TranscriptSpecial Town Meeting ~ November 19, 2024

now all right you'll have to excuse me my voice is a little shot tonight uh first order business we're going to stand for the America and to the repu for stand one nation under God indivisible withy and jusice for are hereby required to notify and warn the inhabitants of the town of Durham is said State qualified by law to vote in town Affairs to assemble at the Durham Ric Community Center 606 Hollow Road Durham main on Tuesday November 19th 2024 at 6:45 p.m. then and there to act

upon articles 1 through 4 has set out to win all right article one reads to choose a moderator to preside at said meeting do I have any nominations how Bill Schneider do I have a second all right and has the motion and seconded are there any other nominations please seeing none I will now accept the three written nominations filled out and turned in to my box over here

Schneider Bill Schneider and Bill hand I bill Schneider do swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of this state so long as I should continue a citizen thereof I bill Schneider do swear that I will Faithfully discharged for the best of my abilities the duties incumbent on me as moderator of this meeting according to the Constitution and the laws of the state

Schneider thank you all right thank you um thank you for electing me and choosing me to be your moderator I'll try to do a decent job tonight um first order of business is to adopt the main moderators manual as a guide and um I would ask for unanimous consent to adopt the main moderator's manual as a guide for the procedure of this meeting if anybody objects please say it right now I hear none so uh we have adopted the M main moderator's manual say that three times pass as a guide for this meeting the next thing to do is to um decide whether non voters should be able to speak at the at the meeting and we have to do it by name so I am aware of three non-voters who may wish to speak at the meeting and they are George the barge the town planner Robert trip the fire chief and Jerry Douglas the town manager we can also do this by uh un unanimous consent so anybody who objects to any one of those three folks being

able to speak at this meeting please say so to let those people speak if uh if we have a need to hear from them is there anybody else who's a non-voter who would like to speak at the meeting is there anybody else here who's A non-voter in Europe okay great because we're usually required to separate the voters from the non-voters at Town meetings so we don't have to do that um

debate um only one person can speak at a time and uh I'd like to have if you'd like to speak raise your hand I'll recognize you I'd like to have only one person speaking at a time um if you could speak to me that would be that would be great you can speak to me you can ask questions of me I won't give you answers but I'll try to find somebody who has answers to give you um please introduce yourself when you stand up to speak um and please keep your your

remarks brief and to the uh to the issue that's on the article that we're discussing and that'll be great um please remember we're all neighbors here we're all here because we love Durham and we want to have uh the best present and future for Durham and uh uh keep everybody's good intentions in mind and and try to be polite and happy and uh we'll get this done so um if you're looking at your uh

schedule article 3 was a uh was a typo so we're just going to move past that and that will fail because nobody made that motion um so uh we'll move on to article four which is Shon ordinance entitled moratorium ordinance battery energy storage systems be enacted do I have a motion is there a second okay it's been moved and seconded that we enact an ordinance entitled motorum moratorium ordinance

systems uh would anybody like to discuss this yes sir or ma'am I can't yes please I'm sorry I couldn't see town over 50 years I'm an outsider I've been here over 50 years where are you getting that information from uh can anybody answer that question go ahead uh which information are you referring well you say article three and article four we don't have anything like that if you're going to read it we should be a it's just the schedule for the meeting yes that's just the schedule for the meeting article four is the ordinance that was handed out at the entrance of the

just a typo on the schedule sure is there anybody else would like to discuss this can we just read the article so everybody got it yeah it comes up I yeah sure it's very long it's it's like five pages long the next article is this article that we're discussing right now is five pages long the meat of it is the ordinance is the uh the article says

shall an ordinance entitled moratorium ordinance battery energy storage systems be enacted and the ordinance was passed out and it's about five pages long if you'd like me to read it I will do it would anybody like me to read this just need to know what the article is about yeah it's about a moratorium on battery en energy storage systems about New

Todd can uh is anybody here tell me why we need a battery energy storage system in main do we have we ever had one good question the discussion tonight is about the ordinance and not about um the battery storage facilities across the state and so it would be best for us to keep the discussion on the proposed ordinance well it's a that's a legitimate question are there any battery storage oh so I mean yeah there are battery storage facilities in the state of Main where I know that there's one in gorum uh but I don't have an inventory of all the battery storage facilities Statewide I know that there's one proposed to go through in uh Lincoln um but I'm not aware of every battery storage facility State yes can you can we just back up a second of course those of us that came in like 6:30 we have this that looks like what it is so this is all the different

things this is the ordinance that's the proposed ordinance okay so that's what that's why we're that's why we're getting confused the propos has two that's that's a Ty no no so the proposed ordinance the article four is to enact a moratorium and this is the details of the moratorium this would be the ordinance there are several points in here it's numbered but this is all voted on as one uh or so that's

why I'm so sorry I think I confused everybody so let me let me go back and and explain a little bit so just tell us what this is and tell us what this is yes and then tell us what we're voting on exactly right thank you I have the official schedule for this meeting and this is what it looks like I don't know if they passed it out or not it's got It's got the uh the greetings that was read out at the beginning of the meeting and then article one says to choose a moderator to preside at the meeting and so we went through and we did that and the select a couple of Selectmen cast ballots so that I would be chosen as moderator article two on here says to adopt the main moderator's manual as a guide for the meeting and we did that if you remember article three on the schedule is just a typo so we skip over that and uh uh because it really has no meaning and we don't have to take it up article four is why we're here tonight

we're here to discuss and to vote on shall an ordinance entitled moratorium ordinance battery energy storage systems be enacted this piece of paper that you probably picked up at the door is that ordinance this is the uh kind of like a town law that would be voting to adopt or not to adopt tonight and it's about five pages long uh it's a legal document it will it will be uh uh published in the town

ordinances this I don't know what it is or who it's from but it's uh uh some kind of information sheet yes this was the information sheet that was handed out during the uh public information session last week to explain what battery energy storage systems are and the whole concept of the uh moratorium and the reasons why believe this has also been available on the website um for people to review ahead of time but we can discuss this if people need that frame of context for tonight so folks want that we can you want to add something I was going to ask a question for someone that's capable of answering what the reason is help people who are here that haven't been following this conversation um that a moratorium that we're here to either to vote to enact or

not a moratorium in Durham at this time so why are we here can somebody answer that sure ahead the purpose of this moratorium sure I'm not much taller when I stand up but I will um yeah the purpose of the atorium is just to put a temporary hold on any sort of battery energy storage facilities that could be proposed in town the town currently has zero um uh framework for how to accept

any applications or any standards by which we would apply any sort of permit and so uh if we don't have something like this in a a pres a proposal were to come in we wouldn't be well prepared to um handle that in a in a meaningful way and so this is designed just to give us six months to explore what options exist for us to create an ordinance or create standards much like what we did with the solar uh ordinance last year just to make sure that we can get a public input process and have the best interest of the town in mind so that would just be what we would be voting on tonight is to put a six-month hold on any applications that would be accepted and that gives us time to work through the public process to create an ordinance that aligns with the folks uh goals and objectives without that if someone were to make a proposal it would go through right now and the only lever we might have to

evaluate the proposal would be site law and site law has uh doesn't have the mechanisms necessary to make sure certain safety standards are met site law is more designed for like shopping malls and things of that Yes again so basically page three is what we

while to do it in or out I can correct it's just a six Monon uh moror and if after 6 months there is not a clear path forward the select board can prolong the moror for another six months for a year total period from the day that this is en enacted uh and that just gives us time to work on things this is similar to other towns put inor for all kind of things their ordinance doesn't have like a marijuana shop correct example they don't have we don't have an ordinance for that is just kind of put a pause on while we do some more work yeah correct the goal here is not to judge the Merit of any proposal or any potential for proposal just to acknowledge that we don't have any sort of mechanism and we need to establish something um before the next town meeting so we need to have some just a temporary uh moratorium thank you yes

sir Bill M BR road now I do have a to if I read your ly this would not prevent me from putting a battery in my garage to sa and Sol for when we lose power what did somebody answer that yep that's correct um if you look at the end of this here it talks about uh limit that the more torum sha not appies to a battery energy solar system a storage system that is designed and intended only to store energy produced by a permanent solar energy system so if you have rooftop solar and you use a battery storage to help store your electricity this would not apply to you if you are already uh have that in you're good if you are looking to add that we don't anticipate that this would apply to you over the next six months any other questions yes Derek Lovich Snow Road on the same topic on the public information session some uh concerns are raised about the 20 kilowatt hour U maximum considering that is less than what some homes require has

that been addressed in any way answer go ahead yeah so with it not applying to energy that's being stored by solar production uh that would me mean it doesn't apply to that so if someone has 30 kilowatt hours of battery storage associated with their at home energy production this would not apply thank you you're welcome we made sure to clear clear up that ahead of tonight's meeting based off of the public comment we received any other questions yes please um really don't like these types of meetings because the special town meeting you never really get a full scope of people but we're here so we have to discuss that um it would seem to me that when you have these types of things that you was a little better prepared and maybe had some information up here other than what I know you said you put on the website and stuff but not everybody gets that stuff so here we are last minute and we got one question

we're going to vote on and I'm not to sure everybody understands fully while we're voting on up or down so are we just trying to kick this down the road to stop something that may or may not be good that's you know that's what I'd like to know I mean this town doesn't have any industry to help pay for the tax base just have homes so if you have something coming into town that might help with the tax phas and I'm not voting for or against it at this point but we should look at that and we should have a lot more information out there not just want you put on the website for a few people to get out I mean to me we shouldn't really be voting on this moratorium tonight without having a whole lot more information and obviously from the start of this it wasn't very well to pay it special Town meetings are probably the worst than any town could have because you got 50 people here maybe 60 you see at the town meeting we

have 175 200 150 it's a lot it's a lot Fair a lot better we ended up with special Town me before when we did our uh managers and stuff and you see what happened there we shouldn't be doing this I don't think that last comment is necessary but I would like to address the previous comments um we had a public information session last week that everyone was invited to where we highlighted everything both here and in this handout here that was made publicly available for people to come to in person all of that information was put online it was also recorded so even if someone wasn't going to do something online they could still get all the information by a paper or in person we also understand that special Town meetings are less than ideal for anything due to the busy nature that everyone has but the reason we reserved using the special town meeting for this instance is because we feel like this is

a uh issue that should not be held off on until the next town meeting of April if we don't cons do this consideration now um anything that could come to fruition or any proposal that might come forward between now and next town meeting we would not be able to um process in a in a way that would keep the town's interest best in mind some of the things that were brought up by the previous speaker were things like tax revenue and the impact on Town that's the exact reason why we want to have this moratorium because if we have a six-month period we can actually go through and evaluate that and figure out the best way to consider or not consider any sort of project and take into consideration any economic development that might come out of that and so without putting a moratorium we can't leverage those sorts of tools and we're just at the mercy of whomever may or may not decide to apply I'm hoping that answers the

question I'd like to address that comment also um when the select board and the planning board um and some of our various Conservation Commission when they're prioritizing work battery storage systems has been on the scope of

work for over two years now and because the planning board is a volunteer board that also reviews um subdivision applications any conditional use permit you know that they've been working on the solar there's only so much that they can get done in a year so when they're prioritizing last year the priority was resource protection and solar and battery storage system didn't hit up top which would have allowed more time now the pressure is on because we do have an interested party that is interested in

potentially doing this in Durham and we have um a new town attorney who is is very involved and it comes from her recommendation that we put this moratorium in place um because of all the reasons that Joe spoke about we don't have a mechanism or a vehicle right now to leverage anything that might suggest economic devel M attached to it and also because if we we can't apply any standards other than site plan review and so we're asking the town we're putting that out for vote for those reasons we we need time to look at what the best way forward for Durham is rather than always being reactive to situations which in my opinion Durham has been reacting to what gets put in front of them rather than being proactive and if we want to have for where the town is going we can't always be reacting we have to be proactive and putting six month a six-month pause on this with that interested party it it gives us time to

be proactive and involve the community in what that looks like versus having something like this not have to go through any kind of review other than site plan review and then everybody being really upset about that because we didn't have any parameters around it I hope that makes sense yes go ahead my big worry with it is fire

prevention we get our excellent fire chief to give his opinion on how you could put out aumy if he's willing I'd love to hear from him is it easier if I go up front really is that okay permission we need you on camera no we don't l so I brought up a a good question of how your fire department or or any fire department would put out a lithium ion battery fire um I have not

met with people I have not done the standard but I have been doing the training your Fire Department volunteer limited water supply there's 23 dry hydrants in town a couple of them are are inactive we've had a drought so we're still relying on that the best way is a or b you can let it burn and protect exposures around it or you can put copious amounts of water on it uh the moratorium or this vote I as the fire department representative we don't have teeth so if it wasn't just a residential development there there's no uh enforcement or or regulatory that I could put on them meaning a di hydrant more training a bigger pper tanker there's nothing that I can do but what you have in place so very difficult if

that were to come to town without some type of Cl uh so it's either let it burn or copious amounts of water which is still very difficult that would be that type of gallonage 8,000 10,000 gallons or more and that's what they're saying for a Tesla car I just had this training so a Tesla car and I only use that brand because of the training um were to catch fire you could use up to 8 or 10,000 gallons to put that car up um

we carry 4,000 in in those trucks on the road so we're a little shy um so that would be calling in mutual Aid which I love but U Mutual Aid um Partners other towns or have a tank or Shuttle so having some time to to come up with a plan to train your firefighters to figure out a water supply or to regulate something that that they would have to provide on site would certainly help me but we only have two choices as a town let it burn and that's a policy that's okay you can let something burn in place and protect exposures or copious so so you bring up environmental Hazmat and whatnot that's above my pervy um but not lost on me as a cons does that answer the fire side questions Todd does that answer your

fire chief or yes please um Patty Smith rale um question about toxic gases released during this fire let it burn good question it it depends on how they are laid out so if it's a car natural ventilation heat smoke Rises you you let it go other battery storage that I've been reading up on they can either come in Paws they can come in buildings it could be something like a shipping container um there would have to be explosion proof there there's other ramifications as far as the smoke there's not much once they catch fire there's not much we can do they do provide uh costly blankets like a fire blanket that you could put on it it's sort of a onetime use those are anywhere from3 to $5,000 sort of a one-time use and and only as big as a car now I'm not suggesting the town pay for that but if something were to come to town you could have a policy that says you shall provide some type of fire protection or

a special nozzle or or they may have an insurance plan as far as the toxic gases you're right they do admit toxic gases there's not much that I can do we can spread hose lines and play with the wind and away from houses or the population uh but again that's a geographical plan that would need to be enacted prior to construction and I don't have that pervy as of yet there something going yeah I was going to say these are all really good questions and as to Chief's point you know not all answers are known and that is why we're proposing a moratorium because to Chief's point if the plan is determined to be you let something burn then we would say as a town we could potentially say well we have concerns about what any where any project could be located to to uh proximity to developments um if there's questions about the need for defendable space around the structure right now we could not leverage any sort of uh coordinates

to require x amount of feet of non-b burnable space if we enact this moratorium we then could go along the route of developing requirements for that so these are really good questions but without having a moratorium we can't ask these of an applicant should an applicant come forward unless we have a ordinance to use uh to in our back pocket so that's why we're trying to bring up this ordinance for the town to consider sir did you want to to speak

um I'll I'll skip on that because I think the chief com great great other yes yes yes ma'am thisor will only hold things off for six months potentially a year if it goes to that point where the select Bo has to extend it but it doesn't

later saying damn you know on by people that's a very good point um so the moratorium would only put a restriction for six months with the option of extending it another six months uh the intent is if the if the community here tonight is to enact a moratorium the select board would direct the planning board to explore all options available for permitting regulations in consideration of these projects with the intent of them bringing a proposal through through the public participation process and to the April 2025 town meeting for a townwide vote um and uh and so as for the time thing we've already checked in with the uh planning board chair and they've they understand that this is a very important task and that if that involves extra meetings and extra work it's something that they're going to have to undertake and if they can't make that happen for the April 2025 time meeting and we decide to add six months we would then

be having to do a special town meeting one year from now but we would have a very long lead time to let people know we weren't able to get there for April but the plan is to be there for July or August so we can make sure that it's very well participated and that's part of the concern here is that without a special town meeting without a moratorium the lack the participation of the public in any sort of project is virtually zero um participation with the boards is virtually zero the board would even have the opportunity to evaluate projects the way we would expect them to taking concerns from the fire chief they couldn't even ask for that sort of impact so that's what the goal is here are there other questions or comments

doesn't if they do not want this then we're paying a write up this big long proposal we can you make a proposal that just says sorry no we don't want this in our town I yeah if you vote if you vote down tonight's proposal then there would just be no action and none of the boards would invest any time into developing an ordinance so that is an option but then anybody can come in and do anything and we can't stop is that what you're saying correct that's what we're voting on tonight so we should have at town meeting had voted to say no we don't want any at all no matter what and then you could have made the ordinance to say sorry we do not want this in our town go ahead I don't believe we have the legal capability to put a per ordinance in perpetuity we would have to check with our town legal council on that but generally you can only put a moratorium um for six months to a year and so during this next six Monon

period if the community decides that they want to come forward make a suggestion to the planning board to have a very strict ordinance that doesn't allow it or something like that that is allowable but from the floor tonight we can't enact a moratorium in perpetuity for this yeah no I think I think you're saying that uh um if my understanding of the question is is can we ban these forever always without using any sort of public input from the town boards or committees well is that a question the question is can it be can it be banned forever at some point I think is that right it seems we're putting in front of the horse here instead of finding out you know vote on does the town want it absolutely no if if that's what happens if they do then okay you got to write up an ordinance and make it very strict to cover all aspects of it but if everybody really doesn't want it it's overwhelmingly no

that would come out during the public participation process if acted tonight well and somebody somebody could write up an article for the town warrant at a town meeting that forbids it that that makes it impossible for this kind of project to happen and then the town would have a chance to vote on it I'm not sure if we can forbid it for forever can we okay yeah so that could happen but if we don't have a moratorium now that would just expose us until April without an ordinance yes go ahead actually sorry George can you answer the question about the Banning and

any any ordinance uh is a legislative act of the town meeting and so if you were to enact a Prohibition on battery energy storage systems which you can legally do that would not bind a future vote of another town meeting so you cannot ban something forever it takes a legislative act to permit it or to prohibit it and that would require a town meeting vote and a subsequent town meeting vote could reverse that as with any otherin Mr bullier thank you could we say in the ordinance that

the battery storage area has to have its own fire department has to take care of its own fire we can't change the wording of this ordinance here tonight no I know I know but in the future yeah in the future you could ABS Point order we're getting into what a potential ordinance could look like I think discuss I think that's entirely German so I would allow that kind of discussion yes sir yes Jim worington um it seems to me

that if I come in tomorrow with an application to put this thing down over there you can't stop me this is a moratorium prevent that from happening until the planning board can make up a set a list of do and don'ts and cans and pants in the meanwhile to hold hold that off for at least six months until they can do their work and that's always his yeah that's that's a correct

agreement let's let's see if anybody else wants to make a comment or ask a question question yes go ahead Jim sandborn run around Pawn Road why is it retroactive to September 4th can somebody answer that yeah I can answer that uh when you enact a moratorium it's retroactive for a certain amount of days uh to provide you with coverage in case someone did apply so we do not have an application but if someone were to have applied you can enact a rep a moratorium and say including everything up to what 40 45 days previously so that's just how standard moror language Works we're not in that situation but that's just how the language works good question any other questions or comments yes hi I'm

jen5 um I was a little late so you may have already covered this why would we want a battery storage system is has that been talked about like what the pros are because it seems kind of obvious that nobody wants it would anybody like to answer why somebody might want a battery storage

you answering the question I can answer sure actually part of the team that's building the one in gor building it where okay you got a 137 megawatt power stage facility going up there um and are you a voter in town yes okay great

Cody made 1031 Hollow great um yeah so it stabilizes the grid which is huge all the renewable energy coming in from all the solar Farms all around it provides an area to hold that storage and at night release the storage back when the sun's not shining so you're not having any energy it's going to also bring in attention to the grid around here and result in L

aages um I mean that's that's the gist of it yes and the other thing too is any sort of development that goes into town its valuation is added to the tax base these projects can be valued into the hundreds of millions of dollars which would have significant impact could have significant impact on uh the Durham tax base you figure the way we calculate taxes now is you take valuation and then you divide the budget by that valuation if all of a sudden that valuation goes up by several hundred million dollars with one person one entity's development that could significantly reduce taxes um so that is an ISS is a consideration that some may take into thought when thinking about uh facilities like this but it couldn't rce property taxes no it would it could yes because if you when you calculate property tax you calculate the value of all the property in town you take the budget and then you divide

it by that and that's how you your mill rate so how much you pay per th000 of valuation if two or300 million more dollars of valuation is added to the town you're now dividing the same budget by another two or300 million lowering the mill rate potentially 30 40 50% depending on the scope of the project which would in which would decrease your your personal tax uh property tax L did you already say where it was going to happen there's no proposed project right now thank you any other questions or comments yes sir I just want to add in one more thing um actually two more so one they come with fire suppression built into all those modules um so every single one of those has its own sort of fire suppression that you can put out its own fire if something were to happen um now if it was to get really bad then yeah you're going to call in the fire department and of course the devastation can happen

um two I can I can add that Jason Queen Le D also part of the going project I mean these things are constantly being monitored so that any sort of thermal Runway issues that arise they shut themselves down hopefully ahead of time of me any sort of fire department interaction as well as having Sy built into the containing on style agreed somewh happened and it has happened in New York you know in other places um it can be problematic but there's several giges that's happening throughout the country right now moving west to east and gor is the biggest right now the one that they're proposing in Lincoln is started to be the biggest in the world so I mean it's it is coming

grid from buffering we have a failing grid system EV Chargers are coming not built we're not prepared for it and this is a way to combat that without running giant transmission lines from Canada here any other yes sir Alan pingon d call question well let me see if anybody else wants to speak first Mr moderator if I may yes please Brian Lan of the Rabbit Road um I'm a member of the board and I fully support this moratorium um as a member of the planning board I cannot effectively do my job and make the best decisions for the town without theor we need time to research this thank

comment ask a question yes go ahead just one quick comment originally I was against the moratorium um but after going to the meeting last week and discussing it um I'm actually for it um desp by being a potential contractor that could build this um because at the end of the day for Durham all we have is uh New England ISO and pu restrictions maybe main D um other than that we really have no say of the town the B's going to be going down um and we just upset thank you anybody else okay it's been moved in

entitled entitled moratorium ordinance battery energy storage systems be enacted so if you vote Yes you want to impose this moratorium if you vote no you do not want the moratorium so all everybody who wants to vote Yes to enact this moratorium please raise your card

down everyone who wants to vote no to not enact the moratorium please raise the Thank You by an overwhelming majority the article is passed and so the moratorium will be enacted wait wait we have to have the motion that never fails to is there a second it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn um everybody who's in favor of adjourning please raise your blue card thank you everybody who's oppos can stay here and clean up