TranscriptPlanning Board Public Information Meeting ~ November 13, 2024

everybody George that right yeah right words before we started no sir just moral support working hello Deon how are you going to hear back what's that how are you going to hear back he's going to text me telepathically he said it takes a few minutes

blocked his house because Brian wants power at his house pretty damn selfish that he would I don't know this said a power line issue at my house and CMP has blocked my driveway unfortunately I will not be able to make it to the meeting tonight oh man

one's which J one yes so all I need to remember is Jess I always say Jess anyway no matter which one early well thank you Devon hey how are you being blocked in by CMP so he will not be here okay too bad I was looking for getting his name right tonight Brian L lenen lenen unlike Mark dur mine's

I yeah he said he wasn't coming again until I got so it's not just conservation people who I can't get their name right I mean he's been on well over a year right what's mean I've it's all good is that the same the SEL meeting last night and the last very long period of the SEL meeting was a class they had with the Tom attorney and it was actually very interesting a class well yeah she was giving them a class on everything select board uh you

know uh Foya uh meeting that I'm just making that up but anyway that's for the planing board so they TI your time was sitting there saying well okay it's been 30 minutes there's $200 another 30 minutes so you know I bet it's 400s yeah so anyway what did they want clarification they just I think it was just kind of like uh train us you know I mean it was stuff um when you can go in executive session what you can discuss an executive session um I learned so much I've forgotten in the last three hours uh what emails email yeah it they talk about fo you and how emails are you know use the town

thing because if you don't you open up your entire life if you put something on Facebook related to town everybody gets to see your faceb you know if they file a foil request they get to to see it they cover know it as like we're doing

now but not yes and and she didn't really say you couldn't uh you could you know don't uh yeah don't have a conversation about you know what do you think about uh Jes development or anything like that it's like pretty much the meetings at six please be there George sent out this please be there uh so you know that kind of stuff they talked about you

which is you can you can say that you're not representing a select but you but people will assume you are select you know maybe you keep it legally that way yeah I saw last night yeah although I what do you do chairman I was an hour and a half talk about how bad I started to takeing

do with the all hypothetical and I said it's it's better to ask these questions when there's no concern when then there's actually a concern so but you never once brought up like the cemetery never once I brought up Conservation Commission I brought cons that was we brought up Public Works it did but how wonderful they codes we brought codes how wonderful they all so not going to lose sleep actually very good so you know if you I thought it was a very good meeting her training was was really I thought our new attorney yeah and it's a very different relationship new

rapid response for requests and well I'm sure she's given lot of that kind of training but she was well prepared yeah you know gave good answers and you know work yeah their firm pretty stacked with municip okay we've got Roberta and Samantha are here so we're just waiting for the other the other Jess

student sit in the back of a class don't what's going well my mother used to make us go to on Christmas Eve we would have to go to church an hour and a half early so s very back of the Bel we were s all by ourselves you know up there first in last out it was no like that's exactly she be last out so everyone sees you when they come in they know you're there you get credit just

believe it is 6:30 and um so everybody turn on your uh microphones there so we want to get started because we've got a lot to cover tonight and want to make sure that uh we get through it so um the first thing I start with is a uh check on the Quorum uh we have five members for present one is presently blocked in his driveway by CMP restoring his power so uh he made or may not catch up to us later today but we do have a quorum so if you will stand and join me in the plge of

flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you [Music] we'll get started with that first so there's two items uh on tonight's Agenda One is a change to the resource protection uh article uh based upon some new data and then the other one is for a moratorium uh on battery storage so uh

we'll kind of get into that but kind of want to tell you where we are in this process so uh we met with the U select board all the committee chairs met with the select board last spring and they handed out a couple of tasks for the committees or boards to work on over the summer and in the fall so the two that uh the plan that came in the general direction of the planning board one was take a look at resource protection uh review that and then the other one was battery energry storage and we'll talk about each one individually so throughout the summer uh the the uh resource protection that was a joint Conservation Commission and uh planning board effort so there were three members from each committee that were on that and um

so early fall we came we spent the summer talking about the and you'll see the results uh on the resource protection as we go through this uh refined our proposal uh to go forward and tonight is the I guess not the culmination because we're long ways from the end but tonight is an opportunity for us to show you talk to you you inform you about what uh what the results were and what we've done on that and um then the other one is battery energy storage which George Mr tavar the town planner will go into greater detail on what that is um and that's a little bit different and we'll again we'll talk about that when we get to it so uh talked about the uh the process on resource protection and that um so tonight it's about an introduction of the two items to the town and so either those of you who are here or those you are watching on television uh what are we doing um and the way we're going to do

this is I'm doing the intro as we speak the town planner Mr thear will give information on a little more details about the two items one at a time we'll then take public comments and questions and then we'll wrap wrap each one up separately so we'll do resource protection first followed by battery energy storage so the process from this point is for resource protection uh we'll take your comments tonight we'll take a look at those at are uh December 10th meeting uh that excuse me December 4th is the next planning board meeting um incorporate make changes that may or may not that may be appropriate and then uh the planning board sends it to the select board the select board will take our recommendation uh for the changes they will tweak them and uh um add to them change them decide not toh put them on the town warrant at all they will send it back to the after they've made their changes send it back to the the planning

board planning board will have a formal public hearing which is different tonight is informational uh sometime in March uh 30 days be no more than 30 days before no less than 7even days before the town meeting uh which I think is the 5th of April but the first Saturday in April the town will vote uh as a legislative body they will vote to approve or not uh the resource protection uh changes so that's kind of where that that process is so having said that um I think I said we're we looked at resource protection uh to see what changes may have occurred since it was last looked at and I'll ask Mr thebarge who's the town planner to uh to give us some detail or some information on that I do want to say that we really tonight is not about in for resource protection is not about individual properties so if you're here to talk about I live at 636 stackpole we're not going to do that this Eventing we talk

about the the process we going talk about in general how we came up with uh ideas or proposals but Mr thear the town planner um whether he likes it or not is very happy to meet with you individually to talk about your individual ual parcel will show it to you on the gis and explain to you why it may still be in resource protection uh or why uh you

know we we cut this piece of resource protection out so that you could add on to your your home so uh with that Mr thar is there anything I need to cover did you have it so I'll turn it over to George thar Our Town planner thank you John um I will help everyone just understand what the proposed changes are and so we start out with the reminder

that in 2023 the zone map was updated based on comprehensive plan recommendations and natural resources data that have been provided by the state part of this process for comprehensive planning state provides natural resources data across all towns in Maine and so uh the town uses that as a basis for making decisions on natural resource uh conservation and protection during that participation process similar to what we're doing tonight uh there was uh considerable public input that was uh questioning the accuracy of the state data and it was also uh significant concerns expressed about the impacts of that new resource protection zoning on the expansion of existing structures so after a review of Durham's data based on public uh inquiries at the state level uh indland fisheries and wildlife confirmed that their Co co-occurrence map which was very generalized uh in the way that had been applied was uh inaccurate and so they

did a customized analysis of Durham to try to give us a much more accurate picture so the proposed zoning map revisions will remove areas that were previously placed in RP based on uh what they the rating system that ifnw uses

the beginning with habitat program uh of six plus and this is an overlapping of deer yard uh unbroken forested if there's Wildlife special wildlife habitat conserved lands all of those things go into a uh a qualitative uh

assessment of how important this is for a community to work on protection so that has been updated as I said and uh We've also working with the Conservation Commission members and planning board members on that working group that John mentioned uh took a deep dive look at the impacts of resource protection on existing structures and the difficulties imposed if they have to go to a the board either a planning board or a board of appeals review to do expansions of those structures so the committee uh took a look at that as well so where they came out uh after the review of all this research was uh this is what we were using in uh in the 2018

update this was the these were the areas of Durham identified by the beginning with habitat program as being uh of a higher significance in terms of uh co-occurrence of Natural Resources that's about 1,500 Acres total of land and based on the comprehensive plan uh that land in 2023 was put into the resource Protection District

came out this year they did a customized analysis so if you compare the green area on this map uh with these Maps which show all of the different resource values you can see on the left side those dark green areas uh that show up uh in composite on

this map and when they did the 2024 update customized you can see that pretty much all of that really dark green which is the higher rating values for Durham pretty much dropped off and so that led to a dramatically different picture in terms of those High higher value uh co-occurrence natural resource areas so part of The Proposal that the planning board and Conservation Commission working group was recommending is to revise the zoning map to remove about 1500 Acres uh depicted

on this map is orange uh those are those dark green areas now if there are other Durham uh classifications 100-year flood plane uh 10 acre plus forested Wetlands the 100ft stream buffer uh the uh waterfall wild uh waterfall waiting bird habitats uh those will still be resource

protection so the only parts that will be removed are Those portions that are only resource protection because of that beginning with habitat six plus cooccurrence of Natural Resources so those are the only areas that would be pulled out of resource protection and then the second part of this proposal is to look at uh existing

buildings within the resource protection and there those spots are depicted by these circles on the map you can see the purple ones are uh buildings of which they're about 18 there were 18 buildings within those circles that were in resource protection based on that uh cooccurrence of Natural Resources if the resource protection is removed from those areas those buildings will now come out of resource protection and those buildings can be expanded without any board reviews subject to whatever the building codes are but there are another 34 properties uh in buildings that would are will still be in resource protection and so those buildings giving relief to those Property Owners is the second part of this proposal so after a lot of discussion about how to give that relief and how to measure it how to apply it where the working group came out was uh four different situations generally the intent was to

provide provide a 100t buffer of for development around those existing structures uh these are down along in the flood plane along the anders skogen River uh that's Snow Road so basically create a 100 foot development buffer so development expansion of these buildings could occur within these uh development buffers with no requirement to go either to the planning board or the board of appeals now this this any construction in here would still be subject to flood plane regulations in terms of flood proofing so any fed federal or state regulations impacting the development in this flood plane would still be applied but it would not be Durham resource protection and then a similar treatment was applied to all existing buildings that were restricted from expansion by uh resource protection on the basis of being in a 10 acre area identified as 10 acre Plus or Lar larger forested Wetlands so you can see there's a couple

of homes here uh these are the yellow depictions and one over here and so creating a 100 foot buffer around those will again enable those Property Owners to apply for building permits to expand their homes uh or businesses without having to go before any board uh when the commission uh and

planning board working group looked at stream offers they they saw a need to do a differential treatment on that so this building uh I think this is Auburn pel Road um that building because the corner of it is within the 100 foot stream buffer that is a non-conforming uh structure and any expansion of that building would have to go either to the board of appeals or the planning board so the intent here is to

remove the building from the resource protection so that expand ions could could occur without board approval provided that if they're build expanding their building it can go no closer to the protected resource which is in this case a stream and then finally the same treatment would be given and there were only a couple of spots in town where you have an existing building this is off the way up in the end of Snow Road where you have a building that is currently in a buffer of a waterfall waiting bird habitat area identified by the the state but that building again could not be expanded without going to the boards uh so the we did a kind of a customized change to the map that pull the building out of resource protection and allows expansion on three sides as long as that construction goes no further toward the protected resource so uh the proposal that will be put before the select board the

recommendation from uh the working group with after considering the public put is currently to remove areas that had previously been identified as uh six plus cooccurrence uh and again those of those areas represented in Orange and then also to remove uh all buildings from the resource Protection District following those guidelines those four different guidelines that I gave you those are really hard to see at this scale but you can actually see those ones up near Snow Road there's little circles those 100t buffer development buffers around those so that is the proposal okay um so I think the uh next step is to take public comment on this so um as

I said earlier it's not your specific piece of property that Mr thear be more than happy to uh to meet with you after this um but we are interested in your comments your comments will be taken into consideration or questions we'll try to answer the questions uh this evening we've got uh the Conservation Commission folks with us Mr thear the members of the planning board so we'll try to answer any questions that you've got um but so we'll go ahead and do that when you come up to the microphone um a couple of things please please raise your hand so that I recognize you this is not going to be a conversation so this is if you've got questions or comments come on up uh give them we'll try to answer them but it's not it's too hard to control or takes too much time if we try to answer questions shout questions from the back also if you come to the mic we know we captured your question and if we can't

answer it this this evening uh we'll be able to get back to you at a different time so try to hold your your questions comments to three minutes plus or minus if we have some time after that we'll do a second round so please come up prepared with your questions comments uh and we'll go ahead and get this piece started who would like to be first come on please come on up Sir all right name and address please Bruce Ro 1641 Royals B road so if you

would speak in the microphone so we can capture it oh i' rather not if you don't mind sir as a special favor yes sir I'm Bruce R I live at 1641 Royals Boro Road and I just had a question I from what I've heard here so far we live down I guess we call it the southeast part of the Town off from 136 and apparently this meeting has nothing to do with that area at this point if you're not on the map I think that would be true it's as I said it's it's hard to talk to individual properties and I would defer you to Mr thar but if you don't see your property on the map either here or on the g i you look at the map and I don't know where I'm at now I mean looking right now at 136 and end

freeb by the looks of that map am I correct in saying I would be considered in the southwest part of the town and not on that map at this point well that's the entire town boundary right there right yeah so I guess what I would as John indicated probably the best way for us to answer your question is to have you get in touch with me by the email on the town's website and I can prepare a map of your particular property and show you what if any impact it would have sounds good all right do that thank you for your time leing more than wel thank you thank you foring into the mic how to get in touch with you was on the sign in sheet okay we'll do thank

road okay and it's really more of a comment not so much a question but when whoever crafts the language and the question that'll be voted upon would seem to me a good idea to explain a little bit you know just this just says remove areas but it doesn't say because it was based on you know maybe some inaccuracy and that sort of stuff it seems to me I want to be clear to the voters that this is to correct something if I'm being clear you are being clear we will try to make it clear I hope so well you know said people come in and say oh why you know doesn't really seem like it would be a bad thing to make it crystal clear and we will probably do a presentation at the town meeting and take qu you know take the same kinds of questions and comments but if you have I can't emphasize enough you have a question about your specific property the best way to get it answered is to have Mr thear show it to you on

the gis yeah no it's not about it's just in general you know I appreciate that thank you anyone to see your property as the example um actually had more general question was the December flood considered a 100-year flood it was the second highest recording on the anders scogin I don't know the answer to that does anybody know the answer to that I think it was far in excess of the 100-year flood that was my impression therefore my question is why is the flood plane mapped as it is considering it it's far it's quite in congruent with the actual results of a 100-year flood and therefore how did the flood play map be made by FEMA State Etc

um because they don't match I if I may take a shot of that and anybody else is welcome to join into it the 100y year four flood plane map is you know 1% chance of it occurring in 100 years so you could have floods that are greater than that but the 100e flood plane is as FEMA has just said here's the it's a standard they use or a line they draw on the map to say these are the areas we're concerned about if if that makes sense it does make sense and I will also say that Mr thear and I attended meeting I don't know where they are in the process but FEMA is looking at the lower Andre Skagen to include Durham to re to see if they're going to remap the Andrew scin so it may change 5

10 years from now that's a very long process yeah yeah I understand it it's hard for me to sort of wrap around whether I agree or disagree with the mapping when I sort of have inherent question about I mean if you look at the flood plane mapping for um The Edge the

call it the north central Corridor there that is probably I mean two to four times the actual flooding that occurred in December and although my property has no chance of subdividing in while I'm alive nor do I want to ever expand the house we just built um I worry about my neighbors a bit and also the potential for that area it also makes me just generally concerned about the process of the mapping because it just doesn't make sense the original flood maps before this process began almost perfectly aligned with the flooding that occurred um into December flood so the change that has significantly increased and I I just I guess I it leads me to question the whole thing even though generally I'm supportive of it and would like to state that things like the 100 foot buffer for uh pre-existing buildings is something I commend and makes sense because a building is no longer habitat um and if buildings were built like ours

was with flooding in mind um we'd have no concerns about it um my biggest question is comes things that are beyond the scope of the meeting today stuff like flood insurance which we have but how much more when basically three quarters of our property is considered a flooded plane which I'd argue is just not conceivable um I would defer your questions about I mean the the flood plane is drawn up by FEMA and they do all kinds of fancy you know fly over it's much more precise as they're going forward flood plane I think FEMA or your insurance people are the right guys to uh to talk to about that you know your flooders sure that's fair and I don't want to get specific about properties but it does like I said make me question sort of a lot more than just my property because some of it just doesn't make sense to someone who would self-define as a conservationist who wants to protect resources so I'm a little

concerned okay thank you thank you thanks for hearing me out um next anybody around Pawn Road and first of all I more of a comment I'm wondering um on previous meetings when we were talking about this meeting you said you're going to be sending out postcards to the affected land owners and I didn't never received the postcard about this meeting and I know my neighbors haven't either wait one second I believe we sent them out over a week ago yeah we sent out 120 BAS B on looking at the maps and identifying the properties so I don't want to throw the US Post Office under the bus but they were mailed well Sor I know some of my neighbors didn't get them either um beside that um to follow up on

Linda's question about I know why the runaround Pond area land is being taken out of resource protection because of the inaccurate facts of the Blanding turtle but some of the other areas that um are in orange now they're being taken out I was wondering what what the change was there why why that's no longer six 6 plus if it wasn't within the blanded turtle Circle um I will pass that to you Mr Barge or Conservation Commission anybody want to take a shot at other than the fact it's no longer on the state map after they've reviewed them so um which that's our our basis but is there any anybody I was like like any specific reason I mean I like I know there's values different resources have different values and when a resource goes away it takes away from the six point and but those areas that aren't in the where the Blanding turtle was supposedly living um you know I was just wondering if what what was why is it different now

than it was and I think Mr Roy would like to answer that and Joe if you would come up and do Brook Road uh to answer your question the map that was drawn using and this is just the de the facts and figures here the map that was drawn that was utilized is from 2018 when the town went through the comprehensive planning process and one of the criteria there was looking at undeveloped habitat blocks meaning areas that are not having any sort of development um they could be Fields they could be Forest but if there was houses there was they were buffered and called undeveloped and since 2018 some of those areas have had additional houses developed had roads put in um driveways and things of that nature and so those undeveloped habitat blocks score large amounts of points if they are 1,200 Acres or more and so there's some areas in town where those 1200 acre blocks are now smaller due to additional development that has taken

place since 2018 and so when the map was redrawn in 2024 those areas no longer met that 1200 acre undeveloped habitat block criteria they might have dropped down to 1100 Acres or 1150 and that 1 1200 acre threshold is where the value assigned to that block drops a lot so if something's over 12200 Acres it scores quite a few points if it's under 1200 Acres it scores less so that's one of the reasons that some of this uh these were pulled out of there others are because the um flood plane was redrawn based off of the most recent FEMA 100-year flood plane map and now when that was put into the co-occurrence model it no longer um applies in some areas so if you look at some of the stream features we have here those red areas had previously been considered part of the flood plane but due to increases in accuracy of mapping they said it's unlikely that this uh flood plane would be um a 100-year flood

plane we need to tighten it up a little bit so that's some of the reasons why um that I can think of in particular so okay problem that answer your question yeah yeah um the other question I have is do you foresee any uh opposition to this being approved at the you know every time I say something's easy we spend three hours talking about it so I don't know I mean I I don't know if it's negative Fe back about it or the what I would say is our intent was our goal was to to help all people who either shouldn't be there because they're no longer in a resource protected area or those like the previous gentleman who knew are there to give them some opportunity to do something with their property so that's certainly our goal but if you know I don't know well I think probably everybody that's affected by that is is you know going to approve it or in in favor of it but I just don't know if there is any would be any

opposition to it that's question I haven't heard much okay thank you that's all thank you thank you for your time anyone else going going uh so uh anybody else in the back front middle want to ask a question okay we do 292 see you again good to see you uh I just wanted to double down on the largest block of red area that's potentially to be taken out of resource protection because the six plus designation is gone and that Circle as you can see the remnants of a circle are directly related to the blinding Turtle being spotted in the center of that circle on the Chesley Hill Road so that's a good reason to take that out of resource protection because it's been debunked clearly by all the powers that be so and it is the largest block the land that's all I say well thank you

to anything from the planning board or the Conservation Commission that you would like to add uh to this we have three members of the Conservation Commission all of whom work very hard and very well uh I think as a as a team so kudos to them I do want to I guess one thing um to clarify that the data that we have on here um the flood plane is from FEMA so

that is you know the latest accurate data so I want to clarify that thank you anything else at all okay so I will again this is public informational so the the next step is we'll take the comments that we've heard this evening in our December meeting we the planning board um will decide what we want to send forward to the uh uh select board and then they will uh act on that as I said act on it put together the warrant uh tweak the recommendation if they so desire and uh you will uh

there will be a public hearing which has different little bit different rules in terms of public notice and all that other stuff sometime in March and then be there for the final vote uh the town meeting in 5th of April I think it is so

and I apologize that it didn't get out in terms of I I do know the postcards were mailed um and I'm not throwing the US Post off office under the bus but uh I am uh I'm sorry about I mean I go four or five days without getting mail so I I don't know what to say um but what I really want to say was this is being uh taped or whatever the right term is digitally recorded please pass it on to your neighbors who who may not have gotten the word or could not be here this evening to take a look at it um is if they have individual questions Mr targe or even just in general uh please reach out to us and we will uh reconvene this the planning board to discuss this on I think it's the fourth or fifth or the first Wednesday of uh December yeah before so I think I've covered any other comments I've covered resource protection for the evening thank you for coming the next topic will be uh battery energy storage systems how you been

recording this channel and I apologize for looking at my phone when somebody was talking but I wanted to check to make sure that it was actually working this time and I am assured that it that uh it was working so it should be

battery energy storage we'll let you slide out and then we'll move on to uh the moratorium for battery energy storage folks if I could just ask you to keep energy storage um and I want to start by we're going to do this pretty much the same process but this one's a little bit different in terms of the the next steps so we are here this evening to talk only about the moratorium and we'll explain why we think we need a moratorium so the discussion tonight won't be about I don't like them uh I you know can I put one in my yard where do you think it's going we don't have a lot of answers to those right now so we're not going to conest C conjecture or whatever but it is uh we felt as the planning board and I think the select board felt the same way that our to the tools that we have

in the ordinance now um aren't as strong for lack of a better term that they should be to handle this and and George will explain some of the particular issues to battery storage and so the moratorium will give us time to develop the right TOS talk to all the right people we've gotten help from Chief and some others we had been working on in the summer and probably about August September as a planning board we just sat down said this is this is probably too complicated to get done in time to do it justice at the uh at the town meeting so we're we're asking for a moratorium and the reason and so the purpose for this is to provide you information there's a special town meeting next Tuesday the 19th at 6:30 at the Eureka Center 6:45

6:45 at the you can be there at 6:30 get a better seat but the meeting is going to start at 6:45 so that will be a a special town meeting but kind of the same rules we'll have a moderator there'll be it'll be presented there'll be an opportunity to speak Pro or con for the moror you know I won't emphasize on that uh for the just the moratorium so tonight we're not going to talk about the size the standards whether you want them or don't want them don't know where it's going and so on and so all of that will come uh during the moratorium that give us a time to develop good standards and good rules for it make sense Super Mr thear will talked

about battery energy storage systems and the uh uh moratorium okay so we'll start out just by explaining what it is we're talking about uh this graphic up here on the left is actually a plan that was approved by the gorm planning board um this is on I think Route 25 it's next to a CMP Pole Line in an industrial park and it's 5 Acres of battery storage that connects into the grid directly on the power line there so each one of these units is about like this and so those

are are each capable I think of about 1 megawatt of uh energy storage and so that's a 5 ACR site and uh as I said that was approved by the planning board in D gorum and like Durham they had no standards for this other than their site plan review standards and Durham standards like at least in gorm they have some industrial areas so they have a little bit more but generally site plan review is not designed at all to deal with the issues uh associated with this type of development and it's happening all across Maine all across the country uh and there have been some real issues with some of these facilities so how we got here is as I said gorm recently approved a utility scale project uh next to a CMP substation and Durham has actually received inquiries about building an even bigger particular uh system here in town U the town attorney has advised that that type of of development currently because it's related to the

electrical grid meets the definition of an essential services and is a permitted use in the all throughout the rural residential and agricultural District which means the only regulations that the planning board can apply not even conditional use can only apply the site plan review standards which as I said are really designed for small Office Park type development shopping centers those sorts of things uh so it doesn't begin to address the issues of of uh battery energy storage systems and based on some of the research we've done over the last year and this actually came up when we were looking at developing standards for solar energy systems uh the solar Farms but we just didn't really have the time or the uh um experience to really get into this issue in the last round of uh town meeting process but what we have learned since then this was one of the couple of issues that John mentioned

that the select board had had U directed The planning board to work on is that in other states where this has been much more prolific up to this point there have been significant fire fire safety noise and environmental concerns and again Durham's regulations right now don't begin to address those things so the planning board uh had proposed a six-month moratorium for the upcoming town meeting but based on input from the town attorney the select board has uh really advised that to prevent any applications from being filed before the April 25th town or April 2025 town meeting uh the town should consider doing a special town meeting uh with a moratorium so that's basically the overview um I do have some slides to just kind of get into explaining a little bit more about those but I think again at this point through the the purposes really to deal with should the town do a moratorium on on this or not

then get into the details so I just like to emphasize so that George mentions a six-month moratorium the moratorium language will also if it passes we'll also Grant the select board the ability to extend it for another six months so if we can't get to the to a good solution in 6 months uh we will hopefully get to it in a year uh but the moratorium will expire a year from if it passes next week a year from uh November I get 360 days actually I think it's 180 180 so that's part of the moratorium the other one is that it does not so that does not include so if you've got U the solar batteries that you might have with your home solar so under 10 20 KZ I think are exempt kilowatt kilowatts yeah thank you I I will I should have started with this that I failed electrical engineering and the final exam final exams so I trust other people to get their kilowatt my kilowatts and megawatts and gws correct but anyway

20 kilowatt of uh of energy which we believe is more than enough if you've got a a residential solar system we don't want to deny you the use of a battery or your Tesla or whatever you may may want to do so um at this point we'll turn it over to public comments with the same conditions that we're talking strictly about the moratorium and the uh the election is next Tuesday at 6:45 at the or Center sir if you

would um Mike friendly run around Pond Road um my only concern is that I think the 20 kilow might not be generous enough um it's fine if you're only backing up lighting and your fridge and maybe your water but there are people that want several batteries to back up Heating and Cooling and and I would recommend 40 Kow because of that I mean I think that will to my understanding that will cover 95% of situations it's a little detail but it might avoid some angst down the road um

thank you I am cons concerned that where we are in the process I don't know if we can make a because this has been posted as the as the item so I'm looking for somebody against smarter the meeting to see if we can change it before next Tuesday uh well I mean we would only be changing the documentation going out to the meeting on the meeting on Tuesday right yeah but it has to be posted seven days in advance oh right we're voting on it yeah we're voting on it so we're under that seven days um the other question I would have is that and I do actually have I think uh some graphics on that uh that's pretty much a Tesla and I think that's 20 13 and a half yeah it says that most residential backup systems would fall below the 20 kwatt hour so I'm wondering if you'd be able to have two of those units in your house no you wouldn't under this under this this is 20 right those are 13 but if you had two they'd

be 26 and You' exceed interpretation yeah we we probably need to ask that if we could modify the I'm just thinking out loud folks we just we just I think we need to dig into it thank you for the information what we probably need to dig into it with the attorney to see if there is the power to change it you know the legal okay to change it you know on the on the floor before the floor whatever it may be but we're now inside the 7 day uh notice not on that that one's an interior one you have an exterior one that be bigger and

think we did we don't know the answer I mean if if if it's something other than 20 do we have the the power to change it before next Tuesday I I don't know the answer to that I don't you know I did better in law in college but I'm not I'm not an attorney

was going to be May 1031 um my concern with that is if it was going to be a fair vote and there there was a small detail in there that was going to make it so that it would um get voted down for that then I guess it wouldn't be a fair vote so to speak then I hear what you're saying but we're going to just have to sort it out if we could I mean that's good point okay thank you ma'am I've already forgotten your name so if

um where do you say they they don't know where they're going to do this where do they want to put this yeah we're not going to discuss I that's not part of this evening's discussion it's not okay it's just whether we're going to do the moratorium or not yeah okay well it has other question and one would be I guess if they are are permitted to do this does it in any way improve our tax

base same thing we're about the moror just about the mor term okay good idea so I will say that if we get into the standards or whatever there will we'll go through the same process for any changes to additions changes to the ordinance okay just like huh what is that you so okay thank you good questions hold on on to

Road my question is if the moratorium is going to run out ultimately a year from now then you would still be ahead of the 2026 town meeting so would and you would have that period of time until town meeting where anything goes would you have a special town meeting about this time of year next

year to vote on whatever people I will P that one to the select FL because they call but if I may assume and I don't want to break that word out for you but I would assume that if if we want to prevent somebody from coming in and taking advantage of no rules we if we can't have it ready for April then we would a request a special town meeting but we'd have more time to develop it be more comfortable with what we're recommending have a better opportunity to present you know our final our recommendation if you will right I just but I will that question yep thanks but someone is anxious to answer that if you would I jeroy pink and Brook Road I'm the chair of the select board um my our understanding is that if the town in this moratorium the select board has the authority after 6 months to extend it um but that there's some questions that we'd have to clear up with the lawyer that if it needed to be

extended after the uh oneyear Mark that there there might be some challenges there because they don't want it to be set there's a legal process to set up so you can't perpetually extend something for a moratorium for no reason and so if the town were to pass this moratorium um

I think that the goal for the planning board would be to have something ready within the first six months in ready for the town meeting um and uh in in in uh April of 25 and then if that wasn't going to happen and we had to extend it six more months and we're not going to be able to make it until the 2026 town meeting um I can't speak for the future iteration of the board but it is likely at that point a special town meeting meeting would be um the wisest option to make sure that the town has uh uh itself best protected and and open to all viewpoints and making sure it's integrating uh everyone's uh feedback and expertise so okay thank you any other questions

to um try and get the wording right try and reiterate my um or I want to say I think it's a great idea to look into whether or not we can expand the um 20 kilowatt um standard to 40 seems pretty reasonable to me um 20 isn't that much we I we built an all electric house um I need our estimate was three Tesla battery walls in order to power it for a week um that's not that much and certainly not commercial scale we chose not to do it at 15 grand to pop but um at the time but it just it's too little and it just seems sort of unfair to I I wouldn't be able to support uh anything with the standard that low okay so hopefully we can look into changing it we will look into it then we'll sort that out anybody else sir I just Joe Roy just wanted to say once again um the whole point of this hearing is to get that great feedback and so we'll connect uh the select board and the town manager will connect with

the the lawyer uh first thing tomorrow to incorporate that feedback I suspect there may be an opportunity to uh possibly do a motion at the moratorium to to adjust the language like we do other other articles at regular Town meetings um but if there's an opportunity to explore these comments prior to that um we will do our best to incorporate that because the the intent is to just limit a commercial grade or or grid scale and put we there's no intent to put restrictions on people's um homes and home businesses for this so we'll definitely get on that thing that first thing tomorrow so okay thank you sir uh J 118 l so could you I'm sorry

repeat that in the into the queen8 lon road so in this uh document that was published there's some illusion to um Consulting involvement of one where if anybody has been consulted at this point in time and you do has planning board talk to an alide consult correct or is that something going to happen to ask the moratorium well it's hopefully after the moratorium if we do it uh We've Mr thear we've had help from the chief and a whole in Juliet is quite uh quite fluent

in uh in this so we've already done a lot of it but if we need one we will most definitely uh ask to have the funding to call up one so just so it's explained to people you know there's yes I understand risk but there's also huge benefits as well po stabilization and things of that nature yeah no I mean those are there's two well it's not just two sides but there's pros and cons and that that's why we needed time to sort through all of that kind of stuff so hence the

moratorium but thank you anybody else um I'm actually a part of the team that's building the battery storage and gorm oh okay um and the whole reason behind battery storage is to stabilize the grid and there's so all of the renewable energy that's coming in from solar and just let me finish um that's coming in from solar quickly if you would yes you're not generating any electricity when the Sun goes away so that's the point of the battery stabilized if we kick this down the road six months to a year you're potentially um scaring away an essential resource to

Durham to all the local towns so in order to stabilize the grid which we all know we have poweres around here all the time right it's going to get more attention from CMP now it's going to get more attention to all the substations it's going to stabilize the grid alog together so with if this moratorium comes in I know we're not we may not be ready as a town for it but it's it's going to come around here regardless okay I'd like to you're more than welcome to make that point at the town meeting on why people should vote Yes on the moratorium and then we can talk about the the next steps if if in fact it passes next week okay I guess yeah my point is is uh you support it the danger of more tum could put us in okay the belief is that it we're in a greater danger if we don't have something to just go into this without the right tools which is where we are right now is you know you're right there

are probably Pros to it there are cons we want to make sure that we've looked through all of them and that we've done the right that provided the right standards and rules else going going gone okay um so the the next steps will come after the vote next week and uh we'll get further guidance from the select board on on going forward so I guess we need a any anybody else we need a motion to adjourn if I may so moved second second anybody want to talk about a joury seeing none raise your hand if you want to go home uh the meeting is ended please turn off your microphon thank hey thank you all very much for coming out tonight and your comments were