TranscriptPlanning Board Public Hearing ~ March 13, 2024

for only one phone off you for coming to the tonight's public hearings on the three uh land use ordinance amendments to the uh the land use ordinance that will will be voted on at the uh town meeting everything okay yep so uh tonight is a formal public

hearing which is different than our we have information meetings like we did with conservation that we did with uh the housing ordinance whatever so it's a little more formal that's not a conversation we'll when we get to the to the land the public hearing piece of it I will kind of go down some rules and uh so where we are so there's three amendments to the to the ordinance that are out there we we' been the planning board uh started working on them I guess the housing density almost two years ago and then last uh spring we kept going on housing density and a Conservation Commission picked up uh and helped us out with the solar uh part of the or Amendment to the ordinance and we've also got the third one is fees giving the select Bo the authority authority to set land use building uh permit fees so

the the process basically starts with land uh the planning board kind of deciding which of the uh pieces of the ordinance that we think need either some scrubbing some rewriting or in this case there's two new ones two of the amendments are new three them a you count fees uh we then met uh George and

I met with the head of the conserv the Conservation Commission the U appeals board and the historic district uh chairs and what came out of that made to say okay what do we want to do and who's willing to step to the plate help with that um Conservation Commission stepped the plate and helped us big time with actually took the lead on Sol we'll talk about that a little bit and then the planning board uh continued on with the the housing density PS uh housing diversity density um so I

will start with the and the way this will work is I will do an introduction to the each individual amendment that Mr thear our planner will give a presentation on including the details I guess more of the technical aspects of it and then we'll move into the uh public hearing uh piece and then we'll open the public hearing take questions and comments and then uh close it the one thing I do need to say and I'll probably say this more than once is the Amendments that you've got and everybody hopefully has copies on the back board there those amendments are draft but the language is set so the the we worked through this process that I talked about um where the planning board met we worked with Mr thear we had an information meeting back in November on um housing density and then we discussed what we heard from the public at that meeting voted to send it on to the SE select board who sent it voted on

it sent it back to us and so what you've got are the language that will appear before the uh town meeting and this there is not an opportunity this is still draft but it doesn't get changed uh so with the purpose of tonight's meeting is for inform everybody what it's saying uh the public for the public who can't pick up hard copies they are on the town website uh under draft land use ordinance information and uh to

provide you some information answer any questions listen to any comments uh and close the meeting and then uh the next opportunity will be at the the town meeting so housing density uh this is based on LD 2003 which the legislature passed back in summer of 2022 the intent was to it was called affordable housing that part of the uh the law does not really pertain to uh Durham so this our piece is more about housing density and diversity the types of housing so we went through the uh we

worked on the Amendments and George will get give you some of the details but we developed the amendment based upon a couple of key uh pieces to it one is what we've heard is a planning board and the in since probably a comp plan past but the town is very concerned about density and how many homes are being built and maintaining the rural character at the same time there is a goal in the uh uh comp plan that talks about housing diversity and uh improving housing opportunities in Durham so probably the lead uh issue that we looked at was uh maintaining the rural character but we think that uh We've also provided some opportunities for diverse more diversity and uh some more

uh help to the housing shortage here in Maine so with that I will uh Mr thear turn it over to you to give the presentation okay thank you John um pretty much the presentation I'm going to do is going to be very short we've had as John mentioned several public meetings uh all the information that I'll be presenting tonight is right on the town website and we do have handouts in the back which is going to include just a few slides that we have on this issue so as John said this is the planning board recommendation which has been endorsed by the uh select board and will'll be going to town meeting as one of of the three land use ordinance Amendment warrant articles so as John indicated the uh part of this stems from the comprehensive plan which looked at the current uh zoning requirements for single family and this slide illustrates that for a single family home in Durham to be built it has to have at least a 2

acre lot actually it's uh 2.07 uh rounded off uh and it has to have at least 300 feet of Road Frontage you are allowed currently to have one accessory apartment and that can be no more than 50% of the floor area of the house and then finally when you put those two together you are allowed to have a maximum of two housing units on any 2 acre lot at this point there is an alternative to that and that is to have a duplex where you have two full-size housing units side by side or one over the other uh but under Durham's regulations that have been in effect since at least 2000 and probably before that to do a duplex you had to have another Halfacre which if you have a 300t wide lot that adds 67 ft on the back and you're good to go with a duplex so the comprehensive plan it actually recommended unless there's some real logical basis for requiring that extra 67 ft to go down to two acres that was

one of the recommendations of the comprehensive plan getting at this issue which John mentioned of of uh getting more housing diversity uh with an uh duplex you are not allowed to have a uh an accessory apartment currently under the ordinance and so you still have the maximum of two housing units on a two and half acre lot but they can be full-size units as opposed to the single family which can only have an accessory apartment which must be smaller so then came LD 2003 as John mentioned and under the new law which is currently in effect uh Statewide it goes into effect for Durham and other towns that have a town meeting form of government uh it doesn't take effect until July 1 of this year uh but that law will require any vacant LW it's kind

of complicated the way the legislature did this and it's not clear exactly why but they made the rule that if there's a vacant lot you must allow two dwelling units uh those would be full-sized uh they can either be a duplex or two Standalone single family homes uh and you have a maximum requirement of two units every town has to allow at least two units and you can under the law require an increased land area for those dwelling units up to the current minimum lot size which in our case is two acres so for those two units two Standalone single families on the same lot uh you would be able to require four acres then the law looks at if there is a develop lot which has an existing single family home on it which is the darker uh

uh illustration here you must allow three dwelling units on that same lot and this depiction shows expanding that single family to a duplex and then adding a standing Standalone single family on that same lot uh it can under the law the language says it can be one attached one detached or one of each each that's what's Illustrated here one attached uh and one detached one of each

uh maximum of three units must be allowed by every town that allows single family on a lot like this and you can require in our case the minimum lot size for each of these units which would uh result if this uh law goes into effect as of July 1st and uh and the town

elects to apply that 2 acres per dwelling then they would be required to have six acres for those uh three housing units so uh this is what the law requires we looked at the comprehensive plan recommendations and then that led to the planning board's recommendation after receiving public input that to address the housing needs and to respect the rural character of Durham uh this proposal is to allow uh a single family to have two accessory apartments and this shows in addition of on to this house half the size of that and then an accessory apartment over the detach garage those are both shown in the lighter color there so this would allow a second smaller accessory apartment on a two-acre lot uh and you would have a maximum of three housing units allowed as opposed to two and the second uh thrust of this planning board proposal is to follow LD 2003 if we are required

to have full-size housing units on those slots then require uh two acres for each of the full-sized dwelling units uh and then so that would relate to uh six acres for the three dwelling units as as Allowed by the law and again you would have a maximum of three housing units and I think part of the philosophy of this proposal uh is to say look this is really in keeping with the town's rural character and the character of the single family homes that are in the in the community this is is what the state requires which is not necessarily as conducive to rural character and so this is what the state requires hopefully this policy will lean toward this implementation as opposed to this because of that required land there can be and there probably will be some of this but uh that's kind of the the thrust of the planning board proposal so in terms of the specific amendments that are uh on those handouts in the back uh

article four will be changed uh in the following ways it'll remove the single family or duplex one per lot and that is required by the state law it will require the 990,000 square ft uh which is 2.07 acres per dwelling unit it will exempt accessory apartments from that increased lot area which is required by the law and then it'll set the maximum of three dwelling units per LW so those are the changes that need to be made made to Article 4 to implement this policy then uh in Article 5 which is the performance standards some additional changes have to happen uh this really doesn't have to happen but I think it kind of is in keeping with what is being proposed changed from single family character which is kind of the state is against that uh concept of you can only have you can have areas with only single family and really reflecting what the comprehensive plan is looking for which is rural character uh so that wording

change and then uh as required uh we would remove or as recommended we would remove the restriction for one accessory apartment allowing to and then finally under Article Five a change that would remove the single family restriction for back Lots which is required by LD 2003 then under article 16 uh non-conforming Lots one of the things that came up in the public input was what about a 1 acre lot that's granted fathered would you be able to put in the three units on that uh and the answer is no uh this proposed amendment changes uh the grandfathering basis from lot area which arguably you could say they're exempt or grandfathered from those increases to minimum lot size which was really the original intent that if you had a 1acre lot that was created under the old growth uh management uh and now it's grandfathered they would be able to do what they could on any two acre lot and then adding uh

full-size dwelling units will increase the lot area for each proposed dwelling unit now on that grandfathered law they could do the two accessory Apartments so they would be grandfathered for that so that's pretty much uh oh and there was one more uh which is the definitions just clarifying the purpose of accessory apartments and then also eliminating multifam uh with the old growth District they used to allow three and four uh dwelling unit uh buildings but that's not in the ordinance so uh the planning boards thought that should just be remove for now and it can be re uh looked at in the future so that's pretty much the details of the of the proposal now turn it back to you John thank you just I think if I may jump on a couple of things one is the size of the accessory apartment uh can be no more than 50% of the existing house so uh if

you had two of them you know they each one could not exceed 50% of the existing house um the other question that came up a couple of times is if you live in a subdivision uh does this apply and as George says if it's a one acre no or if the covenants for the subdivision do not allow accessory apartments or additional housing so kind of the subdivision the HOA can kind of set that rule so that's part of the the state law so with that is there any comments from the planning board before we open the public

hearing okay and we will now open the public hearing at 6:45 what I'd like to do what I was going to do is hold it down to about three minutes to make sure everybody could uh could get heard but uh since there's only a few folks here what I would like to do is hold uh your comments questions to five minutes um and then uh pause and if you

would all the all your questions comments should be directed to me I will then Farm it out to George or myself or planning board member to uh to help us answer that so with that at the public hearing is open at 6:45 and anyone you don't have to come up but if you have to speak loudly so the mic can pick you up so if you'd like please your name address um and we can

begin first have question and a clarification so the accessory apartment still 50% each or total 50% of the outside each is 50% each somebody can correct me of them wrong but each so so total to be 100% yeah and the other question I have is um what happens with septic requirements for the additional housing good question so um the state

law limits what we can do in terms of um setbacks buffers and all that other stuff but the additional housing must fit on the lot so if you if you add two additional things it has to be able to physically fit you can't encroach into buffers or set backs or anything like that the if you will have to prove that your septic system can support one or two additional uh housing units so the size the then you will get a permit from the the codes officer and when we did ours our our uh septic was based on the number of rooms which either are or could be used as a bedroom right you know so for instance we had a very small room that we used as a storage room and it has like a little 2 by two closet so that had to be accounted for as a bedroom right in the size of the drain field and the tank was already overized right so the number of additional bedrooms correct have to be accounted for in the drain field and the tank

correct and if you have specific questions to the audience maybe more than anyone else if you want to do this and you have a a specific question about will this work on my property on my lot please take I'd ask you to check with the codes or the planner and uh they can tell you whether your septic is going to work or you've got the right spacing or whatever it may need to be comment nobody's seic is oversized what's that nobody's seic is oversized you're all going to have to

quicker Ridge Road uh question on the increase in lot size for two family duplex is the Halfacre is that to compensate for uh the additional septic and wellwater use give it a larger area U what's the rationale for the extra half acre to have a two family do I'm just curious on the rationale for that um I think it's really just kind of get to where we've got a a standard and

we're trying to make if you're try trying to maintain the rural character and anybody else is H happy to jump in but I'm not saying we're trying to force people out or make you pay more for land but I think really the intent is to uh

keep somewhat the rural character by going to the big a lot okay thank you John can I answer that address too okay so I think the the question was about the extra half acre which is on the current Zone and it's not clear what that is therefore if I had to guess I'd say it might be about the septic more than anything but we don't really know the the proposal to require 2 acres per fulls siiz dwelling

is really related to maintaining rural character so that that is what limited understanding we have of the half acre so maybe it would help to explain what if if wanted to this passes and with the big if if this passes and I wanted to do a duplex how four acres two so two per

per half or the each living unit and that's in keeping with single family and and all that stuff so does that answer your question yeah anyone else have any other frequently asked questions that we may need to cover at this point well we had uh received several questions you addressed the one about subdivision or excuse me about yeah if you have a subdivision so we've had for several months now uh some questions and answers you know people asked about how to driveways get treated you know those those sorts of things so on the website there are some specific uh questions that that have been addressed B coming from the public hearing so that information is all available online if people have questions good good and and as you said uh as going forward to the town meeting if people have additional questions feel free to send them to the town planner uh at on the town website and I'll try to answer them and if you

do that then we can be be better prepared on the 6th of April to answer them and not have anything hanging out there um anybody on the planning board have any questions public hearing um and we will move on to the next topic okay solar and at this point I'm going to ask my friends from the um Conservation Commission as I'm explaining uh how the process worked with them so when we met with the chairs of the various committees uh Conservation Commission uh felt like solar Farms was something that we should be addressing and um they gladly were

willingly or happily uh step to the plate and have done a great job actually in developing a s solar ordinance and the reason we're dealing with solar is we don't have any uh rules on solar so it had to go to a a non-conforming use um what we're trying to do is set standards so someone who wants to develop a solar project uram knows what their standards are and either can meet them or don't come to the town so uh with that I will turn it over uh is there anything else we want to discuss from the so the Conservation Commission so if you would introduce yourselves I'm sorry

George to you to uh yep okay again I'm going to try to explain the details of this proposal coming from the Conservation Commission um so one of the fundamental pieces of this if you think about what's going on around the state regionally uh and some of the surrounding towns here uh what you're seeing is a is everything from a rooftop on a small house to these large Fields with 20 30 100 acres of uh of solar panels so many t towns and the Conservation Commission looked at uh topsum we looked at the state models we looked at other states and uh pretty much the the systematic approach to regulating these solar energy uh systems

is to classify them into three groups the small is pretty much a home or small business applications which have uh limited impact and then medium scale uh which would be like uh if you go to I'm going to show you one in Cumberland on Route One that uh an office building probably about 10,000 20,000 foot office building basically built about a half acre uh of uh solar panels that's going to supply all their energy uh and we'll see what the visual impacts of that are and then the large industrial are those ones that are used for uh generating utility for broad distribution so uh just to give you some illustrations and this doesn't show up really good with those lights on on it but and uh maybe Roberto you could just flick those lights off let's just get a better illustration these two try one of them that's it okay this shows up better okay so uh you see uh for a single

family it can either be roof this is probably what you see mostly around uh rooftop application and then ground mounted this is becoming more popular because these can rotate uh and not get into the roof problems so the draft regulations treat either any single

family application up to 8,000 square ft of these panels uh either on the ground or on the rooftop those can uh be approved by the code officer with just standard electrical permits uh and building if it if it affects the roof structure uh and then because of the public input where people were talking about uh well really rooftop uh systems

don't really have much visual impact or other concerns and so this was expanded to actually include uh so for example the school system uh on the elementary school you could do and many communities have done this or as well as this building that we're in right now uh you could put solar panels on top of this building as much as you could get on there and that could be permitted by the code officer with no planning board input or review so that's uh what's being defined in these regulations as a small system and then the second uh classification will be medium which would be an example of uh A system that would serve a subdivision and these can be between 8,000 square ft up to just under a half an acre uh and typically these are going to be ground mounted systems uh to do this as part of a subdivision or added to a subdivision you would have to go to the planning board just for site plan review and

we'll be looking at the standards that will be applied including 100 foot setback from the property line to the actual panels and then uh fencing for safety purposes and then depending on a visual impact analysis as part of the review uh the planning board has the authority to require buffering either from a public road view as is Illustrated in this uh so that's from standing right there looking that way uh and if that's going to be visible it it all needs only needs to be 100 feet back from the from the property line or if there was a neighbor right here the planning board could require buffering on that side as well but the intent is to say this is their project they're doing it if they want to buffer it that's fine but they would not be required to buffer it from their own project and then the third classification is a large commercial and Industrial which are greater than half an acre and and recognize that if you

have a half an acre of these panels with the spacing that translates at least a doubling of the land area for it uh so this would require a conditional use review before site plan review and at that stage the board would look at what are the surrounding uses uh if these are all uh dense neighborhoods around it then that's going to impact whether it really fits in with that character uh if it's next to the power line then and there's no houses around then that probably would uh pass the conditional use Criterion for scale uh uh being compatible with surrounding uses and then once the use issue is is addressed then they would go to the more same detail site plan review process as the medium scale uh but there would be a two-step process for these larger industrial scale installations

visual impact analysis and the planning board could and most likely would require a buffering of that entire Road Frontage so here's an example uh route two in in uh pit in uh not Pittsfield it's uh Kanan there's a DOT uh installation there and

I'm not sure if this was put in by the state or or private developers actually I think this may be chinro and there's probably I don't know I haven't looked at I haven't seen Aerials but there's probably 100 acres of of panels there right next to route two uh and then the smaller Community scale you can actually drive down Route One in Cumberland this was put in last fall uh that's that one I was telling you about that's serving a commercial uh building it's going to supply all their energy so you can see the potential visual impacts of that that facility be being located on some of the open field roads uh here in Durham so the draft amendments to implement the Conservation Commission proposal uh will have uh these changes

in in the land use ordinance article three it will add site plan review to the types of permits needed and in the table it'll add me medium and large scale solar systems to the table of land uses uh it'll add the review requirements for those medium and large scale uh solar energy systems so those are the changes that are needed for article three Article Five is the performance standards and this will add a whole new section which will uh have the three classes uh that we discussed it'll list the submission requirements for the large these larger two classes and then it list the performance standards for them as well which I'll get into in just a minute and then article 8 will add these types of systems to the requirements for site plan review currently it's building a building non-residential building or adding a certain amount of parking uh this will clarify that these whether they're adding a parking lot or building

a building also have to get that site plan review and then finally in Article 19 it'll add some very typical uh definitions to the ordinance which all relate to these special uses so submission requirements uh they will have to have an operation and maintenance plan and this is pretty much right out of most of the ordinances that you will find uh they have to have all the specifications for what they're going to be uh proposing submitted to the planning board they have to have certifications that they meet uh all safety codes and that they meet pu requirements Public Utilities Commission for connecting into the grid uh they have to have an emergency services plan uh that's approved by the fire chief they have to have a visual impact analysis by a landscape architect they have to have vegetated vegetation management plan which will cover both the uh the panel areas as well as the vegetative buffer uh if any

and then they'll have to have a decommissioning plan these things have an expected life of uh 25 to 30 years they may or may not be able to be recycled in terms of are they still producing enough to make it coste effective so like cell towers and other types of these uses uh most communities require a decommissioning plan that says when they're done they have to take it off the site and restore the site to the original condition and they have to have a financial guarantee to do that uh so that if they they leave the the town has the wherewithal to get that get that addressed and they have to keep that uh I actually I'll uh they have to keep that in effect and I'll explain in a minute how that gets done uh then finally they have to have a public Outreach plan uh re uh talking to the neighbors and working with them and then the performance standards is another whole set of uh the draft regulations I

mentioned the 100 foot property line setback uh they can't go in and mine all the top soil off the site before they do this uh they have to do an invasive species survey before the development occurs and then after to show that they haven't brought in uh a lot of invasive plants uh they have to mitigate in terms of the surface glair and if you drive along some of the roads and see ones that are not uh treated in this way you'll see why that's there uh they have to have an 8 foot agricultural style this does not allow the typical chain link uh security fencing it's uh it's more in keeping with Durham's rural character and they have to have ground clearance for a small mammals to be able to go under the fencing um uh maximum height is uh 15 ft

and the ones that are down in Cumberland if you want to see those are just at 15 ft so they they extend up above the fencing and uh the buffering as well potentially that 50ft vegetative buffer as I said was outside the security fence where needed per the visual impact analysis uh the planning board will have discretion on that under the under the the ordinance and all utilities will be placed underground except where they're required by the utility companies to be above ground any lighting and we don't really expect there to be much of any would have to be uh minimized and shielded the uh for sound purposes some of the equipment in these does generate a humming noise and though any equipment that hums or produces noise would have to be 400 ft from many residents uh they would have to have emergency ACC access information posted so that if there is something happening there the fire department knows who to

contact about it uh they have to have warning signs that some of these are very high voltage uh it has to be wellmaintained and free of Hazards it has any minor modifications like changing some of the equipment small changes in location or something like that once it's approved by the planning board the code officer has some flexibility but any substantial like an expansion of it would have to come back to the planning board and the uh part of that uh um decommissioning accountability says that if they change ownership they've got to notify the code officer and the the new owners have to acknowledge that they understand all of the requirements that are being uh in the ordinance and the planning board approval uh and any breach of the approval uh it would be a breach of the approval for their decommissioning financial gar guaranteed to expire and not be maintained and uh it provides for a the

shutdown of the facility if they if they let that Financial guarantee lapse so that's uh pretty much the nuts and bolts of it I turn again okay so as you can kind of see the stuff that George showed up there on the screen those are the kinds of things that the we realized that we didn't have as a town and so we've got them laid out there for planning board's use the code enforcement's use also for anybody who comes in as an applicant and I can't say enough about the work that uh the so the Conservation Commission did digging this stuff up they went looked at a bunch of places they looked at a whole bunch of uh other ordinances as did George and took what we think is the best of of what we saw out there um they had a public information meeting back in uh December to lay this out I know it was well received uh by a lot of folks and I appreciate all the hard work they've done with that I'll quit talking and

open the public hearing at [Music] 707 anyone wish to speak sir uh Steve binski uh this looks pretty well put together but I'm wondering is this a good time that you could maybe also address wind power at the same time in case someone decides they want to come in and put in some wind to you never know seriously uh we did not bring it up we did not address it and it's something that we would if if we felt the need we would probably take a look at we're taking you know what we can bite off in any given year the follow on to this is is battery storage which has a lot of whole lot of other issues I suppose the good news about wind power is that there's only a few places where it actually works uh that actually has enough wind to make it coste effective and so far we've not I don't believe with the town is anybody addressing uh windmills or wind power whatever it may be so it's certainly something that as we go through uh the

coming years if we feel like hey we want to do that because one of the reasons for solar was there was people were interested in building solar uh facilities on Town and we wanted to get ahead of that uh so does that answer your question it does thank you can anybody up here do it better than I did Conservation Commission want take a shot at it uh so any other questions Phyllis pH Ron um so is there

any impact to um if it's near the electrical grid either to the Grid or to solar is there any impact at all you see the the Grid or you know the electrical lines have this big huge openings they would it be put near the electrical lines do that have any impact I don't know about do you mean does the solar farm do damage to the or are they not as efficient is that your question um I will anybody on I can

I can kind of answer um there's actually um developers look for spaces near lines to actually be more efficient and cost effective because the closer you are to the source or where the power is coming in or out the cheaper it's going to be to build there so um they actually look towards those like substations or lines or whatever so they're usually near those those locations sometimes yeah yeah thank

you any go ahead I'm sorry Russ CO's um if I'm remembering correctly which could be really wrong the original draft said 2,000 square F Feet max size per small that's great and do you have any comment on how we moved up to eight I'm not opposed to that I'm just curious where that happen we wanted to be generous um I think there we thought there might be some small business of lers that have greater needs and we didn't want to

wanted to be generous with our minimum that was feedback that we got from the town meeting that um we probably needed to have a bit bigger range yeah there were two people there who were yeah we looked at other towns the 2000 was at the very lowend I guess that's another point but most of the towns were more generous than us so recogniz that 2000 was probably too and we got 8,000 from another example one of the towns I think was it refi maybe um

might have even in the autons um Autobon said 15,000 um you know Oakland said 5,000 topsom said one acre I mean the numbers are kind of all over the place so we Pi sort of a middle of the road phas when you had asked about the thing with the power lines when you drive around and you look at the power lines sometimes there's two wires sometimes there's three two on top and one the bottom and sometimes there's three the more wires there are the bigger the project that the power lines can accept and as you drive around the door and look around it's almost all one line so that's pretty limiting that um I believe that when I that uh cmp's website a 2,000 square feet square foot

system would exceed the capacity of a single line system already but if you look at that Cumberland project on Route One you look up the line it's a single line but you can see they use plastic hangers that look kind of like Christmas ornaments and added the other lines as a way to increase the out

capacity of the system that they put in so that I made me think that maybe my idea that the infrastructure was going to limit the size of solar projects may not be as true as I thought it was however that system is um pretty close to the transmission lines so they didn't have that far to go on existing poles Hing off of the existing wires to put in a system that size the other thing is is that this would be up to the plan commission that doesn't have any

one which I'm not sure how the planning board would deal with that you know we can all it's all it's right there it's too close really for much of a vegetative barer and if you want to see another one that's kind of interesting I may have been going to breakfast at Holy donut and may happen scar

and there's a system there that's pretty large and it's got a a wooden fence that's quasi decorative between holy donut and it that's it there's no other fencing you can go walk around in it you could vandalize it you could go get

presentation there are things we have done it is up to the planning board the planning board has the discretion of requiring buffers and so something that was right on Route 9 196 uh or even some of the other town roads would I can't speak for future planning boards but I think would be seriously considered that you would put a landscape buffer in it and they work if it's done well as you're driving into Auburn on the left hand side by penley quter church just past that there is a fairly significant uh solar farm behind

the behind the tree line that is very difficult to see uh even in the winter time when the when the leaves are gone so one of the reasons and the conservation guys and George did a great job and and Juliet was our uh solar expert um put it together we I think we try to incorporate as many of those protections if you will as possible distance from the road and all those other kinds of things I agree and I think they're in there and I like it thank you any other uh question questions before I close the public

hearing anything else the Conservation Commission and Miss Jess Costa who is their chairperson uh has joined us and she helped answer that along with Michael any other questions comments that you want to get across solar before the town meeting other than to vote for it

you'd like to add to the discussion the question on the images that so George is this the um presentation that you'll have at the town meeting I don't think so and I know Joe is going to be uh he's been talking to the town manager about getting some sort of a presentation but definitely not anything in this kind of depth it'll probably just be a summary and maybe a couple of illustrations but uh we'll be working with the select board uh on on what they want to present but there won't be time to go through this type of presentation okay my only question was about the um um photos that you had of examples of sizes of solar arrays sorry

wrong if whether or not those towns have buffering requirements and you know they're most of them don't okay it' be good to see an example of if you're going to show a photo of one to show that has a buffering requirement and what that looks like rather than being so visible from the road what we can do though I think if it helps for the folks listening at home is we can put this information on that a lot of it already is these hand outs right there and it'll be there also on the website going in we can put it up on the website now so that people can take a look at it it's already there it's already there so those of you at home the town website uh has this information uh digitally so any other questions comments from the board or otherwise if not I will close the public hearing at 7117 I just one I will reopen it ever so briefly um I just just for the record wanted to say that past the idea of not passing this

wouldn't mean we couldn't have solar Farms it's just saying this is actually giving the planning board power to oversee some of the projects and without them solar Farms could still happen it's just we wouldn't have the handles to knobs to turn in order to give buffering and things like that so I think that's been clear to everyone but I just wanted to State it for whoever else is listening out there thank you Tyler anything else so now I will officially close it at 7:18 the public he and we'll move on to the third and final uh ordinance Amendment which is fees and a little bit of background on that at U I guess it was the 2022 town meeting uh the town uh passed a u ordinance or

whatever a rule that allowed the select board to set fees and then what's before us before the town meeting is formalizes that process into an article on the uh in the land use ordinance and working with attorneys and others their recommendation was to list those fees uh uh that we know we're going to need so you'll see a s long list of up through P or Q of all the all the uh fees that we know we're we're going to need including solar energy systems and if we get to wi we would have one for wind power as well uh and then there is also a caveat at the in the second page that allows the select board to change those fees or add

fees as they're needed so if there's a fee that we're missing that is included the process is included in the uh uh land use ordinance they could uh elect to do that and it would also allow the select board to change or add fees periodically so and I know that U codes

and select board in Georgia I suspect you had a lot to do with that spent a lot of time going around to a bunch of different towns and finding out what others are charging uh from my own personal experience experience when I moved to Town 3 years ago and I found out you know the fees to completely redo the second floor of my house Electrical Plumbing and otherwise I got a hell of a deal uh and I don't you know I think the code guy put a lot more time and effort into uh that than than I paid him for based on the fees that exist at the time so I don't think they're outrageous but we want to set it so George anything you want to say John you pretty much hit almost every button up there in terms of the details so as you said uh it's pretty much in 2022 the voters said let's not let's not have to amend the ordinance every time we want to change a fee let's delegate that to the select board but uh Devil's in the details as

they say so when it went to the select board they were questioning well wait a minute if a fee isn't mentioned in the ordinance can we still adopt a view for it got Town attorney wait in and he thought well you might be able to get by with it but if you want to make sure it's legally enforcable it ought to be in your ordinance where the other fees are all in the ordinance so uh this was kind of a a patching job here where we said what are the ones that are missing that's those are the ones are on the slide in the list uh as well as some new ones and then said look let's not keep going through this uh every time we figure out we want to start charging for a service that the town is providing based on lanu ordinance that led to the select board saying let's have an umbrella provision uh that says if if it's in the ordinance and we're providing the service we should be able to adopt a fee and then as John

mentioned finally the uh periodically uh change from annually it gives more flexibility for the select board to do this it should also help the residents contractors whomever to say do I have like when I tore down an old building of my farm do I have to get a demolition permit the answer is yes and so uh it should help them rather than start working say oh I didn't know I needed a demolition permit or whatever not that somebody's not going to Dem demolish something without permit but hopefully they won't so uh having said that I will open the public hearing to anyone who has questions about fees land use fees open it at

so I can close it at 7:23 uh any questions comments select planning board any Roberto um was there any material for that I didn't see it and is that online it is online and I think George we have should be up in the back there should be a hand out okay a lot of them look similar everything looked the same and so I was getting confused there's there's three groups of of pil but everything is in fact online okay thank you any other questions we've now reached 7:23 I will close the public hearing any other comments questions from the planning board about any of this if not I'll remind everybody that the vote for Town officials is on the 5th of April at forget where the E I think EA and

then the town meeting is the sixth uh at the school so that's when these uh along with a bunch of budget articles and other things will be voted on if you like it please tell your friends encourage them to come out and vote and democracy at work and if something for the audience at home or whatever or something comes up uh contact the codes or George uh and we'll we'll get you the answer before the meeting with that I will say goodbye George would you please turn it off and FY board if you would turn off your mics you have to hold it down