TranscriptDurham Select Board Public Hearing 3-15-22

planner uh and al burnson from the planning board here and the purpose of tonight is to have a public hearing opportunity about four proposed changes to the land use ordinance uh we will take them kind of one at a time starting with the resource protection and kind of open the floor for comments and questions we don't have a podium microphone arrangement here like we typically have like a town meeting so people will raise their hands um i'll call on people try to i'll try to keep track of what order they went up but i won't make any promises um and then most questions i would assume are gonna be answered by you know george allen uh because it's really the planning board and the planner that have done uh the work on these ordinances um the select board we we vote to put them on the ballot for people to vote on but unlike budget articles where you get a selectmen recommend something and budget committee

recommends something there's no recommendation attached to these from the select board it's just putting out there for a public book all right so i'll turn it over to george and i think the first i think i don't know if you have any introductory comments or whatever but we'll start with the resource protection zone proposed changes you want to briefly summarize really what the changes are and then we can open it for discussions yeah i thought what might be helpful is just to give a little bit of perspective on how this came about i started working for the town back in 2018 when the select board and planning board wanted to do an update of the comprehensive plan that last was done in 2002 back when the town was experiencing like most of southern maine a lot of development in a building boom so like so many towns durham looked for the ability to put in a limit on the number of new housing starts and in

order to do that you had to have a comprehensive plan that met state requirements and basically it put a limit of 45 new housing starts per year my knowledge only one year that that was ever hit and that was the first year that it was put in place because it caused a run on permits but after that it averaged well less than 45 decades only about 15 new homes have been built in this town for about 10 years now per year per year

at the time of the of the review of the comprehensive plan we looked at it and said look durham is not scarborough and uh and really the plan is not workable according to the state guidelines so we did an update to the comprehensive plan and kind of the three overarching principles that came out of that goals of the community we're number one

agriculture and then thirdly to balance property rights with the public interest so those are kind of the overarching goals and then looked at a number of policies in there so the new plan that was adopted in 2018 so basically keep the whole town uh and that's mainly done from the droning that requires a minimum lot size of two acres and three hundred feet of uh road frontage for each individual lawn the idea is to spread out and not aggressive adult uh subdivisions but some other towns so there was an addendum that was put into the comprehensive plan and as we're seeing right now with the housing crunch uh there could be a lot of development more development pressure on this community in the future so the comprehensive plan includes an addendum that says if and when more than 45 000 units are built in one year or the planning board proves more than 100 subdivision laws then they'll be call for a special town

meeting consideration of a moratorium and possibly consider whether or not the town should have a growth management plan so they could put in a growth cap none of that goes into play until those thresholds are exceeded um so the current as i said the current plan is really looking to keep the town controlled the two main mechanisms to do that are the resource protection zoning in addition to the rural zoning and then the other piece of it is the uh allowance within subdivisions to cluster and create one acre lots with dedicated open space and part of the idea of that is to preserve the natural resource areas and sensitive areas that's kind of the background of how we get here and this is part of implementing that new plan so i just wanted to show you basically what happened why this is important to change the research protections

a lot more than most towns have and part of the reason that there is so much resource protection is that in 2002 we're using mapping mainly about flood plains obviously the androscoggin river a lot of the streams that come in the low areas around runaround pond in the major flood events those areas are saturated and sometimes so they based it on mapping from the 1970s 1980s and this plan actually was done in 2002 based on that old mapping just to give you an idea how outdated the information was one of the criteria for uh resource protection says anderskagen river floodplain uh area defined as defined by the army corps of engineers 1936 florida records so so what has happened in 2018 we received a lot of updated information the state over the last 20 years has really developed a lot of good topographical information much more accurate flood mapping so uh we set out an appropriate plan calls for the town

to update the zoning map particularly with respect to the resource protection because that's the part that has the most impact on on individual properties to reflect that latest data and make sure that any restrictions that are put on property are based on accurate scientific information and not old outdated maps so as a result i did an analysis using some mapping tools that i have and some data that was provided by the great important council of governments and this is the current zoning map which shows it a little bit more clearly in terms of the resource protection district you can see round pond area this is i think alder brooke coming in here that whole area where the water flow from run around pond goes down and then chandler brook the dire work coming down through here there's a headwater wetlands over here uh these strains that go down to the river as well as the area around uh i think that swamp road there so that

whole area drains down that way as well so all of that was based on old mapping and the comprehensive plan that was done in 2018 provides a lot more accurate and the basic uh change that's proposed is based on that new more accurate data basically all of the areas in dark green would meet at least one of six criteria some of them meet more first one would be the 100 year floodplain based on the fema maps so that's a policy that's been in effect since 2002 2004 is actually when we adopted it state shoreline zoning except for there were some farm fields with wetlands that had to be added to meet state vp requirements and so those are not going to be part of the resource protection uh but all other shoreline zone around the streams within 100 feet uh the amstrad river which includes the flood plain this is where i think the dlt pile was right about there land uh forested and emergent wetlands

uh the criterion from 2002 was swamps swamps shown on the tax maps which is not a very accurate depiction of where wetlands are in this community and then uh the fourth one that is uh fifth one excuse me this is in shoreland zoning there is a criterion that within 250 feet of

waterfall and wadenburg habitats that have been degraded by inland fisheries and wild life as moderate of a high value those would also stay in and only one new criterion for resource protection is mentioned in the comprehensive plan and that is areas where you have an overlap of a lot of these different issues wetlands floodplain wildlife habitat those areas and there's kind of a rating system that um beginning with habitat in the fisheries and wildlife program has developed and that's all in the comprehensive plan so the uh the plan is to update this in two phases and i talked to the select board and uh back in october they approve this two-phase approach first phase says look this all this area within the light gray and the dark gray is apparently resource protection which virtually allows no development very limited development so but it's not based on accurate data and so the first step in the process is

to fix what's wrong and so i proposed and the select board agreed with the strategy of basically anything that doesn't meet one of these criteria such as all of this area in gray doesn't mean any of these research protection criteria that would be removed from resource protection and just put into the rural agricultural zone that affects the rest of the town there are some areas however that do meet six criteria and those are outside that existing resource protection and once we fix what is broken then next year working with the planning board and conservation commission that proposed a second phase that would apply the same criteria to the land that meets them outside the existing resource protection that would have to be added now we did send out and the select board directed the account manager and myself to send out a letter to every property owner who has their land either going in or coming out and so we did phase one

this year probably many of you here not most of you here are here because you got a letter and i've had several people call i have developed a gis system for the town which allows you to look right on an air photo and see where the existing is and where it proposed is so after this meeting if you want to get in touch with me i'd be more than happy to send you very detailed uh pictures and maps of what your property again it's not survey accuracy but it's probably a lot better than the little map you've got in the mail which is probably why some of you are here tonight this is the letter that explained it and this is the map that went out to everybody

no property will be added to resource protection in this round next round any of you that have resource protection and is retained the town will consider a town meeting next year if we go forward and we'll have a lot more time to explore you know give more time for people to look at those hard decisions that will be made next year yeah that those will be you know that's obviously it's a much bigger conversation when you're talking about putting property into resource protection uh versus taking it out from a property owner's perspective so like george said we're not put we're not proposing to put anything new into resource protection this year we're only proposing to take stuff out that doesn't meet the criteria that was established in the comprehensive plan for being in resource uh protection and then even next year people will have the opportunity to challenge if your property is proposed to go into

resource protection there will be mechanisms that you can use to dispute that or argue against it it's not it's not like a done deal so that's that's why we split it into two phases because that's going to require a lot more you know groundwork and conversations

so at this point i said i'll do my best to direct traffic because people you know have questions or comments it doesn't have to be a question um so if you you know raise your hand and we'll female maps change at any given time the town automatically accepts it at that point or would the town need to approve the acceptance of the new map okay on every one of these you'll notice the language and shown on the zombie map that one doesn't say that

one of these should say as shown on the you notice all the others do i do that's why i asked that one yes i'm glad you brought that up and so basically the answer to that specific question is that before any of anything can be added to the resource protection it has to go through a town meeting boat including these changes to pull stuff out so just be aware even though and that's why we put that language in there as shown on the zoning map to clarify that when something is determined that doesn't put it on it has to still go through a mapping process and a town meeting process to approve that change to the zoning map this is actually that's the language that's going to be added this map will be modified the current zoning map based on this this map okay thank you

can you explain where you said some farm fields are not on there but they so this is the current zone and you know in addition to the town's growth gap and companies plan not meeting the town had sherland's only imposed by the dep back in 1994 because it didn't meet the state criteria and so the state basically imposed that zoning on the town for sure it was a separate shoreline zoning map so in order to get the plan approved and the ordinance of approved the dep we had to add because technically these are in the law this is off buoy hill road uh there's a couple here over on the uh border with uh auburn and then there's one here and then another one so there are five there's six uh lar and these are what they call emergent wetlands so the farm field if you look at an air photo you can see the trenches where you drain that wetland to create the fields great place for crops because you have water

around but uh technically under the epa army corps of engineers those are wetlands and they're regulated by the clean water act so under shoreline zoning and it just makes no sense whatsoever but you have to have a shoreline building distance around the parts of the farm fields that are what that are wetland now i did include in the report uh if you're going to get the report and put it on the website basically an analysis of this and suggestion that the town might want to challenge that because like i said it's very hard to support that these farm fields need the same kind of shoreline zone and protection as the english river all around on but under the lane dep guidelines and requirements that's what you get so these were added but this is limited residential which does allow development with some restrictions on buffers and stuff like that a couple of parts of this tiny portions and some of this one over

here which is all in research protection anyway has to have resource protection but those are not part of this analysis okay so let's say that this is adopted yeah do they stay or do they go away they stay until it gets changed and we did discuss this is the only parts of this map that we're going to change are the ones that are shown on this map and those farm fields are not shown because that's a separate issue you have to challenge the state which i think the goal here is to fix the broken parts and then move on to other issues so that's more of a phase two it could be a phase three depending on

it's not part of the vote at this time is there a diagram that shows what is coming although i might come that's what we're here for the definition of a perennial stream definitions in this ordinance and basically a perennial strain is one that has water most of the year and it's a very technical definition and there are different rules if it's a perennial stream or what they call an intermittent stream that doesn't usually have water all year round and they have different setbacks and buffering requirements so basically it has to have like a mineral bottom where it's scoured by the running water most of the time it can be dry in summer in august but it's still perennial strength and would it be the responsibility of the landowner if this map because this isn't on the ground mapping correct this is done by software so if this were adopted would it then be on the land owner to prove that one of those things wasn't in existence

on their land yes and there is a process you can go through as a matter of fact the equestrian center down on royalsboro road i can't remember the name of this but they came in and their uh barn and paddocks and everything were in the resource protection from the old mapping and uh they went to the board zone in the field were you part of that i was yeah you remember so basically they brought in uh detailed information that showed and i showed that these maps were not accurate and therefore the board of appeals gave them relief and removed the resource protection from that part which wasn't on this map but to have to go through that every time is not really good so this idea is to fix that not just for those people but to fix it for the majority of people that are affected and one swap one spell school thank you okay yeah um that little gray area that you're pointing to you said that there were

three areas now on that map the ones that were added in you said they had to be added in because of something from state law requirements yeah those were only added in like two years ago that's correct so um which is when the town tried to get the dpp to prove this zoning and get rid of the state imposed one

it was from 2002 or 2006. but anyway at that point that happens to be my property right there and i'm a little irritated um i was also told that at that time and this this was the planning board said one thing i went home and i came back and it was changed when i went back and basically like heather said the onus now is on the landowner via uh i believe it's called the delineation zoning map that needs to get done is that correct not exactly it's the same idea but what you're talking about you want to apply for development permits they have a subdivision with a planning board or or a single home with the with a code officer basically you've got to show do what they call a wetland delineation which is hiring a wetland specialist typically most soil evaluators that do septic systems do this and they have to go out and determine based on the type of soil it is how much water there is and the types

of plants that are there whether it's technically a wetland so that boundary on your in your field you know until you do that type of analysis you can't tell exactly where that boundary is right and so then going out from that 250 feet is going to vary but that can't be done without on the ground elimination right which costs the homeowner more money but again that's state law it's state and federal law yeah but you guys said last time that we have to add it in um and tonight you're telling me that it's been there since 1996 and that no it's too different no no that's not what i said i said the town the state imposed dep shoreland zoning back in 1994. there have been a lot of changes since then and i think this would probably add later but the shoreline zoning and pole imposition so whether the town adopts it or not the state is going to apply this if you were to go out there and violate it it would be in violation of state law

and again if you look at the report and i'd be happy to provide you with that part of it that looks specifically at your situation and says look there is some way to deal with this not requiring you to go out and hire soil evaluators to do it because that wouldn't do any good the law is still

what i was planning to do at that time i would have gotten away with whatever i'm assuming i don't want to think out of the way because i paid good money for my land and i thought it was all usable and now i'm being told that a

how those got in was in the stream that was the only ordinance that did pass correct last time when there were things on the board they all got voted down except for this one no no this was two years ago everything passed unanimously last year some of these other issues did not pass but we'll get into that

and when i went to refinance in 2003 i discovered it was in a flood zone i had no idea therefore the atlanta who worked with uh technical services incorporated uh engineering department they surveyed from the 100 year front flame at the end of scotland they started the front of 1987 all the way back to the basement of my house and i had to get statements from town people plus

information to females and fema supplied a my question is does this change that or is there a lot of effort and basically what they did was they they revised the flood map to be more accurate based on the survey the flood intelligence

your basement is is at least one foot above the level and that but you have to do that just like sometimes you have to document that on flood assessed properly for some reason then you go to the assessor and you say that i don't hit my i'm assessed too high for these reasons and then the assessor you know does the research and makes a determination you know yes you're right or or no we don't think that we think we are we do i bet we do six to 12 abatements a year from people that have gone to the assessor and

the taxes have been lowered so it does happen i have a question are there minimum resource protection requirements that we need to make and are they and so are these in excess of those requirements the answer is yes and yes there are under state law flood plains and steep slopes along the anderson river it's over 20 percent small so this area is flood plain these areas here are steep slopes within 250 feet of the river that means either of those criteria by state law it must be in resources okay but under state law a town can go beyond the minimum state requirements based on a comprehensive plan that goes through a public process so and in order to have restrictions that go beyond the state requirements the town basically should have good data and that's what we're trying to do now whether to put it in resource protection or not that's a policy decision it has to be decided by the voters again this stuff has been in resource

protection since 2002 right or wrong and to take it out has to go to a republican vote to add nothing new in that's true but the town has the authority to do that under state law so we tried to distinguish and i presented to the select board the analysis that was done allen in the planning board hired michael morse who used to be the dep coordinator for the state look at under state law what of this must be resource protection under state law and not a lot of that other than uh

some areas around runaround pond and the industrial river has to be under some form of shoreland zoning but it doesn't necessarily have to be resolved so yes the town's going update to the comprehensive plan where it's presented to the people that participated and ultimately to the voters different scenarios one went in the other direction put more into the resource protection one said roll it all back we called it the walmart rollback roll it all back to the minimum state requirements on everything and you know like 15 of the participants and we did a survey yeah we did as part of the carpenter planned process there's a lot of public uh input and so there were several public hearings and workshops and and i think george mentioned in the beginning of like kind of the three you know uh main guiding principles that kind of came out of that one of them was balancing private property rights with resource

protection and that was really the message that came out you know there was it was pretty evenly split among people that wanted to put more into resource protection versus people that wanted to go the other way and take you know out of resource protection so what went into the comprehensive plan was a list of criteria based upon the habitat the actual habitat data we had and that's that's where the town landed during the comprehensive plan process on what would be the criteria to determine what would go into resource protection and so what we're doing now is following up on that and say okay based on those criteria that the town identified in this year we're proposing taking certain properties out of resource protection because it doesn't meet the criteria that was established in the comprehensive plan next year part two here are properties that do meet the criteria but are not currently in

resource protection so the conversation becomes what what properties that are not currently in go into resource protection but that's next year's conversation this year is just about what comes out of resource protection were you part of the comprehensive plan process you are sorry um who was it the facilitator or was it you or was it the select word that drove the prompts for the choices it was a combination of the planning board and the select board had members of the committee it was really it was really it was a comprehensive planning committee it wasn't the select form so i forgot didn't really have a role in yeah in drafting the comprehensive plan that was up to again yeah so it was the comprehensive plan committee that consisted of planning board and sled board members as well as some other citizens and uh they hired the philip the facilitator from the greater council of governments yeah and so it was a

combination of uh that group everything that was put out was run by the group they approved it both the survey that was done online as well and you know part of this is how do you break this very complicated stuff down to either a discussion like this or a survey is even worse to try to communicate this stuff but i think the message got through and people didn't come and say i don't understand any of this i understand i don't like it but i do understand it so that was all part of the comprehensive learning process that is why we're here

saying that we're impacted does that mean some of our the property that we own is being taken out of the protection and what does that actually mean i can build a shed now or what does it mean i'll show you probably the biggest impacts i was talking about the equestrian center okay so they are they are right like right here

so they're almost their entire property or at least more than half of it was in resource protection they wanted to do a day camp for the electric for the equestrian center and when it went to the code officer it's not permitted use he said he can't do it so we had to go to the board of appeals and show them basically how this is the old bad data this is the current data more accurate and what they wanted to do wasn't even in the resource position so that's that'll be the effect wherever you see the light ray you what you couldn't do before you will be able to do now

room uh i own a huge championship group and uh we're a family subdivision not some division but i understand what we're giving it to the family i have a lot next to meadowbrook and uh it looks like it's going to be in resource protection if it isn't in research protection now it won't if it is it will stay unless it's not in the flood plain or within a hundred people all right so we've got our code enforcement officer the old one uh said it was a build a lot we've got a uh septic design we have not got a building permit yet so am i going to be grandfathered if this goes into you okay so number one if you do it in the next year you should be good to go because if it's not in there i mean if it's not it doesn't meet the criteria it will be pulled out so there wouldn't be any restriction okay and then if it's going to be even considered to be put in that won't happen at least until april so you got a whole year that you don't

even have to worry about it okay so my land runs down the middle rook that i'm what cuts through my land and i've got three kids to give land to it and it's all close to the brook uh all building the land yep if they don't do it with them next year they can't build unless they build closer than a hundred feet to work okay so it's 100 feet yeah 100 feet we're good unless unless it extends out a little bit more you can look at it and pretty much tell you know oh we're 100 feet that's not an issue right but the wetlands and the floodplain they go a little bit harder so but you can generally tell by the topography you know you can see where the platform is all right well on the edge of the rocket boards it's high and you know it builds up yeah so it's all higher land so it should be good it should be good

they need to build on it they live in durham now and you know get them out of the house give them their own house we can still do that in this town yeah the gentleman in the back had his hand up next then i'll come here just uh his question and your comment that you should be good to go um i own the yellow house at the end of swamp uh road about 30 feet above the stream but when i bought that house i had to get flood insurance so somebody didn't look at that you might look at him saying it's never going to be wet but the last time that yellow house was wet the last time that property was wet was when noah was in the yard

yeah you might remember my relatives can't always tell you i may think this land is great yeah but their maps in washington are different than our good standards and just understand this information is not perfect but it's a lot better than what it was based on in 2002 which was not very good at all and we're trying to get more accurate to be fairer and more accurate on the regulations

screens are only 100 feet on either side so that's the but there is a 100 foot setback but it's all resource protection so you're not going to be building within 250 feet of the river anyway because it's either flood plain or steep slopes

feet because i thought i thought you need to look at the difference between a stream and a large wetland area like that or run around pond or the river streams of art from flood plains are only 108 on either side of the brook

and these large open wetlands it's 250 feet from there is shoreland zone and generally there's 100 foot setback within that 100 feet are buffering and setback requirements does that make sense no i'm still missing okay so if you're right if you're if you're either along the river or run around no i'm in the grave unfortunately the same rules that apply to run around pond apply to the to the wetlands of your farm those same rules don't apply to a long stream you don't have to be 250 feet from a stream that gets regulated only 100 feet so what you're telling me is around that great circle i have to be 250 feet out on any side of that you have to get a shoreline zoning permit within that orange and you have to be have to maintain a 70 which doesn't make any sense i understand

it doesn't make any sense mike morris the former regulator said that doesn't make any sense so again let's look at the report together and i'll show you what's in there and then that might at least give you a glimmer of hope and as george mentioned you know that that's an example of something that is

it may be able to be challenged legally and if that were the case the town would would discuss doing that you know for all those areas that are in a similar situation right expressions again um hold up gentlemen in front of you i have no i found people i hate you okay and i think i might have some things i'm right next to jane's place there and uh she said farm fields are different than streams and all that okay i remember when those stitches were put in i was i was just a kid my father and uncles and with those stitches in and the only reason for it was a big honking hill right next to that field and all that brings down to it runs down through it runs right across it that's up and that's it right now it's gone you know normally after almost a record ring within 24 hours is dragging but you know if it's going to affect any valuation of a property which you know i i imagine it might i'm going

to have to go and get some kind of an adjustment on my tax tax situation because uh if this thing's going to heat up all my land and stuff like that and i'm allowed just a little spot because you know i was going to put a lead to over and back to put some equipment underneath and all that kind of thing out of the way you know different seasons but i don't know we'll see what we can do i i'll tell you what you come up in july you'll find out there's 18 wheelers sitting up in that field picking up a big heavy you know 20 ton tractors running all over everything

that well and just i i don't know why anybody's i have a feeling somebody's looking looking just to make a point here you know the states never come in said anything to me never never said anything to the people at london this land's been gone for probably 200 years maybe a little bit longer and so you know i

i just don't think all this always necessary done again yeah i think that so that question similar question came up before if you feel that a change in your property in its relation to resource protection has impacted its value then you would want to you know work with the assessor uh and make your case and say you know i think my taxes are too high because my land is now you know less valuable because of x y and z and the assessor would be the determining factor there

we're talking about and some of the other designated wetlands that wasn't decided by the town or you didn't decide those places that came down from the state so somebody in the state made the decision that the state adopts laws and regulations that are administered through ep so if you're going to do shoreline zoning you have to do shortline zone by state law whatever you do has to be reviewed by the dep staff we ran this by the dep staff and said that's going to be in there in order to get state approval off your shoreline zone so somebody in the dep decided those hate fields they meet the criteria for federal westland protections

the town had had to adopt it but it wasn't a decision by planning board selectmen or you that those things well the decision was to try to get the state to approve it so would affect our property but just with the fight for the landowner that has that issue go through the town

well that's an issue and the plan that i wrote the report the research that i did suggested that the town and the landowners cooperate on it and and you're like likely to get much more hearing with the depa of the town and the landowners are coming in and filing an appeal so i think at a minimum we would at least have a conversation with the town legal council on you know and with george consulting on the feasibility of that and likelihood of success and do we you know do we have a case there's a three-part strategy first is go to dep staff and try to convince them

then you can appeal their decision to the board of environmental protection which is kind of like the state planning board for children as our language and so they have the authority to give you that five recognizing it impacts the whole state all the all the farms in the state are subject to this they're likely to be hesitant to do that even if they think it makes sense and what they're going to likely say is it's in the law then after you go through that process you can talk to your legislators and say that law needs to change so that's a strategy to you know work or not i don't know but it's probably worth the time because it just doesn't make sense to treat those farm fields

what happens if we don't meet the state criteria planning to put money into a development and this town says you can do it there might be neighbors that say we don't think this is a good idea and they will use anything and everything to make their case that planning work can't hurt us just saying you know it's okay

that it no violates a state law no i just no that's not what i was asking what happens if the town says we're not going to meet the state department did in 1994 and the state came in and put it on what's the penalty what are they doing

didn't work sorry sorry i had to have it over here and then i'll come back to you so i know where jane lives and i'm looking at that big gray circle and i'm wondering the bowie hill subdivision that's in process right now

resource protection and staying in place and i have one more thing is it like and then it gets put into it and he said maybe grandfather okay and he says okay i want to put a garage on now then what would happen it depends it may be affected because basically what's on the ground you can't change but putting more on the ground might be effective so is there a process that will be put in place so say an additional you know buildings that we put on and with this process where you get through the state yeah once it goes into effect there's not a lot of leeway

is phase one i understand that it's not going to change anything that currently exists but i'm looking forward to phase two and talk about maybe some tax incentives but if if i realize that more of my property is going to be in a protection zone um who can i reach out to for maybe other incentives to make my property uh in a conservation district well many communities i work for falmouth for 25 years and they had a very ambitious land acquisition program and they went out and bought conservation easements on a lot of properties because that's another tool that you can use you can use zoning and you can also use land acquisition programs but obviously that's an expensive proposition there are there is the uh we did some farms in uh in falmouth that continued as farms and we went to the landforming futures board and got grants from the state to cover and then the trust for public land so it's a public-private partnership so a

lot of communities have been very successful not using the regulatory tool exclusively but also using the kind of incentives that you talked about it's an option but who's the organization in our area trust for public land is uh is across the nation land for maine's future board is uh is maine so okay they were talking about portland yeah and there's there are other organizations too that do similar type of stuff like royal river conservation trust does some work like that and their nature there's not like a one-stop shop yeah but there's a lot of organizations that do that type of thing

comment on the ad language uh georgia which i think because it's a list of separate items you may not want there time yeah so yeah tell me well yeah on on some of this topic that we've been discussing so i wanted to re-clarify that so yes october october april 2nd uh nine o'clock after school it's always tell me it's always the first saturday of the month yeah when we're not in a pandemic of april when we're not in a pandemic um and so one of the questions is what we're talking about today today but again we're only voting on phase one which is taking properties out of resource connection we are not adding the areas that has been the focus of a lot of the discussion to the math this year correct right right that would be uh potentially next year

come out the two maps oh the phase two map phase two map is available now but we don't want to get it out because we don't want people to think about it yeah i think that horse left the bar a while ago the ordinances if this fails then what stays the same it's all still resource protection

why that would be bad for the town even in terms of you and the planning board i i just feel like there's been a lot of time and a lot of money spent doing this to try to get us in line with the comprehensive plan and whether i agree or not i just would love to see you know these things these efforts happen um so that we don't keep putting stuff out to vote and then having it fail which i appreciate this because i think this is an opportunity for people to learn what's going on so thank you all for coming here to get informed before you go vote um and thank you for you know explaining what these things are um but if you could articulate you know why it's important for us to pass this stuff well that's a voter decision some people may think this is not a good idea because it's removing resource protection some people on the conservation commission have made that clear they're not necessarily on board with this so

there's people in the community that have both perspectives and that's why you have a town meeting if uh if we don't go through with phase one will phase two still come in not likely yeah yeah i i agree not likely but i think it's i think if this failed then we would probably want to try to ascertain why like what was it was there one aspect of it that people were you know you know really opposed to or was it just the idea of any change at all like i think we're trying to dig into why and depending upon what we got information there that would kind of drive what next steps might be

being approved phase two not being approved i mean yeah we're only approving phase one so it's a sound bubble they could come in and say we don't approve of adding any resource protection above me on that that's right that could happen and that's that's one of the reasons we wanted to separate the questions we didn't want one direction to be a victim of the other direction we wanted it's really two separate questions so that's why we've broken it up into two phases yes sir george just to go back to something that you said originally when you were explaining that correct me if i'm wrong but what i think you said is that really the intent of this phase one is to correct something that was done wrong or incorrect math data based on limited data right so they didn't intentionally say we're going to put this on there

clean it up to make it in accordance with the currently available data yeah and it so happens that the way that we're trying to clean it up takes some areas out of resource protection and doesn't add any to resource protection before this proposed phase we're not looking at adding anything research protection in this case my experience in doing this for 40 years if you've got bad information you're basing your policy on you better get that right before you do anything

basically what he just said if phase one makes it right what does phase two do they should apply the same criteria the land that is currently not restricted by resource protection outside of the existing history because the phase one doesn't make everything right well it makes at least what's right in terms of the data but then there's other areas outside of that existing resource protection district that will meet the same criteria we're saying before you add more fix what's broken in this way to build some credibility and then the question becomes for those of you who have land in the existing district should people outside the district that meet the same criteria and not have to live by the same restrictions and that's a different it's a very tough policy question but you don't have to the town could both say no we've had it in this here for 20 years and that's enough

the gray areas that you expressed are really kind of idiotic why are they still in there if we're trying to clean up what's not correct because you can't change this without going through the vote well we are going that don't meet any of the criteria on the map for resource protection the gray areas that you're referring to do have criteria that would call for them to be in resource protections that's the distinction the areas that we're proposing to pull out of resource protection don't have any none of the resource protection criteria applies to those pieces of work so that's that's what we're trying to fix

resource protection ordinance changes if not we'll move on to the next one through all four and so you can think of something and at the end we'll kind of do a cleanup if you've got a follow-up you know um do another bite at the apple so rhodes would be the next one okay so back when the new comprehensive plan was adopted the first project was to overhaul the lane use ordinance which was a mess it was copied and pasted patched together terrible font you couldn't even read it the playing board struggled at every meeting to understand what it was saying so first project was to just do a massive overhaul of the land use ordinance to make it a readable workable document he put off touching any of the difficult policy issues like the one we were talking about from part one and another one was the issue of clothes how the town regulates roads this part two dealing with road policy has three parts the first part

is backlot access the comprehensive plan recognized that for someone to do a single backlog and have to build a 20-foot road to serve one house 20-foot wide road back 300 to 600 feet that's that defeats the purpose of allowing backlogs which most towns do sing a lot just a driveway so that's one part of this the second part of it is the uh we talked about family development yep okay so currently durham like most towns uh allows and state law allows it to do what they call exempt loss so if you're typically if you're doing three lots let's say you own your property and you sell off three loss that's going to go to the planning board and be approved as a subdivision if you're giving one of those lots to a family member then you're not a subdivision and you don't have to get playing with approval you still have to meet the zoning requirements now that part of the difficulty is with your rural zone

is you have to have 300 feet of roads for every lot that you create you may have limited road frontage and a lot of action so durham like most communities allows what they call and doesn't call it this but what it did most towns call it what we call a private way to distinguish that this is not a submission and so basically it's a common road owned by the by the laws and they're not required to get a subdivision of pool where you have to look at the wetlands and the wildlife and the hydrology and all of those expensive engineering issues all you got to do is get an engineered road design and build it to the standards and then have a maintenance agreement because family members eventually are going to not be there and so it's important to have a maintenance agreement that ensures that that road is going to be maintained it's not just the people that use it it's also the public safety vehicles

including the ladder truck that i saw the other day that they need to use it to get to the home to be able to fire so most towns have that what was voted down last year was a proposal to eliminate those private ways completely and make everybody go through the subdivision review process if you're going to build a new road that got voted down so i approached the select board and said right now the provisions for those private roads for family developments basically it's in three different places the road commissioner and the code officer approved the road the planning board approves the maintenance agreement and there's confusion over who has authority and responsibility and the standards are scattered in three different parts so this proposal is intended to simplify the process give clear requirements and make sure that as long as it's done right somebody has the right to do that and not have to

go to subjugation okay so basically these amendments will create a private way section in new york because it's already there it's called roads target roads and then most towns that i work with the planning board reviews those just like that subdivision but it's just the road i presented that to the planning board back in february and uh they said look it's just a matter of reviewing engineering and there's not going to be a public process we don't see the point of having the planning board do it let's just have the road commissioner do it so this gives clear guidance the road commissioner will be the only officer board in the town that would be involved in the approval of those roads and that's that's basically that part so now is it three houses is it two houses and then the third you have to have it or is it three houses then if you do a fourth you have to have a specific well if you're going to build a road

anything other than a single backlog driveway you've got to get a road as a private way whether it's two lots three lots five bars so this will kind of clarify and codify the specifics of how you do that and it'll simplify it so if it's already a private way then adding another house on that should be an issue yeah and the main thing is making sure that they join the maintenance agreement okay yeah now there's a third part to this okay the third part so backlog driveway rather than road private way road commissioner rather than road commissioner and planning board and code officer uh the third part of this is that the current subdivision road standards are based on that old growth management plan and that part of that growth management plan said the town will not accept any roads outside of this southwest then district area road district and anything out of that it's going to be a private road so the road standards

are really based on whether it's going to be a public road or a private road well the town has no street acceptance policy and it's not really accepting any road so everything is a part of the road so this proposes that the everything new that's built

towns do is they base it on how much how many homes are served by it and how much traffic is generated so they have what they call a minor local which i think is up to nine watts a local which goes up to 26 lots and every anything over there is a subplot

four or four or more losses whether it's a subdivision or a private way according to these strat standards many towns allow that to be a complete gravel road and you have seven lots three family members and homestead so that's that's a policy discussion so the third part of it is changing from public private road distinction

a lot of details there that i'm not going to try to get into but do you see mutual questions narrow road is that only to family or could that just be a person that has a big piece of land and that wants to there are several exemptions but generally if you're creating a new house law it's got to be a family member the house if you've lived there at least five years that's called the homestead exemption so you could do that as a separate lot without getting a subject so theoretically you could create carve off two acres with the existing house uh gift a lot to three children that's four new lots for the globe and then sell off two to help generate the road to building and you still wouldn't be a subject

like that where there are already two or three houses on the road that is this already and then they're going to do more yeah does the first part of that road if it doesn't meet the criteria if they're extending does the first part of the road have to need it or is it just from there forward that's a tough question and everybody struggles with that you know you've had some subdivision built number todd on day road and said you know what you do road right now doesn't meet standards it's a tough question and but generally if you're going to be expanding that road but a 20-foot

local miner local road is going to serve up to nine lots so that's going to give you some accommodation yeah i'm just wondering about girls that are like just thinking of my neighbors actually and i know that their road isn't up to well not you dan not your part yeah the hero's awesome um okay so that answers my question yeah i just have one other question is that this is not going to take roads like dance road milky way lane right and turn that into a road that the town is now responsible for plowing and maintenance that is not going to happen even if the road is paved even if that's that's a policy question for example no there's nothing in the proposed road or in a change that would lead to the town taking on responsibility for more roads that would come that would that would be a completely separate question and george has has prompted the select board a couple of times like you know you know you guys

don't have a policy to accept any more roads and we're like yep wants it right now at some point in the future if there are enough private roads and enough taxpayers on those roads that you know that feeling might shift in town but right now um that's that's not where we are so there's nothing in here that that obligates the town or leaves the town to take on responsibility so one um the road thing was irritating for me just because back in 0.506 the thing was i asked the town for a building permit on pound road it's a 17 acre lot which my parents owned uh and there's a foundation with a trailer on it and i wanted to take that off and put a house and i was told i couldn't unless i brought the whole dirt road up to town spec if anybody knows pound road there's a cattle pound which is there so you can't do it so i was removing one home to build another home and i was told i couldn't do it um at all and now other

people are built here that's a different story but yeah regard said that um so the back loss when do you need 300 feet of road frontage for a backlot if it's a family members because reading the backlots here it says that you need a 50 foot right away if you don't have the 300 foot frontage and you can get it so basically if you had 400 feet of frontage yeah you don't have enough for two logs but you got enough for one lot plus a backlog and the back the 50 foot access would be basically the street frontage and you build a 16 16-foot driveway for that single backlog so realistically you only need 350. you need at least 350. you only need 350 correct 50 for the road and 300 for the original one

if it was defined as a right away you don't need the 50 feet right or wrong i don't know because i have it right away in free pool some more right away again some ordinances say you've got footprint we can build a square

backloss number five there it looks like the driveway width was changed from was it previously 20 feet yeah yeah that's that's that's one of the changes is if you're doing that single backlog driveway we've changed it from a 20-foot requirement to a 16-foot requirement because it's a driver and just to explain why that's great because from what i understand it's basically the fire department has seen these things go in and all of a sudden there's four houses on it and so they said it really needs to be 20 feet wide because they're going to do more development on it so this specifically says it can only serve one law so and and this provides protection and before a building permit can be issued for the backlog that's served by that driveway the fire chief has to sign off on it and he can get his trucks down and it has to be a turnaround at the end okay so if you have an existing backlot is it

grandfathered the road doesn't need to meet any of these new requirements if this passes i'll be able to get a building permit on an existing back lot this thing that long you'd have to have a 20-foot road built to it there isn't there is a road okay it's 50 feet it doesn't happen to this oh by the way it's 50 feet i'm assuming the right of way is 50 feet right and how wide is the travel surface

30 requirement is getting less restrictive so if you're okay now you're going to be okay later because the current requirement is 20 feet for if it's a single backlot and it would become 16. well there's two other houses

which which kind of road can be 16 feet wide a single driveway for a single backlog okay and you also made reference to the fire department's aerial the ladder truck so for the lot of the truck to be deployed i believe it needs a little bit over 18 feet so why would a fire chief sign off on the building lot knowing that the new home we could not access it with all of our equipment generally i don't think they put the ladder truck in the driveway leading through the home they put it at the home which is usually has clearance so and that again is why the fire chief has to sign off on it before they can get a building they got to show them how much area they're going to clear around the house make sure that they can get their vehicles and put them close enough to the house and so the fire chief is going to have to sign off on it before they approve it we have that discussion

maybe you said but yes well the point of having a backlog is so that people can give lots develop lots without doing subjections and if it's too expensive what they end up doing is looking to sell that land of developers so one goal of it is affordable housing more

to not do subjects for some landowners does that make sense no okay how do you get a subdivision of a backlog want to do a single backlog for a relative they don't want a developer because they can't do that except it's a 20-foot road currently

so on the topic of the turnaround for the backlot the proposed language is a turnaround adequate to serve public safety vehicles shall be constructed at the end of the driveway that defined adequate is there any consideration given to giving some general guidelines to what adequate would mean so that someone who's looking at doing it knows where to start at least you could do that this plan says let the fire chief decide if you can get vehicles around rather than prescribing like a like a subdivision has to have a big turnaround if you can get by with less than that then that's the downside if you prescribe it they have to deal with it so we have a do we do have a prescription for a subdivision which required yes would could we would we maybe want to consider adding language that says like it's never going to have to exceed this which is for a subdivision or something that says you know you might you know i don't know

somehow point to what's required shall not exe clause something i don't know just the word adequate in that just kind of stood out to me putting it on one person that's that's if you pull the fire chief out of here and then you get a requirement of all the specifics this gives

our children and we have a hammerhead at the end of that road but their driveways are coming off of that so i still need to turn around on that road that all put in at the end so if i don't have to spend that money now or i can put it into their driveways at the end because that's the objective here is to give our family a place to live so we're helping them out as best as we can i don't want to put in two of those turnarounds if i don't have to so just one at the end of their driveway is that my understanding if this goes if the fire chief says i can get my vehicles turned around there

making this backlog kind of amendment there for one driveway that's nice to hear more family friendly in that in that sense my wife was saying we've got three children and i was i was like i would i would encourage you to move in that direction you know because you have people in town here who have more than one child who might like to stay in this town but there are other towns that are more friendly you might say but i'm sorry i want to make sure i understand are you asking like a smaller lot size requirement for backlash okay don't know that but i don't have to put a 20 foot that you don't have to put a 20-foot highway in if you have three children couldn't they all be serviced

the size of a lot doesn't matter but uh it's discouraging you know to realize you've got to drop 60 or 70 thousand dollars into a road that's 20 foot wide through you know a lovely wooded accurate area you know something that's very silly and serene and you gotta put a highway in there so i just encourage you to i'm glad to hear what you're thinking about you know but i was encouraged to maybe go a little further

road yes um everybody is three acres lot but that was a backlog no no protection yeah now there is a requirement that's a bigger the home sometimes you have to do they do an analysis of the groundwater so you might have to have it bigger than three acres but three acres is the minimum in the african production district is an aquifer

we're sitting right in it this is all aquifer mapped sand and gravel aquifers uh this area here and this area here those are the only three areas that are aquifer protection and basically that could be a public water supply at some point and so the idea is to protect that groundwater resource

sorry man i didn't uh construction of a private way must be eventually would have to be paved i would like to propose an amendment to 5.23 e which says construction of private ways shall meet the construction standards for mile local roads found in appendix 1 which is a road and add-on except for paving at that point and erosion and sediment control standards have appendix too that way your your uh your road for instance wouldn't have to be paid you could keep it as a gravel rule you would take care of it you have a maintenance agreement maintain your own gravel road that's the plan exactly but with this with this that's not you would have to pay and todd todd and i did discuss that and i offered that language to address that issue generally if you're in a subdivision you have to pave after the third law the whole thing and for a private way private that their keeps it proposing to add language

and i'll look to the select board for the direction on that you already put that language in again as we discussed the purpose of the public hearing is to take public input yeah and the select board reviews the discussion here tonight including some of the ideas that have been offered going farther you could theoretically have that posted the new draft new draft dated and that could be considered remembering you said you agree with that yeah

no this is the public hearing yeah yeah i offered him that language yeah yeah okay to discuss tonight uh yeah so yeah i think that would be um the board would discuss that our next meeting is tuesday night um we'll bake you a cake and get your gravel road for your birthday so yeah i mean i don't i think the if i understand it the suggestion is for a private way that it would never have to be paved no matter how many lots are on it or what is the what is the what's the threshold [Music] oh i'm asking you it's a private way

that and this is a common thing you hear about and i don't have any skin in this game so it doesn't really matter to me honestly but what you hear over and over again from planners and other communities is that what starts as a backlog and then it becomes three family laws and then a generation later it's not the family that owns that land anymore it's somebody else and then there are more lots and all of a sudden you have what really should have been a subdivision has gone through the subdivision process to make sure the road was adequate and all everything of that sort is is a bad situation um so i think a lot of these things are intended to kind of you know prevent that type of situation over the long term so that's why it tends to be that okay well once you get to this point then we need to upgrade the road and so i think it the language in there now is at the third

regulation right so but if there's a maintenance agreement on it well i think i think you yeah i think we can uh discuss that at the board meeting on tuesday and the board will discuss and vote whether to make that change in the language or not and then if there's a change it'll get reposted everything everything has to be posted at least seven days before town meeting so basically we have until the 26th to post like the final version of you know warrants orders changes or whatever so that would give us time to do that so we can have that discussion at the board meeting on on tuesday

um to take back to the board so if those that would be in in favor of todd's suggestion that if it's a private way that there essentially would be no requirement to ever pave that road am i here is that what you're saying can i ask a question before we go is is a sub decision considered a private way no

right i kevin everyone thinks yes so i dealt with this in freeport they had a private way and they ended up putting a subdivision off the private leg and i get what you're saying it is a nightmare because then they hire somebody like me to come grade the road well this person pays this much and there's no set for boundaries so what you're saying i totally did yeah it's

as family but it doesn't have to be family like i have ten acres i could split off a lot now a lot in five years and eventually i have five lots in there and the planning board's never looked at it can be ugly as hell the road can be vastly undersized so the fire department can't get down to the last two houses and that's why it's important to think long term instead of oh my kids are moving in here your kids aren't going to live there chances are

now when it's family land and you've spent your whole life savings on it so it's a good spot for them now that's scientific it's just a data point i just want to see if there's kind of like overwhelming consensus one way or the other like if if you would be in favor of basically uh changing the language so that a private way would would not have to be paved regardless of how many lots i wanted if you would be in favor of language like that can you raise your hand but i think it said more than three that's what it says now so you would leave it to say that two-thirds of the room i guess is that a fair estimate okay okay all all right

uh there's always a public comment period at the uh in the select meeting so if you want to come and express your opinion on this you're certainly welcome to come in i've been having conversations actually with a construction guy about building a road and and what he's spoken about quite a bit is a 14-foot road which i i he led me to believe that was sort of standard is is 16 foot standard georgia my son-in-law my daughter lives on a private way in falmouth that's about 14 feet wide and basically when he's driving his truck and i'm driving in with my little car one of us has to get off the world to be able to pass so that's kind of the issue typically a travel lane on a road is 10 feet wide minimum it gives you some clearance 16 feet i think for a driveway and again part of the issue is getting a large fire apparatus down that driveway uh 16 feet is kind of easy could be less could be more

fire departments would say make it 18 um i have some questions about parking and i know that that's part of this part so i just didn't want to move out of the roads because they didn't have questions while parking but we wait

functional i think my my functional comment here is there's a proposed change from ten percent grade within the right of way for a driveway to three percent grade within the right-of-way for a driveway um which is three percent only 1.7

degrees which is almost completely flat so i was just i didn't really there wasn't anything really any justification in here uh as to as to why that was being done if it's maybe it's a standard you know it is a standard because if you think about it if you live on a hill and you're coming down to the road and you go 10 all the way to the shoulder of that road slippery day you could be out in the road similarly if you're on the down spot and you're trying to get up on the road yeah and 10 right to the road right away that's a very difficult thing to get on to so typically most towns have within the right of way of the road maximum three percent grade from there so you basically create one landing for one vehicle so three percent isn't that the state that's the safe space yeah okay [Music] um i'm sorry i have a bunch of administrative comments and questions on the proposed language um 5.2 the first uh sentence and 5.2

i don't think that you need on the last sentence there i don't think that you need if they are addressed during the planning board review i think it may be covered already in the sunset because we're done earlier in the sentence well yes and no uh the reason it's in there is to clarify that that's something that the planning board has to look at and if they do and they basically review that typically with input from the road commissioner or peer review engineer then they don't have to get a separate permit from the public works director so it's in there to say that it has to be discussed at the planning board meeting to be exempt from the road commissioner but it's great but it says that i think it says that already at the beginning of the sentence where it says accept the driveways and commercial entrances approved by the blackboard during subdivision a site plan review shall not be required to have a separate

review for compliance with these standards i think that's covered in that first part but anyway that's just something to consider in the language that's a comment um