TranscriptConservation Commission Meeting ~ December 6, 2022

figured we get started here um my name is Joseph Roy I'm on the Conservation Commission and uh this is the rest of our Conservation Commission staff for volunteers we want to just introduce yourself quickly Samantha Michaelson Alberta and Jessica's got the signing sheet over there and before we start this whole thing just want to let folks know we do have an opening on the Conservation Commission so if anyone wants to volunteer let us know talk to the town office we're always looking for more people so um cool uh anyways

so cool uh figured tonight we started off and kind of talk about who we are and why we're here and what the goals and objectives are for tonight's public meeting are most of you are probably like me you received one of these postcards in the mail so it means you are impacted or potentially impacted landowner so to start off we we are the Conservation Commission so what we do is we really work to help enhance um the real characteristic of Durham and we do that through working with our water resources and our Forestry Resources and all the different sort of conservation resources we have in town and the had some work that we've tried to get involved with on our parks and we also just advocate for the resources here in the town and work with organizations like Royal River conservation trust and windling landowners who are looking to do conservation on their property and we can also just be a source of material

for all of you to ask resource related questions here in town a lot of us are professionals who work in the field of either wildlife biology or environmental science and we are a completely volunt volunteer board um you know we're here tonight talking to you about regulations but we have absolutely no regulatory Authority we purely just help advise our select board and our planning board when they have questions about this sort of stuff or looking for additional capacity um and we're just here to kind of act as more people hours that can be thrown at tasks and projects so that's who we are and now that why we'll talk about why we're here uh we were asked by the planning board to kind of help facilitate discussions around potential resource protection changes and what that process looks like and what it means for the town and for impacted landowners so they reached out to us and asked if we could help out and

we said sure um you know George has been working his tail off they're working their tail off and they just need a little bit more capacity as we prepare for our meeting in April next year so like I said we're assisting them as they try to bring us into compliance with the voter approved 2018 comprehensive plan so the town planning board's busy and we're just here to help uh so I've mentioned it but talking about the 2018 comprehensive plan you know really this plan was developed by a committee and then brought to the voters and voted on and the plan highlighted a lot of um really important factors that were determined to be important to the people of Durham uh mostly that was keeping Durham Rural and maintaining the rural characteristic of Durham so some of the key land use issues that were highlighted in this comprehensive plan were that we wanted to preserve our own characteristic preserve farming and

Forestry and balance that with private property and public rights and public land use so as part of the plan the planning committee did a survey and found that 90 of the people in this town support farming 75 of support forestry and of the surveying people 75 said they also supported expanding the resource Protection District to achieve those sorts of land use schools and then you

know to break it down even further they really want to preserve our world characteristic and preserve all of the land use that is associated with that questions that came up with this were on our water resources and our natural resources here in the town of Durham and essentially the comprehensive plan wants to to make recommendations to consider critical natural resources in the community to promote the development of floodplain areas to to prohibit development and floodplain areas to help protect life and property and preserve natural habitats to protect identify rare endangered plants and animal species from degradation

significant level of natural resources and to coordinate with local groups and neighboring communities and Regional land resources to help protect shared natural resources and all of that wants to be done in the context of a framework that still allows for things like forestry farming and agriculture which are really important to all of us here in Durham and really help make up that rural characteristic of the town so that's kind of the backdrop um but through that whole process was developed a handful of criteria that we're going to be considered into adding into the resource protection Zone in town to change the resource protection Zone from its current Zone zoning framework to something that more reflects the town's objectives and culture and goals now because it's been about 20 years so George is going to kind of go through today and discuss what that looks like and this is something that we're going

to be meeting again about in the beginning of the year and then voting on at the town's meeting in April and two phases one phase will be you know to remove some resources from resource protection aligning with news new framework and then one phase would be to add them into that so George is going to go into a little bit more of those details today what we're hoping to do here is to just help people understand what resource protection is um you know why we're here talking about it how what impacts your land if it impacts your land what's allowable and not allowable and answer any sort of other questions that might come up as well as answer questions about what the process moving so George is going to present a handful of slides but we'll be here to answer questions take names and follow up with anyone if needed so I'll hand off to George thank you Joe yeah my name is George tabarge and I'm the town Museum

since the adoption of the 2018 implementation of the recommendations of that plan in some of the areas that Joe mentioned natural resources but also in other areas historic preservation I've been working on this particular project doing research with initially with the planning board as Joe said the planning board they reviewed the products all the time subdivisions so pretty much I've been working with the Conservation Commission for the last year on this project so that 2018 comprehensive plan did recognize that the uh 2002 the last

version of the comprehensive plan had uh had used some data had been provided from the state and federal governments on floodplain data that was uh very outdated and so the comprehensive plan that was adopted a couple years ago recognized that that flood plain mapping had to be updated in terms of the restrictions that the town places on properties within those areas the town had already done that for aquifer protection in 2011 the state produced some new sand and gravel aquifer maps and another recommendation of this update to the comprehensive plan said that their aquifer protection districts that were in place needed to be revised to match the latest State uh data and that was already done as part of the first implementation of this comprehensive plan so now we're looking at the resource Protection District and that's all these areas in Gray and if you look at the 2002 this is floodplain map from

the 2002 comprehensive plan that was done by the Adcock in Stockton Valley Council of governments and so they had pretty extensive flood Plains along most of the waterways of the town particularly along the Androscoggin river and so you can look at the current zoning map you see that the resource Protection District is almost a mirror image of that flood plain mapping just go back and you can kind of see how the current resource Protection District is mostly defined by the 2002 floodplain mapping so I mentioned the new aquifer Maps well this is the new uh what they

call lidar it's uh I think it's done with satellite and infrared and basically you can actually pick up uh gravel pits that's how how detailed this stuff is in terms of comparison with what they were doing before so based on that this all the green on here is what FEMA the Federal Emergency Management agency that does flood plain mapping this is their most recent mapping indicating what the flood Plains in the Durham are so you can see it's quite a bit less land area that was included that should be considered as resource protection based on floodplain uh sensitivity

for realigning the research Protection District the first phase of this would be to remove areas that are not flood plain that are mapped as resource protection because of flood flying so the light gray on this area as you can see more the darker gray more more aligns with the FEMA latest FEMA flood play mapping but in moving forward with removing uh areas out of the resource

Protection District there's new comprehensive plan also recommends not just removing those areas but considering additional criteria which would include all areas covered by state shoreline zoning the land within 100 feet of the major streams which is currently in resource protection and then also Wetlands of 10 or more Acres and then finally uh there are some uh what and Joe's the expert on this aspect of this project which is uh Inland waterfowl and wading bird habitats the uh his department has identified some of those areas in Durham that are high quality habitat for waterfowl and uh and waiting for breeding so the beginning with habitat program from the state made recommendations on preserving buffers around those areas and then finally there are also areas where you have flood plain and stream buffer and a

wading bird habitat and other natural resources that are all in the same location and the state has identified some of those multiple resource areas and developed a rating system that's like 1 to 15 or 16 or something like that and so when the comprehensive plan was adopted it basically said anything with six or more of those overlapping values should be considered for resource protection or mandatory cluster what if somebody was doing a subdivision in that so in deciding what to recommend for removable if uh land that's there now meets any of those criteria it would still be retained and not be removed so it would only be the floodplain areas that are improperly mapped that would be removed as part or phase one with a premise that this is just basically correcting bad data and uh and taking improper restrictions off people's properties based on faulty data so then phase two would then look at uh

areas outside of the existing resource protection and those are shown here in green just to kind of make them stand out so these are areas that meet those criteria that are in the comprehensive Plan and there's a public participation process that we're engaged in here tonight to look at these areas in detail look at the principles behind it look at the potential impacts the potential benefits and try to make policy decisions before the voters at town meeting

Protection District that would include the areas removed in Phase One and the areas added in phase two of this project and that would be the result and uh map that more accurately tracks the actual natural resources uh providing on the basis of the state providing data

one at the last town meeting back back in April and there was criticism at the town meeting of the idea of doing these as two separate phases and so the voters actually did not approve phase one uh and there was an expectation that uh if this was going to be considered it needs to be considered in tandem if not a single low at least having two separate boats on the same town meeting one and so that's the track that this is on right now the select board has reviewed this and they're pretty uh set that their in principle that there are two different issues here one issue is people that have land that's currently restricted based on bad data and then there's another set of property owners and all of which we've attempted to notify we set out I think it was 440 postcards like the ones you received anyone whose land was touching any of those areas that I've identified and so the select board is pretty pretty firmly

uh of the position and Kevin NATO is here tonight you can Echo if the uh or correct my understanding uh they think that these are two completely separate different issues and should be should be considered separately so uh So the plan right now is to have two different questions on the town meeting Warren for April of 2023 one would say approve of revise the zoning map to remove those areas from improperly mapped and then uh

part two or phase two would be to have a separate question to add new areas to Resource protection the town which is how I prepared all of these Maps using that state data as well as some of the local Town property maps and things and uh so I've already been contacted by several Property Owners asking for detailed information and I'm just going to show you an example of what we can provide to people so you can understand what the impact of this might be on your property so here is an example of one property I think it's on uh Auburn pounder Road

to say you know what's going on because they saw a lot of green on the map in their particular area and so I'm able to zoom in highlight their property and the show here's the the Grays the existing phase one will remove this part and then phase two probably one of the most impacted properties I've seen on this project so what I can do is go through the individual layers of those different criteria and add sequentially this is the uh beginning with habitat 10 acre Wetlands so these are areas that are low wet lots of wetland area now there can be Pockets like this one shows here of Upland within that large area and there's probably a lot more but based on aerial photography and soils Maps they have a pretty good idea that if you go out there these are pretty wet areas and so that's uh one of the criteria that we could add on to that the beginning with habitat recommends buffers around those Wetlands so that

that also would be included based on the criteria and then we can then end up with a composite here's another property where someone contacted me this is over off Bowie Hill Road and so phase one removes this area from the resource protection based on the more accurate flow play mapping and then phase two based on uh other the other criteria adds a little bit to that so there's a net reduction I think that I calculated about four or five acres so I can do this on anyone's property if you are interested to see what the details would be I've done a few more on the sign up sheet that you came in if you would like to have me take a look at your property I mean we sent out 440 notices so obviously I have to be able to it takes me about an hour to do each one of these half an hour to an hour depending on what the situation is but I'm more than happy to do it and at least you have the information that

you need to understand what what the what the impact potentially could be on your property either positive or negative so I do have uh Maps timeline maps of all the individual layers here's another property this one was actually uh the other property with the big impact was here this is the butter who can't who heard about what this was doing and so they were questioning you know what what does that look like on my property we bush hog the fee of the field you know and so I could actually overlay an air photo which shows the field and you can see that the buffer around the Wetland area pretty much follows the tree line and so it wouldn't be affecting their fields but those are the types of questions that people really wanted to know and the town thankfully was in the position with all the research we've done to be able to at least answer these questions and I do have uh all of the individual

layers this is another one that I just got done as you can see the flood plain and what the impact would be which is uh not much and it's basically these are floodplain areas that they're being added or other resource areas but particularly the floodplains it's not a good place to build a house or uh or do development anyway so I do have all the individual layers but I just kept that as background I won't go through those so that's pretty much my explanation and I'd be happy to help the Conservation Commission you all as much as I can

meeting um like this prior to last Spring's town meeting and I'm not understanding what's the difference of the meeting we attended to in prior to Alaska meeting and tonight's beginning yeah that's a that's a good question so tonight's Town means that tonight's meeting is being held hosted by the I saw you came a couple seconds after we said this earlier it's being hosted by the Conservation Commission on behalf of the planning board and this is more of an informational meeting to help people answer questions like what is resource protection what does that mean for my property you know and ask any other sort of questions from there this is is being done in addition to another meeting that will happen with the planning board in the beginning of next year prior to the town meeting to say this is the exact warrant language and this is how it's going to be presented in April at the town meeting to be voted on then so this

is uh just since it didn't go through last time there seemed to be a lot of questions that were popping up at the town meeting we figured this is a good opportunity to answer those questions and kind of get ahead of it and make sure that people have a really solid understanding of the impacts and of the changes before uh the next meeting and it's the subsequent uh meeting where we vote on it in April so does that answer your question at all yeah

I guess I'm I'm a little frustrated I went to the town meeting I think people heard love and clear we don't think it's right that they should be done in one in two different pieces and that's why it was voted down I'm not sure who didn't hear that but I listened to the select board meetings the other day I listened to them and basically what I heard was

um Kevin felt that it was two different issues I guess my question number one would be is the data when I leaved at the town meeting was that we were doing phase one because it took so much time that we only had time to deal with phase one we didn't have the hours in to present phase two and that's why it was two separate issues that's what I heard um now I'm hearing that phase one is based on data scientific data is phase two

based on scientific data are we just bringing that no so that's a good question um first off foremost in terms of Warrant language we as a Conservation Commission we do not write warrant language we do not change weren't language we're just here to present the information that the select board has asked the planning board to ask us to present so that's that's a separate issue and we don't write language so we're just curious finding Mission no worries and in terms of the the criteria George if you could go back to the slide that shows all that yes all this criteria is is based in different data layers that are developed by a variety of different state and federal agencies so for example you know the 100 Year front plane is really easy for most of us to imagine that's the expected flood plain of a hundred year storm event that could take place um like George said that data is different now than it was in the past

because of the technology lidar that he was talking about has not been around for a terribly long time and it's essentially like it can take images and do measurements from drones or from the planes or from satellites to get really detailed information I mean some lidar can tell you the height of trees in the species it's very different than it used to be um the shoreline zoning is a state level recommended or requirement in many cases of what your your property has to look like to be in compliance with dep I mean dep the lands within 100 feet of major perennial streams that's a buffer that is recommended by the department inland fisheries and wildlife usually with a Ford forested Lance landscape a buffer of 75 foot is what's required by like the main Department of May 4 service is where you can't do any impact ifmw made Department of inline fisheries and wildlife recommends considering extending that buffer to 100 feet and in

some cases out to 300 feet so that's something that we've already done a long time here in Durham extended that out to 100 feet just because it does provide a lot more habit attack value for a lot of wildlife species about 86 percent of wildlife species utilize those corridors here in the state of Maine so that's kind of the Nexus for that value the forest in emerging Wetlands uh that is being edited uh per again these are all recommendations from the comprehensive plan not us we're just explaining them so that is being added in because those are considered Wetlands a very high value forested Wetlands generally are very productive for Fisher Wildlife they help control storm water they help control nutrients they kind of act as buffers and sponges and pull a lot of toxins out of our water which is I know a very important value to all of us rural to me means when you look at aerial footage there's more green space

than there is tar in buildings and that captures some of that as well and then lands within 250 foot of wading bird and waterfowl habitat there's a designation of certain Wetlands as Inland wading bird and waterfowl habitat that means that these areas are very highly productive for our waterfowl our ducks um our other species that you might think of are like great blue herons and stuff like that those habitats are very much in Decline they have been filled in a lot by developments in the past and before these sorts of regulations have gone through and once they're gone they're you don't get them back so that they provide a lot of great value and they're also Wetlands so generally speaking in today's day and age when you're dealing with permitting in Wetland fill you're not going to be able to build in those anyways but they provide a lot of good Wildlife Resources and then the beginning with habitat six plus

co-occurrent resources is another scientifically based model essentially so the state has mapped all important important wildlife and habitat features and they assign each feature a score whether it's like one two three or four now where those scores overlap tells you that there are a lot of co-occurring important habitat and Wildlife and water quality features so oftentimes that overlapping takes place where there is an inland waiting bird and waterfowl habitat but also a stream and also a

rare occurrence of a rare species so things that are kind of blinking out as development and stuff like that takes place so all of these are rooted in data that's provided by a lot of yeah it's all scientific data provided mostly by uh the main Department of Environmental Protection and the main Department of inline Fisheries okay so I wanted to hear that come out

at once because it's all scientifically driven it is not let's take land out of resource protection and I'm going to shoot myself in the foot because I could be taken out of some of resource protection however if they overlay the other map then I'm going to get some put back in so I just think what's fair in the town is if you're going to go on a scientific data if you do it all at once and not say let's pull stuff out and then the next vote people don't want to get put in so they're going to vote it down and then our town is more open to more development than it currently is now and it's getting pretty scary out there what's happening so anyway I wanted it loud and clear I think one vote and I'm not sure what the select board did or did not hear but when Kevin when you said I felt like it was unethical for us not to do it this way I think it's unethical not to put it all together if it's based on scientific

death [Applause] my name is that we necessarily took from Cal media it should all be one question I think the message we took is that we should be voting on them at the same meeting and the the board does feel very strongly uh for the Integrity of the process that it is to do very separate questions the first part about land that is it let's step back to it this is about making sure that our land map accurately reflects the real world conditions on the ground okay because what we don't want is somebody to have to go that goes into the code enforcement office and says I'd like to do XYZ on my land and the code enforcement officer looks at the map and says oh well your land is in resource protection so you can't do with your there's a significant amount of land in the town that is misidentified as being in resource protection that it shouldn't be so the way we look at it is the first question is very objective right it's we

have a map that inaccurately represents what the 100 Year floodplain is and as a result people have land under restrictions that they should so we want to correct that so that the people aren't being penalized by a mistaken map okay that we see that as a separate question from what should be added to Resource protection because that question is much more subjective right because it's based upon the criteria and the criteria we use or don't use that's where like public input comes in like for instance you know there's probably a couple things here that are that are legal requirements like you know State Shoreland zoning and you know probably the FEMA 100 year flood plan but some of it is subjective like the uh the six criteria for

um under the uh the habitat conditions six the right number maybe it's four maybe it's eight you know that's that's something that could be discussed but it's an objective thing so um that's why we want to go around it separately we didn't feel it's fair if you want them in one question and as you say maybe there is a sentiment out there that people don't want to add more land to Resource protection if it's all one question then the people whose land is misidentified

their land doesn't come out and they continue to be penalized so that's why it's two questions the first one is to correct the mistake on the map like basically to correct the past mistake the second question is about okay what do we want resource protection to look like in the fusion so can you tell me are these these other layers I thought they were being mandated by the state uh so a lot of this is from our 2018 comprehensive plan and one note on the data layer the old floodplain data versus this floodplain I have a slightly different interpretation than Kevin on that data layer that is a reflection of what the town felt was important to protect back then now these set of criteria are what the town feels is important to correct now so a town can put anything they want in resource protection for whatever reason they could say because we think that this is old growth Forester because we think

that we want 500 feet are on the Stream So that data layer at the time was something that people were comfortable with and now we're proposing to adopt these six new criteria which includes utilizing the most recent flood plain data so I wouldn't necessarily consider it a mislabeling it's just a changing in town values which would pull some Town information some properties out and put some town properties in and that that is kind of subject to individual viewpoint points on that for sure but these other layers not all of them are required by the state like for example Shoreland zoning is one that is required by the state but the rest are from the 2018 comprehensive plan you had your hand up next so I'm confused about how much of this is mandated by the state and what the difference would be if you if this doesn't get enacted him too isn't it automatically protected by state federal requirements can I yeah

that's okay so my initial charge from the planning board is to hire Mike Morse who used to be the Shoreland zoning coordinator for dep for this region and so the first thing we did was to look at what is required to be resource protection under state law and virtually the only part of its parts of Durham that are required to be resource protection are the Androscoggin river where you have either flood plain or steep slope areas and Mike Morse did it did an analysis and showed that virtually the whole Frontage along the river is is required to be resource protection the other main area is uh around run around Pond and under dep Shoreland zoning rules if you have an area like Joe talked about large Wetland areas forest and wetlands if you have two or more Acres of that on the edge within 250 feet of running around Pond that also has to be resource protection and it's a it's it's in different places

around it but it's about half of the whole Frontage of a runaround pond and the only other areas in the town where you're required by state law to have resource protection is some of the emergent Wetlands some of the farm fields we had to add into Shoreland zoning again if those have some flood plain margin or forest and Wetland within 250 feet of them and those are just kind of a few spots around but the main areas where it's required by state law to be resource protection is along the Androscoggin river and around run around Pond about half of that Frontage the rest of it is all subject to the local decision-making process so how much land with that's not being there what's the percentage of land that's not mandated that is being protected uh we haven't done that calculation because from the Conservation Commission side of things we're just here to answer the questions on what the town voted on in 2018

comprehensive plan so we are just here to explain what the six criteria that they picked that the town picked out and voted on and what those implications are we haven't gone through to calculate you know what if there's a net increase or net decrease if you're looking at the map and just making that visual adjustment it seems to be about the same just shifting a little bit but you know since we're thinking about this from a scientific standpoint where we're just considering the criteria and from a policy standpoint the criteria that the town already selected we're not trying to calculate those sorts of things because you know that's not part of what we were tasked with doing yeah you clarified something so what I think I heard you say is that 100 Year blood clotting outside of the Androscoggin river directly is not required to be under a circuit protection that's correct yeah a lot of towns if you think about it part

of the reason that you're required to be uh prohibited from development not some other orders some some I believe some mortgage companies will require you to get flood insurance yeah and that's the issue that the FEMA has floodplain regulations there's no words you no state law says it has to be a resource protection protection yeah because I don't believe the initial map that shows all of it is considered unless that initial map for resource protection also mentions things like swampy areas as designated on the map so that initial map isn't just showing floodplains or what was the flood necessarily in the floodplain map it just happens to align a lot with those water resources which is very common I had a map that was a 100 year yeah we have a new map new data that shows what 100 year is and that is listed as one of the criteria that the 2018 comp plan has to be used for consideration that was

the mapping in 2002. can you define 100 Year floodplain what does that mean so generally when you you probably have heard of things like 100 Year storm 500 year storm that's referring to where all if you think of a hundred year so flooding 100 Years of weather 100 Years of fluctuation what that area would capture all of the possible projected areas that that water should move into so by flooding what would flooding look like uh usually flooding would be defined as when the water from a river or Upstream leaves its Divine defined channel so you have a defined bed and bag when the water comes up and over that goes into the adjacent Fields adjacent Woods that's when you kind of get into a flooding situation and floodplain data can change based off of if a new dam is put in or if some sort of um New Management of the Waterway is put in you know now you have different flood Plains if you think about like on

River Road there there's you know water fluctuates pretty regularly and in the past has come up and over so okay yeah part two I guess that the reason I'm concerned about this is that um when we purchased our land we were aware of some of the restrictions you know because of streams and stuff like that looking at this new map it's like our whole property because like now green so it's no longer residential zoning agriculturalism it's now all resource protection on top of it it's like a level six you know it's got through everything are you serious it doesn't float the only thing I see around there is turkeys you know I don't think there's too many endangered birds but in our hay field you know so I'm sort of like where does this notion come from that this huge pretty big piece of property is all of a sudden gonna be rezoned yeah so part of that is the beginning of habitat data for example

you manage hay Fields um there are certain species that are endangered in the state that specialize on Hay Fields um specialize on those sorts of things but that being said resource protection doesn't prevent you from agriculture does it prevent prevent you from cutting those fields doesn't prevent you from grazing wild animals it doesn't prevent you from hanging them so it doesn't prevent that but those things that you're talking about it's why you have might not have seen it flood it is a hundred year period to think about so for most of us that spans more than a lifetime so it has the potential based off of the topography and the location and adjacent water bodies the soil types play a big role some soil is very well drained and the water is just going to go through there like our Sands other soil is clay and it's going to hold water so you have potential to flood more so there's more than what you see

necessarily on the surface and all of it is collected data that's been analyzed by a variety of state agencies in federal ways so another question I would have for folks who are sort of in my shoes sort of all of a sudden if all you know the whole the go almost just has been turned into agriculture is that what happens to you know homeowners that maybe my son and daughter wanted to build a little cabin or something no longer could do that because it's in research so the land in my view is where you're sort of paying taxes you know for a for a residential piece of property now with the town foreign

property it's like okay so I still paying taxes on this or is there some sort of way of looking at a homeowner and say well you're getting screwed you know so if your land is in resource protection you can have conversations with a town assessor and the code enforcement officer on a case-by-case basis because are losing developmental potential it can sometimes equate to decrease taxes that is a discussion that we don't have because we're not here as tax experts that's something I would encourage you to ask the town assessor and the code enforcement officer about that's done Case by case it just seems like almost like an eminent domain kind of situation you say well you had you thought you had something now it's being taken away yeah and that's exactly because I would say not necessarily reasonable I mean look at that map that those little green pixels on and I say seriously you know where where you know

does that actually going you'll ask you you know what you're offered about yeah yeah and so that's what this whole process is for with any sort of change there are people who are going to have an Associated loss or a gain so that's why we're having this public process and that's where we're increasing the amount of public hearings we're having versus last time so people really understand those implications so we're answering those questions now and raising those concerns now rather than at town meeting um where the vote is happening right away so it gives some people the opportunity to really see the impacts on their property prior and bring up points like what you're bringing up so like you said you know you might not be interested in developing but it certainly with resource protection the major limitation is buildings or energy development like solar or wind or subdivisions there's definitely some it

prevents you know the footprint of buildings and stuff like that so that's that's the concern that sounds like you're sharing well it more or less yeah the quick question is that you have uh one of the maps the sort of yellow areas I guess on the website where we're proposal is to take out of the running source of attention so I'm looking at this and I say okay so that corner of my land is yellow okay that's been taken out look at another map and it's all green again you know it just seems like a contradiction well what I mentioned uh earlier was that uh in in removing any areas if those areas still had any of

these other criteria and it was the flood plain that was being removed but if they still met these other criteria we would not remove it right so basically what happened was part of your land was yellow based on flood plain that wasn't flood plain right but then there were other values that also were on that property so that was why that's greeting it yeah yeah so that's where a little bit of confusion of the two-phase system is that first phase is saying let's address just the flood plain but if your property also has those occurrences and it was already mapped as resource protection the first phase doesn't pull those out it keeps them in so that's where the confusion could come with the map um for sure so Heather you had a question I have a couple questions and a couple comments um the I don't have my comp plan with me to refer to so what the 2018

voter approved comp plan listed what criteria these six right here I know I mean like you know how it was the last when we did this last time I was asking I think the maps were drawn at a level four criteria yeah sorry let me explain that are you talking about with the beginning with habitat co-occurrence I think yeah so the comprehensive plan recommends taking beginning with habitat co-occurrence model data of six or more and including that as resource protection it also made a recommendation on creating critical rural areas for areas that are four or more we're not discussing that um discussion about that but this is saying six or more because that six value is significant in the sense that the department of inland fisheries and wildlife has said that that is where those habitats start showing a lot of really important features and at six is kind of that threshold where okay now this is something you should consider

protecting for its conservation values and the comp plan says six or more Yep six or more in relation to Resource protection so it's not really I the um subjective conversation this mapping was specifically done based on what people voted on and approved in 2018 yeah the map George has made right here is a picture of exactly what it would look like if all of the recommendations from the 2018 comp plan were adopted that is what this map would look like okay that's if both phases were voted on and went through this is what the map would be okay so just to be really clear when Kevin was speaking earlier he was saying that the flood plain is based and the reason why the select board is choosing to take this through is because the Phase One removing just the outdated

floodplain information and then these other things are subjective that that it's not really subjective if we're going based on the 2018 voter approved conflict correct we're not talking about four or six yeah I would say that in the sense that is it something that is already been asked for by the folks who voted on the comprehensive plan yeah this is very clearly an exact representation of those

six different criteria which includes the beginning of habitat the Inland wading burner waterfowl habitat the 10 acres the 100 foot stream buffer and the shoreline zoning and a new up-to-date floodplain map so yeah okay thank you very much so uh Heather's right in terms of this is representing what's in there I know she's shocked I actually am everybody right down in the record books

should absolutely guide and inform the process that's the purpose of it but it's not a to the letter legally binding document so and things evolve and comp plans can be amended so if if people think that at some point that you something articulated in the comprehensive plan should be changed and that can be changed you know but again you go through that process the public process but you know but what I really stood up for is I want to clarify what the first question is going to do because I think let me start by what it's not going to do it's not going to only remove property that is not in the

updated 100-year flood plain and then in the next question some of it may get added back in question one will be to remove from resource protection any property that doesn't meet any of the criteria not one and that's that's what we're talking about pulling out of resource protection not the 100 Year floodplain and it doesn't mean any of those other uh criteria that's the first question that we will seek to do so we're not going to take it out in question one and put it back in in question two okay so then my question verification because originally you had said that that first phase was to align us with the 100 Year floodplain well but it actually is to Alliance with 100 year flood plain and adopt these criteria for some landowners but not all landowners

people who don't have them apply on their property correct what do you mean by well the criteria so what we're talking about is if there's if there's property in the town that doesn't meet any of those criteria then it should not be identified as resource protection but currently the map that we have does identify some property that doesn't meet any of those conditions as protection so the first question is to remove those properties or pieces of properties from the map as being shown resource protection and then what that is a discussion of the criteria and what the criteria is that if there's anything that does meet some of those criteria and it's not currently shown on the map in resource protection protect question two asked to add those properties to Resource protection right but I just want to clarify section one doesn't simply just align with the 100-year foot correct right and I think

there might have been a statement about that earlier so I just want to clarify it's not just saying it's unreal flip it's not just really informative so it sounds like question one is going to apply this criteria to remove property and then question two is going to apply this criteria to cut

so this is a statement not a question I feel really confused about why that wouldn't just be one statement does the town of Durham wish to apply the criteria to all property in Durham well I I feel confused about why that's not the question which is what I believe based on all of the meetings that I attended all of the public comment that I heard was the reason that it was voted down last year and why people want to see it presented that way so that all landowners are subject to the same criteria across the board um one thing that I would really like to clarify because I I feel like I keep hearing it is that the data that has the

landmarked as resource protection currently is bad or inaccurate data and I I would prefer if this is in fact the case which based on what I'm hearing it sounds like is that this data is now outdated that at the time that we used that data it was current and accurate data and now that data has become outdated so the way I think of it is that the town's values have changed and that this new data better represents the existing time values as voted on in 2018 because that old data like I said any people can include you know just large tracts of land or Fields over 50 acres or whatever they want as resource protection and vote on it and the voters can decide the town in their review process in 2018 decided that the original resource protection doesn't represent the towns values now so they're looking to change it so I think that using the words bad data um good data are a little confusing yeah

because it's just more I see it more as a reflection of the changing Town values um and including different information so much more precise data yeah lidar didn't exist when this was originally drawn out I think the town original map says something of like swamps as outlined on this property so a lot of times municipalities just kind of gobbled up water resources and wetlands as their protected areas and I think that that's originally what that First Data layer represents or which you've had your hand a couple times now so um

does that mean I'm impacted or did that put everybody uh no that only went to those of us who own property that is either currently in resource protection or might go into resource protection so this is like if if there's a change in the your back corner is touched by resource protection you got this you could be someone who's having your land taken out of resource protection you got this so this is just anyone who's had gonna have any of that little fluctuation occur on their property okay so

understanding and it's sort of evolving as I've listened today um you know my my fear is that I was in favor of two questions um because I do not think we should um penalize people whose property should not be in if you were you know the the FEMA 100 Year floodplain is not decided by anyone in this room this is that's decided by FEMA you know just like every mortgage you've ever gotten on your house is going to have flood insurance if you're in the flood plane and there's lifelong value uh like from um review of that so as floodplanes are updated you may find out your house is now in a flood plain you're going to have to get flood insurance on it and vice versa if it comes out you would want to get that flood insurance off your property because it's expensive right so I am I am 100 in favor of removing the resource protection on properties that are no longer in the flood plain and my understanding was that was question one

um the clarification around no longer in the floodplain and doesn't meet any of these criteria for me is a little concerned because I where I see there being an issue is if that's the case question one passes question two fails then those people have these six criteria applied to their properties and no one else does in my mind that's not overly fair so I think question one should be straight flood flame regardless of these right and then question two is are these the six criteria that we as a community feel is important on what we want to protect so I'm in favor of two questions because I don't want to penalize people that shouldn't be but I also don't want to penalize them by instituting other restrictions that other people don't have so thank you for sharing that we don't write the questions Kevin Kevin is when so it wouldn't apply

to criteria yeah with so far but so these some of these six are new right like that in a flood plain but I'm now in this sixth habitat figure right which previously wouldn't be in resource protection would my property come out it would come out your property will only come out if there's no occurrences so if you are so right now that's not a requirement right if you are like you're you're understanding is correct if you are here and we're saying phase one goes through okay you're no longer in the flood plain but you still are within a wetland of 10 or more Acres your property would not be removed in phase one and then questions

resource protection map and anything that means nothing outlined under the new criteria comes up so you would then have the new criteria applied to your property if that was occurring there in phase one and then phase two is saying okay for all the other areas where this should apply but we're not applying right now let's vote to add it in so yeah you fully yeah I understand what you're saying and you're fully understanding it correctly but we don't write the word language we're just here to have these discussions on clarification and talk about what it means and we haven't even really talked about exactly what resource protection means but uh we're just kind of showing you what the maps are yeah I understand what you're saying okay

these discussions well I was on the impression that warrants were already written based off of the November 8th meeting you said we're not really taking public or not just no questions just just another factor to consider he said you didn't care what a survey said your language was going to do it in two phases on November 8th separate books yeah so I was under the impression that we were talking about what this means and not Warren we're the board is as of right now the board is pretty much unanimously

take yourself out and adding stuff in so what questions themselves so you're saying you will consider changing the language of the questions as long as it Remains Two questions but you wouldn't come back to me and maybe it's not two questions and I've actually been sitting here thinking maybe it's six questions right which ones are important yeah exactly maybe it's one question about do we want to take stuff out of resource protection if it doesn't meet any of criteria or the fun plane or whatever wherever we leave right and then it's then then you ask maybe and I don't know you ask individually does the town want to add to Resource protection those lands in the 100 Year floodplain that is one question next one does the talent want you to add mandatory Shoreland zoning to you know and so on down the list because it might be maybe it's not an all or none thing maybe people are good with parts of it

so isn't this what we kind of already did with the comprehensive plans when everyone voted to accept those six criteria ultimately any comprehensive plan is that's the starting point for you you bring proposals to the town so you're meeting the obligation of software but the town ultimately has to vote on so the passing a comprehensive plan does not have the power of ordinance only voting on an actual ordinance it is in State statue though that ordinance changing has to align with the comprehensive plan that's that's true it does happen oh my God twice in one night it doesn't mean it has to reaction exactly you had your hand up a minute ago I agree with Kevin on the comprehensive plan because it is just a tool for the town for their ordancers the beginning with habitat Max as the school for the planning so not in that Essence no none of it is required I agree with you I want to know where you

have green and you have three different criteria that agree which one is my property in definitely send ask Georgian remember I showed you some detailed analysis of different properties okay and you said it went for 250 degrees is that the only thing yeah because you've raised a good point some people's properties may have overlapping characteristics and others might not only they might only have one is that your property right there okay yeah it is this uh border of this large Wetland area the buffer around it that's the only Criterion it just comes onto the edge of your property on the edge pretty much follows the tree line yeah

and that's because of those pixels yeah right here it's called raster data I asked if you could measure that 250 feet from this edge of the screen you just said that was the requirement of the buffer so yeah and that's what defines that resource protection

yeah so that would involve a survey on your property so it's 250 foot buffer on that resource wherever your property line Falls and I said I'm asking George everybody wasn't in on the day they arrived why didn't I get a postcard

question is the father of neighbor Dan Fisher who was not here for visiting Connecticut his property is already very defined by um tax use programs he's got his treatment he's already defined with Wetlands he's got it in farmland

area so to put on a blanket resource protection criteria when you know if somebody went to develop it which he's not going to develop I have no desire to developed that when I bought a big chemical man it would have to go through a wetland study so it's almost a double unnecessary cry too yeah so the reason this is being proposed the way it is is because it wouldn't really create a sense of equity if we went around to each landowner and said we're only going to put resource protection on you if you have plan a b or c versus this landowner who says I already have a conservation easement so there are people in town who have permanent conservation easements that prevent their Town property from ever being developed tax advantage yeah just yeah exactly just like tree growth tax program does just like Mr Fisher's program does now with something like this like we said earlier if you're feeling that it is impacting the nature

of your property you can talk with the town assessor and the code enforcement officer to see if that has any impact on your tax burden um but like with a property like this one thing I wanted to point out so for example even if this were to extend into your field resource protection does not disallow you for mowing it does not disa you are still allowed to mow this field you could still cut all of the trees for firewood and follow all normal forestry regulations you could plant it with crops you could graze your cattle or you put goats in the woods to graze under there or finish your pigs under there on acorns like there's nothing that limits that the only thing this would be saying is at this point you couldn't put a solar panel you can't put a wind turbine you can't put a parking lot and you can't put a Walmart or a home or a store because it's energy development is not allowed in the resource Protection

District so it's like extractive things like gravel extraction you could have put a gravel pit there but if you wanted to put a private road you would have to get a permit so that's what we have here is some of the common things you can and can't do in resource protection and then in our land use um ordinance there's two pages of all things that you can and can't do so I've printed off again

people have asked saying hey a corner of my property is now in resource protection does that mean the standards apply to all my properties property area no it only applies to the area with resource protection so if you were to put an accessory building over here no impact if you were trying to put a condo right here then that's when there would be a restriction but only within the actual area so not the whole property yeah um I'm curious as to how I looked at the map for the proposed expansion of the resource protection area and there's some areas that are significantly increased or the proposed increase how did you come by the borders how did you establish that on that yeah so that was just

just those criteria that were selected in the comprehensive plan so this map just reflects where those are so like there's areas like here where we where we're seeing increases there's a lot of areas throughout here where we're seeing decreases and that's just a reflection of the criteria that we're excuse me my question is how did you establish the expansion borders of the new areas these so the these areas are already mapped by a lot of our state agencies so we just took that map and overlaid it no no no I'm talking about the green area where you've proposed to expand it on different properties throughout the town there isn't you've got an area that say rural residential and then you've expanded the resource protection area significantly into that area how is that how did you come by that how did you how to do it yeah okay so this is the one that shows the areas that are not currently resource

protection and going back to that first issue of you know phase one take out what's improperly zoned based on an old flood link play maps the the other properties that meet the other criteria are currently in the resource protection so the question becomes do you pull those out as well as the one space time that's a that's a slightly different question okay maybe you're still missing no no I'm going back to your question right now so those areas that are green on this map are not currently resource protection phase two and add those to that but that's based on the overall mapping and what is not currently in the resources how was it how were the borders established for that based on those State inventories what's that based on the state inventory maps that were provided to the town okay so that's information that somebody could get if they were requested oh absolutely yeah all of that information is publicly

available it's right on the main Department inland fisheries and wildlife I can also get it from Montana and one thing I want to point out with this map right here is um there have some folks that raise a little confusion about this map so this map shows the existing resource protection and shows what phase two would add this map does not show what phase one takes out so this would be a map this map is what it would look like if for some reason the town voted down phase one the voted in phase two and we're here saying that you know we should consider voting both of them through because apply it equally so it's unlikely that this map would ever look like this because you know realistically a lot of these areas are going to be removed if phase one is voted on so we can definitely pull together a map that shows which we already have on here a map that shows what it would look like after both

phases were voted on if they both passed my my comment right now speaks directly to what you just I think that the Conservation Commission has been wrongfully tagged as trying to um overstep their role and I and I think in

my opinion the Conservation Commission has the ultimate credibility in this conversation because they could have said let's start with phase two and put everything in and then take out phase one they're not asking for that they're asking for the criteria to be applied equally across the board and so I I just asked people to really consider what the intent is by

asking in two phases last year phase one being voted down because people were not interested in removing we already know right that they're not interested in removing um phase one without phase two as part of it because we had that opportunity last year and we voted it down and now here we are again being asked to do the same thing and so it's been said well if if why are

people so worried about it if we voted it down last year they'll just vote it down again and if people really want to add resource protection then they'll do that well that's true but what is the intent what is the actual reason when we already know the answer to the first question right that potentially like Jane was saying leaves Land to be more developable if we

pull that land out which I think it should be if it doesn't meet the criteria because that's a decision based on science but equally all landowners should be subject to the same set of criteria so I'm just asking people to like really think critically about why things are playing out the way that they're playing out and who benefits from things playing out the way that they're playing out I just want clarification we're not asking anyone to vote on anything Conservation Commission we're just here tonight to explain what this data layer is what what these data layers are what the scientific justification is behind them and what the implications for the town so we're not we're just trying to answer those questions so we didn't write this we're not trying to say book one vote two vote two don't vote one or any sort of iteration in between so I don't think you were lucky no no I mean you know I really feel like if it's

in fact the Conservation Commission was just trying to establish as much resource protection as possible you would be advocating for putting all the land in right you're not advocating for that you're advocating for the science to be applied evenly across the board

well some of this science and some of it seems to be optional you know as far as phase two well the science is solid whether you want to include the science or not as an option but as questions are proposed right now phase two would include all of the six criteria not just individual criteria um so but the science is is there it's just whether you want to include that so it's not really a subjective matter in terms of whether that is scientifically relevant it's just whether you want to include that can I make a quick comment to her conservation Committee in here sure yeah I think people need to remember that you and the conservation committee are doing what you would have to do by the selecting oh by the planning board and they gave you a try they told you this is what we want you to do to overview look at it and I think the question of one vote or two vote is not as important as understanding the

total impact and I think when it comes to a zoning map change the clearer the vote can be this add one and two and all that's good together I liked Kevin's idea maybe it's six votes yeah Forest because because Summer maps are not important if we do six the Girl Scouts are going to need to bring more cookies because I ran out halfway through last time let's put in your order um and Juliet had her hand up first so this is obviously really

what is the timeline that we need so my understanding of the timeline is that the Conservation Commission is hosting this event to have these very important discussions and hear from everybody um you know there's a member of the planning board here this member from the select board here this is just and then we're being recorded this is just a public information gathering and then um per statute the planning board has to have a meeting prior to the uh April

town meeting to go over all of this information again but the planning board in the select board I believe and then members of the town since there was so much confusion we're just asking for this to be an additional fat Gathering meeting because there seem to be a lot of questions at the Town town meaning of like what's this mean for me what's this mean if we do this in the future so this is just you know I don't want to use phase because we're talking about phases but this is act one of three years we don't really have that much time December when does rewards need to be I think Kevin can answer that question so basically with any ordinance change there needs to be a public key earning in this case it does have to be hosted by the play anymore and I believe it needs to be at least seven days before but not more than 30 days before you know both so Tommy so it means sometime in March it would be the actual public

hearing it's in that I think Joe alert alluded to this earlier that this meeting is and this was a voice that tell me like people wanted an opportunity to offer some input where there was when there was still time to tweak things or change things by the time we get to the public hearing what what our responsibility to present to the town is like what are the actual warrant questions that are proposed to be voted on at a town meeting in April now it could still be tweaked at that point it's it's not common but it could certainly not in a substantive like major way but I mean there is opportunity to to tweak something if we had to coming out of public hearing but this purpose of this is to hear some things and try to get ahead of that and where we've if things need to be ordered differently like the question one thing you know I've heard some good arguments saying you know I think we'll have to talk through what

George you know how do we word that to you know make sure that we are applying a criteria equitably across the board um you know whichever way uh ends up and you know I want to answer one more time the question that came up I think it's um I you know I've agreed with Heather twice tonight but I don't disagree with the peers I I think it's um it's an opinion not a fact that that the uh on what she thinks devote meant on at the last town meeting um different people will have different interpretations of of what that meant and why they lowered back down I think a lot of people voted it down because Joe raised a technicality issue about who hosted the public hearing I mean he was right you know it was hosted by the select board and it was by law supposed to have been hosted by the uh planning board you know I don't know if the end result would be any different but he was right about that so that and a few other

things people raise just raise enough doubt where people you know and we've seen anybody who's been a town meeting a lot you know that if the room is confused the room is voting no right and so I think that's what happened it wasn't by any means to be interpreted that as a declarative this is absolutely what the town said we do not interpret that from that results and the reason that it's two votes is very simple in the eyes of the board is that we don't want to have

people whose property is should not be identified as resource protection to have the only way that that can be corrected is to have other property put in resource protection we want to remedy the people that shouldn't be in resource protection and then talk about and fix that and then talk about what should be asked so you're contradicting yourself over to the beginning of your statement you said that you believed the criteria should be applied equitably across the board and that and then what you just said right there is be exact I don't think so I think I said that yeah so what we want to take out is if it doesn't meet the criteria then we want to take it out if it does meet the criteria we want to add it in it why is that not being asked

this is if you it's not Equitable to the people that have property and resource protection currently that shouldn't be well to be fair what what do you mean by should it be because if you're saying hey this looks good where it already exists so that's what it should be because should it be is if it's mapped currently it should be if it's not maps though because I think because even phase one introduces new criteria if it's math currently we know that the origin of that map the the old one before that was updated 218 was not the result of a public deliberation process that represented the values of the community it was largely imposed by the state based upon what that hundred year floodplain was it wasn't the result of a large public input process but it wasn't just a flood plain areas started meeting showing this is what the old 100-year flood plain was and it is remarkably similar almost

exactly the same as what our current resource protection map is so we we really you know there's no there's no question There's No Agenda here to add or subtract the net you know net increase or net decrease resource protection the only agenda is to make sure that all property owners are treated fairly and it's not fair for people that shouldn't have property and resource protection to have to stay that way if the town for instance voted the single question down because there wasn't uh appetite to add things to Resource protection so I have a clarification question it's like in areas right here that that's currently mapped its resource protection um if you were to just switch that to floodplain part of the floodplain actually increases here so would your phase one also be to if we're concerned about the flood plain to also add those properties that are now captured by the floodplain that weren't previously

that's the second question that's like doing but if we're time first question to flood claim there will be property there is data that show that like this small parcel right here gets added in just by the new lidar data so with your first phase say don't add those those not currently identified but by your argument we should include that because that now meets a criteria of flood plain right yeah and they have to get flooded questions but it's not currently marked as as but then we're kind of in a situation where we're saying you have to follow flood plain guidance unless you're this person who doesn't have to okay it is though phase one goes through in phase two does it no it's not because in phase one but phase two shows that there are areas that need to be floodplain map based off of the lidar well I'm just saying that it's not a correct statement so phase one shows that we're taking some things out but

there are flood plains that are mapped by lidar which we're seeing is the Nexus of this discussion that we need to be sticking to the floodplain data there are flood plains that would extend under phase two because that is the lidar data but they're we're not capturing but those are not those areas that you just mentioned are not showing on the current map as being in resource protection so those aren't part of the question in number one all all number one is saying is if property is currently showing on

the map as in resource protection and it doesn't meet any of those criteria of which 100 Year floodplain is one of them so then take it out if there's area any area that's currently marked resource protection that does meet that criteria would not be proposed to come out because because that's the criteria that would be applied if question two passed to keep it in and in question two didn't pass then we would say we're counting the flood plain except in these spots where the flood Plains we know to exist with the updated data but again that's two different questions

the flood plain or or some other criteria it's a matter of fixing the map right so it's if it's if the math shows it and it's not and it shouldn't be there we need to take it out and if while we need to vote on whether we take it out the town may vote Yes or no wonder and then as you say there are areas that should be identified that aren't and we need to vote on that the town may vote yes or no on that but we can't we can't structure the votes based upon how we want the end result to come up we got to have integrity in the process and ask the honest question it seems like the vote's kind of being structured that way if we're considering it in these two phases when we say frankly if we say we need to fix the map we're saying it's broken so we need to fix it so it meets these criteria but only in some places and then we need to fix it again so it meets this criteria and the rest of the place so I think the

language fixed and broken might not necessarily accurately describe the situation this is my thought process on you maybe a line with the floodplain if it takes you out it takes you out if it puts you in it puts you in wait and that's a different question is all these other more subjective and what's important and that would be a different question to a line on the floodplain because the floodplain data would show that it increases in some areas so

yes sir um one of the people who spoke at the Town division said they were going to vote no because the town didn't contact adjacent property owners for for this Orton last year at the town again one of the people who spoke who said we're going to vote no except now because state law required that not only affected Property Owners but adjacent Property Owners should be required to be contacted and that only affected Property Owners had been contacted so I want to know if that would be resolved before yeah I think Georgia looked into that question yeah whether we had to alert Jason and whether the times

notify the property owners that are affected this has been done as a courtesy trying to engage in public discussion so I'm not doing this because the law required it we're doing this because somebody somebody I know somebody raised that question yeah Joe asked me to clarify it and I did look at it and there's no requirement that you notified letters yeah but like obviously we want to see more people even the unaffected hearing this information that's why we're having these extra discussions and important conversations you know for sure oh yep um so yeah I have a property that both will be affected by question one and question two different areas I'm taking out and areas we put in and now I will say having looked at the maps um pretty closely because I went through planning board process this year and field board process around this the new maps really reflect what feels accurate to our land and so I really appreciate

having accurate maps and accurate information that you know really reflects how we can protect resources in our town and so I I'm definitely you know love to see both questions one and two paths and I also really would agree that it makes sense to apply it as a fair Equitable process overall that we apply the accurate map period not because I do worry about if question one passes and then question two does not pass what happens then and I I'm wondering maybe I don't know if there's a select board question or consequently what happens then do we then like go through this process again for another you know a couple years where we kind of debated for you know throughout this process and you know and end up in that time having less land and resource protection more development happening and then more you know and maybe that development happens and then it ends up in resource protection in two years and

someone bought that property thinking oh it's not and now it's so to me it just seems like making it one one clear decisive vote would be good and that and really you know see how we can come together to town and say hey we want to protect the rural nature of this town we want to protect the resources of this town you like we like clean water we like clean air we like having animals and Wildlife that are coexisting with us you know and trying to have that as being something as one point clear about if the slight board doesn't agree that it can be two votes and I feel like it needs to be or it can be one vote that I feel like be really come together is to really vote uh conclusively as one vote so but I put it back to you if we vote down question two what happens then like what would be the process to actually get to being a place where we have resources to Texas because I just worry about you know take as as I

think James was saying before we take stuff out and we have more and more development so yeah well I mean ultimately that's definitely something that could happen but that only happens if voters both happen right right I mean that's ultimately what drives it and if it's based on what the voters so I would I would turn that question around a little bit and say well what if if it's all one question and it fails because I you know there's definitely I mean you could definitely foresee an all-in question failing because you know there's definitely a vibe in here that there's not a lot of appetite for adding a significant amount of additional lands or resource protection that I think that boat could go either way so if it if it was all unquestion and it failed what happens to the property owner that their land shouldn't be in resource protection really in the first place but now they're still you know subject to those conditions and

I would point out that the comprehensive plan had three main elements in it and uh only two have really been mentioned here uh tonight but one was to preserve the world character and I was chairing that committee so I kind of know what I'm talking about here preserve the rural character preserve the Agriculture and Forestry but the third one was private property rights and public balancing notes yeah and I mentioned that at the onset um so in that vein before we take more questions I just wanted to take a quick moment and you know we talk a lot about resource protection tonight we haven't really qualified what that means you know in some instances we've mentioned what it does and doesn't mean so in our Durham land use ordinance that was adopted most recently we have a couple pages that highlights um what you can and can't do in resource protected areas and you know whether you need a permit or whether it's not

permissible so these are some common questions we have gotten can I still Farm yes you know I own resource protected property and my goats graze it and my ducks and geese crazy no problem um can you do Forest management yes at a commercial scale you can't and just at a private scale so if you're just cutting couple cord off your wood block every year that's still allowed can you hunt fish and Hike yes that's permissible motor vehicle use on existing trails and Roads yes so if there's a snowmobile trail or a four-wheeler Trail and an area becomes resource protection protected that is still permissive um private roads so if you now own property and the resource protection makes you feel like you can't access the back lot of your property that isn't resource protected you can get a permit to put in private road so these are some of the common things things that you can't do um extract gravel

build a home um add an addition into that area those are kind of the major ones any sort of thing that the municipality might need to do like if we needed a transmission line or if there needed to be an access road or some sort of fire beam sort of thing that's allowed and I just wanted to clarify for anyone did anyone have any other questions about things that they were concerned about doing and wanted to know whether resource protection on their property impact of that hit me sir support

bars and resource protection I think foreign they want to create a separate lot in the resource protection and build a house on it that is not permitted however there are specific allowances for expanding existing non-conforming uh properties and there are some rules that limit how much expansion you can do but there's a process to determine whether you can expand or not within the resource protection for example I built my house 20 uh 20 21 years ago was so if it suddenly became resource protection yes

construction real quickly too is uh resource protection can be part of open space so if there's a development in town in the back half of the parcel is resource protected you can that and can be included as part of their open space requirement if the developer so chooses so for some of these larger lots that might feel like they're losing development on the back half that can still be utilized as part of their control in that regard yeah I build a pond in resource protection pawns are tricky because ponds you go a level higher than us that kind of gets to the main Department Environmental Protection in terms of building ponds and they're permitting so that's probably going to fall more towards them you know we have in here wildlife management practices are allowed if you're building a wildlife pond that's probably still something you'd have to talk to main dep about um but it's probably going to depend

where you're doing yeah because for example ponds get permanent if you're trying to build a pond within a flood plain or within a wetland complex or along the edge of a stream you do need a Maine State permit and that's a whole different process so well that's out of our auctions

changing question one to line up with the updated map and not adding the new six other criterias and including the criteria that represents the update okay so that's not I know I just want to clarify I don't know you're saying you are in favor of adopting it all in one vote including the updated map that Georgia showed with all the six criteria the additions and the subtractions there's gonna be two questions the first question should get every um the land use in line with the updated map so you're saying add and then if there's a second question subtract yeah okay that's not our prerogative I just think the way uh the criteria is being applied to the first question today is not fair for all

planning board meeting and we talked about the mapping and and that it's not um precise enough so that if I wanted to do something in my property the owners felt fell on me to do a Wetlands delineation survey correct thank you I I was yes okay so

with the new didn't we get new GIS I know George was developing Maps but I thought we got a new system that's what I've been using Okay so the new system is have that um weapon delineation service none of the gis data provided by the state is accurate enough to make development decisions on individual properties that requires surveyors engineers and Wetland scientists yeah so for example a lot of this this data here is just showing what would be in resource protection there could be wetlands and vernal pools and aquifers or other natural resources that are scattered throughout a property and there are state level compliance requirements for like filling Wetlands so if you're trying to put in a development you would still need to do your Wetland delineation potential soil surveys and stuff like that to show that you're meeting the state regulations so you would be able to say we are outside of

Durham's resource protection zone so there is no Nexus for us to have to go through the town and the town is saying that you're outside of the area where there are restrictions but you still have to deal with any sort of other state or federal permitting but I was thinking that even if that green line touched your property that mandated that you had a difference no it just it means that you can't work within that area so it only cuts into the back corner like my property there's a stream it's the floodplain area and some wetlands but it I'm everything I've built is 300 feet away from it so it doesn't impact the whole property just because part of it is touched by

good for voting on ordinance change what what ordinance are we going on land use ordinance and zone map which is part of the land but we're changing the ordinance yes the zoning yeah is part of the landing we're also we're also putting those specific criteria into the ordinance which are not in the ordinance right now right so if if we're voting on an ordinance change why don't we create an ordinance that makes this automatic in the future for all the subjects there's no question about that so are you saying like have it written so it doesn't say ducting floodplains annually or no you haven't you have the criteria in the ordinance and then based on that

acres or greater uh Wetland that would be included on the zoning map but creating the zoning map which then puts it on the ground on a specific piece of property is a separate it's a separate step what we're trying to accomplish with this vote because it's a combination of a zoning map and an ordinance that regulates the property you can't include results

five you can zone different areas of the Town based on those criteria and not Zone other areas okay it's a it's a policy decision that has to be made by the by the governing legislative Authority which here has found me um there was a time when we were I don't know if it was when we were updating Shoreland or when we were updating the ordinance as an entire thing that I had to go for through a review process to make sure like at the state level that was shoreline's own it was shoreland's only okay so my question would be is there a process or an option like that

that would take our comprehensive plan and take the proposed language because they they did a read through of what we were going to put out to the voters right because part of this to me feels like there's a discrepancy in what the comp plan says versus what is being put out to vote and it's very clear in State statue that it has to be pers like the language actually says pursuant to inconsistent with a comprehensive plan adopted by the municipal legislative related body so is there some other entity at the state level that looks at that and says whether or not it is pursuant to and consistent with because if it's not then we get into a situation where landowners or potential developers can challenge the rules there was a process that was started down that track at the state planning office when there was still a state planning office and uh it was just a nightmare and they politically at the

state level gave up on it so basically these cases of its consistency or inconsistency with a comprehensive plan are decided by courts uh town of Scarborough had their comprehensive plan kind of like the uh Scarborough Downs area it's all being redeveloped right it was another area down at Dunston where the comprehensive plan said do all of this type of development and when they proposed it the project the neighbors came out of the woodwork who usually happens and said you can't let them destroy our life and and overturn the zoning change and that went to the main Superior Supreme Court and they said no it has to be they follow the comprehensive plan and you can't now reverse that when it follows the comprehensive plan so that's how it gets done when it gets I think it's challenging okay and so just you know everybody knows the blood pressure that Durham's under and I think in the best interest of the Town not getting into

legal arguments in abort situation would probably be in our best interest and therefore really put out language and changes that aligns very closely to that's what we're trying to do yeah no I appreciate it George I know you've worked really hard on this thank you and I and I have to say how much I appreciate that we're having this meeting in December and not waiting until March to do this so thank you very much amen I agree with you more communication is better so you had your hand up before Heather you had your hand um are there any other questions about allowable versus not allowable uses in resource protection the list is available on the talent's website I've got some copies printed off here for anyone who wants one we can answer any questions a quick question about Forest management if you have property some of it is in my case in free growth yeah is that you still have people go in there and do what

they've been doing to maintain the rules could you so she's saying uh would this stop the force management no for tree growth no so you can you're you're saying would this affect your doing keeping the tree growth yeah no this this doesn't impact that so tree growth designation I don't like it much but I'm trying to follow the rules you know so tree growth just says you have to manage for commercial forestry product well you were to the word commercial that's what yeah well that's that's this that's the main Forest Services language not ours they're saying you have to manage for a commercial forestry product and your plan gets reevaluated every 10 years whether your property is in resource protection or not does not impact that and separate yeah okay so it went in or out you can still maintain your Forest management plan and your course management activities Heather I just want to say to the people

who own property that's going to be impacted in a way that more if it if it passes that more of their land goes into resource protection that I do remember a conversation where there were like four different programs that offered significant um tax benefits where the people who are saying they're not they have no intention of developing that's not what they bought their land for that's not what they're keeping their land for there are tax benefit programs that do

exist for you if you're interested in putting your property into a situation where it doesn't get developed and then you do receive you know based on whatever the criteria are to be able to have those tax benefits I think yeah that's a separate topic but that's something on the Conservation Commission that we know a lot about so if you outside of this whole discussion just want to utilize that it's called Open Space Program most of you are probably familiar with tree growth but there's other designations that reduce your tax liability you could reach out to our Conservation Commission and we could gladly point you in the right direction to explain the program it's a state level program account so I've been sitting here brainstorming the whole one question two questions I think might be a solution to that and I guess my I think we do both um I think we could ask the first question could be the all-in question

right if I prove the map that has the conditions the subtractions the whatever and if that passes we don't have to ask the next couple of questions but if it doesn't pass for some reason then you ask the questions individually like you say okay if the all-in failed so now let's vote okay do you vote one can we take out the stuff that shouldn't be there using whatever you decide or should we put in the stuff are you recommending a question that would be like adopt the six criteria as shown in this map which George has already made if that were to fail at this time meeting then the subsequent Town meetings it's actually it's something that you can do like you can you can you can put contingency questions on the one so you you put the all-in question on and then if that passes then the next two become

moot because you've already you've already passed it and then you just move past those questions if the question fails so that would be this map right so it's the all-in what comes you know the the one question thing that a lot of people have advocated for if that passes what not if it doesn't pass then we go to um okay so let me know then we do whatever it is whenever we land on on you know I think there's still some work to be done on how we word the what to take out what to put in um but I think I think that to accomplish both things because the concern of the board has been that people who have property that shouldn't you know straight to you there would have no remedy if you only ask one question and and it fails at least this would provide a potential remedy if that happens so phase the new question one would be to adjust the map to meet the six criteria outlined in resources as expressed and

that would include pulling everything out and putting all the things in and then if that failed we would go through line by line you know good let's go with 100 Year let's go with this let's go because my only question with that is if that was the case we would probably want to have another meeting like this where the Conservation Commission can explain what each one of those mean and we have to go through each map to say here's what the 100 year flood plan looks like here's what the iwwh looks like here's what this one looks like here's what it looks like if the number one goes through with number three it does but number two does it in all those sorts of iterations so I just think that'd be more education and Outreach you have a really color from that yeah perhaps less green is what you're saying I like this I just want to clarify one point when you're saying all in you're you're saying apply these criteria

evenly across the board as all in when you're saying all in you don't mean all in like land that's currently identified in addition to this you're saying your version of what all in is this evenly across town it is a map that reflects the criteria articulated in the comprehensive point I love it approve phase one and phase two simultaneously right I love it yeah

some reason that fails then at least potential the opportunity for remedy to go through to go through yeah so my question in a situation like that this one fails you're going back to the base map and you're now saying the existing the existing map and it's saying add let's vote on number one two three or four to be added there how do you get make sure that people who don't meet any of the new criteria would be removed that would be the first question so it would automatically be removed yeah whether it's you know however I mean there's been a couple of thoughts expressed tonight on how that question should be expressed but um yeah so a big thing and they mean there's obviously details to work out but I I would like to find a way that wouldn't require pushing

be ready with other scenarios if uh if for some reason the the all-in thing actually happen or aware whether it'll be enough play any more meeting or a select board meeting or I'm not are there still 12 Days of Christmas

open-minded enough to say hey it's my order I think this discourse is important this you can reach out to us as a Conservation Commission like I said we're trying to recruit a new member as well so please sign up if you want a detailed analysis on that thank you