TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ October 10, 2023

Welcome to the town of Durham select board meeting here on uh October 10th I can't believe time's going this fast uh we have a quorum uh we got um Joe Roy excused and M Roy is running a little late this evening so we'll expect her a little bit later U

America repu for which stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for agenda okay public comments that's probably a no uh we have no old business and uh we have new business uh the um discuss the historic district ordinance discussion uh George kage and uh John talet you guys both want to join us that is fine with us this evening it might make it a little easier was

guys in to uh give us a briefing um uh George you had forwarded a uh uh uh basically a proposal on where to move with a historic um District ordinances changes that were recommended uh believe it was over a year ago um and we'd like to hear more about uh what was proposed and um where that's going to take the town moving forward okay sure uh Jerry did ask me to come and give you guys this briefing so I'm happy to do that uh just a little bit of background uh as Community Development director for Lewis and Clark County I was the supervisor for Helena's historic preservation officer uh city of Helena Montana has uh three historic districts and over 60 uh listed properties on the national register so um I'm not an expert on historic preservation but I've had quite a bit of experience in terms of being involved in the process and understanding what the goals are what the parameters are of the of historic

preservation programs so so um Durham's uh historic preservation program really has three different tracks that are all running simultaneously with overlapping jurisdictions so the code enforcement officer and I did include a map in that uh me memo that I had sent to the historic district commission there were basically 10 properties uh in Durham such as Shiloh Temple which is on the national register of the Union Church which are all painfully familiar with the difficulty of dealing with some of these historic structures and there are uh eight to eight outside of those the historic district itself only contains three of those properties one which is listed and two which are eligible so the code officer under section 5.14 of the uh land use ordinance basically any project on touching any of those 10 properties uh whether it's a new siding any modifications to those uh he needs to do a review to determine that what's being

proposed is consistent with the national guidelines of the Interior Department uh and they're pretty very very detailed and very very difficult and expensive to me frankly uh so um and then this ordinance which was adopted in 2005 um

also U extends his jurisdiction 1,500 feet from the property line of any of those 10 sites and you could see the circles on uh on the map it's a it's a fairly substantial geographic area so he has to review any proposed development uh that he's that somebody's applying to him for within those circles uh to determine that they are compat what's being proposed is compatible and it uses that term in the ordinance compatible with uh the historic structures um so the code officer has that jurisdiction and he has Authority and responsibility to do historic preservation reviews U then the planning board and John's here and has dealt with this a little bit uh any subdivision or site plan application that comes in the planning board is required to have them do an inventory of any historic features on their sites and to consult with the main historic preservation Commission in Augusta which keeps a a register of all the properties

and archaeological sites so all the all the planning board has is it specific responsibility is to make sure that they do the inventory the ordinance doesn't say what you do with it it just says you have to do that inventory and obviously if they go to the main historic preservation commission they're going to make recommendations and the planning board can consider those as conditions of approval if they so choose and then thirdly the third overlapping jurisdiction uh is the historic district commission and uh the historic district

has uh is what's known as the Southwest Bend it's that little shape uh right up in the corner uh with the river bends and uh any any project for any type of modification of property within that District needs a certificate of consistency uh or excuse me c certificate of appropriateness issued by the historic district commission so that is the three layers of overlapping jurisdiction the 2018 comprehensive plan contained a set of recommendations for a lot of different historic issues but two that are really applicable here tonight is that the comprehensive Plan called for coordination of these overlapping roles because there have been since I've been here multiple conflicts between these three different agencies that are trying to do this uh and then secondly it it recommended updating every permit application whether the code officer planning board or the commission to make sure that the his proper historic

reviews are being done so in uh uh I was approached by the former chair of the historic district Commission in uh early 2021 to help them coordinate meet those address those goals of the comprehensive plan and so I started working with them by doing research on what the different provisions of the ordinance are and I also consulted with the main Med uh main Municipal Association legal staff as well as the main historic preservation commission to make sure as I did my analysis that it met both the legal parameters as well as the historic preservation analysis to make sure that I was reading it correctly and so um I reviewed the roles and functions of the code officer the planning board as well as the historic district commission I provided the commission with draft ordinance uh amendments uh in in August of of that year to uh Bas actually was a little bit later it was more like October uh in anticipation

that they were on board with with making some changes and then going to uh to the town meeting uh they basically asked me to go back to square one and uh and do a comprehensive report before I prepare uh presented them with draft amendments which I did I went back to the drawing board and just catalog all the research that I have been done uh but before I proceeded any further with it under C the former Town manager uh supervision Kathy torelli I basically wanted to get clear direction from them before I spent a lot more time working on this project because it is very time consuming so I did that and that's the memo that I provided to the select board in March uh of uh last year I met with the commission and asked them to get some uh

consensus on a direction for simplifying and streamlining Durham's historic preservation commit uh uh pro programs and they agreed to do that and uh that that recommendation had basically three uh recom main thrust of recommendation the first was to eliminate article 12 which creates historic districts and transfer that responsibility and authority over to the code officer which

that there are 10 de facto districts created by that provision the ordinance the second was to reduce the scope of those reviews from everything within a quarter mile down to just the properties themselves and their Butters and then thirdly to change the historic district commission which has the same regulatory Authority and responsibility as the planning board and the board board of appeals and the same legal requirements for public process to really transfer that into a an advisory committee and not just limited to the district but townwide to assist the code officer and the planning board and and individual property owners in addressing the historic guidelines so they AG voted to uh move in that direction and uh and I went forward and uh prepared a report that would catalog everything in addition to the Amendments and that's where pretty much I left off and you know where we are today so I'd be happy

to answer any questions about any of that or about the historic preservation programs that you have to if I could just add one thing we as you know we've been working on changes to land use articles for this coming year uh board of appeals Conservation Commission the solar panels and then affordable bad term but affordable housing the fourth one uh we were working with and they started out the historic Commission on ifying uh their

land use article thing article 12 um and then late summer they elected to not go forward with that so that that has stopped so that effort so we're down appeals housing and solars has there been a a break in the deadlock with the commission no so right

now if someone's trying to do something in one of these can well they complete it again just to clarify that only the only jurisdiction that they have for actually reviewing projects is within the Southwest Bend District so anything outside of that around those other properties on those other properties uh you do not need any review or approval by the historic district but within that District yes any activity whether it's new siding whether it's putting up a fence of the things that they reviewed uh you they would have to get a certificate of appropriateness from that commission where they can do their project and that would be for the one property at the top of the hill Union Church no it's actually anything within that District which extends uh beyond the union church I goes down Ferry Road up Royals Boro just to give a parameter and a little bit up uh newor Road and a little bit up uh uh rbur Road so it's

pretty much that area down there by yeah and and I think it might be 20 or 30 properties within that District so I guess my question is since they're not do they they they can't or won't do anything right us I mean I can't imagine there's a lot of stuff going on in that and that but you know if there's going to be a time where it's going to go get busy it's going to be you know right now right I mean that what is the fastest way for us to

here taking uh changing it from a Regulatory Commission to an advisory committee I we need to land use ordinance well I think you should perhaps consult with either MMA or your your town attorney in terms of what you do if the historic district commission does not have proper leadership and cannot call meetings I'm not sure and I'm not a lawyer to address those issues of what your parameters are for operation between now and the town meeting what I have done is present you with the Amendments that I had pres prepared for them a year more than a year year ago and basically if you decide to go forward to town meeting to uh to implement those recommendations then that's all I can really address right and that's kind of where I think we were that I was thinking that we would we would move this forward to a town meeting vote to get these ordinances changed to give the

responsibility to the CEO and basically the planning board to manage this moving forward um with the historic district commission acting as on an advisory role just like anybody else would be consulted like the fire chief or the or the or the um uh DPW um uh commissioner

um that this would just be another person that would be consulted by the planning board another group for um um looking at properties that fell within the the bounds of what was considered to be historic um and that we move that along move that down the road for uh the public uh the town to vote on to uh to come up with a clean ordinance that anyone could View and read and

understand where it um you kind of really don't know where you're heading right now when you go and look at some of this um you know permissions you got to go to three different people and you know who who who has the ball really really should fall back on the on the planning board and the CEO to process it like any other property in town but with some special rules of course because it's historic it doesn't take away the rule the doesn't take away the um you know responsibility at the state level state level still has to do their thing with a historically registered property um and it also lessens the burden on the community members around that property because you're you're shrinking the footprint down to just the property at that point um you know and again if you if you had a lot of historic properties near each other than having a a larger um purview on it might make more sense but where we have one there spread about

quite a bit it doesn't uh the ordinance doesn't seem to support a larger Heather um hi sorry that I'm late I had my son had senior night and I came in on Wheels to make it for the meeting and I apologize for being late so thank you um

I I'm wondering what is driving you being here right now when the historic commission is sort of um not necessarily available for us to ask questions of and um I feel a little bit uncomfortable having this conversation without them being present um um and so I'm just wondering what's driving this to be in front of us right now I don't love the Optics of this conversation taking place while they're kind of in an in between status I'm only here because the town manager asked me to be here and I may have raised it at the last meeting because the commission has nobody willing to step up to lead to call a meeting to run a meeting to do anything so they're not doing anything and so well I agree with what you said about what the change is you know again it's a small small area 20

properties but you know right now if we wait until April uh to vote on anything you know people I I feel like we're letting we could be letting people down and and so you know I haven't concern about waiting and that was one of the reasons I asked you know what are the other what are options what is their role is there a way around it which it doesn't sound like there's a way around it right because it's in our ordinance this is something that has to go before town meeting in April well you also if you have an application come in the town's going to have to decide how it's going to process it right now may well be if you talk to the town attorney if they're not doing that if you don't have a historic district commission functioning it flips over to the board of appeals to the planning board to the select board so there may there probably is an outlet for responding to any applications that that you

the reason why I wish that we had someone here from the historic commission to answer the question um of course I'm going to take your word for it why they chose to um not continue moving forward with the changes that they had originally thought that they wanted to do I can't speak to that okay thank you for being honest yeah so I that that's part of the reason why I'm uncomfortable with the situation they had something driving them wanting to pull this and I'd like to know what that was before I don't know if you're here tonight to ask us for a vote about this or not or this is just information this is information for us again I'm not asking for anything okay I was asked by the town manager to come and answer I was listening to the I was listening on the way here and on the way here Mr tat you were saying these were the things that were working on in the fourth one that you were considering

the solar farm the appeals appeals and the affordable housing and that this so I thought that you were based on that I thought you were asking us to move this forward tonight that's why I'm saying I'd like to be able to talk to them first to find out why they pulled it originally the problem the problem is there's no one to talk to right that's that's the issue that I have and right and that feels separate from this though for me

then falls on us at that point so we need to be educated on what it is that will be made for a decision if we have a property that comes in under the historic district it is going to follow on the select board at this point to make a decision on on where to go so problem is the ordinances right now don't support the regular people that normally do their jobs on dealing with properties to do that job so the ordinances in the long term probably need to change to allow the normal process to take place and the historic district commission not having the entire oversight that they currently do um even if they were a functioning body later I'd probably still lean towards having the CEO and the planning board and have properties go through the normal process and have them as an advisory just like the fire chief's advisory and like the the road commission The Advisory um they pull those people in to ask them

questions it this is set up quite different and it's it's currently with what's going on that leaves the town in a little bit of a bind that we shouldn't be in so I I I agree with that and I think that when we go I think it's like a little bit of putting the cart before the horse kind of how we were having the conversation around codification that if we go through all this effort to rewrite this ordinance to change all of these things and then it still doesn't you know write because like our now we're a town manager form of government our ordinance doesn't support that right so I I would like to to discuss this and and look to make

these changes to make our town staff be able to do their job but I don't want to go do this work and then we end up doing codification and then we have to go back and do it again that that's where I'm at with would be additional changes that would need to be made this just streamlines the process y but these regulations that have been adopted in the past are really very confusing and the MMA has already reviewed it and but what I had proposed to the commission was to First address the systemic issues because you get that through town meeting that's a hard thing right uh and to come in with all the details of what's going to you know what the standards are going to be and what the requirements going to to be and you know changing all of that is typically the way I approach things fix the structure first then commit to the

codification do you can is it appropriate for me to ask that now is that are we done with this anyone else have any questions on the historic district commission I I don't necessarily have a question but just for clarification the reason why at least my understanding of why this was taking place was simply to figure out a passage

forward for us if something does come before the board it's not to necessarily achieve any Rewritten ordinance or thing of that in Jance right now without having that particular entity in place how would we move forward if something was to arise that we had to make a decision of and that's what I think we need to get clarification of here before we even tackle this this this is the secondary problem the primary problem is how do we address the true in the interim in the interim that's that's really what and you're saying that that's what the town attorney or MMA would advise us on right the process for either replacing that group or transferring their on a temporary basis their responsibility to one of the other boards of commission and that's what your concern was the interim

right because based off our ordinance we don't have a way to act they basically without they basically disband without necessarily expanding Ian I mean the the way to do it is and I I'm assuming we would have the authority to basically say everyone's off and appoint the planning board as you know or or us or somebody else and to me that's not the way I would like to go I would like to see them step up and do this because it's important yeah but yeah what from what I read on the MMA site and the um and the um State Statute

it's on the Committees that yes that we would have to vote in a committee or an expert that would act on our behalf um and we're we're able to do that if we go through the process that Jerry described the other day of of essentially picking names out of a half for a uh committee chair and if nobody nobody went that route to take that position then that's it the committee defunct and then you move to appointing an expert at that point to take over the roles and responsibilities of that committee's Charter which cost us more money which would possibly cost us more money if it was outside person it can be an outside person it can be somebody not from town that can be an expert in the field have you had an inquiry or an application or that is stemming from this or is this just because of the current state of the commission I do not receive applications as it's the code officer that gets the applications so I'm not sure that he's

had he hasn't okay okay I just wonder answer your question hea I think it I think it stems because we were laay the news yeah of what transpired with the with the commission as Josh said he raised the question well how do we proceed forward moving forward that's that's what really this is and this was one piece of it so yeah okay all right any other questions can George tell me how he feels about cific

otherwise move on I've been advocating C ifications ever since I started and and have been doing some of it yeah uh the idea of a of over the whole ordinance U I think it's important to look at and I've asked Jerry and Allan to set up a meeting with the consultant that you were talking to to just kind of explain to him what we've done what I've done with the planning board and the Conservation Commission and you know get a sense of what exactly they're talking about because obviously it's not as easy as just you know looking at the laws looking at other towns you got to work through all the local issues as you've seen with the resource protection you know it's not as easy as just saying okay we'll crank out this model and bingo you're done and and they understand that I watched the presentation they understand that there's a process but what it does is gives you an overview of the whole framework I know I know I've been saying

for years your mobile home park ordinance does not meet state law but that's not an issue that's pressing resource protection was other solar now those are the things that I've been focusing on working with the planning board and the other groups okay thank you I appreciate your opinion on that great yes Rich well just because John's here and we here thank you for being here just if you give us maybe a high level quick synopsis of anything new going on in town that maybe sure give it give it a shot we U we had two minor plat changes uh probably the last last week at at our meeting uh the biggest of which was Bowie Hill dropped two lots they went to 11 instead of 13 um and the other ones just simply kind of moving lot lines a little bit uh the we have no other at least right now we have nobody else coming in we did a site visit about three weeks ago for four more Lots Ruby Lane the subdivision off Swamp Road uh

but we have not gotten a formal application we did get their sketch Plan gave them feedback and that did a site visit for that while the weather was nice uh and I don't think we have anything else that's been submitted no right now this this is the time we focus on the ordinances because we got the town meeting coming up and that's where we're really all full bore getting ready and so the three three of those that are active are solar and the Conservation Commission has taking the lead on on that um and then with George's with GE George's help and we've we SL they have focused that solar thing on what I call the technical infrastructure uses not what land is good or bad for solar but what is the height of solar panels how much buffering uh putting money down escrow to take it out when the time comes all those kind sizes so on and so forth uh so they're they're working on that um the appeals board uh more than

likely I think the planning board will kind of take the lead on finishing that George has written up the the changes on that one and um and then the housing we we have U November 15th is our tentative dat to do the public uh information meeting on housing um and so the process will go through is similar to what we did last year on all all of those which is excuse me the the a for lack but

better terate rough draft of the bullet outlines of the three changes will be done it'll go before a public information meeting not a formal hearing um Conservation Commission will run it for solar panel planning board will run it for appeals and housing uh they'll be scheduled between now and December uh we are looking at doing a survey on the housing similar what we did last year uh to get some feedback on that U come together with a rough draft of the three changes um the planning board after the feed back from the citizens at those public information meetings uh planning board would probably then as we did last year have another meeting in January where we said okay this is what we heard in November December here's what is look at what we're going to send to the select board your comments on that get those comments sent them to you all in uh you then write up the final draft of the article send it back to the planning

board we hold a formal public hearing uh but assuming that the what we send you is the 95% uh certainly could change it but it's real close to the final thing we hold a public hearing and where there are no real M major changes to the ordinance after you send it back to us and then the town votes on in April and that true public hearing is no more than 30 days no less than seven days before the the town meeting and that's a process we use for resource protection last year and I think worked pretty well so it was plenty of opportunity for public input and tweaking stuff and your input and I know a lot of you came to all those all those meetings so if you didn't have anything else to do before and after Christmas we invite you to the there will be no cookies or anything else um one question that I know that I'm going to have I don't expect you to answer it right now but just so that you can put it on your radar because it is

something that I will ask and and I'm interested in the answer is how building permits are impacted if whatever happens with affordable housing like let's just say if we did the thing I think it's like three houses per where there's already a single H housing right they can have whatever more dwellings does a does that count does each one of those count as a building permit I would be you want me to answer that now I would be interested in whatever the answer is simple answer depends if they build it all at once if they like a duplex that get one permit a single family home with an accessory apartment gets one permit if they build two different houses they get two permits so building permit not dwelling permit it counts as one okay thank youate it any other questions all right gentlemen thank you very much appreciate your help thank you good to see you guys good information all right we'll move on uh manager report

yes you have anything for us this evening um I really don't I just um the election is coming up November 7th it's going to be at the ambet um absentee voting has begun you can request online in person or by phone okay great um I want to do say a a shout out to everybody who put the newsletter together I read through that the other day probably a couple weeks ago now it came out but we haven't been here since great job for everybody who did that that I like it a lot it was uh very informative and um yeah and anyone easy to read wants to chat with Jerry I know I love this no one no one is not in touch with me yet so am I allowed to you can just email me or call me and I'll put you on I love it I love that okay well thank you any anything else no okay nope no that's it all right move on consent agenda um have a motion to accept the consent consent agenda so moved have a

move Josh I have a second Rich seconds okay all in favor I'm going to abstain from this vote because I wasn't here for those meetings and so I can't determine whether or not those minutes are accurate because I wasn't at them all right so I got got three for and one abstained so motion passes for the consent agenda okay uh upcoming meetings we've got the select board meeting on 10:24 and then our first meeting of the month in November on 11:14 um let's see and we have a planning board meeting on 111 okay unless there's any reason for an executive session right I'll take a motion to

adjourn Rich second all in favor all right we are adjourned thank you very much everybody have a good [Music] evening sign sign