TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ June 25, 2024

we're good all right let's make sure our mics are on and give it a moment I don't know why I have two here usually not hard to hear surround sound all right uh call to order here today we have two excuse absences but we still have three members here so we do have a quorum and we will begin the meeting on 625 2024 at 6:30

with the Pledge of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all righty um full meeting tonight any amendments to the agenda I have well when we get to the consent agenda I'd like to remove minutes 61 meeting I if you want me to wait get well let's just yeah let's wait till we get there okay um Josh you have anything uh no all I was going to say is I want to add to the agenda uh as item H

um we got the uh the steering committee uh application windows closed so we get those so I just want to quickly talk about those for the uh the downtown revitalization and then I was thinking we could move um G the consent agreement

for the setback violation or to um after the homestead tax discussion just so we can get folks who are here the option to head out um rather than wait for the whole meeting is that all right with any I think it's a great idea cool so we're just going to move

G up to to go after B so so folks don't have to wait around cool um all right any public comment public did you want to go personal matters in executive session talked about that yeah we do want to do that so we do have to add that executive session for

matter um but yeah any public comments tonight comment what oh so we have some all right cool so just to remind folks public comment everyone who wants to speak can have three minutes to share whatever they want to say during a public comment window um it's not a back and forth discussion so if we if we seem like we're ignoring you because you ask a question it's not that we're ignoring you just we have some boundaries that the public comment is just for us to receive and if it's something we feel like we need to discuss at a later date we'll build it into an agenda so we might look quiet and stone faed up here but we are certainly listening so if anyone has public comment they can come up we just ask you give your name and the street you live on uh and then you have three minutes

we're not we're not mean so live on Orchard Lane I have two children enrolled at DCS where I've been so pleased with the quality of the curriculum staff and administration as I was considering the candidates for this role um I'm here to talk about the school open school board role I reviewed the boards mhip presentation from the district council posted on their rsu5 website the roles and responsibilities for board members are clearly defined their governing board part of the school unit part of a team with a duty of loyalty to students employees and board members their code of ethics demands that commun community members do what's right for students work well together honor the appropriate process and be professional with that said I would be looking for in a candidate someone who can work cooperatively with the board and the administration someone who's collaborative open-minded thoughtful and

has a commitment to providing the highest quality public education that we can when I look at the available candidates of which there's quite a few strong ones I think about Miss I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing it deeps who has extensive experience and I believe is the only candidate that has been successfully elected for this role by the town Dr Ortiz whose commitment to Quality High public education high quality public education and past leadership experience I believe would make her more than capable of upholding the duties and responsibilities Miss pollster who's a parent of a current student with a PR background and has a clear commitment to putting students first and the demonstrated ability to work constructively within the existing structure and miss Who full disclosure is my sister-in-law and one of my closest friends but her bio also speaks for herself for itself she's an MBA CPA

with extensive professional experience in that field her financial Acumen would be an incredible benefit to the role as a clinical social worker providing Therapy Services to people who qualify for main care including children she has firsthand experience in the power of public education and the broader Community needs I don't believe you can go wrong with selecting either of these four while I have respect for anyone who would dedicate their time to Public Service I do have concerns about the remaining candidate because I do not believe his stated aims are appropriate for the clearly delineated roles and responsibilities of the committee uh Mr oa's bio states that school boards ceased to exist as responsible stewards of public education more than a 100 years ago if it elected it's my intention to restore these values I don't personally agree with returning anything to more than a 100 years ago but more broadly I believe

this is a misunderstanding of the role he's seeking to be appointed to and would be more appropriate for a legisl role to attempt to change the laws that govern the role of the school committee and shape the policies they put into a place by to abide by those

are you comfortable leaving that for our board members that aren't here oh sure is that this evening Brandon Brookside Drive um I'm here in support of Michael OA um for the appointment to fill the vacancy in the rsu5 school board seat um Michael has

been and is a longtime resident of here here in Durham he's retired so he has time to commit to meetings of the board in talking with parents Michael listens to concerns will expect to listen to concerns of parents and students he doesn't already know people on the board or have working relationships with them allowing for a different perspective or concerns 180 people Town's people already voted expressing their their desire to hear from someone who could have different ideas and resolutions to issues that's all I have thank you

any other public comment this public comment we really we really do so thank you those to those who spoke tonight all righty uh old business Jerry yeah so I just need we need authorization to sign the legal services do you all review that you have it so I just need authorization to to sign and send this on to the to the attorney I make a motion to authe Jer enter into contract

Clarity Services any additional discussion all right seeing none all in favor thank you all Commission we'll have Donna come on up name and uh your sorry so my name is Donna Hayes and I am go okay so uh so this year we picked up $5 million in new value our percentage of market value dropped from 67 to

57% so um that means that a homestead exemption is now worth 25,000 but we are doing a revow in three years so we'll catch up um you have tax rate calculator sheets in front of you I was just looking through the packet I didn't see them but I might missed them I oh I do sorry yes we okay so when we calculate for commitment

revenues it gives us a high and our low for for tax rate the lowest that we could go for a tax rate is which would allow us a 5% overlay an overlay is is kind of just that it's left over it's money that we want to put away in case there is an abatement a large abatement can also be used for uncollectible taxes so you want some kind of an overlay last night last last year I overlay was $35,000 so in what I gave you if we went

the lowest that we could go of the 2170 we have a negative overlay which is unrealistic uh so we have 2175 which gives us a $19,750 overlay uh 2180 which is a $39,000 overlay and a 2185 which is a $59,000 overlay what was 2175 2175 was 9,750 2180 was and 2180 is

highlighted tax rates and overlays um I don't use a lot of our overlays I haven't had a lot of serve and I don't know how much we have uncollectible given the fact that our tax rate in this past year was $21.35 that helps so it would the minimum we could go would be a 40 C increase the other thing to consider is the fact that our Homestead is less than it was before so even if we had no change in the tax rate if you had a homestead you you would see a $43 increase in

taxes because the homestead went down and you have more taxable value so question sure when you said last year overlay was 35,000 yes that was on the tax rate calculator that's this that's not what we used no that's that's the old delay that we we allow through bringing the 2135 tax rate okay yeah Jo you have any questions what

amount did we use last year I'm trying to remember of the overlay yeah I mean did we actually use in what abatements and stuff did we use any I'm trying to remember yeah it was a MCH yeah yeah cuz I mean there's always there's always I mean you work all year I have no idea I've made a mistake until tax bills go out and then yeah right no I I understand I'm just you know we're going to have something but how much I never know um I I don't think we need a big

overlay I think we can go with the least amount of overlay that we could that that's what I was going to say so just you know if I'm looking at the 2175 with a $119,000 overlay but we anticipate that we will have more collection in the sense that homestead exemption has decreased percentage so um it's a it's less overlay than last year but in my mind that's not as much of a concern because unfortunately we have the decrease in um homestead exemption so I don't feel the need to go with either any of the upper two numbers um but following your advice I think it wouldn't be smart to go with the negative um yeah right I mean you got to have something the other the other thing about that is the reason that we do so many is to just to how much of a difference the nickel makes in in

overlay is there a reason you do it by nickel and not the penny round nickel or or zero or five it just rounds better it's easier for collection and you don't have a third digit out when it comes time work together we I would recommend the uh 2170

19750 I would go with I would recommend that I think Donna would recommend recomend that as well the lowest the lowest overlay that we have the chances of us using this 19,000 overlay is like slim to none so there's really no reason to go any higher than that we don't use goes back undesignated so and and I think to we talked about this in the budget season last year and and I'm going to carry it over this year like with our tracking of undesignated funds we'll be able to roll over into our budget if we wanted to anything that we don't use so we could make that correction going into the next budget um unrestricted unrestricted sorry just make sure unrestricted either way I think we've got a we're positioning ourselves a little bit better to square the circle at the end of the year so when we make a motion do you want the motion to be for the rate or the overlay the rate okay so I I I agree that that's

the number we should use I just think I will say the disappointment that people are feeling with numbers going up and the homestead exemption going down um and I know that we did a good job with our town budget um and so I hope people start looking at um the other components

of these figures uh the the the county budget I think went up significantly this year could add the the the overall Appropriations is exactly a million dollars higher so that's how much is needs to be funded is another million right and do you know can you is that coming a majority of that coming from the county budget so this is last year's um and I just took it for the I

just took it for the no it isn't last year's I thought it was and it isn't so this is last year and you can just kind of look at it and pass it around but when you look at the Appropriations you'll see what the county tax is last year and what the county tax is this year because even though yeah and the school and everything so it leads up that the total Appropriations is a million dollar high so seven and eight county is seven and Municipal is eight Municipal is actually down a half a million yeah and that's I think what Josh's Point's making for folks who are watching is that um our goal this year because we found a lot of savings opportunities and to and um was to and

we were able to use some some funds to offset you know expenses we are really trying to keep our taxes as close to level as possible and so we're looking at the budget here and the overlay I think that that 2175 number would would

do the best while still being responsible so yep my only other question is around um the hardship of batement and because that was not for 2023 how does that how does that work I guess what I'm trying to say is if the abatement amount for 2022 is

is that figure when we do the books does it come out of the 2022 abatement if the abatement was granted in 2023 for 2022 taxes so when I do an abatement I'm abating value okay so what happens is that value of course has a tax attached to it when you do a hardship abatement even though it's called an abatement you're not touching the value you're forgiving taxes right you're just not collecting it just not collecting it so it will come out of the year right although there's nothing really to take it out of because it's not the same as an abatement where it comes out it just goes away I

year's number here was 2126 or no 2135 yeah so this would be 21 75 so 40 Cent increase if we went with that number um yeah I would accept a motion for a know what I want to say I just don't know that I'm going to say it correctly okay i' like to make a motion to ex to what not acceptation select 2175 as our rate tax thanks for

discussion so we've already discussed but I think that that is the lowest tax rate with a that has any sort of overlay and we need to have some overlay to be responsible but we uh can go with less of an overlay this year because of other uh changes in the budget like with homestead exemption so this is uh what I I think we would consider striking a good balance of being responsible while increasing the tax rate as as L little as possible one more question we have to become do we have to make a motion to go into Board of assessors to do this the municipal office tonight just signing on and there signatures on every page there okay okay sorry nope no worries any additional discussion okay seeing none all in favor any opposition all right and where do you need our signatur on

L um while we're signing this feel free to hop do you you want so there was some questions about Homestead examp right so a board member that's not here tonight had questions about Homestead and how that works and how we can get people did did Deb send you those questions uh I kind but but um I I can talk about it if

you absolutely like or put something together and send it to you as a board if it be here for her if you if you think you have a handle the questions and you want to put something together and send it to us so we can have something running I think Deb's question was was um mostly you know what percentage of people are utilizing the homesteading tax exemption yeah and then um how do we get it higher and then how yeah how do we get the homestead tax exemption higher which we know is going to happen through the reval yeah um and then I know she was also wondering if there was any like implications for if your homestead exemption increases and fewer and fewer people your people are paying less less taxes because they're able to exempt more right what that means for the budgeting process does that all have to be made up through the tax Raiders is there something offset by the state or anything like that so first of all we

have 1142 Homestead exemptions that is 71 % of what I have as Residential Properties what I didn't do is try to figure out how many of those Residential Properties are eligible I mean just because you have the same zip code and it's residential doesn't mean that this is your primary residence doesn't mean that you don't rent it doesn't mean that you don't claim Florida when you get hired so you know there was a time years

ago where there was post cards and stuff sent out um I posted on our website it's in our town report and I've been here since 4 o' and there were three individuals today who came in that filled out homesteads for next year everybody at the counter does it I talk to everybody I see when I'm out doing field workor so we push it as much as we can um with the exception of sending a postcard or mailing everybody mhm I'm not really sure how else they handle it do you think 71% is similar to the other communities you work in yeah don't know I don't know I I I really don't check I mean we there's things you can do and and figure out mailing addresses how much have the local zip code and then how many of those after the 1142 m yeah I don't know I haven't I

mean every town goes through a surge where all of a sudden everybody gets something in the mail that says hey problem that you have is these started in 1997 a lot of people have owned here for a long time they don't even think they have it but they've had it for all that time it's been there so long you don't notice it anymore so we get a lot of duplicates um and you know we can do things like town meeting or just kill me

but like a voting voting we could put out information and don't don't we we we all get a a tax bill whether or not we're paying our taxes or there coming out of our escrow it show and so everybody can look and you see you either get it or you're not yeah so that's sort of the giveaway right yeah and we we we try to do as much I mean try to do as much as we can yeah it might be worth I don't know when the last time we sent some sort of townwide email or news blast or something to just encourage people to look into it because I think of it because I heard of some first-time home buyers who didn't know it was even a thing you know that Comm didn't get communicated to them and I know that de said the reason she was asking is because she just knows that you know especially for folks who are on fixed income and stuff like that we want to make sure that people are taking advantage of every opportunity they have

to and I will say unfortunately or unfortunately people my age are the ones that have them they have them for long if they've been here for a long time if they move from somewhere else they know about them so it's the first thing they want to do is is send us a homestead exemption it's usually firsttime home buyers younger people that we try to say

Hey you know uh two things is it legal to include a notice with tax bills no we can do that we can put a strip in with it and put whatever we want on it there was a I mean I'm doing it and so I shouldn't say too much but there is a spot on the tax bill that you can write something you can say hey if this bill doesn't have a homestead exemption do your bill St homestead exemption yes yeah you can do that now but we send our bill out to East Shore printing so they take care of can we do something yeah but if I mean this is the other thing if we're going to do this it needs to be in the budget for mailings and all that other stuff if we can in between do it yeah I know our mailing budgets already yeah getting gobbled up I mean at minimum I think especially if you think it's the younger newer demographic we know that we're engaging well in the electronic modalities with them and that might be

sufficient if that's the vast majority there or we can even put just something on to everybody in the town office I mean everybody's going to come into the town office at some time to register a car right if you're not coming in you don't get the homestead anyway there is one in dur pet that we pass out to people they say new to to they get a Pack's there I mean they they push it at the town office which is great cool so the the only other thing that I wanted to say is that part of her question was that how does it impact the budget we get reimbursed we get reimbursed 50% or 76% sorry I was in the med mode 76% from

the state they don't follow your zero or five rule no they don't but I'll take it one percent time there's a chance of advocate for 80% round for is the 7 oh the 76% but now is it going to be 57 no okay no because we're assessing we we're lowering our values at to 57 so we lower

to 57 and then they give us 76% of that I see okay yeah yeah but we [Music] we're and the other thing is that is in the tax rate calculation down at the bottom of the sheet yeah so this year it's like 268 yeah that's that's how much 29,9 yeah that's based on the amount that we have in the reimbursement well I think this answers the questions we had and that Deb had said to us so can I change the topic for one second and and I'm not looking for an answer so I want to be clear what I I know you've heard the move for the the the calendar year to the yeah FC fiscal thank you

um that's something I think we need to start talking about more y um and so I think that that's a conversation that you should be involved in because we're going to commit that same value for more than a year right we'll either do 18 months or we'll do a full year and then a six month year that will get us into a July 1

yeah and and so I guess without thinking about ahead of time oh I thought I know about this I'm into it okay so so it it's something that we should should look into from your in in your opinion we should do it for with the next budget season because it's more than just I was thinking but is that what you were thinking uh I I would never push to do it that quickly but I mean if that's if that's what you're pushing it's a conversation well you you no go but when

you do a budget you have to do an 18mth budget right right so uh and the whole idea is so the next budget will be for the 25 year but that 25 years will go from January 1st until June 30th 26 right right and then in June July 1st of 26 we're fiscal and we have a revaluation coming in February so so that gets to the question I really wanted to get to is before or after the reevaluation should we do this well so I guess I said after but I've been convinced that it should be before so that's a discussion then we should because I I I'm sorry I didn't mean to change I didn't I was expecting it to go this direction Donna and I have talked and we planned on coming in on an August meeting or sometime and and dive into this and and and have it being an item so we all understand how it works the implications what we need to do this yeah I mean we you need to see it in black white because you're thinking this

is this is like now right and the other thing is to remember is it also moves it so that you have two payments of taxes right which makes it easier it it really is a more fiscal responsible thing to do because it lines us up with the state it lines us up with the school It lines us up with the county right now when we do our budget I have to do six months here 6 months over there hopefully it's okay but if we go that route it'll be it'll be a little bit more fiscally responsible is your question fiscal year it's not a question it's comment okay yeah I just want move past that's a that's a whole another can of worms discuss it later because we have a really full agenda but if it's brief it's just a brief comment that if when we get to the point in August when you come back and we discuss it I think it's really important for us to do voter education going into the November election because if we're going to work

on this for 2025 one of the things that we talked about when we briefly talked about the fiscal year was how important it would be to give people notice and education around that change happening and I think our best ch to reach the most amount of people will be at the November election okay we'll talk we'll talk about it in August specifically any other questions for Donna about commitment or homestead tax exemption no I just wanted to stick around for another five seconds when we go into the reevaluation contract that's all oh I uh had I had moved the uh set back violation after Homestead but if we need Donna well it's just I just want Donna read the contract we've read the contract we're okay with it we don't see any red flags or anything okay not sure if the board has reviewed it if you have any questions but I just wanted you to know that Don has read it and we're both good with it that's all have a nice

night thank you um all right so we had moved the consent agreement for the setback violation up to be respectful of folks time so we can hop into that Jerry yeah um and alen you want to come up sit with me do you want this I think that's uh is that all of

is what is it 356 356 uh Swamp Road but there's a setback violation um that uh came to fruition with a uh mortgage survey M Allen here he can explain how it all uh how it all transpired um but what we're looking to do the house is up the foundations in the windows are in the porch is on and now we're realized that according to the the boundaries uh the mortgage survey uh we're in violation of the setback by like three feet I believe but Allan has a little bit more detail on that so we're looking uh for a consent agreement uh to keep keep going with the with a project M so you want to explain yeah

how it all transpired that would so and i' I'd like to ask the L shells actually to come up and sit and if if I say something that doesn't sound right please correct name microphone Alan plumber code enforcement officer for Durham and the people over here are

308 so back in November of 2023 Skyler had come to me and and mentioned that he had talked to the previous code enforcement officer and gotten the go-ahead to build on a piece of of land and I said okay I need to I need to review all that um he said well he already said it was okay and I said well he's gone and I need to review all that so I need to review it for the things that I look at every time so I did that um and I um found out

that perhaps because of the rezoning of the uh resource protection area that they didn't have a building envelope um large enough to build on the parcel that they were talking about so uh I I I noted that and um we talked

about what they could possibly do about that so they regrouped and and decided to find a professional to U map out exactly where the resource protection zone is on their parcel which they did and they came back um I think it's mainly mainly soils LLC as who you contacted and they found out that the resource protection was in error The Zone was in error and they provided me with documentation and a building envelope of 40,46 squ Ft buildable area that is on the parcel that they were talking about their parcel is 300x300 square um and handed down did you sell this to them I sold it to my son d Darren and Darren gave them that fil

okay so there was not a survey down on the property is that correct no so I collected that information I got the information that I saw there I looked at the tax map um looked at the area that they were talking about keeping in mind that the resource protection area was right behind them and it's it's quite a quite a steep drop off in the back there so they can't said uh I'm going to need you to give me a plot plan for that and I'm going to need you to stake out the area that you want for where where you want to put your house and keep in mind that the setback um as determined in our

uh land use ordinance is 50 ft that's on page 10 of our land use ordinance and this is kind of known any town has a l has a a setback area and this page is ours says minimum setback front lot line residential 50 ft that's the information I've gone with for the two years that I've worked in

that our ordinance has some holes and some problems and some conflicts in it not until I got a letter from their mortgage survey did I ever and this is a mistake on my behalf look at the definition for front set think I needed to because it's very clear in that section right there that the front lot line residential setback is 50 ft however the surveyor pointed

out that in our definitions um setback comma front is the distance between the street right of way or easement line extending the width of the front edge and nearest part of any principal or accessory from the property line as it says in our ordinance but it's from the right of way

of the reasons is in the town I worked at previously their setback is from the middle of the existing Road and there are other there are other towns that have that same setback because I've talked to a lot of people I want to I want to do the right thing and I've talked to surveyors um some people are very surprised that I didn't realize that the right of way is the front property line I I didn't I don't have a problem with that because I know I I owned a parcel in Augusta and my front property line was the edge of Road and my right of way went through my living room so therefore my property line was in front of the right of way so I really didn't have any concern with looking into it further that's what I went with so

now the surveyor has mapped out this uh area that says it's 40 ft is what they found from the iron pins that they located and you didn't have did you have knowledge of any iron pins or or not yes we have iron pins in fact we have uh we have a picture of the home we have some numbers that we measured out from the center line the Ed Road the iron

together something that they want to Bo sorry can you say that again what you oh Caitlyn and Skyler have something in there that they want to read to the board and let me just wrap up with with this and so so the the mortgage survey

and I talked to the mortgage survey uh person his name is Dave uh Dave Hughes of Livingston Hughes says they found 40 ft from the um RightWay line and I said how do you know that's the right of way line it's like well we don't but this is just a mortgage survey it was a $300 survey way and we're going to we're going to go with that and say those pins are the right of way well how to can you tell me what they need to do in order to um Livingston Hughes the surveyor he said they'd have to pay for a boundary survey so okay that's that's fine that's kind of messed up but um that's the information I got they won't move forward without a con a letter from the town saying that okay with the setback that they have now in place

but I want to add to that so when Allan went out there thinking it was 50 ft from the road he measured 80 cuz he's trying to help them out and trying to stay within the within those lines and it just turned out that it wasn't really from that that point so we tried to get them back away even more than theyed 50 50 when I told him

to take it out I said it's 50 ft setback but don't don't put it at 50 ft you know go go some and they distance from the back of the house to the nearest corner or nearest piece of resource protection they're they're way they're well away from resource protection there's no concern if they didn't have enough space behind them no we just have to meet the 100 foot setback from the brook yeah so that that was what that's what I'm getting at it's a big enough lot that even if you went back further you're not it's not like you're bumping right at 100 ft from the edge of the brook correct we have like aund it was like 110 to the brook so that's I wanted to stay off the brook for the EES as well yeah and I think we're 84 ft from the resource protection line the back of the house so if you look at those numbers that we put out there those are numbers that we measured up from pins which supposedly are the boundaries the

edge of the road the center line of the road so can I can I just stop I'm sorry I just want to make sure I understand uh what this surveyor found is that the boundary of thead right away for the road is 40t from the center line no it's actually 37t 33 isn't that seems so that seems so since then I've gotten information about all of our roads and that is a four Rod road rod yes what does that mean it means right away is four rods wide SW and a is 16 so it's 33t on either Edge 66t wide

which isard of on a loal yeah so I'm I'm going to blame the this directly on our ordinance and and that's what I followed and there are there are a lot of lot of things that you could do very easily to resolve this down the road I just want to throw that out there if it just said refer to the refer to the um append

definitions or it said you could just say from the right of way those are few words that would fit in that space easily in the ordinance I think that's besides the point right now that's for a further discussion um couple things I have the questions Heather you can go first though who determines how many rods a road is how was that determined years and years and years ago 1800s where is it said that that's a

registers and Sean in this document man Associates to go out and do dur those and see what these right away wits were because it matters so state roads obviously are different than not than town roads and they measure the distance from the center line for what the setback is for the road itself right that's why the state had to come fix when my whole driveway washed out because it was in the states there's still a right there's still a right of way measured so what I'm confused about then is how the right of way is measured on a Municipal Road

versus how they measured who was responsible for fixing that right because then that's where the edge would start correct so no the edge of the road does not start at the edge of the right no I mean the edge of the so my my understanding of it is that whenever the road was laid out I do not know what year Swamp Road was laid out I'm certain it wasn't recently um whatever year the road was laid out it was determined that the right away for that road was going to be four rods which is one chain not very intuitive um measurement unit nowadays but that's why when they look at the registry of deeds they'll say property boundaries start at the edge of the the RightWay here correct yes and

but not not always right and what we're running into confusion is here is that you measured 80 ft off the edge of the road and it turns out that 80t off the edge of the road is not 50t off the edge of the I measured 72 ft off the edge of the road and 82 from the center line of the road MH yeah so what we're just getting at here is you measured from what you thought was the edge of the edge of their boundary they built and told them they could build there they built there and then now we're finding that that was not the edge of the the right away so correct um couple questions I have so you said that in November of 2023 they get to goahead to build was there a permit application or a thumbs up or a handshake or something from the previous code enforcement officer there was a nod okay actually I think so I said no taking it we don't have a copy of the nod in there's no no copy we have a camera there

now okay and so I feel like there's a driveway permit yes there was a driveway permit I um before I continue further it sounds like you all had something you wanted to say to us I want to give you the chance to speak to and just say what you know we're hearing from our code enforcement officer is everything that you agree with we're all on the same page yeah yeah no for sure um we just had we wrote something um that we're here tonight regarding our new construction build at 356 Swamp Road um from the the beginning of this project it's kind of quickly gone from something that should have been really exciting for us to a little bit of a nightmare um but so my fiance and I went to apply for our building permit and we told that it wasn't a buildable lot anymore due to the resource protection Zone that was put into place after we obtained the property um after having mainly soils LLC do a soil conservation survey we

determined that we had a building envelope of 40,46 Ft same as Alan said um and the town only requires 40,000 um so we thought we were good to go um but then we met with Allan and he told us um that as long as we were 50 ft from the edge of the road we were all set um so we broke ground the house is now framed doors are on I know the picture is not that great but you can kind of see that there's a structure there um U but yeah

uh the bank surveyor came out after we got made our first draw they had to come out and do their um appraisal um and determined that we are too close to the town setback from the front boundary line and has now made us halt construction until we resolve the issue um at this point we are kind of too far along to tear down or move the building um so we're attending this meeting in hopes that you guys can kind of work with us to resolve this issue and allow us to continue constru where the house sits currently um we realize that it's kind of been determined already that we violate the town setback codes however we feel that there's been many instances where we could have um determined this before we built it so we're just kind of we're at a a little mixed up situation here getting into a home's never not stressful hasn't made it any less stressful um so Alan couple questions do you have the report from mainly soils yes so my

impression is that the resource protection there is due to a stream that has a 100 foot buffer put on it correct and my understanding would be that the only thing that the the consultant could do is go out and get a uh GPS location of the stream get a 100 foot horizontal Direction not including grade and so it sounds like they did that and found that the stream was further back on the lost and have been depicted on the resource protection map I believe that's the case okay and but you do have a copy of I do you have that here with you um that's not the issue though right well there's two issues is they have enough buildable space and the resour and in the the resource protection said no the they hired a consultant which is the proper thing to do and they found yes we do have a large enough lot so we've exceeded that and now the question is do we did we have the appropriate setback and so sounds like we that the issue is

the the setback if I'm being completely Frank in my opinion I think you all did all of your due diligence you've done everything right and above the bar and in my opinion it seems like the error was not on you and so I'm not I'm not of the mindset that we want to punish you for getting to go ahead and and working within where you were staked out that's my thought process we can talk about that further as a board um that's kind of where I sit so I I move that we authorized I I guess probably from town manager I can write it I can I can I can do that the the ordinance says I can do that I can administer consent agreements so so I move that we uh allow either alen or Jerry to uh sign a consent agenda on the town's behalf um

awesome that's that's all the surveyor said he need second second so Heather seconds it motion any further discussion I was just going to say um I appreciate you all going and doing everything exactly right you know this board takes these violations very serious and often times when they're coming to us there's some funny business that has occurred from the other side of the the building and that's not what's happening here so I appreciate it I know it's super stressful it takes up your time to come here on a weekday and go through all this but um that's what I have to say for discussion did you have anything to add yes the the server said all he needed was a letter from me he didn't even say from the town so that's all they need to continue and I have learned something valuable I know where the boundary is but I do um that needs to change in our ordinance it's it's just very clear it needs to change yeah and that's that

will come up there we're just discussing the motion now we can discuss that at a later date um but see no additional discussion all in favor all oppos all right so Alan you just going to get that letter can you do that this week for them so they can get back to work and yeah no problem we want to see a copy of it too

very much I appreciate it thank you all the due diligence there all right so now we have authorization to sign the reevaluation contract um and actually the I think you have the contracted so there looked at it it's fine and there's actually I placed for five signatures yeah for the board to sign so I didn't yeah we'll sign it and I'll still ask um the two excuse members to come through and sign to so just for everyone here who's listening you know the uh we selected a contractor for our reevaluation and as soon as they can get to us in 2027 but we're going to have lots of Outreach and education on what the reevaluation means for us so um

Jerry leaving or is he going to stick no he's I think he's going to stay cool and so we had a couple quotes and we went to the public process and picked this firm and we're just signing that do we need to vote on the authorization I think we already did we have to sign because if you sign it you're kind of authorizing we already voted to pick it right so uh next is going to be the

authorization to sign the solid waste contract yeah and I uh I sent that to you late I have it here I'm not sure if you had a chance to review it but it's basically an extension of I just sorry can me back up for a second I think for consistency sake we should vote to authorize the Ral because we voted to authorize theal services and then I think we should vote tothor I think the difference here and we can go to that but I think the difference here is that when we're voted to authorize we're authorizing Jerry to sign it whereas here we're just signing it right right so we don't have to vote to authorize to allow ourselves to sign it so um but if you have a preference if you want to do it one way or the other completely open too

Jer it's right here I sent it to you I think I sent it to you yesterday um apologize for that um I think you got it though yeah previous to that too um so this runs out in a few days yeah Is this different because they designed it yeah yeah right right that's their contract um do either of you have questions about the solid waste contract not unless Jerry can lower the cost guarantee pick I don't I just need to go back to this because I'm splitting hairs for one second so we're a town manager for government and it's totally fine if we're the one signing this and this is the way that we do this I just want to make sure that we're being consistent and following what the way that we're supposed to do this the town manager for of government yeah either either way either we can sign it and authorize or we can sign it contract authoriz or we can authorize Jerry to sign it on our behalf and I think the reason we just

went that way is because they submitted the contract with us signatures on the impression that the board was going to vote on in that Solid Waste there's room for one signature so if you're authorized me to sign it I'll sign it send it off to them and so

authorize Jerry to sign the solid waste contract any you the opposition righty next we have our land use article 5.14 and 12 which is pertaining to the historic Durham historic district fill in the blank I want to make sure I say that right one so this is regarding the historic Durham historic district commission uh and we have some proposed changes that they wanted to go over with us and we're just talking about what that could look like um in terms of developing uh some warrant language to vote on changes in April correct correct so since I've been

here there's been some really some confusion on who does what when they do it what kicks it off so we have a case here of the left hand maybe not knowing what the right hand is doing you've got overlapping jurisdictions different entities involved and nobody really knows who's doing what um I I'll read a conclusion to you that George had put together because he's looked at this extensively um and I should just cavey out here that the the goal tonight is to just hear what folks think should be changed or what folks think edits are here from our Our Town planner as well and then we're kind of going to adjust the information so we're not the questions that I want the board to ask tonight or just if we have question questions regarding um some language not necessarily discussing the Merit of this change versus that change this is just kind of Step One um came out of our Workshop where all the boards and

commissions came forward and raised with us questions that they had for us to work on for the year to try to fix some of these issues and that's where we're now in in that step all right is what you going to read with us or in our email it's it's no it's part it was George's uh and his report yeah I don't

think you have it I don't you don't have it just but I can get it to you okay so he writes over the last past six years I've observed that the overlapping jurisdictions of these three town agencies the Redundant historic protection regulations of the land use ordinance in the complexity of historic preservation have led to constant confusion on the roles and responsibility of the code officer historic district commission and planning board and much conflict between between them multiple property owners have expressed dismay over the confusion of town staff and appointed officials when applying for permits and he's provided a report offering recommendations for simplifying and streamlining this process so right now it's confusing because Allan will come to me he says I don't know what I need to do here I don't know who's in charge I don't know and George can probably explain it a little bit more because he

has it but this needs to be resolved because it's it's constant like I said confusion I don't know what they should be doing it's not my bailey Wick I just want to kind of like simplify this um and George has made recommendations like I think 12 talks about historic districts we don't have districts we have one District not districts so does that fit that's something we need to discuss and talk about so I would strongly recommend working this and maybe potentially going to town meeting with a with a better ordinance so we all know what we're all supposed to be doing here some questions the paperwork that we got sent are these the changes recommended by the commission or these the that's the land use ordinance as it's currently written now yeah and my hope is based off what Jerry was just saying is that we can hear from the time planner the recommended changes we can hear from the Durham historic district

commission their recomend mended changes and so we can start evaluating because I think that there's a general consensus that there's not a consensus so I I don't want to sound disrespectful but to me this would be a lot more fruitful if we had the recommended changes in front of us so that we we could compare uh because otherwise I feel like we're going to go line by line and we're going to be here all night yeah and so to that point I I think again that the goal tonight is to just get this topic on our minds and in the public Arena and I think that what would be helpful is if we proposed that we either had an extra meeting or just dedicated one meeting to a workshop like you said Josh where we have both of them and then continue to figure out where we need to kind of cross reference and that sort of stuff because I I agree that we would want to see them both at the same time I I don't know it's just the historic district

commission has recommended changes that's what I'm not sure if we Oh I thought that's what I know George has recomended my impression was from discussion from our Workshop that they had gone through and had some recommendations that they wanted to propose as well is I want to address I don't know Lois is that correct because you were at our you can you can come up yeah and again tonight we're just trying to get every everything on the table we're not debating the policy itself we just want to get everything on the table so

I'm chair of the Durham historic district commission I got it written down thank you um yes so we've been working on changes for three years plus because we were given um that task by the town plan planner MH several years ago so we've been working on it we do have changes available M we weren't asked to bring them so I don't have copies for you um but we have been working on it and we have completed I would say most if not all including some things that need to be changed in the definitions part that was the issue um because definitely Allan's right that not every everything aligns so we've changed some of the definitions around as well and would it be easy enough for you all to email those to to us as a board and and Jerry so we can have an electronic copy of those changes to see as well absolutely okay perfect I will tell you why we didn't do that so there's been a lack of communication

commission asked the town planner to be ready to prepare something in the fall of 202 one I believe or perhaps two but when the time came it wasn't that the materials were available for us they were already printed into a booklet and handed to us so that sort

of lack of communication on how things were going to be done because what we thought we were doing the pl Town planner thought he was doing and so it caused a great deal of conflict because what we had been told to do no longer needed to be done you know I mean yeah it's like if I say you know what go bu go go bake a cake and you bake the cake and I say no we don't want a cake anymore it's a waste of everyone's time so the lack of communication is an issue so my hope Lois is that with our Workshop we had earlier this year where everyone brought everything to the table I hope this is a US showing that we heard that there was that concern here and so that's why tonight is we're going to we're requesting in an official capacity requesting you send us that information and we're kind of looking in the windshield not the rear view right now to figure out how we can better move forward because everyone the only thing

we can agree upon is that we can't agree upon it so I want us to start working in the right direction so we're going to get that from you and then we'll review it and we'll get some from our planner as well and we can review it and then find how we're going to move forward for in preparation for the April meeting so so piece of the communication I could have sent this to you yeah if IID known that you wanted it but I didn't know that so yes I mean it's on the computer it's already I think they're going

colorcoded cross outs underlines it's it's very easy to see the changes that we've made so that you can read it and see those changes if that's what you'd like awesome if if you could send us a copy of that definitely will that would be great you'll get it it might be it might be um a few meetings before we can get this on our agenda but we want to work on it later this summer or in the very early fall so we can make sure we're setting up for something for um the the April meeting the follow be much better because the commission is not meeting in July because of a lack of a quorum MH that that works so I just wanted to make sure by tonight what we're doing is we're vocalizing the needs and developing a schedule together so we're all on the same page and we can start working towards that stuff and we'll we'll review what you have and we'll the town planner got it does that work works for me um this seems like a very silly

question but I'm on our land use ordinance have it pulled up and 15.2 is under mobile 1514 5.1 5.14 no we're not the mobile home company take take our wins where we can get the first one I looked at said explosives and the second one said mobile home I was like am I losing my mind explosives don't have a historical ordinance there's explosives there's mobile homes well perfect um if you could send us that that would be great and just want you know you're on our thought process or somewhere in the late summer and early fall and we appreciate that we appreciate the effort that everybody's making to get our name right as well so thank you yeah we want to talk about the name too well and that was one of the goals that you gave us that we received from you we had three goals I think that we got from you and one of them was to talk about changing the name so we're we started to discuss it but didn't come up with an answer

right yeah perfect one more question one more question so when we put them on the agenda for the next meeting every they're not the the next meeting that we're going to have them on the agenda to discuss this they'll be notified that they're on that upcoming agenda to be here yes yes and at that time is when

we'll discuss the merits of what we would be having the planning Bo hold the public hearing and we got to the point planning Bo well the planning board has to hold the public hearing on ordinance changes so once we get to the point where we've made and agreed to the changes that we want to put out to the town to vote on the planning board holds the public hearing on those changes yes uh you yes I mean they have what we're doing on there is you have public information meetings in the fall in December and then whether it be conservation or the planning board puts together a final draft if you will that goes to the select board you then vote that that's what you want then you send it to the planning board for the formal public hear yeah and so I think that one thing we may want to consider and this can come out a little later in the summer fall is I know in the past where we've had commissions kind of doing some leg work

they had an an information session and then the public the planning board itself had the public hearing so we can we can kind of hammer out those details that will all work the same way though correct yeah okay but I do think we want to make sure we're just saying here that when we want to put you on the agenda for our next the next time we have a meeting that we want you on the agenda we'll make sure that you all as a commission get an email directly from either the town planner or us at least you know and ideally it would be two meetings in advance but sometimes if things get moved around but I just want to let you know think about that August time frame and it's always Tuesdays so yes it's always Tuesdays we know that thank you um and just so that you know August is a difficult month for everybody in Maine too cuz it's one of the 12 days of the year that there might be sun yeah so um yeah AB absolutely thank you perfect

Jerry did you have anything you want to add on that no no I just I'm just looking to get this George did you have anything you wanted to add okay cool Josh I was just going to say we have George has been here I don't know if he's here for something else but seems silly I'm here for this it seems silly if there's nothing else you have questions I'm available to answer them no I don't have any for George do you there's nothing for you you want to present to us on this topic or but you can email us your already yeah yeah sorry we have it but yeah we have it yeah perfect so I guess I'm just going to call out the elephant in the room because that's what I do um the the differences between what the planner would perhaps be recommending versus what the commission would perhaps be recommending would be that the planner is looking at it from a um being able to facilitate the document for lack of a better way of

saying it like to be able to accomplish the job of the code enforcement officer and the town planner I I really want to wait until we can get both a copy of both both of their proposals and and do this in a workshop format on on these details because I want to make sure that we have the opportunity as individuals to review the material in advance so we can come and have kind of do it in a workshop space that's fine I'm just trying to understand why it would be two separate things like when the planning board makes changes so the way I think of it and I don't want to speak for the organization but the way I think of it is that we have an organization that is dedicated to us that is dedicated and has passion to a certain portion of our code and when we're talking about needing to make changes we have a difference in opinion from the town planner and from that organization as to what changes need to happen as the

policy makers it's our job to figure out what we want those changes to be proposed to the town and so regardless of what those differences are we we need to rectify something you know and so I just want to do that in the workshop format after we all get information does that work for the two of you yeah yeah cuz I just don't if we go down the minutia of like what exactly are we talk about that turns this whole just process playing out into a different different meeting so okay so at that meeting I'll get an understanding of why it wouldn't be the same document coming to us yeah and we we'll get those documents in advance we've already got the one from George and we're getting the one from the the Durham historic district commission this week and then we can review them we can noce see what we see for changes if we have questions we can then get questions pulled together if we feel the need to

ask questions we can do that sooner than than later but yeah may I ask a question sure the report that you have is it the printed book or is it something different I I don't remember I'd have to look um again it's online it's the book that has the2 thank you yeah yeah and as your man

I just want to get I just want the confusion to stop the whole I want the code officer to know what he's respons before yeah because it just makes it easier and it it just it keeps people from getting pissed off MH yeah that's what I'm trying to resolve and and that's what I wanted just tonight to be we're going to lay out that process and just showing the good work that came out of our Workshop where we all came together as a boards and decided what we needed to do this year Alan you had something will I be able to share at some point um my perspective as Co officer yeah I think we would want you involved in that as well so we'll keep in mind that sometime in August probably you know keep keeping up to date on that so okay cool anything else this is going to be a workshop and it's going to be expected that George Allen planning board historic district commission we're all going to be there that would be my

intent I just I I feel like I was expecting that conversation tonight so I want to make sure since they're all here I feel like it's it's kind of wasted everybody's time I just want to make sure that that's the expect I think what we wanted to do tonight based off my discussion with Jerry and I could have communicated this better to everyone is that just get this process laid on in this public venue and make sure that we because we don't have all the information at our disposal right now to dive into this and I think it's important that we have the chance to review it before we dive in and I also think that this is an important topic so I'd like to plan for a meeting to do it at where we can dedicate a lot of time to it and we just had some emerging issues arise especially with the setback and stuff like that that would would have made this a that would have turned this into a 10:00 at night meeting and I

think we're trying to avoid those no I don't disagree I just it was the expectation and everyone's here so I feel like we've sort of yeah I hear what you're on to fee you're all fre to go do whatever you want you know to go all righty fee schedule yeah you didn't you guys just didn't make it into it this is the it's the same thing you got last year it's just from area towns and some some of that applies thank you some of that does I'm so as you know you um periodically you can adjust the Y apply fee so this is what this is about allance put together a the fee schedule of what we what we charge now for what items and he's suggesting um different fees for different items this is as of August 2022 yes

yeah all righty so do we want to I think that maybe the best way to go through is just go through if you want to highlight where places where you recommended changes and maybe give us a little info as to why you went with that number yes so if you want to just start right there at residential con conu yeah so the the first thing is uh under res residential construction all residential construction that adds square footage to a lot is build at the residential structures rate so before there's you'll

see some line out things um some things like a garage after construction if they build a garage after construction it's at a 15 rate per square 15 uh 15 cent per square foot that's just a ridiculous amount I remember you brought this up last and that's if they're adding on to square footage to their parcel it really ought to buil be built as new construction that's what other towns do and that's why I put that in there when do you want us ask questions whenever you want so is is this definition of residential construction in the land use ordinance yes uh it's it's part of and the and when you guys voted uh when the town voted to put these the fee structure in there all the things that are within that list is on this yeah I just want to make sure that we're using the same definition so there's no okay yeah that's yeah cuz I could see what I if someone says oh well my my garage isn't a residence it's a garage we're

saying here that counts if you're whether you're attached or detached y okay yeah you said something about sheds um anything that's over 200 squ ft um is going to be counted as new construction if it's less than 200 ft they don't need a building permit I make a note of it and give it to the tax assessor for her information she may or may not add anything to their tax um this particular thing that you're talking about right now 200 less than 200 square feet and the fact that we just uh approved the accessory dwelling

situation and that people may build tiny homes I just wonder if you've given that any thought on the fact that that could be under 200 S ft and whether or not not something should be different regarding this regarding that um I haven't the accessory minimum size

for accessory for the state LW is 190,000 square ft but if it's a tiny home there's no 190 Square F feet I'm sorry 190 Square F feet that's the minimum for an Adu however you can build a tiny house a tiny house definition is under 400 ft so if it's under under 200 ft they would does the ordinance specifically State something about under 200 ft shed is that you don't live in it says under 200 square ft okay a structure under 200 square ft so I think that we what about what would an occupancy permit come into play there isn't there an OCC if there if there is a dwelling yeah but if some I mean I think what you're getting at is can someone build a 190t building and then move into it without a building permit and live there no is that what you're getting at well they can if it's under 200 ft right they should not be living in a shed if they don't have adequate accommodations if they don't have waste kitchen or sleeping area

right but if the footprint is under 200 sare fet we're not giving them a permit and tiny house is defined as under 400 square F feet yeah so what's the key I mean regardless of whe what someone should or shouldn't do and I know what we shouldn't shouldn't do is a very different definition from person to person um what's to keep someone from building a 190 sare ft building and then living in it without a

they need to have septic and so that's where I was going to ask is in order to live someplace do we need I thought we had like a dwelling permit or something like that or you had to like register that you live here somehow we don't have to discuss this down to the nitty-gritty but I do think that this needs to be on our radar because I think this is a situation now that that law has passed that this is going to come up m

structures used in conjunction with residential uses yeah does that include a residential use or is it I I mean yeah because this doesn't say used as residential so yes so that I striking that out I I don't even want that part of the ordinance anymore MH that's oh it's noten it's not stricken out here above occupancy permit fee Miss oh uh yeah so yeah that's yeah you're right okay so I was talking about the the garages Barnes and other miscellaneous structures M okay so that's yep so miscellaneous structures I see what you're saying so right there miscellaneous structures used in construction is talking about if it's under 200 F feet there is no feet right now but we can definitely look at that and talk about dwelling I'm not saying I want to charge people for Tool Shed but but what I'm getting at is we just want to and not that we're thinking anyone's doing this but Heather raises a really

good point with you know talk about affordable housing and stuff like that we don't want to set up a situation where someone's building what might visually look like a shed as you drive by but then you find out they're they they got their mother-in-law living in 150 square feet my mother-in-law wouldn't live in 150 square feet well I mean it's happening right now could there are I'm sure there are places that is happening it's it is happening and you would address it if you found I would if someone if someone was living in a shed I'm going to address it I'm going to I'm going to go and knock on the door and say hey I understand someone's living in your shed can I come and check this out they can tell me nope go fly kite and and then I would go fly kite but from what why why do we get to ask them if it's under 200 sare ft is it because they didn't get an occupancy permit that was here before I got here

yeah that's just the way that you guys wanted it under regardless if they're actually living in it if they're building it to put on their property that's ahead of and then there it's an after I'm just saying I I we don't have to beat this to death right now but we do need to address this because I see two locations in town that are building a tiny home right now yeah that whether or not it's going to stay on the property or not they're doing it and so they need a building permit but it's probably under 200 square feet so they don't and if it's a if it's something that they work on if it's if it's a hobby of theirs and it's movable is that is that a structure for the site is that a structure for that parcel well that's they might move it around that's a big discussion that that's a discussion we might need to see for later cuz my other point is if you're putting something on um Moon pads and you can argue oh

well I just get a slide of trailer on it and I can move it you can't say it's a dwelling even if so that that might that's probably something we need to put on a list to talk about yeah later other than just assessing the fees here but it's a good I think it's a really good point to bring up you know okay um occupancy p uh permit fee other

towns charge that and $50 is is in the ballpark of what other towns charge um lots of places require it Banks Banks do require occupancy permit and I have to go sometimes I have to go back to the place if it has something significant that's not up to par for example um I went to a house the other day and their hot water heater didn't have the piping the way it's supposed to be that's a serious safety hazard so I said I I need to come back they said could I take a picture no I'm going to come back and I'm going to look at that I'm sorry but I have to come back that's two trips to there so that's why the um occupancy permit fee um so are you saying you're assessing that every time you're visiting when I do when they say hey I'm all done building can you come and check it for a final final inspection come for final inspection and I usually talk to them on the phone do you have this is this done did you do this you got to do

this all the appliances connected gas connected all that stuff all that stuff needs to be done you all set yep coming over okay Y and so in this instance you show up they you've charged them $50 because they're having an inspection for an occupancy fee they do not meet it and now when they call you to come back it's another $50 no I'm going to charge them $50 for their occupy P I'm going to come back but it's going to cost $50 period just the one time just one I think it should be this says per inspection I think it should be both times okay yeah what no this is this is the way that we generate Revenue to take the burden off the taxpayers back it needs to be every time you go out that I'm inclined to the to the per time because you know the expectation every time yeah the expectation is the contractors or the people building are building up to code and um you know I've heard of examples in the past where like something's wrong

and then the person puts a piece of paper over the hole and tries to paint it and say oh look I I fixed it it's just what I'm concerned about is the time of the code enforcement officer being eaten up doing these return visits um there's not as much incentive in my mind to get your ducks in a row if you know it's just a onetime fee gotcha even if the person has to come back three or four times okay I'm I'm open to discussion on that I don't know if you have any feelings Josh on it that's just the way I thought it was written yeah so okay yeah that's F that's sorry so we'll say change that to per visit

page um I changed that to flood zone permit what that is is a uh it's a flood plane permit and if that has to happen they have to build a foot above um flood elevation that's a a lengthy process and it's quite a permitting um feet with the state um I have to go back four times just for that not that's just for elevation

checks with the surveyor and marking the elevation and checking whe the building is compared to the elevation Mark so that's for visits outside of any other visits at all no other building permit no other building inspections that's just for flood permit so right now I don't charge we don't it says $50 but I

go back four times for that one reason just to check the flood elevations and where the building is but at this point our resource Protection District overlaps the flood the FEMA flood plane map so so they can't do no one can build in the flood plane all permanent build in the flood plane currently because because one of the criteria for resource protection was the FEMA 100 100-year flood plane M so unless you're using a different assessment for flood plane I don't know if this is relevant okay moving forward I could be wrong um right but it might be worth just double checking yeah you're probably right you probably are right okay next page so right now as it exists the

minimum charge for electrical an electrical permit is $120 that is too much for some electrical visits MH so I'd like to change it to 1 to 10 open openings meaning if they put an outlet in if they put a new light fixture if they run one circuit if they do those kind of things one each but I have a a minimum and it used to be $75 is all we charged and for that kind of visit for me to come check their Elco stuff 75 bucks is adequate because I can check a room full of outlets not a problem when it gets to be over that then there's a bigger charge for it so that's where it would be 8 cents a square foot or minimum of 120 um so there 8 cents per square foot someone's going to say well I'm only putting 10 outlets in this half of the house why are you charging me for the entire square footage of the house it's just a line and so but I just want to make sure that that 8 cents per square foot is for the entire house even

if all of the work is taking place in if you're doing 11 openings we automatically go to to that space we're going to measure that space we're going to measure that space and that's what we'll charge what I'm saying to measure the space is are you charging measuring the space that the openings are taking place on or the entire square footage of the house for that 8 I would say the the me the measurement of the space that they're doing the renovation in kitchen renovation bathroom renovation whatever that might be or the two my only thought about that is that can get a little messy cuz what if they're adding two to the kitchen on the west side of the house and one to the to the basement on the east side of the house and then four in the in the in the living room it just turns into all right are you going to go room by room or how would you propose doing it well I that's what I'm just asking is so when

it says eight8 cents per square foot minimum $120 I read that as square foot of the entire house so if you have a 2,000 foot house and you're putting in 11 openings it's 8 cents times 2,000 feet that's how which that's how I'm reading it someone want to do that math which is what what's that come out to for math 2,000 square ft is $160 so that's still that's still reasonable yeah and that's that's fine I just want to make sure that we spell out here it's square foot of the dwelling of whole house of yeah and then the next question is do you include the attach garage or detach garage and I'm I'm not trying to be nitpicky here but these are questions that I know contractors going to say is well the the garage is detached you know but you're not just looking at the actual Outlet you're also looking at the panel right no no I I understand that but I just think it's important that we lay out it accurately here and precisely so

because it's like when you're he's going to go look if you're adding Breakers and then adding you know wire throughout the house to get to whatever I get that I'm just making sure that we we specify that that 8 cents per square foot is per square foot of the entire building whole structure being wired yeah so if it's not going into the garage we wouldn't include the garage assuming the garage is De attached or what if it is what if it's attached that's where I think we need to figure that I I can I can do that I mean I can make that determination when they call because I want to be reasonable to them and so do I it's it's what I want it's what I it's it's why I want to get a $75 feeback is because 120 for a circuit is a lot of money right and so $75 for the fewer openings yeah if A2000 foot house works out to $160 and that and that's doing you know over 10 openings that seems fairly reasonable to me um you

know that's a pretty standard sized house in term 2,000 square F feet yeah so 8 cents a square foot for the whole Space being wired well no 8 cents per square foot for the dwelling for the dwelling yeah Bas you're just saying how many square footage is this dwelling okay uh so after this last year I bought a generator I haven't gotten installed yet and I paying $75 or $100 um generator installed down below electrical fixed rate $100 but it says gen install including switch 75 up above where oh yeah gen install including switch no that's that that's that's a typo I'm sorry that's not supposed to so you want to remove gen install including s wait a

is all that's supposed to say up there I'm sorry about that that strike all that other stuff that all that other stuff is not supposed to be up there I'm sorry about that so strike replace electrical service panel or meter socket J install switch so where is the replacing electrical service panel or meter socket the $100 $100 fix $100 fix

fee and how much would it cost me to do it before this goes into to effect 120 Tom tomorrow no one complains about the 120 and I'm like I just because it's not I've checked with other towns and electricians and I don't want to soak people so what it bus on with the generator installed you're just putting in a large plug in one breaker so all the electrical Works happening right at the panel and going into your generator plug as opposed to this big big thing you know yeah I'm happy I mean frankly that's my excuse for my my kid was yourself yeah if you're getting a generator installed soon so we're saying here

before any proposed changes it would be $120 to do anything anything and now be more expensive to do the big jobs and maybe a little bit less expensive to do the small jobs that you know electrician's there for an hour or two and and as when people come to me and I see and they see that when I look at that and and they're okay with me me saying and I and I try to do that as best I can I try to accommodate you're putting in one Outlet damn that's $120 I'm sorry can't

you do more can you do can you lump anything else in there is there anything else you want to add cuz you can put it under this okay so are we at are we done with the electrical stuff or you want replace electrical service panel meter socks 100 install emergency generator to include switches 100 1 to 10 openings is 75 over 10 openings 8 cents per square foot of the structure yeah so an example would be 160 bucks

for a 2,000 square foot yeah okay okay next part is Road association fees Town Road entrance permit for the road commissioner 125 currently there's nothing there's no fee for that there definitely needs to be he needs to go out and look at where he needs to check distances sight distances see what needs for for a culvert yeah so I think fees like this are important because you know we have our town employees who have a set set of services that you are all providing but when there's an incurred not regular part of their job and that incurs extra time that's where I think that this is important because I think you had brought that up in the past Heather it's like this isn't something we do all the time but we're doing it just for this one person this one entity you know so and a bigger parcel could have they could say I want three I want three openings here MH um at different times so I would like to address here

what happens when people create an entrance without a permit I think there should be a fine for that and well double permit fee double permit if it's they do work before permitted um and then also when a parcel of land is their logging and then down the road use they

didn't get a driveway permit for that or an entrance permit for that correct are we talking about a state road I'm talking about anywhere yeah no so when when you're getting a logging when you're going to log if you're going to do you don't you just file for Forest operation notification and just you access it for but I what you're saying is that sometimes what people are doing is they using establishing a road for the purpose of logging and then they're saying oh I'm now going to put my house lot in there or create a road out of this and so I think that that is a change of use in my mind and so there's a long history of people discussing someone doing something with logging and then being like Oh well I now I happen to have a road here and so I think that I want to know if it's legal first of all that when they go for their permit for logging that we also have an access permit that they have to get and then if

they do great because eventually and maybe it doesn't always happen but it happens a lot that they end up establishing that as their Road or driveway and sight lines haven't been seen and all of the things that go along with associating the safety of an entry point so I don't believe as a municipality we can put in an ordinance related to issuing of logging permits I don't think so because we don't not the logging permit the access to the lot I that's part of the permit I I believe that comes as a part of their permit yeah I think with the Department I think that that's exempt for the purpose of Forestry but what you're getting at is someone puts in a build a road to access for logging and then two years later they're like this is going to be my road to access my property and we're saying well okay you're putting it in there it's 100 $5 fee but we're saying hey that road wouldn't have been able to be

permitted as an access road correct because of its location MH and after I got I should check with the forest service about that about any requirement to take that down to remove that well they can't I mean you can't remove the opening that you just created to get in and out like I mean if it's not like you're going to like put trees back in the opening right but the opening I'm thinking of they can certainly remove the gravel yeah and so so I I'm fine with that gravel or whatever they're saying but what I'm saying is if you're doing something for the express purpose of logging and then later on you want to use it for something else you have to treat your road application as if that road doesn't exist if it exists and you are able to meet all the other requirements of a road sure that's fine but you can't say if you put the road in one spot and it's too close because of a buffering reason

or whatever you can't say oh so you're going to make me put a new road right next to it like the answer is it's yes you you can't use the logging as an excuse to set yourself up for a non-compliant road in three years that's what I what how I feel it's a loophole and they're taking advantage of it so anywhere that happen that happens to we can we can call up the do and we can asked them if there's a a road permit pulled and they don't even find people that put a road in on a state road and get caught the state will just allow them to get a permit and there's no cost for it they just get it and they apply for the permit and now they have a permit if we can as a municipality hold people to a higher standard our resource protection is at a higher standard than the state level I don't know about that on a state road though okay because we don't have I don't have anything have jurisdiction on it doesn't so if that's the process for

state road then that that's fine but on our roads it's happening it's happening and it it's not appro this this this this fee is a town road entrance permit right so like if this is on Swamp Road or something like that it's it's that's the fee but if someone's trying to put a road on 125 we don't 125 is State yeah I'm saying but if someone's trying to put a road on 125 the town road entrance doesn't apply because that's a that's a state thing and so but I do think you're bringing an important point is that if someone is actually accessing a Town Road for the purpose of logging and then after that logging they're utilizing that as their Road that's a that wasn't that road was create that was access point was only created for logging and it's only exempt because it's being used for logging so you're bringing in your low boys and your F buncher and your skitter and stuff like that that's fine but if

someone's now utilizing that road as a road that's an unper permanent road if it's in town access Jer can talk to Calvin about it the road Comm yeah I but I just do think we need to Fig to think think about that um because that's a that's a workaround to get Road access without a permit and I think everyone should be held to the same standard yeah you know okay can can

I ask a question since you brought up the after the fact permit fees that applies to all per right not just right yeah but the after Thea permit fee also is assuming that the the per the activity meets the standards of the permit correct they has to meet the have to yeah cuz what I just want to make sure is you can't put in a road that doesn't meet the standards and say whatever it's only 250 bucks I'll pay the fee yeah right so just want to make sure

125 so when someone comes in and gets a new house builds a new house they need an an address and I have to go out measure the road distance measure in in to where it is the distances between the houses on the website I have to fill out forms for the sheriff's department the fire department the post office the tax assessor myself the town and get those to those people so there hasn't been a fee for that there has not been a fee for that yeah I remember you brought this up last year and that was part of the reason why we realized we need to assess fees and sometimes it's it's a long rad it's a I got to go a long ways MH well I mean my my thinking is that 125 is not going to cover your it it's gener it's for the ones that are quick sure for the ones that I go and do and and it takes 30 to 40 minutes that's great but they don't know to take that this so it's going to even out on this fee comparison I don't see am I not

seeing what the other municipalities are charging here for I don't know that they I don't know that it's on that list okay that's fine I just want make sure that yeah I mean how did you arrive at that number thought about my hours mhm and my salary mhm

it takes you on average to do one of those your rate that's some take more than that works y um private road sign fee right now we charge $126 that covers the cost of the sign itself that's not okay so there's a post there's installation of it and that's where the 245 is I talked to Calvin about that 245 per sign that will include a SE charge for lost or damaged signs so in other words right now when we someone puts up a private road it costs us money own side well it we get the money for the sign only 126 that's what the sign then we got to go get the poll and we do the poll and put it up and all that stuff so yeah yeah

so can we talk about some of the the fees that aren't being changed here yeah yes yes please um so and some of them are line through just so you know some things like temporary structures I never used that there are no temporary structures I don't I just don't do a temporary no one's asked for that and I've been here two years where are you I don't see on the front page temporary structure just has a line line through some of these line um do you think that was intended for like the canopy the storage canopy thing I want I

I want those those add square footage and those should be permitted because I want to make sure that those are connected those blow if those blow away and they're not connected they're going to go into somebody's so to me that's what that is and maybe that should require that charge one thing that's I think saying that the canopies at square footage is something we need to talk about because like if someone puts a a canopy up in their yard that they put a you talking about a garage temporary garage yeah I'm talking about like a metal whole canopy that you put up and take down or canvas top canvas top when you say canopy that's what I'm I'm thinking other times charge for that so they Charing a square footage for their structure Donna has that on our list but when we do the reval is one of the things that they yeah I'm also thinking of like shelter Logics people put them up and they put the tractor under there or whatever but

it's just a tent for a zipper I hope it's secured and if they get the the point of it is if they get a permit I'm coming to inspect it this isn't secured you need to secure this but when would you apply for a permit to put up a shelter logic that's 10 foot by 15t if it's less than 200 S F feet you don't need to right but if it's more than that you should and they do people call and ask yeah something about that's not sitting super sorry Josh I interrupted what one were you referring to um so my

question um and I had just this I gu guess I assumed which was bad but then looking at the fee comparison um we're not charging for notices on planning board issues to the abutters yeah we do yes we do it's okay it's not listed here it's I'm looking over here and it's it's listed but if we are then my other question is for the board of appeals it says $70 and that covers the cost of the legal ads I already crossed that out and want that to be $200 um it's not going to cover it so on that one in particular I think the no it says plus is T toil well it it say

it say it says that for the board of appeals but it doesn't say that for the planning anything on the planning board which is why I asked gotcha that was a distinction I know it is so the if you're charging it I don't know if you're allowed to charge it and that is something that I think needs to be clarified I don't have it we can look but I think it's in the ordinance that they have to they being the developer is responsible for because they bring in a little green cards and all that I mean I I think it is too but I don't think it's clear in this and okay and we definitely want to get it on this because once we get these all set up they should live on the website so people can see what the fees are yes the the $70 covers legal ads that's that does cover they they're very they the little teeny things and it covers those it covers those yeah it's like because we've done it several times and there's like

$35 what yeah more me yeah and then the plus a butter notifications is where they pay for the notifications for the appeals board but the planning board doesn't say that can we go line by line and then come back because I have a whole list of things that aren't on here that I'd like to put on I think we have a lot of good questions I think Josh and Heather just brought both of them but maybe we should just kind of get back here okay make sure we're good with the road fees and then move through even if you haven't written any exed anything out then go reinspection and then go aftera permit so we can make sure we are yeah you guys change whatever you want too by the way yeah so back to we're still at the road Associated fees then um I think we need to do a little work on forestry access getting converted and so I think that town road entrance permits or entrance conversions should be put in there somewhere a separate

line yeah I mean I just understanding what Heather is saying is that if someone harvests their wood lot and then uses it as a road they're now creating a road without a permit and that Harvest access point might be different than what is actually allowed for Road access do you follow what I'm saying it's not always even that like I know that when there was a piece of property that was bought down the road they created access before they came before the planning board and turned it into a borrow pit and they had they had access and when I brought it up to the planning board the answer was that you can't deny someone access to their lot okay but we can still charge them for it MH or F them for creating it before and coming before the town to get a permit for it and so this might be important to check with the main forest service because like for example if you clear a lot for forestry that's fine you can clear

clearcut it but you can't then turn it into a subdivision the next year there's a fiveyear waiting period before that you can then change use and so it's kind of the same thing with roads here if you clear your access for your logging truck that's all fine and dy I mean think about it if you have a a lot that doesn't have enough Road Frontage to put in the building or access or whatever if you only have a a narrow access point you can go in and harvest it that's fine but we just got to make sure that people aren't using their forestry activities to get a road and maybe there's some sort of language that the main forest service has saying you know this can't be used as a road or whatever but you don't want to add a fee for that because if you want to add a fine for it if you have okay fine well no I'm saying that if you are creating an access point no matter how you to to be used on your property outside of forest management or

farm management or whatever you have to pay the road access fee and so if you created that access because you have a 100 Acre Wood lot and then you just pick the middle and you cut a path and you brought your equipment in that can't turn into a a road for your property access without the proper access fee because the forest management has ended You're Now using it for something different we're saying that the forestry is exempt but if you're Now using that as a driveway to get into your wood lot you've you've put in a road MH and we need to assess the fee there you follow what I'm saying yes or you've put in a borrow pit or you've put in on 50 feet of Road Frontage your new road which now gives you the 300 ft that you need to create start creating Lots mhm so we don't want we want forestry I want forestry to be exempt like it is but only while it's being used for forestry you follow what I'm saying yes

so I think we might have to address this a little further are you following me Jerry you look pive I'm just just playing it out you know I mean if they're creating a law I mean they're creating an access to clear a lot well there's a difference between clearing so if you're hiring a forestry company to say like like you know for example the Swamp Road Lot that came out today someone had that cleared put to put in their house lot it was woods and then they cleared it and so they got a road access permit when they did that they said that because they were clearing that for the express purpose of building and putting an access point what you don't want is that if someone says I own 100 Acre Wood lot I'm going to have my Harvest done to make some money off of the Timber and then the next year you're saying ah I want to put a house in there for my kid we'll just have them Drive in along the road that the loging truck

used they didn't get a permit for the road to be used as lot access they just put their only permit they got was for Forest management and that was to the state so now they're using it for something other than forestry whether it's to access a pit that they want to put back there or whatever so there's a difference between lot clearing to clear a lot to build and Forest management to have a harvest to make some money you follow what I'm saying yes and if they're going to build in there using that access point that was only approved to Harvest wood the Cod office is going to know about it and then that's but one thing what what we're seeing issuing the permits he got one thing he's going to know he's going to say look you but but to to Heather's point one thing what we're seeing is that some people are having the Harvest done and they're building a road and then whether whether they have a road permanent or not

they're now putting a gate and now they're using that as their road that they're accessing their property which 100% fine you can access your property but that if that road wasn't permanent as Road access and that road was just created to to the forest management you got to have that permit because you're now got a road that you're intending on using on the public right away so how does that come up because they won't come to and apply for anything that's why they need to be a fine that makes it not worth their while to do it and if they do it then at least we collect the fine for it happening that's the after fact permit MH right because the thing is is like let's be honest with a mechanized Harvest when you got to bring in a 25 ton piece of equipment and driving an 18wheeler they're putting in a road for the forest management now if this is an absentee landowner who's never looking at their wood lot and

they're getting their their stumpage check and then 25 years from now they come back and the road's all grown in and whatever that's one thing but if there if or if they're vocalizing to their Forester hey make this road heavy duty CU I want to use it as an access road after you're done managing that's fine but they need the permit because that's now no longer just an access road for forestry it's a it's a road that they're using to access their lot do you follow what I'm saying yes so that would just be a call if you drive by and you see a road with a gate on it and someone driving in and out and you come back to the office and realize that there's no one ever applied for a road permit there but they had a harvest done last year that's where it's like hey you you got a road with with without a permanent you got a non-permanent road access so that would be a call to the road commissioner or myself MH and if it goes to Calvin he

should check with me because I get the forestry notifications mhm and I can let him know wherever actually that's all confidential now they they don't even tell us where we have to call and and yeah I get that find out but then but then we could find them we I'm getting could do a fee double fee because they didn't get a permit and that's that's there if they continue to use it as and as long as that access road meets the standards of an access road for that purpose outside of Forestry so you have like the young couple who's here here today they did everything right they got a road permit and they got it cleared yeah from the naked eye you I drive by that SP every day I said oh someone did a little bit of harvesting but it's probably a house lot whatever but now you have other spots in the town where there's been some great forestry done and you have these beautiful roads Left Behind if the person's using that for

more than just Forestry at this point it's now a road that needs to be charged and access we have to charge that town road entrance permit because they have a entrance right and it needs to meet the stand standards and if they're using it without getting that it's a double fee so and they're also doing it to create Road Frontage to create Lots because they only have 50 feet in one particular instance MH we talk about it later so we just want to make sure people aren't abusing forestry exemptions to to the means to get around our permitting yeah especially because then something happens later on down the line and we have all this time that's tied up with your time and we're thinking about you know assessing fees to help build some of that Revenue back I just have one question um do you issue e911

addresses only when the house is up or when the driveway goes in it depends on the person sometimes they want to 911 address one as soon as they start building in case someone gets hurt on the site I was just thinking out loud so they're not building in there but they're using it for Access but somebody gets heard in there but there's no to that road how they find well that's another important consideration because if you had the Harvest done that's fine but now if you're using it to go put around your wood light you're driving your truck in and out and then you kill over having a heart attack and you're saying hey I'm I'm on that unlicensed Road on Swamp Road please come get me and my concern also is that creating an access that hasn't had sight lines done and and now that's access where it could be really dangerous I'd like to think that the forest service knows about that I mean it's a good point because if they

put a road in on a curve and it pulling out slowly with 18 wheelers with logs that's an issue I I don't think that they're I don't think that in the the Fawn the forest operation notification that they're saying what's your site access for getting in and out there and because we have in Durham had issue issues in the past where people T-Bone in the back of a piece of loging equipment I know that a lot of times those loggers will or Foresters will put up Road front signage to say trucks entering or whatever but that's a problem but it's a it's a temporary one the crew's in there for a week or two but now if you got that in a bad spot and it's turning into your permanent access and you're I'm going to go store my boat over there that's a that's now being used as a ro the thing about forestry as well forestry is a temporary

impact this is a permanent Road and so that's the difference there but sometimes you're putting in a permanent Road when you're doing that Forest management you can have them both but you have to pay for the RO M sounds like a compensation for the state and the legislature to make a a fix right well

for at least for us if someone's using it for non-forest management yeah it's an entrance questions about that that's normal this is this is you have this here listed specifically under Road associated Fe no reinspection Fe separate it's underline it just looks bigger yeah okay so first and then and second what about third does it continue to increase or does it stay the same it doesn't continue to increase and it does after after I charged 100 like H yeah

but no I mean I know I I just I don't know if it's worth saying and it's an additional sure $50 on top of this the second fee per every visit so second the third visit is 150 another 150 for fourth fourth visit I'm not saying we're going to get there but I'm just saying is sure I want to make sure where we can be clear we're clear so then you're not coming to us and saying hey I had to go do four reinspection what do I what do I charge them because if if you're paying the second one and you're not going to get charged for the third or fourth why not just keep having you come back because you already paid the 100 bucks it's like putting in one Outlet why might as well put in

second so I I'll I'll I can think of a way to yeah just word it in a way that every visit is incurring a fee so it could be 150 for the third visit and an additional 100 and 150 for every visit after that probably never going to charge it but it's there right after the fact permits double permit fee sounds good to folks planning board all

input on what on planning George and he's good he's worked with I think he's good yeah I was just gonna say if you had anything you want to say feel free to come up and whatever I would just like it to say you think they're low I do

notification is is there there's an additional notification fee there's a fee charged for notification think it should be yeah I think it should be in there okay yep just because when I look at this I mean I think it's I think in the land use ordinance but I think that needs to be put here otherwise we're going to run into problems so you want to just add to just to conditional use you want to add plus notification fees well no just a line underneath notification fee to a Butters okay and just make sure that this page is saying whatever the land use ordinance is saying and so we made enough edits here at this point I'm not comfortable voting to approve all this tonight I want to see edits and have them come back to us oh I haven't even gotten started right well that's what what I'm saying it's like so don't so make make your notes but we'll we'll have to take another look at this but just make sure it's we square that you

might want to check I think the developer is doing it so you may we we just want to make sure we have it on here I I think you're right it is in the land use ordinance but when you look at this this is supposed to you know be a one place shot to look at what's there

Andel you know A4 something like that yeah yeah makes sense I just think it needs to be there um you know to Mr tabit's Point here are these fees low conditional use preliminary subdivision peerreview escrow like my my thought with that peer review escrow $250 a lot Consultants eat up a lot of money uh think they if we run out if the town runs out they invoice them for add yeah

and are you finding you're running out often on these be reviews all depends on the yeah a 13 lot house div subdivision at this rate is 3200 $3,250 for esro I don't think it's money I get it that they have to replace it but I think that part of this is that they their profiting off developing in Durham

substantially and they should be able to come to the table with the financial means which I know that we verify and you know the whole bit but but I don't think that there should ever be a situation where where like what happened down here so are you talking just about the

peer review escrow account right now the 3,250 is the peer review escro account that's what I'm saying if it's a 13 month subdivision or not nearly but if we're if we're using over that they get invoiced the consultant gets invoiced have to check with George I

this escro account is designed to put cash up front to us and so if we have to hire a peer review we have C we can manage cash flow but then the consultant comes through and says we're going to blow through all this money we'll say all right well you're invoicing the developer and and again I think that needs to be clear in here because otherwise I'm reading this and you're saying it's 250 for lot and that's that's I mean that's what I'd be telling you and and I understand that what we're doing is covering our peerreview expenses but to Josh and Heather's point this document will exist on the website not just for the developers but for people so when I read this I went 250 bucks a a lot that

that's not a lot of money if you get in some serious delineations or you've got in some some serious Consulting work now that I I'm comfortable knowing that that 250 bucks is just the beginning and they're still getting invoice for it it's not costing us money but that should just be it should say you know PR review escrow $250 per lot

plus invoice directly for all expenses over the escrow account just we should put that line in there or something like that I think that line should be higher I don't think it it covers really matters one second one second I don't I don't think it matters a ton because they're still paying it so this is just starting off saying $3,200 Upfront for a 13 acre for a 13 unit lot but if we go over that you're paying it anyways so this is just the upfront cash on hand so we have something to give the contractor at the beginning of having them come out there so they're still paying paying it no I understand that I just still don't think it's enough could we say um not depleted but um when it gets to a certain level replenished so when it gets to $2,000 or something or 50% or whatever I mean I mean if you if you feel like it should be higher I'd love to hear like why you think it should be higher to have up

because I don't I don't think there's any situation where we're hiring a consultant to come in and I get that we're still going to build them but I don't think there's any situation where we're going to only spend $3,200 and to have them come out or to not finish

or you know whatever I just don't think that any profitable situation should be on the backs of the tax in any capacity even if it's just in the meantime but this money is returned if it's not used right and so this seems to me almost

punitive U because I think we should be charging what's reason what's what's for the service reasonable for the services well and if and and what that is if it's 250 that's fine if it's 500 a lot that's what we should be doing well they're if we're charging no I'm saying if we're charging what's reasonable for the Services Consultants I mean their technicians holding the GPS are going to be charging $125 an hour and so my only question is

you know if we're anticipating we want to set aside a few hours for the consulting fee for each lot that 250 isn't isn't what's reasonable for that service you know my next question is we're invoicing them if they go over that so if we start invoicing them is that a onetime invoice then a change order and another time invoice and what type of time commitment does that take our front office staff exactly because if it's easier to have a large escrow account up front that's going to cover all expenses so we don't have to have a town clerk sending and managing multiple invoices and buying up all that time that's giving them the time to do their day job and so if we're expecting it's always going to run 12 Grand or we're expecting it's averaging $1,000 a lot I'd rather see that escrow account be that and so we're not going into a situation where every single development we're invoicing additionally um I I'll just have you

come on up okay John if we're going to be part of this so we can have it on the but I I get what you're saying it's like if we know it's going to be 12 Grand right because when we're saying that we're we're refunding this right if and if it doesn't get used okay great but if it does get used St time is also involved in that and I don't think anything should be subsidized on the backs of the tax payers because that's the point I was getting at is if if we have to have a town clerk do an invoice that we're not getting paid for and it's taking out of their daily time budget that's a cost and the developer not paying for that because now we're invoicing that consultant two or three times to get the the rest of the money so then shouldn't we word I'm sorry to interrupt that's right but shouldn't this be worded then that the developer contracts with the town peer review I don't know what they call peer

review person uh and and so that they're getting build directly and the town is taken out of that no no no at they're the they're working on behalf of the town to check the developers work so we don't want to give the developer the opportunity to say I'm going to have the peer review done on my work by someone that I'm working with directly it's important that the the the consultant's working whether it's girl Palmer whoever is working on the behalf of us checking to say that the developer is doing the correct work so we do need to have that ownership my only other thought to like what to what you're getting to is do we Institute a 10% administrative fee if it goes over

that so if someone at the front office is now going to have to take the time to send out an invoice for $13,000 that's an unexpected cost that the developer is asking us to do for them for free whereas in my Consulting background there wasn't a dang thing we did for free we we charged you an extra 5% for printing we charged 10% for shipping and handling I just don't want anything that has to do with a permanent application to cost any time from a town employee without compensation so John speak so in the 22 months that I've been here I've been involved with late and they both have escrow account I

don't know how the money got derived or the amount but there was significant money in an escro account in our bank and how it works is when we send somebody out there from the consultant firm to do a check consultant firm sends us an invoice and we pay it just like we do our regular bills I don't don't we don't write invoices to Consultants so they invoice us and now we're paying it but if it's more than the escrow account it's not I haven't ran into that situation so let me ask that question if it's more than if there's no money in the esro account we're not sending them out there and all work stops that's a simple fix to this issue right well I think and that that requires somebody paying attention to the escro account but it also means that there's not going to be a built to the town that somebody else should be paying so I had emailed George the other day and told them that the escro account was

getting low but in our ordinance we're not allowed to replenish until we've depleted it I don't so then we get to a position where we paid for the service yeah the word so it's yeah the word we paid for Serv we so a lot of what we want to do and I know there's a lot of what we want to do but you can't do it unless it's in the ordinance well it says the select cour shall establish fees for all permits where permit fees have not been specified Within this ordinance but the town performs Services required for its Administration right there yeah and so that's where I think we're getting at is right now what you're saying is that if the you're saying oh this fee is low there's nothing we can do about till hit zero and then we're telling the contractor hey you can't do any more peer review until we have the fee re we have the the uh escrow account replenished that's what I and then how do you go about

saying how much it gets replenished and do you say hey can you give us a rough idea how much I don't know yeah yeah I don't know I'll have to ask I mean I ask George these questions because I keep an eye on the accounts I saw that it was going down so I wanted them to know I said look you know you're going to have more inspectors out there and you're running out of M so we do it in as part of this and it's covered by the select board shall establish fees for all permits where permit fees have not been specified within this ordinance but the town performs Services required for its Administration those perit fees I'm not sure that's the same thing but what I'm getting at is in terms of time that we can increase that permit fee to accommodate for that if I may the first thing I would do is I ask George who's got years of experience I know and I know he's he's talked to these guys uh about that uh but I do want to clear up

maybe something on on what the peer review is doing they're not going to the field what they're doing is they're taking a set of engineering from a you know certified professional engineer or a wetland Specialist or whatever and looking at it and that it is a quality you can't review Wetland delineation without going to the field they go to the field they go if they're not going to the field they owe us some some explaining but uh but I don't think the fees I I think the fees have covered most of it and it's if not every project has a Wetlands fee um

I don't think it has been a problem but George has got but you know four five six years the esro fee is noted it doesn't say what the fee is but it does speak to it specifically and I if you need to raise the fee to some reasonable number that doesn't you know doesn't bother me in the least the town will get the money back or you know if they don't there's no approval you what I don't want to get into is the a situation where for the first time ever we've drained the escrow account we don't know how to proceed right if if you add that line if when the escrow count is depleted it it is renewed somehow if you

do that in the fee structure that's in the fee structure it's it's part of the ordin we're talking about in a perfect world when you're making a budget you budget for what you need and so we budget in a way that that escrow count is designed to be a reasonable expense and we're never we would not expect under reasonable circumstances to have to ask for more money so if the consultant has to submit a change order because it becomes very confusing or there becomes unexpected workload that's fine but I don't want us to say well we're going to start low because we can always ask for more money it's like we need to start for the expected cost right now it sounds like we haven't exceeded that expected cost on things but we're running into a situation where we might be and we don't have guidance on how you do that because if it was after the escrow account is depleted they invoice they continue the work that

needs to be done they invoice us that's not what's happening so we either need to increase the amount the the the lot fee to make sure that we're not running into situations so 99% of the time we're not running into a situation where we need more money or the ordinance needs to say once or or the fee structure needs to say something about when the escrow account is depleted to less than 25% you have to put in additional $250 per lot or something like that plus an Administration but that's where I have an administrative fee on everything I have a lot to add and that's where I think that the administrative fee is important because if you think about it from what I hear from just a random person in the public anytime a consult a a a developer is coming in much like if you're being asked to put up a new 911 thing we're telling the individual person the young couple who wants a home that they they have to pay extra to do

that but if you're a if you're a developer and you're having the front office staff didn't handle all this Administration you're not paying for that unless that's being captured in the fee and I don't think it is being captured in in the fee yeah is what I'm getting at yeah I think we need to do I think we're making a mountain out of a mole hill when the to is the one sending out these peer reviewers and Jerry is watching what's in this escro count and when it gets low he's going to instruct George or John or whoever not to send them out until there's more money in but that's that's an issue because that interrupts workflow and we have a super busy planning board who's already it's like now okay well we were going to talk about this next meeting but we had to stop and wait for the escro feat to get re rebooted that bought us that took a week and a half and now they didn't get out there to do the review and oh look

it's now fall time and they can't really do an accurate Wetland delineation review so now we have to worry about that it's just it slows it down I I don't I would tend to agree with Josh it is not I don't have George's experience so I mean I would just say you know is this a problem how do we do it I mean the de don't pay your taxes you know don't waste your time coming here you know and somebody just recently paid their their taxes so what what are you talking about well you know we have we have mechanisms to make people pay I guess is what I'm saying so well it sounds what's the mech it sounds like we don't know the mechanism right now to replenish the escrow account it's it's to not do the work there's no money in the account the work doesn't get done but we don't want that to happen right but we need the work to get done well and that's why the developer is going to pay it right Jerry saying he doesn't

have an example of what to do when that escrow account is depleted but but what he's done is say we need to replenish it which addresses the situation but how do what what what rate do we replenish it at and what and how and I think that's a disc no that's my that's the question there because if you're going to the developer and saying you need to replenish that at $250 per lot or they're going to say well it shouldn't take another $3,200 to get it done why don't you just invoice us but we might have to carry that cash flow because we have to pay the developer to get upfront or invoice time that that's I just don't think the answer is well just stop and we need to require a minimum balance and when it hits the minimum balance we need a replenish of $33,000 or or whatever it is I think that we should either just increase the escrow fund so we don't have to worry about this in the in the vast majority

of things or say that if when the escrow account is depleted to 10% it needs to be replenished at the $250 per lot Mark within a certain time frame I think we should move on because I don't think this number is going to get determined tonight and I think that we can all think about it we need to think about this and how to word it and what to do to cover all of the things that we've all just brought up but I would like to move on all righty please so that's just the escrow discussion there um conditional use preliminary subdivision for over three lots and under three lots does everyone happy with that number I'm not so that's the other thing is that like I I have different numbers for a lot of these things and I haven't been sharing that as we've been going because I was letting him get through it um I don't know if that's how you if if we just keep going and then I make all of the suggestions that I have at the end I

mean I for number changes I think what we're getting at here is and we think about our our rules around our meeting time it's 8:45 and I think we still have a lot of work to do to discuss here because I also have questions about select board fees like gravel pit annual registration and stuff like that that I think that we need to get some information on that like yeah like 50 bucks for an annual fee for a gravel pit that's impacting Our Town Road I have conc about that I think I don't think that's being paid it all yeah and so what I'm thinking is I think we have more work on this than we have time right now and it probably should be more of a workshop type discussion rather than because and then we can get the we get George because he I mean how it's because I'm sure George George follows the ordinance to a te yeah yeah I get that he'll he'll be able to add value to the conversation if we get him

in he'll let us know and these guys have talked about it so it's yeah yeah yeah but I think that we're just bringing up some things like making sure that I I agree the staff time is super important we already have enough going on and if someone has to spend half a day doing administrative work around something and they're not able to do the other things that the taxpayers are expecting there needs to be some compensation there too so I think we need to talk about that a little bit B more um so maybe we should

table this until another meeting because I think we just open up more cans of worms and we have fishing lines to put them on I don't want to Kick the Can too far down the road though because every month that goes by that we don't make changes it's Revenue that we don't receive so yeah I I'm I'm favor I'm happy to make a motion to table to a future date as long as we don't push it too far off yeah can can we think about some of the stuff that could be changed and make that change incrementally I I was just going to say I'm fine with the residential construction changes for the um the electrical work so the things that I had changes for residential structures is that I'd like to see it go to 50 cents a square foot instead of 40 I'd like to see a line for Foundations at 20 cents a square foot under the residential part and I would like for the occupant permit permit fee to read per visit we we sounds like we all agree on the

per visit where's the 50 Cent per square foot coming from up top it says residential structures at 40 cents yeah yeah but what makes you want to go from 40 to 50 cents I did the math on what a typical house in Durham would be and looking at the other the other fees that Allan gave us from 2022 which is 2 years old at this point and I just think that 50 cents a square foot is a reasonable number we were low when we when last year when we went to 40 cents we were still lower than any time around okay J you have thoughts on 40 to 50 cents no cool I mean I'm fine with 50 cents if we want to change it to that so are you going to make a motion on that yep um I'd like to make a motion to have residential structures be built at 40 cents a square foot 50 cents a square I'm sorry 50 cents a square foot yeah I'll second that any other discussion all in favor favor uh I'm sorry I do have a discussion I do uh are

we allowed to change this fee schedule as often as we want or is there periodically periodically we just added that periodically if you want to do it five times a year or every four years MH are you more comfortable waiting and doing it all in one Fell Swoop I I think if we don't kick the can too far down the road I can I'm in agreement with that also if you're feeling like you want to get one section done at a time we just pick just pick a section for next time that's what if the residential construction and the electrical was going to be simple I'd say we could have just approved that tonight but it sounds like we have more discussion um so if you want to withdraw your motion we can do that at a later date or if you're comfortable it's fine all right well all in favor of the 50 cents per square foot any offic all right cool so what did you say about foundations Foundations at 20 cents a square foot

and that's not in here now it's not so just when they pour the foundations cuz that's already going to be part of the regular part of the regular inspection for regular building inspection mhm you still have to go out multiple times to inspect like that they've back filled correctly and whatnot so but isn't that part of the regular building inspection it's like you pour the foundation and then you're building the house on top of it that's they're not happening at the same time though and other towns charge for foundations so are we we if right now if someone pours a foundation they don't need a building permit yes they do so but we're not capturing that when we have the foundation what are you what are you saying we're not capturing a separate fee for foundations a separate fee for foundations so what if someone is just going to pour a foundation today and they're going to build their house next year what are

they getting charged right now building permit so we are charging but next year when they if they if they p a foundation they're building so if they haven't gotten permit they're going to get double double build for the building building permit and then next year they come back out and build the rest of the house they they're going back out he's going out multiple time when the foundation is poured he has to go out and once the foundation is poured to make sure that's done then when they back fill it he has to go out again and then they start to build but think of the a whole house construction is 8 to $8 to $1,400 so I would guess that my time over that building period is adequate I think that's adequate fee I think that I think it's an adequate fee well I do have to go out multiple times for foundations but I go multiple times for lots of things how about just for for the sake of time tonight can we just

vote to accept the existing minus that 50% 50 Cent change can we vote to accept the existing residential construction and electrical fees and then table the addition of new fees and the editing of the others just because I want to make sure we can get that easily those low hanging fruits taken care of can you change the AL can you talk about the residential construction adds to square footage period then that's all that that first sentence I want to put that in the fee structure all res construction that adds square footage to the law is build at residential structure rates yeah so everything instead of instead of that little I want to get rid of that garages Barn other misscellaneous I want to get rid of that part that is build at 15 cents a square foot I want that to go away yeah you already exed that out yeah so what I'm proposing is that we vote to approve the residential construction

section as proposed as proposed with the red indicating the new changes that are added and the strike Mark being removed so this will just be whatever is in red or not stricken through Y and changing 40 to 50 we already voted to change 40 to 50 okay and adding visit to occupancy permit fee yep per visit $50 per visit so is that a motion yes second sure

second any other discussion all in favor okay awesome that's done and then are we okay with the new electrical fee just the electrical section to increase in decrease those things and then we're going to be done and we're going to table the rest of this yes just make sure that it's it's clear because he didn't strike replace electrical service panel I move that we accept the electrical edits in addition we will strike replace electrical service panel or meter socket or gen installation switch from the first line because it was a clerical error I made a motion first one today so moved all right nice any additional discussion all in favor no opposition all right so I move that we table this the rest of the edits to a later meeting

um all right we got a second any discussion all in favor perfect and so for me I would like to maybe eyeball that second meeting in July for this if or the first meeting in July it's the first meeting in July we're approving the school board I think we should not have it the first meeting in July so I'm just going to is this better for a workshop on a it is it really should be would you could we just are we allowed to just do a workshop instead of our meeting oh absolutely so we that might be something we want to just plan on the second meeting of July being a fee structure Workshop okay and we can just plan sign AP warrants and and just do that and then plan accordingly for the to add what we need to at the first meeting of July and add what we need to at the first meeting of August you said you wanted all the things on a group too these are administrative fees that that are in the front office and they're

nowhere but they're they're Standalone by themselves and some of the things are not correct for example I know there's a law that passed two years ago that if we charge for um four information we can't charge more than 10 cents a copy we don't have that in here so do you want that part of this too yeah that's statutory right I that is so we we we'll we're saying that we charge 50 cents period and you can't do that okay can you hand those to us we'll just keep off and Y we can talk about whe where how we want to just that thank you Al what is steering committee that's that's the uh for the community steering committee appointments the people who are going to help with the downtown revitalization we can table this until next meeting so if you want to move to table that I'll move to table steering committee to the next meeting to July 9th so second any

discussion all in favor all right no opposition so that's going to be table the only thing I would say is that we have received all of the nomination or all the um um applications for school board everyone who has indicated their interest and we have three applicants um Michael Osa Candace and I I'm sorry if I say this the last name Candace desis

Deus Candace dpus and Stephanie worth um Rea and Rebecca pollster those are the four folks who have yep and Rebecca pster so I'll repeat that we have four people who have expressed interest Michael Osa pollster sorry candy thank

week we will ask those folks if they're interested to come in and provide outside of a regular public comment period they will be able to tell us why they want to be on the board and then we can ask them some questions you had a question I had a question today from one of the candidates they want to know if you're going to be asking them one onone questions or as a group um I hadn't thought about that may maybe we could get back to them can we get back to them on well my my initial thought is that we're going to ask the candidates to just tell them us why we want why they want to be on the board and we can then ask them some follow-up questions about their maybe about their responses and in in a group setting so it can be seen publicly um and I think that that would be the best way to do it because I don't want it to seem it should all be public the the questions with them should should all be

public so let's just let's just plan yeah but it's not like we're going to we're going to have them it's not like everyone's leaving the room or anything this is in a public venue we're just going to say Mr Osa what she saying is are we going to say what would you do about X and then let all four of them answer or are we going to say ask this person this question and this person this question she's my intent is to ask the we I don't see us proposing like are you going to have Michael come up you're going to ask Michael all his questions then he's going to and they need to know that ahead of time what's that and they need to know that ahead of time as to like one candidate did ask what the platform was going to be like um I mean we're just going to direct the questions to one person at a time whether they're all sitting up there at once or I mean I would imagine it would just be easier to have them all

sitting up there and ask a question and then say same question to so and so same question to so and so so I hadn't thought about whether we'll have them s come up one at a time I'm open for what you all they were right when you did meet the candidates with the year that you ran you guys were all up there and people asked the same question for everybody to answer MH I think that that should probably be the plan unless there's something specific to follow up on like if you want some an applicant to elaborate elaborate on what they said they say something could you please explain that more so I would say it would be more like a panel um and then it is not a public asking the

candidates question perod this is purely just us and we are having public comment prior so I do not want to have us ask questions and then have public comment perior where people are going to say this is what I think about so and so's response we get the public input at the beginning of the meeting and then when we move into this that's where we as a board will ask questions and not the public and then we will make a decision uh plan to make a decision on July 9th

right manager report okay it's getting late I have a lot I was out last week and I'm out next week so to put the agenda together we could get together before the end of before the end of Thursday forek yep I can do that we can do that Thursday that then I can set J up yep the agender out works for me

um to help bring dur a little bit closer to the 21st century and I don't mean that to be no I understand what you're saying um I've been looking at getting a service of push notifications are you familiar with what push notifications are so I've talked to this one one uh company so I am familiar but someone watching my not you say what that is push notification is it's an app on your phone that is designed to be Durham the

town of Durham app so they make them for both Androids and iPhones so if we were to do this um and you downloaded the app you have to you know say allow notification and it would be and what it is is we would there would be a couple administrators and we would send out notifications like you know power lines down on Swamp Ro structure fire here planning board meeting select board meeting and whoever signs up for these app gets this app and allows will'll get notified of what's going on and then somewhere on the app there's a calendar that all these things live there there are different things that we can do and you might be probably can set up for a reminder Remind me 15 minutes before a select board meeting or something like that yeah well well they just like I said they push notifications that's what they call but so whatever we wanted to not if if there was a tree down across the road I mean it would be

good for the it would be good for the fire department good for public works good for Town Hall uh so it's 3900 a year MH but they will PR rate US this year and I think I can find the money I have the contract right here not a contract but you guys can look at it back I don't need to answer tonight I just want to kind of get your feeling on yeah how you feel about having providing that service to the residents if they sign up there's no phone numbers there's no emails they go to the App Store they downlo download the D town of dur app that's it so you can look through the get notif like I said it's if if there's anything if there's a flood in the road there's it's just a really good if if if we put up a warming Center we can or a cooling center or whatever we whatever notification that we want to get out there we can do it and we can do it like that and not only that once we do that notification it automatically goes to

the website Facebook and news blast so it's a One-Stop shop for Kimberly when she does these notifications instead of having to go to all three spot to do the same information so yeah towns are doing this um Wales is doing it yeah I mean even your really small town and I think it would be a good idea so I I agree can you send this to us we'll review it and we can talk about it at a next at a future meeting takes so let me say it takes four weeks to get set up yep and after that four weeks the company goab will uh credit us a month they won't charge us for a month so this year it be like $1,300 we can see if we like it if we don't like it we can get rid of it if we like it keep it going we'll just have to budget for it for 2025 y I like this idea because it gets to this point where a lot of folks are asking for better communication right to from the town and it if it in many ways if it cuts down on

staff time from having to go three places it might end up buying us some extra space and time in there so it's it's just a good media to to notify residents who who are interested and want to get the app push notification app cool if you send that to us and we can talk about it at a future probably maybe next meeting or or the meeting after um that's pretty much all I had I said I was out last week so like there's not a lot of new developments going on right now we talked about of them tonight are the agenda so perfect I don't I don't really have anything of much importance really that we should know about at least right now perfect um the consent agenda Heather you said you wanted to pull the minutes out I do and there was just one thing really quickly under board member reports I don't know if we should put it on our radar that at our next board meeting just because of how contentious the issue around the

school board seat is becoming if we should consider having law enforcement here we don't have to talk about that I just think that that should maybe be a conversation between you and Jerry it's a good point I had thought about that too and and I'm happy to make a motion to remove the minutes from the consent agenda from the 6124 meeting okay uh

make a motion second it on any discussion yeah I just I'll come on removing um I we just received them tonight when we got here and when I started reading through them they're not reading the same way that I remember so I just would like a little more time to review them if that's okay so we had somebody El kind of switched up yeah and so why don't we just approve apprciate your feedback on that y I had had a chance to look out a since I've been back I yeah so for anyone watching we just noticed some inconsistencies with the meeting minutes so we're going to review those um and then uh we'll approve them at the next meeting and make edits if we if we need all right so

the rest of the consent agenda approve and sign AP warrants have a motion to accept some moov all right second in uh all in favor any opposition n cool so we can start signing those things under our new bylaw do we need to vote to go past 9:00 I think we do need to except oh sorry actually vote when hea motion to pull the minutes out oh sorry motion second you guys y um so can we go back though andot to extend the meeting past 9 o' before we do that because yeah so I should say it's not with our new bylaws it's 9:00 um in order to continue the meeting I would need to have a motion to continue the meeting um do I have that motion I'll make a motion to continue the meeting until 9:30 all right uh any second second uh any discussion all in favor any opposition none and so uh Heather you made a motion to remove the meeting minutes uh I'll second that uh any discussion seeing none all in favor any

opposition none all righty so now we're Square and we moved for the asent agenda so we just going to sign sign that um upcoming meeting meetings we have select board meeting 7924 and 72324 and then the planning board is meeting at 71024 and we um I would like to make a motion to move into executive session pursuant to 1 MSA 405 for personnel matter do I have a second second all right any discussion all in favor any opposition perfect so um got shut I was going to say Jess we won't make you stay we can finish the rest of the notes if that works we actually do vote and approve the yes we did we did yes Heather motion I second and I think it was just on the AP war after yeah after we remove the

at 9:10 and I'll write what time we come out and if anything happens after mhm and there's a few extra pieces of paper here to sign to