on so you all can see me um I have a short statement that I would like to share with the planning commission um and community members so my name is song when and I'm a resident of Schillingford crossing along with my husband Matt and Rambunctius two-year-old Luca we currently live on an abutting property of the proposed project of 87 Pinecrest Drive and our family has strong concerns about this proposal just four months ago my husband and I bought our current home we were excited to grow our roots in this beautiful peaceful neighborhood born and raised in Essex and having spent about 10 years in the congested city of Washington DC we were excited to call the plush landscapes the wooded backyards the surrounding wildlife of Schillingford crossing our home so you can imagine the disappointment we felt upon learning about the proposal with the proposal of such scale and proximity to our homes there will be adverse impacts on not only our forest health but also our human health from the construction alone there will be carcinogens and building materials that will infiltrate our air our soil our water but more importantly we're concerned about two key areas as it relates to this planning commission first the confined usability of our town designated community recreation parcel and two the lack of buffers in addition to setbacks established between property lines so to my first point the community recreation parcel Schillingford crossing currently owns or currently has a town owned rec parcel this parcel is reserved for residents and is a quality of our neighborhood that our community especially our children will continue to benefit from development of the project specifically units one through 16 would undoubtedly restrict access and usability of the space for families who currently live here my second point regarding buffers and setbacks I know this has already been discussed but I just wanted to share that in the proposal there was not a recommended 50-foot buffer in addition to the required setbacks so between between the proposed and existing dwelling however we strongly disagree with this notion and instead we strongly encourage at least a 50-foot buffer between the proposed dwellings and existing dwellings if not more this would significantly impact the proposed development of units one through 16 it is inevitable that our quality of life as well as the scenic and natural beauty of a residential area will be negatively impacted by the proposed project but we believe that this planning commission has the best interest of our community to minimize adverse effects as much as possible so for these reasons I strongly recommend the commission to reconsider development of the units of budding properties of schillingford crossing specifically units one through 16 so with that I think you plan a commission for the opportunity to speak thanks thank you I don't see anyone here in the audience like to offer comment on this sir with a blue shirt I'm on the my name actually uh Colleen is that you on the phone yeah yes that is me we'll get you after this person okay let's see is this movable daren we slide this oh no you're fine you're fine hi I'm Henry Hayes I live at 14 Hampshire court with my wife Sharon we have resided there for 27 years and we are sx residents for 33 years we have looked at the what is the brown house the single house that's sitting out there for from our back deck for many many many years and and and as the trees came down a number of years ago or were cut down that comes quite visible all the I don't know how many people have walked that land but they're fairly mature trees they don't have they're not a lot of low hanging evergreens to provide any screening for years we've talked about the possibility since it is a private land that it was going to be developed so the fact that it is going to be developed we feel fortunate that we were just able to go this along without that happening um but honestly never in my wildest dreams that I imagined that 32 units would would get packed in there and specifically the the spur of what I think is called road b units 3 through 16 coming down within 25 feet of the of the property line going vertical within 25 feet of the property line um Schillingford is a wonderful single family home development uh I know that there's mentioned throughout the um throughout the zoning regs about uh that that that zoning that uh that new developments should retain the character of their surroundings and I think that this is completely out of character certainly with the single family homes that exist on Schillingford crossing and for the single family homes along Pinecrest Drive um I think this needs at least a minimum 50 foot buffer from the property line I'm actually pretty disappointed that there's not any discussion in any detail about what kind of screening could be provided and I think that we need at least an either an eight foot fence or some kind of berm with mature evergreen trees that create a reasonable buffer there as you can I mean you can see from looking at that cul-de-sac of what is to be the private road you're going to have cars turned down there you're going to have traffic lights coming down all evening that are going to shine directly not even so much in my house but in my the people the wagers and the smiths are going to have traffic lights coming in through the back of their house all day long I live at the end of a cul-de-sac we live at the end of a cul-de-sac so I know that this is this is what happens um so I think you need at least an eight foot fence and again or you need an earthen barrier with with seasoned plantings and then you need if you do go the planting route you need some kind of guarantee that those plantings will remain viable for some period of time after the west ends have come and gone I I don't can't really speak to the 900 foot roadway at all I can tell you that I don't really have take any issue with the units that are at the end of that proposed 900 foot roadway I mean listen we we live in a place we live in we live in a country where people should be allowed to make a dollar um there's nothing wrong with that what people shouldn't be allowed to do is to make a dollar while devaluing the property of other people who've been longtime residents that seems inherently wrong to me it's not the way things are supposed to work so I'm not an anti-development guy but I am against a development that's going to have a material impact on my property values and the property values of my neighbors on Hampshire court um then you have the sewer issue which I still don't quite fully understand seems a little cart before the horse to me but that certainly needs to be rectified I think there was some mention about possibly tying into Schillingford crossing sewer line I'm not quite sure how that's going to be if that if the intent of that is to cut across somebody's existing property to tie into the sewer line that seems um I mean that that just seems kind of crazy to me um the westerns are allowed to make money I have no cons with that this development needs to be scaled back to a more manageable in a more manageable way that offers a 50 foot in my opinion a 50 foot buffer and robust adequate adequate screening to maintain the character of our neighborhood to maintain the value of our homes which has really had been a wonderful place I mean we wouldn't have been here for 27 years if it weren't um and it's going to materially as planned and detrimentally change the character of our neighborhood um so with that thanks for your time thank you so you have Colleen Dwyer yes Colleen go ahead please hi Colleen Dwyer um I live on Pinecrest Drive um actually 85 and I don't think I can I don't think there's anything else for me to add um I feel like my neighbors um in Shirley's coffee have said it had said it well I am very concerned about the amount of traffic this is going to create um particularly Pinecrest is a road that um it notoriously has speeding uh cars and there is many safety concerns that I have with um the unpatrolled and lack of speed bumps or speed um tables and uh that has always been a problem as long as I lived here and uh I think with these these units it's going to increase and risk um people's safety so I I just think this project needs to be scaled back and a road needs to not come in Shirley's crossing or Pinecrest maybe somewhere off of 2A but this is not does not feel great thank you sorry you guess you're up next yeah my name is James Badger I live at 89 Pinecrest you know a road going in is right tight to my house and I'm going to have a lot of cars going in and out of there all kind of noise and headlights and that land in there is the farmers dump back in the 60s Claude Fleming is on the land he had a contract with the village of Vessus Junction to pick up the garbage and he had a pig yard down in the back of uh Mrs. Mr. Tiller's house of what it was and the pigs died from the collar they buried the pigs right in that area and down in the down in the culver sack area you're putting the way down that was the garbage pits there's five garbage pits in there buried I lived there for 70 years I should know so you might have to get the EPA involved into this yeah yeah Tom Tiller dug down in there and he got yeah let's let's let's keep it down back there until Mr. Badger's done and then yeah Tom Tiller when he fought the land went down to that area because it was all open he was going to dig it and put his house down in there when he dug in he hit the pit he buried it back up moved his house back up and back of my house and that's all sand and the land is all saturated with underground springs they're going to have a lot of water problems the house next door to me I think it's 91 he had last year he had to put it in the mound system because he had so much groundwater coming in and to intercept it okay and McVeigh's house his uh seller he had to run a sub pump 24 hours a day so much water coming in that water garbage traffic by your house yeah okay and it's going to make a lot of cards on that fine press so you don't need it you got too many speeders down the other day you just had an accident over in front of the royal park okay traffic is on our is on the list and always traffic is definitely addressed once we get into preliminary we get into a lot more detailed study of that is they can make it as a one-way in and a one-way out wouldn't be too bad yeah okay all right that's what I got to say thank you sir okay it looks like I've got anyone else in the room nope then Christine's hand is okay I gotta move fast got people so Paul Morgan also had a hand up okay is Christine new area on Christine yet we heard from Christine already Christine did you have more to add or is this a still hand still up go ahead sir no I didn't mean to have my hand up sorry all right Paul Morgan you're gonna be next after this gentleman Mike Smith I'm sure it's poor um I'm not really thrilled about this whole topic and um I would like to see that private road be gone or moved closer to the road or to the the proposed road road there I just I just feel like being that close to our property lines is I wouldn't do that to anybody I wouldn't do that to anybody and I sure and heck wouldn't do it to you now if you always want to come over and stand in my backyard this week I invite you over I'll have coffee with you because I'm telling you right now that I'm not impressed so if we could do anything to move that those units right here closer cluster the heck out of them that's what we want to do here cluster them and you know what take that town land and give it to them give them that town land and let them put as many houses as you want there then I'm sorry I'm upset but this is where you got to let it go sir I appreciate your we appreciate your feedback and your your interest and your your contribution to the to the discussion it's it's meaningful no and where's that snow gonna go on to my property gonna I have to I have to blow water out of my basement in the spring time with a sump pump mr. Morgan you are next thank you um I'm part of the uh the the the Hampshire court contingent uh just really want to kind of echo what what some of the neighbors are saying I think we have a great great environment a great community in in Schillingford and especially in in this Hampshire court area a lot of children involved a lot of children you know just if you come on on a random summer night there's probably five to ten kids tearing around you know so in backyards front yards everywhere so I think you know the obviously you know something if something like Hank said if something goes back there I think it's private property it's it's there they're right but I also think that there's something to say about you know the the property and why we why we wanted to be in this neighborhood why we wanted to you know this is like where we want to be for the 27 years that the hazes have been here and and the the light pollution we have four we have French doors on our back window that I'm walking around holding the baby and inevitably we would have headlights popping in our our window right now you know and and it's just all night and you know from from eight to ten and and it's just those those disturbances are what kind of disappoints me about this again I understand you know development is is inevitable in some situations but I also think that that there are ways to avoid this while continuing this project and I you know I think if if there are other options we we want them strongly considered and because it has a huge impact on you know just the the the light lifestyle and living of of the people who have been here for you know for 27 20 years you know we plan on being here for we've been in in in Hampshire court for three years we plan on being here for at least 30 more and and we'd love to have some of that privacy that we that we invested in when we bought this home so what's that thank you sir thank you wagers uh once again I am Mike wager and this is my wife Ashley um we purchased our home five years ago seven years ago thank you um I'm a lifelong sx resident uh my wife joined me in marriage several years ago and better no specifics I'm even nervous give him a break anyway um so uh I had uh echoing many of the concerns that are already there the cars uh you know the traffic the light pollution the noise pollution um we uh um I did have a couple of questions for the presenters you mentioned archaeological tests I was wondering what those would involve well let we'll get all the questions because because the sort of the way we've got to do is the question sort of come to us yeah and then we throw them back to staff and applicant and let them be so I want to get all the questions that we can yeah and then we'll circle back and have the discussions okay and then my other question was about any environmental impact study that was done and feedback from the agency of natural resources on these projects given the proximity of the wetlands um but know that those questions are out of the way our daughter has some form of allergies and every time especially now during this pandemic she gets a runny nose she's sent home from school and she's not allowed to return until she's 24 hours clear of any any symptoms whatsoever so fair minimum we're looking at a day day and a half two days out of childcare which either my wife or myself need to come home and give care to her that takes away from our time at work it impacts our pay I'm just worried that these issues when they come up or these development issues will impact that even more given you know all the construction the noise everything else the proximity the proximity will will certainly affect her and also my wife is pregnant we will have our second child in February and this will add even more to that likely he will have some of the same ailments and you'll probably be breaking ground while he is you know still still an infant I mean I think we just echo a lot of things that have been said before um one thing I was um you know I understand the need for development and um more affordable housing options certainly um I just think our main concern is the proximity to our neighbor or our property as well as our neighbor's property you know um when I moved into the neighborhood I thought I had the best spot in the entire development being on the cul-de-sac and having all that land behind us I understand we were lucky for the seven years that were there um to have not have had that developed um but at the same time like whatever we can do to you know increase the distance between and the buffering I was a little concerned when I was reading the plan there um you know there's not specific mentioning about the type of screening other than like keeping the existing landscaping to whatever extent possible um but most of that landscaping was like destroyed in like 2017 there was a wind storm and then um the gentleman who owned the property um at the time had removed a ton of trees as well so there isn't a lot there that provides any meaningful screening at all so I certainly would be very interested to find out what the possibilities would be just for that that level of detail what we do is that this being sketch we do is identify a concern a need or something that needs to be addressed so we do it next round so for example if we were talking screening and and there was agreement that screening or buffering need to be part of it we would identify for the applicant that screening and buffering needs to be addressed and that would be part of the next round as then we'd have more details so I think if if we get to the point of agreeing that this is an element that needs to be looked at again then that would be your your your your ideas about your your concerns about what the buffering would be would then be addressed okay so that's I mean it would definitely be there that's one thing too to remember with the sketch plan sketch plan is the is it's not a concept it is it is the first round of a plan a lot of the engineering details maybe haven't gotten worked out yet or the fine points of what do we need to go back and forth on so it's it's it's absolutely perfect that we're bringing up the concerns and if the commission sees fit to move this to the next round there would be a lot more detail and I think we've already discovered I hope folks would recognize that we've been talking about trying to increase the amount of space between the Schillingford properties and the Spur properties so we'd already been working on that so it's good to hear everybody's recognizing that as in bringing that forward so I think it's it's definitely on the table so thank you I did have one more question to add to my list there was a mention of the garages in their plan I forget what line item it is but would those be existing in those Laura print drawings or those be added on or whatever else yeah okay thank you um your time Laura thank you very much for bringing it Laura Pierce hi my name is Laura Pierce and I live in Schillingford crossing with my husband we've been here for almost 23 years and raised our two children here I just want to um support my my neighbors that have come to this meeting and really just echo all of the same concerns and I won't go over all of them again mainly I just wanted you to know how many of us are here at this meeting with the same concerns um and honestly my first choice would be for this project to not go forward at all but if it does to really increase the setbacks where this new development would run up against properties in Schillingford crossing and if the project does go forward to really give some thought into what the screening could look like um and maybe this is for the next meeting but I think a high solid fence and tall hedges going the entire length of where the development about Schillingford crossing I think would be um appreciated by the neighborhood so that's all I wanted to say thank you sir good evening Dean and Tracy Reed with the Pine Cush Gives 35 years yeah the garbage pits are going to be a big problem you've got to do something with that that's a that was a dump that was there it's right where that one cul-de-sac is right in the middle and that's why that house was built where it was it was going to be built down there and they punched holes into the ground and all the methane started coming out and then they moved it okay and if you upset that stuff isn't it going to run down into Indian Brook with all the groundwater I think the discussion about garbage dumps was new to us tonight so right I know that we're able to comment on them too much at this point Jim has lived there's whole life and he actually worked for the gentleman that was the trash man and he knows exactly where those are and it's right where you guys want to build we're not building no so it's very important to take care of that first you don't want to just be concerned about the water they they take care of Indian Brook but the dam so well they should be taking care of it down here too okay so one other thing I wanted to point out is that um where the where the exit of both of those um everybody's worried about the lights over in Schillingford but this would be say there's two cars in every household that's 64 sets of lights hitting my living room so we would like to have some consideration because we're right across the road from the entrance or the exit of the building and has there ever been any consideration in moving the exit to an area such as on 2a or through the back of the peregrines where it wouldn't impact but it looks like a nice development. Pinecrest is getting I work from home I've worked from home for 11 years now not even before the pandemic and my office overlooks pinecrest and the amount of people speeding down through there and all during the day and night and it's just getting worse and worse um there are no speed bumps there is nothing to um deter people from hightailing it through there um unless there's happens to be the Essex police happen to be standing watch but a lot of kids are now on the sidewalk we really are enjoying the sidewalk it's great there's a lot we're seeing a lot of people really coming out and enjoying it but I really worry because we had one guy just getting an accident went right across the sidewalk into our flying pole about two weeks ago so just craziness and so back to the old farm that was there and and the trash man he would get all this trash and then he had a pig farm and that's where he would feed the pigs from all the fraction he collected but then there was a cholera outbreak and they had to kill all those pigs and right where you guys what is this thing here it's a we've done pits in that stormwater area right that's where they that's where they that's where they buried all those soils with no bones there's plenty of stuff down there jim can tell you're right exactly where they are let let yeah but we'll roll back on this a little bit but that's where they they um they buried the pigs with the cholera so would you have to contact the epidemiologist or something for that you know I think we'll have to figure this out I think you got to check that you don't want to upset something that will have other potential problems but the the old garbage pits it's not good the right did you see where they are okay so so we're we're we'll we'll we've got the garbage dumps as a discussion point so I think that's as much as we can I mean okay this is again new information to us tonight and it's good to know so I think we just have to roll that piece of land has a storied past that's for sure all right thank you thank you how many pig farms Mr. Badger how many pig farms do we have around here because I know they use the the middle school ball fields at every farm well they used to use the because we used to used to get get pig bones on the soccer fields over at the middle school all the time anyways you've been waiting patiently thank you you're welcome I'm Sharon Hayes I live at 14 Hampshire court I just want to bring up a few points our neighbors pretty much have brought up other things that I was going to say we may be lacking housing in Essex but we are not lacking housing along Pinecrest we have 87 units and duplexes or multi-family situations we have a hundred units in senior housing we have 24 more units being built in senior housing we have 61 homes and showing for crossing and we have more than a hundred homes in the Pioneer Street Jackson Heights neighborhood at what point does pinecrest become overdeveloped this is the last open parcel on pinecrest it contains a wetlands and is frequented by deer owl hawks woodpeckers and many other animals is it responsible planning given the housing density that already is this on pinecrest to pack 31 units and a single family home on 12 acres next to a wetland and like miss Mike and Ashley wager I'm really curious about whether all the possible ill effects on this wetland and these animals and humans are being considered and then lastly given the density of housing along pinecrest would it not be responsible to scale down the scope of this project to a single road road a that features lots of 0.5 or 0.7 acres with single family homes like the lots and children for crossing or 0.8 acre lots like the lots along pinecrest and the single family home at 87 pinecrest please reconsider this project thank you okay we have anybody else in the room who would like to ask put some questions to us don't see any more hands raised up uh Laura Pierce's hand is still raised is it new or is that from before sorry it was from before okay then we're going to pause on public comment for a moment or two i'm going to bring this back to the commissioners table with the applicant commissioners what do you what do you have for thoughts or questions out of the discussion so far Ned uh there's a couple of things when i when i first look at well let me preface it by the way i see it the way i read all the regulations something's going to be built there uh and i have to roll that into the fact that we need housing we need reasonably priced housing or we're going to strangle the entire state faster than than we know so something's going to be built but some good points have been raised especially uh if it's going to be built in uh all these people's backyards uh i think the traffic onto pinecrest is an issue that will need to be addressed the pinecrest you know we cannot do anything about whether the police can enforce the speed limits or anything like that that is not us about how the traffic gets out there and school bus pickups those those are considerations construction if when it goes ahead it's going to be tough it's going to be tough for a certain amount of time i don't personally if we drunk the spacing and all on that to increase the buffer to the other people i i'm not sure that would be a bad thing to do uh you know that and i i as one commissioner anyway would be open to uh some suggestions that way uh the right the right-of-way issue you know i think we kind of ties into the clustering issue the fact that the cul-de-sac is 180 feet wider by some people's interpretations and not others it's almost immaterial you know it's that that's not a that should not be a major stumbling block up to what we do there that's all good tom how about you well i i guess i just like to re-hear from darin that this is fits the pud and that fits the regs seems seems like it does yes uh we would agree this uh fits with pud standards um fits with uh general you know if not too far off from the normal um district standards for the r2 um you know if these were all single unit homes instead of duplexes it would look relatively similar to what's already in filling for the crossing um the increased density from them being duplexes two units each should definitely have some review of uh traffic impacts for sure but uh pack you know increasing density in this way helps us avoid the need to build elsewhere in areas that are more um uh sensitive to disturbance and where we want to keep things open and undisturbed the other thing i would say is i am open to a more kind of solid fence to reduce the lighting glare um i don't know how or if we can do that but it would be something i'd be interested in seeing the the lady that lives across the street the reads that's going to be um seems like a large impact there and does anybody have any ideas on how to mitigate that landscaping can help landscaping in the front yard could be useful although i haven't looked at the site specifically thinking about that so i don't know what i can ask the reads a question okay you guys you're you're the front of your house is that the one that is all driveway trying to remember which one is yours there's a i can pull it up on the screen dusty yeah yeah i think there's quite a bit of driveway just trying to remember the what's the top left corner here right across from the new or the existing driveway new road okay it's the elevation between both sides of the road uh we'll we'll have to get that i i know they're higher but i don't know how much higher uh there's an existing utility pole uh to the uh west side of that proposed entrance there's there is some wiggle room because it's 80 feet you need 60 feet for the right of way but you also need the radii to work and you can see the radii to the east you know that it's we don't want to extend the required radius into the edge of your badger stripeway so you can't go further that way you've got you've got geometry concerns yeah you know usually 90 degrees is best 85 is okay so we can look at it the possible thing that we can look at maybe is try to have a a hump for better terms closer to the road so that you know in that first 25 50 feet so that the lights are are downward and you know not not the typical 3 percent coming in the first part we'll have to look at that and make sure that storm water works and stuff like that but that would probably short of doing landscaping behind the sidewalk on their property or a fence on their property that that'd be the only thing that uh i think we had a consideration similar consideration over on the sleepy hollow extension i remember what the name of the road is now what i'm what i'm talking about is if we had a little not much of a high point but enough just so that the back of the cars are facing down when they're coming to a stop yeah because i think that was that was a concern is if they're at if they're at an upward angle right into the house yeah across and we'll get more elevation in information so we've got a better answer but all right sorry tom i didn't mean to take you no that's it for me thanks john how about you um you know i'm hearing all the concerns that people have and i think they're good concerns um the setbacks uh you know increased setbacks if possible i think would be good of course the screening the you know would be good if we can look at different different methods of screening to mitigate some of the light issues um i think there's a lot of questions still you know in terms of like what the real traffic impact is you know obviously that that trash mount i don't even know if that's in our purview it probably isn't but um that is you know that's a concern and a lot of comments on the water issues as well than that that entire area so those are the things that are that are you know top of mind um aside from you know reading the report verbatim you know it looks it looks like it adheres to most things but it seems like there's a lot of little work that needs to be done to address some of the the other concerns that are being sated over and over again okay thank you you know and i would say i think from from my take on this at this point this is for commissioners it is from a regulatory point of view we this is this is solid i mean this is this is and and and no folks ask about why do we allow development to occur when there's already a lot well it's because that's what the zones and the zoning regulations and subdivision subdivision regulations are there for us they establish what can go where um and strictly because there's other development we can't necessarily say you can't put something there and that's what we so we have to look at is how can we mitigate the issues that present by this as you know what what are the things that are going to you know be be really detrimental and what i'm seeing in this is is really is the is really the the the the the lack of another term light pollution on the adjacent properties and we've had similar situations not that far in the past and the one that i'm two that i'm thinking of we we uh used a berm and we use natural vegetation instead of fencing and i i actually think that's it has a longer longer lifespan generally than putting up a fence because fences like the fence that went along pinecrest the original fence that was along chilling for along pinecrest that collapsed and was sort of really in a state of disrepair for quite a while um fences need to be maintained trees need to be maintained but generally you can do more with staggering the screening and stuff so a combination of both might be useful especially in the short run i'm absolutely right i'm what i'm i'm sort of going towards is i i don't think we should be dictating a specific thing right now i would like to say that light mitigation light pollution mitigation is would be a must for me on the adjacent parcels and i think you know david you mentioned you might you should be able to find ways to increase the setback from the shilling for properties and if we can increase the setback and add light pollution mitigation features um which people will call them light pollution whatever you know buffer features yeah i mean and then we've we've we're recognizing that you have a right to develop a parcel if your if your proposal meets the regulations but you also are mitigating the negative impact to the to the adjacent post in that case i'm i'm really more concerned about like the the how we're going to potentially mitigate the the impact to mr badger because you like he said the road is right there yeah and i would say the and the Dwyer and the Dwyer parcels as as well so i mean i i would have concerns about both of those with that traffic with that road being that close to their structures i'm just i don't know what it is right now i'm just from a from a overhead view yep there's existing fencing but we can show obviously more detail there will need to be a traffic study yeah we know that so what we're trying to do is we're we're trying not to put the 60 foot up against either one of them so you know you'd need 60 feet to come in luckily you know unlucky or luckily there's 80 feet there so we're we're trying not to put the 60 feet right on either one of their property lines which gives them a little bit more space it just seems to me to me that for the takeaway for me would be that we need to to not increase any impact to them compared to what is today so whatever that is you know whether it's solid fencing um to prevent light spillage that doesn't interfere with the egress and and so forth for the but then the really curious one is is is is the potential you know the the garbage dumps and and i'm saying mr badger's been there long enough to say that there was there and he was you know so i don't think there's any doubt that it was used in such a way but indian brook is a sensitive watershed to my understanding still is so we can't do anything that has a negative you know so how do we address that how do we how do we acknowledge that we you know we've had testimony that is there and methane release isn't necessarily a good thing either yeah um oh i was also just going to mention that um there's no sidewalk on that side of the street from what i understand um mr badger's i wish it uh yeah and if there is a sidewalk there because there is anticipation for kids there i mean it it's probably a marketability issue for you anyway but um talking to the school bus company and figuring out where the school bus is going to stop or if you need to turn around or something like that for them because the kids will probably have to go across the street or something so and that'll probably be addressed in the traffic study but well the public road is designed that a school bus if it wanted to come in can come in turn around no problem okay if they're stopping out on pinecrest we have a sidewalk shown to pinecrest staff notes is identified that we need to work on a crosswalk also if if perhaps the bus stop is on the other side of pinecrest or something that's yeah i don't think on the on the garbage uh i don't think that's anything to do with the local process this is an active 50 project uh this was used as a farm 60 years ago maybe there's maybe there's some animal bones there but everything else certainly is decomposed as far as the garbage down there we have done initial test pits behind the house where we're showing that place holder and they were clean clean soil three test three backhoe test pits just just this week i did a couple test pits down by the cul-de-sac perhaps just passed it those were clean i wasn't looking for i was just doing random test pits but those were related to the stormwater areas so so we will at a minimum do additional testing to satisfy our own curiosity but uh if if it's any issue i would think that the state would be interested in us removing that material because if it's it's if it's a concern it's already a concern it's leaching and anything we do will improve that concern if you're removing material to put in a unit that's going to improve that concern so i don't think it's i think overall the project is actually a good thing if there is something there to to remove it given that high groundwater if there is something there it's it's already going it's all right it's already we agree with the comments you know as far as as far as the groundwater table on portions this site um in my overview believe it or not i know whenever a development comes in next to you you don't think it but that's why i said the side yard setback is 10 feet and without a pud you can do duplexes so the fact that we've already started with 27 and 37 feet we're trying to go beyond the regulations we're trying to keep these not backyard to backyard sounds like the board is is willing to work with us to make that into a private road which will make it a little bit better um certainly agree that more so than separation the lights coming down there and at sketch plan we don't it's sketch landscaping is not part of it so we agree that likely a fence is going to be needed opposite the end of the cul-de-sac and and maybe landscaping in other areas but we have no issues with those we'll do the we'll do better than what we've done compared to the minimum regulations um we've already done better than the minimum regulations and we'll we'll try to do better than that we so are darin errant i mean where are your thoughts at this point based on the discussions we've had are we still on track with the recommendations that we have in the staff report yes i would agree and again the design of the stub road road b is definitely going to change sounds like um and we'll look at that when it comes in for preliminary we support modifications to both you know increase clustering and reduce the impact to adjoining properties and we do agree that the um trash is a state level issue okay um there are grants available to help with remediation so that's not an impact to the project as much hopefully um we can connect the applicants with that so uh definitely goes beyond our overview sounds like mr badger would be a good resource for doing some test bits well c in weston is the owner test bits are easy okay i mean yeah um one round back to the table then we're going to go back to the to the public again because we are still open so john mangan what are your any any changes in thoughts anything that you no nothing additional from what i already said no okay tom nothing else for me nid no i think we've we've hit all the the key points okay so i'm gonna go back to the public at this point and if there's anyone in the room mr wager uh yes i have a word yeah are they aware of the farm um farm maybe i don't know it was the trash their trash bits seem to be new new undersheds did i came to our attention a couple weeks ago through darin okay yeah after we submitted our sketch plan application okay anyone else online that has a question one more time around the room okay commissioners i would take a motion to close the public hearing i'm moving close public hearing moved by moved by tom second seconded by ned and i see if they're listening all those in favor hi hi oppose motion carries four zero public hearing is closed okay um is there anything hang on i'm going through the conditions i'd almost like to say leave the staff report as is and then add something in our finding section that outlines we want to support we want to see screening we want to entertain the private road yep um increase private road increase clustering and allow greater setback to schillingford uh see designs that would mitigate the light pollution to the residents at schillingford on the on the stuff on the private road if we're going to call it a private road let's call it private road um options to mitigate the again the light pollution on the parcels immediately adjacent to the entrance and across the street that takes care of the that addresses the reeds Dwyer's and mr badger correct one question i had not not for typing david one of the things that keeps coming up when we do natural resource discussions is the habitat connectivity and it looks like if you can put that back up darin if you've got it i can also pull up the biofinder uh if we want to look at that yeah yeah because we had when we had discussions with um other parcels i mean this looks like it doesn't it's got connectivity yeah the the main corridor um and i agree wildlife corridor is is along the brook there so um there was a question and and i went over it in the overview but there was a question from one of the gentlemen about a and r and uh all those agencies that i talked about fisheries wildlife non-game natural heritage um historic preservation i forgot to mention ag uh you actually even though it's in this backyard here you do deal with all the agencies they're all okay with this proposal at this point this isn't the proposal that we started with there was there's been modifications uh the main thing for the corridor is not all of what's in green but a lot of what's shaded in green kind of minus the uh where the garden area is so you've got the riparian corridor that goes along the brook and that's the most important thing so you either restricted by the 50 foot wetland buffer because it's a class 2 wetland or you're restricted by the limits of the riparian buffer um and we had a a walk a sidewalk with uh the person that's in charge of of riparian buffers uh she's good with it that's when we eliminated that last duplex and made it a single um and uh she was one of three folks from the state at that sidewalk there was a question earlier about uh archaeology that's um hasn't been flushed out yet that would occur next year they do uh they do about 18 inch deep small pits sifting the material they're they're looking for chips, cherts, flakes, arrowheads um if in that area from from historic times if there's any uh fire crack rock or anything like that that's what they're looking for um and that's most likely going to occur mostly down uh and I should say we did walk that site with the the person that's in charge he did several cores with his core tool including by the cul-de-sac it's only on the top but he was coming up with native material on the top you don't get native material on the top even if it was 50 years ago so if there's something down there it doesn't seem to be widespread. There's one more um thing I wanted to point out uh there was a comment or question about whether the road could be rerouted out to route 2 Colchester Road and just want to point out that that would uh impact the river corridor the wetlands the wildlife habitat um because all of that basically goes along the edge of the property and that's what we try to avoid so that's why the design is as it is. Yeah we that would not be approved by the local forestry. By many agencies. Okay so I think I mean you we've got got the decrease right of the surreal I mean all that's already there. Yep so we have private road uh increased clustering and setbacks on to Schillingford greening and mitigation for light pollution on that private road mitigating light and traffic impacts to the reeds, the dryers, and the badgers at the intersection of Pine Crest. Yeah um you want to acknowledge that trash pits are a state-level issue? I think we want to acknowledge that the the trash pits were brought up but we're looking for a state state uh uh assessment. And I know there was discussion about providing a water service to community garden but I I'd just as soon leave that as not a not a official recommendation at this stage. We likely won't do it because uh that there's an existing walkway across the wetland that can stay but we would either have to dig or there'd be impact within the 50 foot wetland buffer overlaps that existing walkway. So it's wide enough that people if they've got a garden card or anything um but uh I doubt we will have water service to that garden. So I kind of want didn't I wasn't thinking that was going to be the the figure. To me the big thing on this is the impact of that anticipated private road in that development on the Schillingford Crossing. The rest of it is is not as I mean and and the entrance into the development of a pinecrest. I mean those that's the two big things in me in my mind for this. It's an engineering feature right now. Yeah you have three basically three areas for development the two that you know the end of the cul-de-sac which people don't seem to have much of an issue with unfortunately the good land next to Schillingford Crossing. If the house was torn down you know you could you could try to cluster some in there but the house is a good house so you don't tear it down. But uh so Dan you captured all that those those pieces? Yep so um you want to do you want to strike any findings about this water service for the garden or do you want to so far I just have additional findings? I actually would would would my my thought would be to just leave the staff report as written in it and add that that commentary into the planning commission findings and and fine tuning those pieces for for preliminary with the understanding that you know you're gonna have the discussion back and forth on the on the water service and and so forth. I think it's it's it's more important to call out those items that are that are to me more critical for this and the rest of it is still going to be worked out. I mean there's an engineering that's got to get done and we're going to get two more shots too so if we don't work it out suitably at preliminary there's final too. So if the commissioners commissions in agreement I would offer that as the motion the staff report as written with the additional planning commission findings that we stated um and Darren read back. Second. Any additional discussion on that? John, Tom, what do you I mean this is no I'm good. I'm good. Okay all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? 4-0. So this is to go to preliminary and as always the expectation is not you know that there's something may come up but we need these we need these looked at to go forward. Thank you. Everyone thank you for your commentary on this and your input it is it it's it's it's significant thank you. Thank you. And let's take five minutes to gather breath. Do you want a official reason? Okay that's fine. Do we need to touch base on the other business items or can we defer them to next time? Do you have want to do a minutes at least? Yeah minutes I that's I was going to find them. I'd like to just do the other stuff of so I need a motion guys for the minutes of November 18th. Yeah I got a couple questions on the minutes. Okay. On lines 348 and 357 they refer to commissioner daily two things number one I was not speaking as a commissioner and number two I and I didn't think that commissioner the title commissioner rolled over the same as a retired colonel or something you know. So okay so I think we we actually chained Sharon had sent out an update and changed it and if you move the commission in 347 left it here because you technically were still commissioner daily when you recused himself. I don't know. And then I think we covered I think she cut yeah but it also doesn't line 357. Yeah okay I would agree striking that. 357 as well. Just the commission the word commissioner on 357. You have to do 362 then. Yes. Yeah. Any other adjustments to the minutes? All those in favor? All right. We never had a motion. We never had a motion so let's go back and move them first. Ned you moved them. I moved it. I moved it. I seconded them as amended. I seconded we modified the the two amendments and now all those in favor. All right. Opposed minutes carry 4-0 as amended. So I'd like to defer the other business items unless they're time sensitive to the next meeting. I've got one comment not on that so much is and you take it the way you want. I'm looking at this storage unit proposal. It's that to me is disappointing. Yeah. And it's disappointing because it's not adding any employment or anything positive in that zone. No people are hired. It doesn't create any jobs except for building it. It's just a static thing and this is just it's probably not our problem and I'll probably catch Brian Shelton somewhere over coffee and get out of him for it but you know if the town is going to look forward you don't build store you don't use your limited industrial space for storage buildings. I know they're necessary. They're probably great business to make a lot of money on them. That's why people are building them. There are a couple of reasons why that it's spot in particular probably ended up that way. They didn't have as much stormwater capacity for the existing ponds on corporate drive so they had to do it on site and I don't know. But I totally agree, Ned. I don't have a lot of discussion. It's just my my feeling we can you know that I come up with stuff like that. No you're right. The other one is this is an article you guys ought to read sometime or find it about where retail shopping is going. Mixed use everything. It's pretty scary. Can we send it to us and we can put it out to the whole PC? What? If you send it to us we can. Yeah I'll send it to you if I can keep my machine. That's enough for that tonight I'm sorry. And yes the other business I think can wait. The letter about RPDI uses we can incorporate into zoning updates which we'll probably do in January and then housing commission stuff just came in today. Okay anything that is burn burner and let's take a motion to adjourn. Nothing. Tom moved to adjourn. Ned seconded it. I heard him and I saw him move. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned at