 Hello and welcome to the Williston Development Review Board of May 9, 2023. My name is Pete Kelly. I'm chair of the DRB. If you are a Zoom participant, please sign in with your name on the participant toolbar. This is a hybrid meeting taking place in the town hall and virtually on Zoom. All members of the board and public can communicate in real time. Planning staff will provide Zoom instructions for public participation before we begin. All votes taken in this meeting will be done by roll call vote in accordance with the law. If Zoom crashes, the meeting will be continued to May 23, 2023. Let's start the meeting by taking a roll call attendance of DRB members participating. Nate Andrews. Here. Paul Christensen. Present. Lisa Brayden-Harter. Scott Riley. Dave Turner. Here. John Hemmelgarn. Here. The chair is present. We do have everybody's in attendance. We do have a quorum. Tonight we have a light agenda after the public quorum. We've got two applications, DP23-14, which is a discretionary permit to modify access to 16 old stage road. And then we've got DP20-03.3, U-Haul moving in storage, master sign plan. I will be refusing myself for the U-Haul application due to conflict my employer has with the applicant. So next up is Zoom instructions. Andrew. So we have no members of the public on Zoom, so I will skip that for tonight. Great. Great. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. I love those instructions. Okay. So seeing that there's no members participating remotely, next up is the public quorum. I have an opportunity for members present here tonight who would like to address the board on issues that are not on tonight's agenda. Is there anyone who has something to bring forth at this time? I do. I think the town should consider renting or buying Bed Bath and Beyond for the new library. Anything else? Okay. Hearing none. First up is DP23-14. Dar, if you would please come up and state your name and address for the record please. Sure. Yeah. My name is Dar Gibson. I address 16 Olson Road in Olson. Thank you. Emily, you're up next. Hey, Steve. This is a request for discretionary comments and modify access and parking at 16 Olson Road. This property is located in the additional review area of the Village Dome District. It's about a half acre. The current use is residential. No changes used is proposed. It has access on a town road. The parks will also have sponsors on buildings to road into the state highway. This application will not require design review or conservation commission review. The staff recommendation tonight is approve the driveway and parking as proposed. This design reduces the non-conformity and improves safety by reconfiguring the curb cut and compliance with DPW specifications. This house is a historic home constructed in the 1830s or 1850s. Fast forwarding a century in the 1990s, a three-lot subdivision took place whereby a lot's access was designated on that subdivision plan as shared across lot two. A few months later, that subdivision was amended so that lot three could have its own access rather than single point overt lot two. And then the DRB may recall recently approving the certificate of appropriateness for the accessory building. The reason for that order of operations is when Dar came in to submit his application, realized that his driveway location wasn't permitted and we needed to resolve the access. He wanted to move forward with the certificate of appropriateness because if there are any red flags on the barn design, that could be resolved as soon as possible. The conservation commission and HAC were not required to comment on this application. Public works and fire both commented. Most importantly, public works is in support with this change. Its reduction in width is away from the intersection will be an improvement. No comment letters were received at time of mail-up or up until today. So for the Village Zoning District, there are some setback requirements 50 feet from the state highway, 25 feet from a town road. In general, new driveways can cross the setback at 90 degrees plus or minus 10 degrees and cannot run parallel within the setback. However, this home's original construction in the mid-1800s, it's likely that the driveway where it exists today has been there since then so it has this vested right. The 1983 photo on the cover page of the staff report, you can see where that driveway is today. That rear addition was replaced with a deck. So that three-lot subdivision in 1990 changed the access for it all to come from the abutting property known as Lot 2. However, despite that subdivision approval, the access continued from that existing driveway. Even administrative permits throughout the 1990s showed the access coming from the other property but it never actually happened and aerial imagery over time confirms this. For vested rights, we recommend approval as proposed. The easement from that 1990s subdivision runs parallel and is partially within that setback. In your staff report, if you go to Big Year 1, I highlight where that 1990s subdivision would have had access all the way to the house within the setback. What the applicant is proposing to do is access an accessory structure which isn't allowed by right use of a residential property. And most importantly, this application brings the driveway into compliance with DPW specifications. So currently the driveway is wider than what a curb cut would allow to be and it requires vehicles to park in the right of way and use the street to back out. That driveway configuration is not in compliance with our access standards or public work specifications. What the applicant is proposing to do is narrow the curb cut, bringing it into compliance. Vehicles will no longer be parking in the right of way and it reduces the overall non-conformity on the property. There is a wetlanded button buffer on the property, but no development is proposed in that area. So this first image I've highlighted the utility plan from the 1990s subdivision that shows how access would have utilized the existing easement. You'll note that the bottom left corner, it had the turnaround going over the neighbor's property. It delineated some sheds to be removed that are not there today. The second figure highlights two areas. The square on the top part of the image is the part of the driveway that's going away, reducing the non-conformity. And then the driveway that's being proposed that lines up with the 1990s plan. What follows is findings of facts, conclusions of law, and conditions of approval for this change. Thank you. Thank you, Emily. Okay, Dar, what do you have to supplement Emily's staff report? Not much really. I think she did a good job. I think this would be an improvement for the town and for myself also. Safety, I've never liked backing out into the road. It's very close to the intersection. People come into that intersection quite quickly sometimes. So that would give me an opportunity to pull onto my property, turn around and pull back out in the right way. Give me access to the barn that I got approval for a few weeks ago. And I just don't see why I need to use that original sort of easement from my neighbor's property just to drive parallel back up to my house along the road. Yep. Okay, anything else? DRB members, questions? Members of the audience, any questions? Jeff? Last call. Very good. Okay. We are going to close DP 23-14 at 7-11. Thank you for coming. Great. Thank you very much. Okay, I'm going to recuse myself on DP 20-03.3. Mr. Hemmelgarn, take it away. You need me to move. I think you're fine. I think I am. DP 20-03.3, U-Haul moving in storage, requesting a master sign plan. We'll call this to order at 7-12. Who's up? That's me. So I'm in. Take it away. This is a request for an amendment to the existing master sign plan at the U-Haul property on Willisford Road. The application seeks to replace one sign on the existing U-Haul building, which you can see lined in red there. Seven wall signs for the new U-Box warehouse that was approved by the DRB last week. And then one directional sign located as you enter the property to direct people to the existing U-Haul facility, which will be the publicly accessible building. Staff recommends approval with findings, conclusions and conditions as drafted. The hack found the signage to be proposed. We did not receive any other comments. Just a reminder when the DRB approved the master sign plan for the existing U-Haul storage building, they did apply a condition limiting the signage for that building to 755 square feet. The replacement sign on the existing building is smaller, so it won't exceed that condition. The replacement sign is also illuminated now. The reverse channel letters, which does comply with the bylaw, always the highlight of any master sign plan staff report, the frontage calculation. So the drawing for lot two has a small error on it. It includes both north and west elevations, but the bylaws only allow one street-facing elevations. We recommended the condition, like it's fixed at Final Plans, but staff has reviewed it and they are comfortably below the 8% limit. And then lastly, sign H2, which is the directional sign that does comply with the limits on height and setback for freestanding signs in the bylaw. It is omitted from the sign table, so we recommended a condition that it be included at Final Plans. So what follows is recommendation for approval with findings, conclusions, and conditions. That's it. Thank you. We're moving so efficiently. I forgot to have you give your name and address. Jeff Bain, owner's rep, U-Haul, 58 Howard Street, Winchester, New Hampshire. Thank you. We should know that by now. We do. There are faces that do appear more than once. So have you had a chance to read the report on those conditions? Yeah. Are you okay with those? We're okay with everything. Simon did a great job in the presentation. We tried to replace one sign. We're not changing any square footage on the building. We're adding the directional sign, which was a recommendation from the hack that we do something on the island coming in, and then the new signage for the new U-Box building. Questions? Any questions from the board members? Yeah. What do you need big signs for on a building that's only not access to the public? It's still advertising. We are advertising. It is a product that we, it's not a retail operation, but it is a product that we offer. So it is advertising signage. You're not answering. Any questions? Anything else, Paul? There's going to be no more box trucks advertising U-Haul parked in front of the new building. Is there? I think that's correct. That was part of the conditions when we... So in other words, we're going to add now U-Haul trucks in front of the big box building that's not open to the public as well as all the U-Haul big box building. Pine? During pre-application, they removed those parking spaces so the discretionary permit that you approved two weeks ago does not include the parking for U-Box trucks in the front of the property. So they'll only be in front of the existing building. Okay. Thank you, sir, for that clarification. Anything, Scott? Dave, Nate? I'm good. Oh, looks good. Last chance. Anybody in the audience like to ask a question? No. Any last comments from the applicants? I'm good. All right. Appreciate your time. You bet. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. 717. 5 minutes. Turn this back over to Pete. Thank you, John. A little slow, John. DRB members, is there a need to go into deliberative session? Not for me. Is anybody... No. I see none. Paul? No. John? I'm good. Lisa? I'm good. Okay. All right. Very good. Who will volunteer to read the Dar Gibson? Take Dar's... I'm sorry. Who will volunteer? I can take that. Okay. Go for it. As authorized by WDB 6.6.3, I, Nathan Andrews, move that the Williston Development Review Board, having reviewed the application submitted into all accompanying materials, including the recommendations of the town staff and the advisory boards, required to comment on this application by the Williston Development bylaw. And having heard and duly considered the testimony presented at the public hearing of May 9th, 2023, accept the findings of fact and conclusions of law for DP 23-14, and approve this discretionary permit subject to the conditions of approval above. This approval authorizes the applicant to file plans, obtain approval of these plans from staff, and then seek an administrative permit for the proposed development, which must proceed in strict conformance with the plans on which this approval is based. Great. Thank you, Nate. Is there a second? I'll second it. Dave Turner seconds it. Any discussion? Okay. Yay or nay? Nate? Yay. Paul? Yay. Lisa? Yay. Scott? Yay. Dave? Yay. John? Yay. Chair is a yay. Seven in favor. None opposed. Motion carries unanimously. I will volunteer for DP 20-03.3. I'll take it. Okay. Dave, go ahead. As authorized by WDB 6.6.3, I, Dave Turner, move the Wilson Development Review Board having reviewed the application submitted and all accompanying materials, including the recommendations of the town staff and the advisory boards required to comment on this application by the Wilson Development By-law and having heard and duly considered the testimony presented at the public hearing of May 9, 2023, except the findings of fact, conclusions of law for DP 20-03.3 and approve the discretionary permit for master sign plan subject to the conditions of approval above. This approval authorizes the applicant to submit final plans, obtain approval of these plans from staff, and then seek administrative sign permits which must proceed in strict conformance with the plans on which this approval is based. Thank you, Dave. Is there a second? I'll second. I think Lisa be doing it. Lisa, second is it. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Nate, yeah or nay? Yeah. Paul. No. Lisa. Yay. Scott. Okay. Dave. Yay. John. Yay. Six in favor. One opposed. And the chair recused himself. I think that would be five in favor. I said five in favor. Okay. I thought I heard you say six. I said six. I wrote five. I believe you. Okay. Five in favor. One opposed. One recused. Motion carries. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of April 25th, 2023? Yeah. I move that we approve minutes of April 25th, 2023 as written. Thank you, John. Is there a second? Question. We need a second. Should there be a note about the fact that we have the point of order? Shouldn't we have a second? Yeah. We need a second. I'll second. Seconds. Any discussion? Paul, go ahead. Should there be a comment in relationship to the fact that we had an email approval part of this? Staff, are you weigh in on that, please? I don't believe that that's relevant. Yeah. Okay. Good question, Paul. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. Yay or nay? Nate? Yay. Paul? Yay. Lisa? Yay. Scott? Yay. Dave? Yay. John? Yay. I'm going to abstain as I did not participate as a board member in that meeting. So six in favor, none opposed? One abstention. Motion carries. The meeting minutes are approved. Okay. Now they're under other business. Communication, final plans and other business. There is a memo here from staff. Looks like this should be handed out. You got one? Okay. Emily, that you're going to walk us through this memo. I can just run through it. Okay, Simon, you're going to walk us through it. It's not just a simple of reading it into the record as having been distributed. If everyone's read it, then I don't need to go through it. I'm happy just to give you a brief summary of what's in it. Why don't you give us a summary? Yeah. So I'll start. Twice this year, the board has reviewed decisions by unanimous consent following the meeting, which is not how, or has historically done it, the approval of decisions. Can you rewind? Yeah. It's not what? Sorry. Historically how the board has issued their written decisions is by deliberating on the night, those deliberations are captured in the meeting minutes. And then two weeks later or three weeks later, the board reviews those minutes. If they're fine, then staff takes those as listing the conditions, findings and conclusions and issues the applicant with a notice of decision. So, may recall at the Northridge meeting there was consensus from the residents and the applicant that they'd like to move forward with the application as quickly as possible. It was basically a poll and they wanted to get a poll in the summer. So, we staff circulated the draft minutes by email and the board approved them by unanimous consent, saying that no one objected and they were accurate representation. So, state statute allows the board 45 days from the closure of the hearing to issue their written decision. So, generally what happens is the board are well within the timeframe. They're generally within two to three weeks of issuing the decision. But it does sort of impose that extra two weeks on the applicant for them to start their appeal period and file their final plans and things like that. Some might say they've got a, you know, they're 99% sure that that's what the condition is going to be so they can work out their plans. So, this is the second time we've done it this year. So, we did it earlier in the year when we mistakenly didn't include the minutes in the DRP's packet. On that occasion, we did approve the sort of the notice of the minutes by email and then issue the decision. So, really, you know, we're well within the statutory time limits. But this is something that historically the feedback is we haven't done that often and we just wanted to make sure that whether the board had any comments on that, whether they're comfortable with us circulating this like that on some occasions, whether they prefer, you know, to always have the minutes, approve the decisions two weeks after, whether they'd like to see some sort of special cases where that might be appropriate. Okay. That's perfect. Appreciate it. Very clear. So, I would open it up for board comments if, you know, I'll kick it off, kind of frame it that I think this is not something that we're going to adopt as a common practice. It's for one-offs and utilizing the unanimous consent for approval on the one-offs, I personally think is a prudent and time-tested approach. And I don't have any issue with it. As a matter of fact, I support it. But I'd like to hear, do others agree with that or do they view it differently? I guess in order for it to be unanimous consent via email, then you need a reply from everyone, right? Yeah, so basically what unanimous consent, as I understand it, and staff please weigh in, is that you need everybody to approve it, and it has to be approved with one vote because you're basically eliminating the opportunity for comments and feedback. And so if somebody is uncomfortable or has question, then you say nay, and the board would have to get back together, and we'd have to have an opportunity for discussion. So it's basically waving the discussion. Right. So if you don't get a reply from someone, then you don't have unanimous consent. But it's only the people that were there and participate. Participate. Yes. It's only the people that would vote at the meeting. So like I did not participate in the unanimous consent because I was not participating as a board member in that hearing. That makes sense. Did I? How did you? Yeah. That's right. I agree with you on this. The one-offs, in an instance like this, were a timeline for a project, and both parties were in agreement with it. I think it's a great idea to move forward and support both applicants. Paul, you've got a question. Which segues back my point that I think that when we do one of these one-offs, there should be an addendum noted on our minutes that we've been voted on in the next meeting. Oh, by the way, just so you realize, we know that we did this. Yeah, I would take it one step further and say that if there was a, I think this memo is well-written. We need the four bullet points at the bottom are important. And that the board should remind itself anytime it takes one of these votes of what these four bullet points are, review them, believe that the request qualifies based on these four bullet points, and then decide to move forward. One of my concerns is that the board gets swayed by the pleadings of the applicant at the time of the hearing. Oh, for me, big, bad developers here, we need to have this done now. We've got to have this built now. Summers, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da. Whatever, and I'm not referencing Northways, but I, so, you know, I guess I would argue that this could act as just a little bit of a, you know, a check and balance to the emotions of the board and the emotions of the applicant at the time of the hearing. I would concur with you, Pete, in that, you know, I think there are probably instances where it makes sense. I would be hard-pressed to do this very often. I think, you know, given these bullet points, I think applicants are aware of the process. They should be aware of the process. They should be aware of the process well in advance. I think we should be, they should be expected to be able to count backwards on the calendar and figure out when they need to get their applications in, when the board's going to review them. If it's going to be a tough hearing, they could even plan on perhaps a continuance in knowing that they're going to have to come back a second time. I mean, there's developers out there that are fully aware of that. I think it's, I think we need to be careful that we don't fall in the trap of doing a favor, doing a favor, just doing that nice. And I think that we need to be even-handed. I mean, every applicant that comes before us is not the same. You know, there are people that have been here many times are very comfortable with this board. This board is familiar with them. There is others. I've seen people sitting up there with their hands shaking and their voice quavering because they're nervous. And they're not going to know that they could even ask for that. So I think it's something, you know, I'm going to look back at staff. I think, you know, applicants need to be aware that, and this shouldn't really be necessarily an option until they've made a really good case independently that that's going to happen. I think, otherwise, we're going to have a hard time some day trying to decide where is the cutoff between the one off that makes a lot of sense and the one that's just somebody forgot, you know, poor planning is not an emergency for me. So anyway, that's... But that's why FedEx exists in the United States because management, by definition, is poor planning. Not sure that's pertinent, but... Okay, so Emily and Simon and Andrew. So Paul raises a great point about how is... These are my words, how we're going to memorialize the fact that there was unanimous consent in the meeting minutes. I guess in the... I think maybe below the motion we can conclude a one line sentence that this was agreed by unanimous consent on the date that the last person indicated that they were okay with it. Okay, I think that's... And I think it also should have in there what you pointed out about the fact that we should have the four bullet points also in the same thing that, yeah, this met that criteria about why it was able to be a unanimous decision, not to speak as someone at Rosamund. I would not do that for the following reason that if we were... If we started to list the guiding principles on everything we did, these meeting minutes would be 80 pages long. It's also not a requirement. As Simon pointed out, it's fully legal to do what we did. And we don't need to explain ourselves. I'm thinking that we want to be fairly rigorous about it as a group so that we're just consistent. Yeah, it's some guard clearance. Yeah. Okay, so... Put it in the minutes and be done with it. So we're going to put it in the minutes and be done with it. But who... John, you made a motion to approve the minutes, correct? I did. Okay, and Lisa, you seconded. John, are you... I'm going to consider this a friendly amendment. Are you in agreement? I am fine with that. Okay, and Lisa? I'm fine with that. Any discussion on the friendly amendment? Okay. Okay, so go ahead and capture that in the meeting minutes. Okay. And that was a good suggestion, Paul. Thank you. Okay, is there anything else for tonight's... for discussion tonight? Is there a motion to adjourn? Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you all.