TranscriptPlanning Board Meeting ~ January 3, 2024

five why why not I'll be you know we don't want you to get bored and retired I think the mics are live and we're streaming oh okay uh okay well everyone welcome to the January 3rd 202 before that's the second time today I got that date right uh Durham planning board regular meeting agenda so quick roll call we have five voting members Mr linois Mr Hutchinson M kaplinger Mr Pon and myself John talet so we have a quorum next step is annual election of chairman and then following that with Vice chairman I'll nominate John jelet is John tala as chairperson okay oh second second that um do we have

have any other comments discussion hearing none we'll take it to a vote and I will abstain so raise your hand if you if you like me or if you want want me to be or you don't like me you want me to chair or the other it passes 4 zero one abstention the next is the election of the vice chairwoman uh Miss Caplinger has volunteered do we have any other nominations if not I will nominate Miss uh Miss ciger as the vice chair second we have a motion a second any discussion hearing none raise your hand uh for Miss CER and it is unanimous uh Next Step then is amendments to the agenda do we have [Music] any I seeing none we'll move on to uh

acceptance of the minutes of the prior meetings December 6 202 three anybody have any comments on the minutes from last month's meeting I'll move to accept them as presented we've got a motion second no second move in a second any discussion seeing none a vote to accept the minutes for December 6 2023 uh approved and next step is informational exchange on non-agenda items Mr Tom planner I've got two uh items to report on the first is that uh the code officer's report for the end of the year indicated there were 20 new single family housing starts in the in calendar 2023 as you may recall there's a trigger if we if we go over 45 that calls for a look at the comprehensive plan so it's about less a little bit less than half of that threshold and also um we had a meeting with the town manager the code off and John attended uh with the consultant who's proposing the digital codification of the land use ordinance

and all the ordinances of the town so uh we looked at that we talked it through in terms of what it would do and what it would not do and basically it will create a digital code parallel to what we did with the tax maps a couple years ago where we digitized all the tax maps put it on GIS makes it available on the web increases public access same thing would really happen with the uh with the land use ordinance and other ordinances of the Town um would also do a legal

scrub of the current Lan use ordinance uh in the past we've struggled with some word word conflicts and inconsistencies like some places it calls uh roads and then other places it calls streets and it uses the terms interchangeably but not everywhere consistently so they would do a language Scrub but they would also do a legal scrub so for example the the uh ordinance currently requires a one acre for a mobile home and a mobile home park state law says you can't do that so they'll be flagging everything that's not consistent with state law scrubbing the language showing simple wording changes to get consistency um and identifying problems such as we've been addressing like lack of any solar standards lack of cell tower standards so they'll flag all those issues and uh offer suggestions on

what the town could do to to address them uh they will not however write and draft ordinances like we've been doing in terms of the solar standards or cell tower standards they will only uh identify the issue as part of this codification process but they can't for the kind of money that talking which is probably 10 to 12,000 they can't do a year-long process on one one issue like we've done not much less all the other issues so uh what they will provide is a comprehensive review of the entire Lane use ordance see what we've been doing uh since I started is triage it's like the sign crisis came up you know that you know someone we had an issue where everybody was confused about the sign regulations it was in uh infringing on someone's rights and there was a big discussion about it uh similar to solar we getting all those applications we don't so we've been doing triage this would give a whole comprehensive review

of all of the issues um and then lay it all out what needs to be changed make suggestions um and as I said it will create a digitized code which will makes make the process of updates uh more efficient and and uh easier uh it'll clean up the language and then they will incorporate even though we won't get into any big issues two things that will be addressed in the initial adoption of the digitized code at town meeting the first will be any illegal Provisions will have to be changed as part of that process but secondly if there is simple fixes low hanging fruit there aren't really controversial issues just simple wording changes those sorts of things probably incorporate those as well but they would stay away from the big thorny policy issues like we we've had to deal with and we would continue to do that um as I said that comprehensive analysis of the entire Lan use ordinance will then put us in a better position to put

together a work program for making addressing these policy issues right now like I said it's been triage addressing the latest crisis and that's not a good way to try to approach this so they're going to put in a proposal to to fund this in the next uh budget and then if that gets approved approved starting next April the process they told us with other towns can take anywhere from 18 months to 2 years depending on how it goes and how much there is to do in the process so does that sound I think that's a that's a good uh synopsis of what we discuss so you'll be hearing discussions about that as the budget is going forward so if your friends out there ask you what you know about codification I used it in the in a past life uh it is when done with well it's very easy because you can type in you do a search for signs and type where signs are covered in the various chapters or private roads or whatever it

may be so it's a we will get a at the end of the day a searchable um document digitized as well as a hard paper copy there will be a fee to maintain that which is not um I don't think too excessive at least what they have said this far George is right it's we probably won't as a planning board have anything to do until at least this time next year probably thereafter this is more than likely would go before the town meeting in at the earliest I think April of 25 2025 and if it takes more than that 18 months in fact even more likely 2026 if it's just 18 months U and so it's it's

out there way um so just just something that's up there for everybody's uh information do you mean their findings go yeah they're not put but they the deliverable is a draft um code and so they will give a hard copy digitized copy they'll take our land use ordinance and put it into this new format and so what the deliverable to us would be is the town would be a draft of that and then we the planning board Town whomever

conservation would take a look at it and make comments about it uh and then it would probably my guesses or expectations would have to go through a process where um it goes uh similar what we did with solar we going to have to have a town an information meeting explain the the what we're because it's going to be new and it's it'll look different than we've got the land use ordinance now but at the end of the day people should find it a lot easier if they ask hey what is it what do I need to do for a private road what do I need to do for uh a split or whatever that information they can Google it or search it and it'll be there and save work on the staff on George and on the code enforcement person so if we can get it right it will be a good thing for the town it'll be a platform you can build on too because I mentioned we have now have the gis online and if you look at your property on the town's website on the gis you can

click on it and it'll bring up the assessment information uh many towns that have gone through this process now you can actually click on and get the zoning as well because that's what people often want to look at can what could we do could we do a commercial on this property or you know is this resource protection uh it'll give the zoning allowances so you can tie it into your digital uh zoning code just like you can tie it into the assessment database and some town have it out there uh they're e e360 E36 360 and we get to

the length but if you want to look at I think AUST has done it Mechanic Falls may have just finished somebody was still on the pro Al for somebody was still in the process so there are several towns and there's going to be more information coming for towns our side so like Alfred Mechanic Falls you know what their process was so I guess ear stages at this point that's assuming the town approves the I think 12 Grand G

you know which would be initial setup and the first Year's first Year's uh maintenance program and 360 would do uh we're on to Residents com public comments and things not on the agenda yeah not on the agenda in three minutes please yes uh and state thank you uh state your name and bring the microphone close to you which I need to do so that it picks up for the uh screening uh sure my name is uh Nathan Ledger uh and I live here in Durham uh Mr chairman members of the planning board um I'm was unfortunate that I missed last meeting I should have been there for that the last time I saw you guys was at the public uh hearing across the street at the Firehouse um I want to

start I don't have much time and I'm just kind of I'm speechless I don't have the right words and I'm kind of insulted um and I should have been here at the last meeting to discuss this because it seems that you've already made a motion to pass the amendment and uh when I was would I say cut off or wasn't allowed uh the time that I had every time I was told that I wasn't recognized the amount of time went to the select board the select board members that were there were able to ask questions ask follow-up questions make suggestions and everything else so it seems like the proposal that you're sending to the select board they've already made their decision it already seems like they're going they're charged with deciding whether this proposal gets on the warrant or not and based on what I saw and the conversations that were had at the public meeting it seems as if they've already made their decision is

going to go to the warrant which to me I don't think that's the way the process should be there's a lot of things I don't like about the process and the last meeting I witnessed some sort of like jokery or mockery of what I was saying about non-verbal Communications and frankly I've never met you sir but you said that you wanted to see a survey that maybe the proposal that was drafted up how it would sway different voters I'll be happy if you'd like to exchange your contact information me and you can discuss all of the things that I've learned in in my short life of non-verbal communication how it could actually sway voters things that studies peer-reviewed studies that the the FBI has conducted sociologist psychologist it's a real thing and to laugh at it and make a mockery of it especially when I'm not here I mean I watched it on YouTube and I was just insulted as if my opinion doesn't matter Tyler you live like five

minutes you're like my neighbor I saw you on the run the other day I welcome you to come down and knock on my door to find out why I'm so upset I was put in a position that I invested money based on the information that I was given from this local government the town over a year ago and that information has changed it drastically I went and testified in front of the housing Committee in Augusta I sat on multiple Zoom calls with the ddec and I've been following this policy for over if I remind you our process at this point is things that are not on on the agenda but we'll give you You' got another minute left we'll go ahead and let you finish thank you sir I um I

lost I've been and I'm shaking because I need people to understand the position that I was put in and what I was told I could and could not do and the actions that I took with investors Banks and money and then all of a sudden a completely different proposal has hit the desk different from last year and then different from the year before that it has changed drastically and the only way I can get recourse for this is to spend more money so in order to sit in front of the variance board or the board of appeals I have to pay a fee and I have to pay a fine and so I'm spending more money and based send your proposal I have to buy more acreage for my property and so you've taken the affordable housing and made it not affordable at all and so my only recourse for this I can't do it alone I can't do it by myself and so whatever implications you need to take from that take it as you will it's not a

threat but it's I'm in a position where I have no other choices and it's unbelievable to me that a local government can lead you down the path and then all of a sudden say oops we made a mistake I'm sorry you're you're and if anybody would like to see the emails phone calls and voice messages that I have I'll be happy to share it with you I welcome you to come see me and I can explain exactly what's going on thank you for your time thank you okay uh any other residents who would like to speak uh non-residents seeing everybody with the exception of the code enforcement person I believe everyone is a resident the plan did you have anything you wanted to say uh okay then so we that covers informational exchange on non-agenda items new business we have none no new or continuing applications I suspect that will change next month uh we've got a couple that started with u site plans and other stuff that probably will be

coming in so all right uh other business we're into the Board review of draft land use ordinance for housing diversity and density I like that name better I will kind of remind us that we voted on that to forward to the sele board last meeting so the intent of this one is really uh do we find any formatting errors or whatever we've we' talked through this one a couple of times and voted to forward it on to the select board last meeting any comments or on the this is housing

a vote on that one so Board review and discussion of draft land use ordinance amendments for solar energy systems um oh sorry I I zoned out for a second I do have a question on the yes I'm back um thank you on the previous section um [Music] the one part in the language confused I

know I feel like I know what the intent was but it confused me in in reading it and I feel like it could be left up to interpretation um in 5.1 accessory of Apartments um this is on page 10 of the packet correct assuming page 10 uh 5.1 C it says an accessory

apartment shall be made part of the main residence or located in a separate building whose primary function is not as a drilling unit I just couldn't get them all together in my mind but if there's two to say identical detached single family dwelling units to me this reads as saying um an accessory apartment could be made part of e both of the main residences since they're equivalent in size and magnitude or is the idea that the single family residences that are detached one is still considered the main

there are two single family homes on the same lot right okay so historically the town back to probably 1976 has not allowed that so that would be a nonconforming situation but AR but we are going to be if we have four acres and okay so going forward going going forward you uh if you go back to uh

a number eight the maximum number of dwelling units per lot is three and a dwelling unit includes either a fullsize unit or an accessory apartment so that's that's the limit and again so here's the the what we we talked about with codification okay we have not gone through and scrubbed the language so when it says back on the accessory Apartments the main dwelling unit okay if that is confusing because you only have one main one dwelling unit that'll be the kind of wording if they're if they're the lawyers will be looking through this that's one of the things they do the legal scrubbing so if they see confusion potential conflict then they'll they'll point that out so if you just eliminate that word potentially that could that up but we're not doing that scrubbing as part of this process but Step One is Max right right right so I knew that was the intention I just couldn't I couldn't follow the choose your adventure to make

it makes sense legally okay any other comments that was it if not then we will move on to Sol and we have uh this just quick uh history the Conservation Commission took this on is for lack of a better term as a subcontractor with great assistance from Juliet and with us tonight to help us explain what they've done and what they have are uh Jess Costa who is the chairperson of the believe and Mike Franklin is also on the U solar commission so if you two would like to join us and come up and kind of talk about the process a little bit and then answer any questions that we might have if you would come to the m please give your name and

will say they either attended or watched on TV they put a lot of hard work into this uh for it so and then this is one that we will at the end of this vote on or to forward on to the select board or not so hi I'm Jess Costa chair of the

Conservation Commission I live at 35 Brianna Drive um so uh the process of developing the draft ordinance was approximately six Monon period um where we did some initial research and we reviewed um ordinances from other towns in Maine um and we heard about some examples of ordinances um from George um from projects uh from towns in Virginia um

and we reviewed the main aons guidance um on best uh practices for Solar Development um we also met with representatives from the topsum Conservation Commission and the topsum energy commission to learn about their experience developing the topsum solar

ordinance um and then we hosted a town information meeting on December 7th um to get feedback from town residents on the the draft standards um and then we had a follow-up meeting the conservation commission's next meeting um on December 20th we discussed the comments that we received and we made a couple um updates to the draft ordinance um based on comments that we received during that um meeting anything else um Mike friendley um I live on runaround Pond Road um there were a few things we talked about but we thought in terms of the time period that we had available to uh get this done that we would table until next year so we had talked about a mitigation fee based on uh if large solar arrays are put on

um land that has you know um conservation issues that a lot of towns have have used that to try and encourage Solar Ray to be placed in on land that that is less important ecologically and another area we talked about discussing in the future is trying to encourage solar rays not to be put on prime Farmland um but we tabled those because we thought we didn't have enough time and to really do justice to it so those have been put on hold for the time being okay um anybody have any questions

for these two and then did you want to do a quick presentation I see it on your computer um I was just going to run down through kind of an overview of the regulations and then uh I did provide the Conservation Commission with some explanation of some of the visual aspects of this and have a presentation that I can if you start raising questions about what it means to have a visual impact assessment or what the concerns are I can certainly share that information with you as well but tonight is really looking at the draft regulations so I think we should kind of stick to that so in terms of that the basically like everything else we've done since I guess 2016 now in the town first started integrating all the ordinances together so used to have a gravel pit ordinance a mobile home park ordinance all these separate ordinances that just never were updated on a regular basis and some of them staff and members of the public

didn't even know they existed so everything has been put into the land use ordinance related to land use so uh these many towns have adopted some of the ones we looked at they adopted a separate solar energy system's ordinance uh We've integrated it within the L use ordinance so it affects uh four articles the first one is uh let me switch to that part so this is on on

of the of the packet so in uh article three actually the land use table so one of the important uh aspects of how this proposal is going to affect the review and approval of solar energy systems most of the towns that we looked at uh classify them according to three levels so if you're just doing solar panels on your roof uh if you some people are going to a ground mounted just for their home use uh or a small business U most

of the communities pretty much exempt those from having to go through any form of a Board review either board of appeals or planning board uh so it's considered to be an accessory to the residents or the business rooftop mounted uh you don't need to have any planning Board review and the and the proposed initially the proposed limit for how much surface area you could have uh was 2,000 square feet and uh based on

public input some solar developers came in and we're uh giving testimony about that was too restrictive the conser Conservation Commission increased that to 8,000 square fet uh and just to give you a sense of how much that is basically this parking lot as we discussed at the last Conservation Commission is is about 7200 sare ft as I recall so it's a little bit more than that would be uh you wouldn't have to go to the planning board you wouldn't have to deal with uh buffering you wouldn't have to deal with those issues uh and that was an important trade off in terms of the potential view impacts and other impacts but at the same time trying to encourage the pro the development of Alternative Energy Systems so the Conservation Commission tried to weigh those those two things and came out as a result of the public input with uh increasing the threshold for exemption from planning board reviews from 2,000

square ft of surface area to 8,000 square ft um so George sorry to R this quick definition of the this might be a good time to say what surface area is yeah basically as you know the uh if you if you just had a solar panel and you laid it down here on the floor it would be 3 feet by 5 feet those are typical solar panels Dimensions give or take it can be larger or smaller but that's just that if you lift it up at an angle to collect get maximum solar exposure then the footprint of that vertically down to the ground is what we're talking about so that 8,000 square fet does not include if they have a raise of say 20 panels in a in a row then they have 14 ft between the to the next one that 14 feet of open space is not counted as part of the surface area so that's what he's talking about so be one big array on a roof or it can be a series of parallel arrays that's how you calculate and that's how

these thresholds are calculated I've got some questions on surface area um do you want me to bring those up now or should why don't yeah why don't we just let me go through give the whole overview and then we can go back and start digging into them perfect okay so this first set of amendments to article three basically establishes uh the the two levels of review that the planning board will conduct so for any system between 8,000 square ft and 20,000 Square ft which is about half an acre um and if you want to see what that looks like if you go down on Route One in Cumberland uh just north of where Route 88 and and Tuttle Road hit Route One there is an installation going in there that is exactly 20,000 square feet of uh solar surface area and that takes an

acre of land when you put in the spacing around in between them so that project uh anything that size or larger would have to go to the planning board for site plan review subject to a review of all the issues that we're going to be talking out about in the performance standards and those are primarily targeted toward three things first is the issue of uh what submissions are required to make sure that the planning board has information that it can process in making a decision on that it meets the standards and then the uh performance standards themselves which typically deal with safety uh with visual impacts that's not as much of a concern in cities and other communities but given Durham's comprehensive plan emphasis on Rural character that was AIG big issue in terms of the development of this proposal uh and then the third issue is these things have an expected life of anywhere from 20 to 30 years and at the

end of their useful life where they're no longer efficient uh the goal is to make sure that they don't just they don't just leave them there to rot and rust uh and so there most of communities have what they call a decommissioning plan that there's an Engineers estimate how much would it currently cost to take all of that d and recycle it and restore the site uh and then that has to be updated to kept concurrent with inflation to make sure that at the end of the process of this use and its abandonment that will be that site will be restored so that's the that's the

second part of it so uh if it's a medium scale which is anything between 8,000 and 20,000 Square ft of surface area it'll just go to site plan review if it's over that anything over a half an acre will first go for a conditional use review with the board will first take a step back and say well look the scale of this project say it's 20 acres is that next to the power line or is it next to a residential neighborhood so you you'll be able to do the typical conditional use review to see whether the use and the scale proposed if it's a half acre or an acre you might say yeah that's compatible U that's just about what it takes to run this to run the uh energy needs of the subdivision then you may have a subdivision that's proposing to do that uh so you would say yes that is an appropriate scale on the other side of it is if it's 20 acres and they have a solar energy or excuse me a battery energy storage system you might say next

to the power line that makes sense next to this uh residential neighborhood doesn't make sense and it's out of the scale so you'll be able to do that before you go through the specific design review and then if you give it the conditional use review then it would go through the site plane review to look at the buffering and look at all of those details so that's what's established in on page 19 of the ordinance so medium scale where it says CER that's code enforcement review but he's going to kick it over to the planning board for site plan review before he is a permit is that auto automatic your expectation that be automatic it's required by another part of these amendments okay so Y which I'll show you so conditional use for uh for

large scale in the r rural residential agricultural uh site plan review for medium scale and the only two places these will be allowed would be in the aqua for protection which is an overlay and the re and the rural residentials which is where all other development is loged okay okay so then you go over to the next article which is

in terms of the submission requirements the performance standards uh and then the applicability is there with uh so all rooftop and uh systems with less than 8,000 square feet fall within that first uh 5.24 A1 if they then you see the thresholds in two and three for the larger systems medium and large then the submission requirements is Part B and then part C is the performance standards which includes decommissioning plan and everything else so that's part five which is the main part of the regulations and then if you go over to page 25 of the packet you see article8 the trigger for site plan review we've added solar energy systems medium or large scale so that's where that trigger is John the code officer would see that and then tell them you have to go to the uh so he'd be doing like a rooftop system but if it's a ground mounted over 8,000 square fet he would say according to article 8

section 8.1 D the planning board has to give a site Planet rule for that and if it's larger than uh 20,000 square feet he would say and you need a conditional use review and then finally as far as the amendments are concerned the other article would be Article 19 so we've taken typical definitions you find in most ordinance to try to clarify some of the parameters of the specialized terminology of solar energy systems and so it proposes to add five new definitions including that one on solar energy excuse me surface area so maybe that's a good segue to your first question yes great first of all really good job on doing this this was a lot of work you did in a very short amount of time thank you your feedback yeah of course um okay so my first question is about the definition of surface area um so you we are seeing

surface area is pretty much from the edge of the solar panel across the project to the other edge of the other solar panel at the other end of the project right like that entire but it doesn't include the aisles um actually this may Does it include it includes the aisles between panels but not between

arrays or what is the intent okay so I've got a graphic that I found online that illustrates the difference okay okay so this is the this is the a panel or a solar array and so the surface area is defined as being the vertical contact with the ground from this edge of the array to this vertical line on this Edge this is so sorry sorry George don't say array it's just a panel well that could be a whole array of panels an array is like a group ofan okay that could be a cross-section of either an individual panel or an entire array right that's a row of panels row of panels okay yeah sorry no it's okay yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so okay so if that's a row of panels yeah then you take this this area right here time this distance here times the length of the row yep that's the surface area so we're not including like you were saying Jess is we're not including the rows in between these panels okay in between right okay um can

I just follow up on that question question yes please what what is an access way that's the road in yeah access road okay so it's including that mhm right no the surface area would not include so what's an access way it would be a gravel drive that's going into it no it does sorry excuse it says here means the total air space projected vertically over the ground above solar arrays the footprint of sorry you're correct that's right yeah so what that's what if it's not the area between the panels and it's not the roadway put it is the roadway in right your ACC Road in um okay so if that's

um uh that's that's good okay um so the tilt of the panels especially if it's going to be trackers which follow the sun it just depends on the angle of those panels so um I don't know if we want to get a little more specific in the definition and just say and at the maximum angle yeah or at the minimum angle I would say Min it's probably minimum why wouldn't it just be the total square footage of the panel period right that would be simple yeah I then you don't have to get S and cosine and tangent and all that I could also move all this it's going to move because I mean I roll by one today on the shallow road and it was practically vertical yeah because of where the where the sun was right right yeah but it can get I mean even easier than that would be to include

fence like that's your project just the balancing of that is that this is pretty restrictive compared to other communities so I think that that was probably proposed by solo developers recognizing the spacing between their rows to not be penalized

right because they can't squeeze them together because they need the separation for solar there there's some people that want to uh use animals to graze between solar rays too and there would be a penalty if you did that to doing to setting it up that way if you took everything within the fence oh you yeah you you have to have that space you have to have that space so the question is do you count that toward their developed portion to me that's that's an access way because you need to maintain these panels at some point um you're using it you're mowing if it's required even if you have goats you still need to go or work with goats or herd goats or whatever but you need that an access way to me is it's a drive also but it's also the area between the panels and everywhere that you're going to access like if there are Transformers there if there are weather stations whatever else is I mean you you you know we list um

accessory structures there um as part of the calculation so if you change access ways to access drives I kind of like the just the surface area of the panel is kind of a nice simple do that with the expertise that we have in the room do that make sense because you are you [Music] are you know is it is it important to include I apologize I didn't catch this in all the meetings but is it important to include a grass area that is a drive between panels aren't we more I thought we were more concerned about how much there is up there I'm I'm just questioning you guys again did a great job but I'm questioning what some of these terms mean um and it's confusing just for the process the surface area definition is confusing to yeah just for the process the planning board is going to have to propose this to the select board so I'm assuming you folks are if these types of changes are added wouldn't have to go back through the

Conservation Commission again well I think I guess the question I would have to that is is it such a change that you have to go back to your committee uh what is your thoughts on that because I can go either way with this I mean I'm I don't think this is going to be a contentious issue so and I'm not sure we have to go back you guys have done it I'm not saying we'd blow you off but at this point it's been handed off to us and so changes we would make that's right or changes we would make but thank you for coming to make sure that I don't you know say anything stupid so uh I don't at this point it would be up to us to make that that change so we also say this is including a pertinent structures so are we counting the fence in that calcul I

think what that's intended to do is to look at inverters and those sorts of Transformers and things like that not the fence okay I mean in my brain the developer needs to pretty if it's forested they're going to have to clear a lot of area more than just the panels to make this project and they're going to have to maintain that entire area so that is their project area when you think about it and in my experience when we talk about size of projects it's by um Acres you know you've got 25 acres of

a solar project down there it's not really square feet we're not measuring the panels because like we just talked about getting that tilt would be some sort of math problem you know we're talking like the entire are the LOD that in you know to be easy you could say between the fence they definitely have to maintain that usually you have to maintain a little bit outside of the fence for shade um so but we're not saying they don't have to maintain this right we're setting a a this is the size that becomes andal use yeah yeah yeah I hear that I hear that and so we're seeing 20,000 square feet right no a we are asking them for a maintenance plan yes I'm not saying no no we have I guess the point is that doesn't matter in the the size they have to maintain the V the road but I think they do anyway as a matter of course but you know I thinking they will they're doing it what we're trying to do is say for this size

project it's going to go to conditional use site plan review and I think after a whole ton load of meetings we kind of said 20,000 was the right cut off for an industrial the only thing I'm I'm saying is those 20,000 sare ft that's half an acre right mhm of surface area of surface area which translates based on that Cumberland project to to an acre no to an acre of total land that's an acre yeah so that that project in Cumberland which I could actually show you the site plan maybe that would be helpful yeah actually that would be help they break that out per square feet see is because I was thinking those projects like along uh 95 or 295 and Augusta those are this 20,000 square feet I would think that's that's that size that I'm thinking in my brain I'm thinking it's closer to the size of the Cumberland one the ones that I'm seeing in the medum the highway which is what I'm thinking too but if they're larger

than that then but I'm just I'm trying to like make it easier for well this is again the minimum size that they have to come in on the conditional use and site plan if they come in and ask for 100,000 it's the same same process yeah yeah yeah right so what we're saying is if you want to do 20,000 square fet of panels and you know the develop there's roadways and and uh stuff in there what

inverters and other things that's they got to fit that up you know into their project so their project half acre of solar panel translates to an acre of access ACC ways drives so this is the project this is the existing site on route route one in Cumberland zoom out a little bit more okay so this is this is Route One the intersection with four 295 is right on the other side of Route One here and just to the right of this building commercial office building uh so you can see the commercial parking so this they're proposing a solar system here that will provide all the energy needs of that commercial building so the this

is the plan and according to the planning board records that I looked at can you all see that good yeah okay so these are the the rows of solar arrays is that just rows of panels R of panels yeah that's like one array that whole thing is like one array okay yeah good um so the total

surface area of these is 20,000 Square fet uh the total area that they sit on is 40,000 square fet if you add in all these rows between them and then the total area of the oh I'm sorry uh within the fence I believe is uh 1.57 Acres okay so where are all the

little structures that support all of that okay so this is the access drive right here and then there is is uh try to zoom in and they included the access drive in that 20,000 calculation I think so but I'm not well actually I'm sorry they do not have any solar energy standards for reviewing these this is all done under the site plan standards yeah pretty much everything is exempt in Cumberland from any planning Board review the only reason this was reviewed was because it was an a pre-approved site plan that they had to come in for Amendment so what they tried to review this with was the One Design guidelines for buildings and landscaping that's all they had to work with does Topson Count Their square feet yes they do and it's by it's it's

using the you know the surface area of the panels find that exactly so question is this to pass it on would you come up and introduce yourself pull up a chair there Alan Alan plumber Cod enforcement officer um is this to determine where the plan goes where the request goes or to calculate the fee what kind this is the definition of surface area the size of these project just for reviews by whether it's review by the board and if it is what kind of review it goes through that's all this is so how this comes into the office it would come to me yeah so I'm not a rocket scientist so if you're asking me to calculate tangents that's probably not going to happen we're I don't I don't want you to do that I think I'm trying I'm trying to suggesting to simplify it and just say whatever the size of the solar panel the panel itself is not at an angle but right I'm the put officer for Wales as well and we just did one I I just looked

on the email and I so I can't get that um the number but we just got to check for 91,000 um that's a surface area that's a different question right but we but the calculation for that I did because it's the surface area of the panel no I got I got the panel that that makes sense but the fee would be set by the select board and they would give you guidance on square foot a panel or whatever it still has to be calculated yes so that's a very easy calculation when they say this is the size of our panel right we have this many panels in row we have 20 rows yeah looking at that George they have their panels are they look like they are flat right so just on the site plan right so that's probably how they were calculated right the size of the panel the entire size so in toson facility size is measured by calculating the square footage of the projection of solar panels at maximum tilt uh on the ground C diagram there maximum tilt

there's the vertical ver vertical airace vertical airspace so it they are using angles and yeah I I kind of I still like the idea square foot cuz all we're doing is setting a cut off for reviews I think that's I think that's fine to me it's easy to go with the surface area of the panels yeah keep it simple along with the access road and Transformers and inverters yeah that's not I don't know George if you have another plan but this is not complete there's more support for these this array than what's shown in this drawing there's definitely inverters um well that's good

to know but I mean I think we're just we said here's here is yeah again they were just looking at site plan review standards they didn't have the standards that we're talking about yep and I'm I'm just looking at our definition and it says accessory structures right so I know that that's not complete so to figure out the actual square foot area of the surface area of everything involved in the solar array that drawing is not complete and somebody has to do the math on that yeah well I guess here's Here's my thought is do we care about those if we're just setting the cut off somebody does cuz it's in your definition no I I'm talking about changing the definition yeah my I'm going to rec at the end of the day I'm going to make a motion that we change that definition to simplify it and I should have caught that earlier in myties but I think you know for discussion and join in Conservation Commission if we just

say this is what it is so 20,000 square foot or 50,000 square foot uh solar aray am I using the right term there do that but a panel is going to have inverters and buildings and and other things in it and but we're not that's not our cut off our cut off is you have a 20,000 square feet of solar panel you're going to uh conditional use and cine you that's what we care about at this point the fee is something totally different yeah I think we also do want to keep in the access road if if that was if you guys recommended that I I I have no reason to take that out why for this calculation that's part of the project right I get it but it's all part of the project but that's our the the limit so they still have to submit a plan that shows an access way and shows their support buildings for the site plan review so what you're thinking is decreasing the threshold needed or no increasing it if if you're taking out

the access road then it's going to be less you're going to need more panels to hit that threshold you're going to need a bigger project to hit this threshold right but we're taking out the angle and the angle based on like Optimal 45 degrees with 50% increase so we're kind of drop dropping the you're we're doing the entire size of the panels right but written here it was not the size of the panels so if we go back if we go back to just the size of the panels I see I see I see what the difference is there you're right I'm

motion and having been criticized in the past uh I will make this as clear as possible whether we change the definition of surface area to mean just the size the size of the panel will be the total surface area of all energy PS period does that work m the total surface area of all solar energy panels so my motion is that surface area for our use here is defined as the total surface area of all solar panels may I ask a question you may Conservation Commission why did you choose I I think I understood this from the um public information meeting but you chose square footage rather than size of generation to make it simpler because we thought that uh when we when this comes to a vote if we propos to the town that anything over 100 kilowatts will have to be go to site plan review I don't think most people who are not haven't spent time thinking about solar rays have any idea of the size and I think people think people are

worried about the appearance and therefore I think appearance is directly tied to size rather than kilowatts so we're industry I'm sorry but industry standards more geared towards square foot area orations a lot of ordinances other towns use size rather than than kilowatts or

yeah they use square a lot of the examples we looked at used square footage for the size scales okay but I do see that we added back in or maybe it was already in that we are requesting the size of the project yes in megaw yes yeah so I will it's time we have a motion in a second I'll second it just to discuss so the motion is to change the definition of solar energy system surface area to be the total surface area of all solar energy panels correct that is the motion but it is open for discussion um my concern with removing any association with access ways and structures is if they do have a large I don't know I'm torn on this if they have a large storage element with it as well that might be relevant but I feel

like if you're going for a large storage element it's already going to be a large project so and we're going to we will review that as site plan right review and conditional use so okay yeah I think the surface area of those additional pertinent structures is probably not going to kick it out 2% or something to another it's going to be minor for sure so still do we still want to say what's excluded such as I think

my yeah I have one thing so the difference here is the conditional use and site plan right so what if we had just throwing this out what if we had a project like this but had a huge long access road or had like some complex

apperences it's going to be counted as towards that square feet although in hindsight oh god look this project it's got this huge long access row we probably should have looked at this little like the next step up we're not counting that we're just looking at the panels you I mean but anything over 8,000 square feet of panels is going to go to site plan review where you're going to be looking at the road access it's not going to have that next level of conditional use no but is it is we condition use being like looking at space in the project does that fit in the use but an an access drive I'm just I'm just throwing out there like a different type of project you know if we're just focusing on panels you could have two way different projects the panels sort of relate to like power generation even though we're not saying like kilow I think panels just counting the surf are for the panels just looking at it from like

power generation and yeah like he said there'll be there could be a long road but there's still going to need to be like buffers you know around those be implications for having like more clearing and a longer Road and we can't be doing any types of these developments in um resource protection right right yeah I'll I'll yeah if this is what you guys decide to do for sure feel like we're missing stuff when we just look at the panels that's all we're cting but again it's just that just get you haven't you're not you're still in my mind you're going to look at the access way you're got to look at the inverter buildings or whatever they are and is part of the use and stuff like that I mean you can't just put panels out there and not have all that auxiliary stuff um so quite truthly I

could Envision where we had a um we might like a longer access road because if we want people to put it on the behind the next Hill you want to encourage them to you know you don't want to penalize them for having that access Drive yep yep I'm just sticking with roads for a minute is it always a Gravel Road in the Brunswick example there was already paid roads accessing that project at enval base but like inside they it's gravel inside um for the examples that I've seen once you get in the fence mhm to the fence was paved

yeah they had like a little extra space that was gravel um and that went through the fence and then it was a little bit of gravel for them to park inside the fence um and then it's kind of grass cover between all the panel rows yeah I would say they're mostly gravel we're not saying what we want right right and they can be pervious they you know I think that's the green way to go right and probably the inexpensive way I mean why would you pave right I drainage you have to add storm water right good stuff the only thing is you have to more complic some projects spray you know herbicides to keep vegetation from growing in those gravel areas um the Bruns project that I'm thinking of they do spring so we but we've talked about limiting that yeah so that's that's been interesting okay so the herbicide I just so do we want to say that it should be a graveled or an impervious servious service sorry right not not for the sake of this

definition yeah I think right now we're talking about the definition so any further discussion about the definition so for clarification one more are we ready to vote I will repeat the motion if I can remember my motion is

that the definition of the solar energy system comma surface area is surface area means the total panel the the total area of the solar panels there do you want to we're ready to vote so all those in favor of that definition for looks like paragraph 183 please raise your hand those opposed please raise your hand four to one and you guys are okay too late now but you are okay I assumed you were okay all right I'm sorry what juliia did

you have any other questions I do but um on the other items yes oh we might as well I guess we're done done with the presentation was time to bring up other items recognizing that we've had a lot of thought put into this comments on the solar panel solar array

ordinance that's we're on we're still the only thing we voted to change was that one paragraph so we're still reviewing the solar energy systems juliia we started with you let's um so on page 21 or 28 28 number 11 under submission requirements um we say that the visual impact assessment needs to be prepared by a registered landscape architect um I wonder if we mean to say that the vegetation management plan needs to be completed by a registered landscape architect and that the visual impact assessment can be done by you know consultant can be done by an engineer it can be done by yeah I don't think you need to be a landscape architect to do a visual impact assessment or is that what you that's what they would do that's what a

a landscape architect would be the type of professional that you would use to do a visual impact assessment like they typically do cell towers and those sorts of things that's part of their training uh vegetation management is more like landscaping and those sorts of things that's a lower level of professional training to do those things okay all right in my experience really anybody can go out and do the visual impact assessment if you have like cameras and you have the angles you don't need to be a well it's not just it's not just determining what the visual impact is going to be it's more importantly how are you going to mitigate that visual impact and that's where the landscape architect comes in to be able to design a buffer that looks natural looks appropriate got you and it's going to be healthy right what plants to use right what CL okay and they're going to look but that'll be within the veg management plan right

their plan of buffering and all of that will be shown on the V plan yeah well the vegetation management plan is is a separate thing related to it so that's going to cover two areas because you you recommended including the maintenance of the buffer the original language was focused on the control of vegetation within the solar energy uh project weeds

and growth of vegetation that we you know controlling that that's what the typical vegetation management plan is the vegetative buffer is on the outside of the fencing and it's it's screening and so you made the appropriate suggestion that the vegetation management plan should not just be for what's inside the fencing it should include the buffer as well as well okay which we did add okay all right all right I think that's fine um

while she's catching her breath Brian did you have questions sure um just getting you sounded like I'm sorry your name again Mike Mike um were you saying that in the future you're going to look at possibly allowing or maybe easing some of the restrictions on where they go and in the future maybe see these allowed in resource protection no I I think the plan was never to allow them resource protection I think that other towns have tried to encourage solar arrays to be placed in um habitats that are sort of less valuable so and we don't really have any zoning in our town to sort of encourage uh solar rays to be placed in less sensitive areas like topsum has zoning throughout their town so they can they can encourage solar rays and make it less expensive to put them in less sensitive areas we don't have anything like that we thought at some point it would be nice to encourage these solar rays to not be placed on Prime farmland

or encouraging people not to cut down a thousand acres of Woodlands to place solar rays and maybe using a mitigation Fe to address that but we tabled it because we thought we want to get something p and it adds levels of complexity okay thank you um the other comment I

had was there was a lot of discussion about um lighting or some discussion about lighting um and I'm not sure if there's if it's possible to maybe ask that all light fixtures are dark sky compliant um or similar to having a land if they're hiring a landscape architect um it's and if it's it's a commercial development it's it's not um uncommon to metric plan of light fixtures to see what that looks like what the spread of of the proposed lighting looks like can't imagine there's a lot of lighting required in a in a solar array um maybe for maintenance purposes I don't know about security but um just a suggestion is which paragraph Was that okay so on page 23 looking at page 23 uh item

number 10 it says lighting shall be consistent with local state and federal law lighting of other parts of the installation such as accessory structures shall be limited to that required for safety and operational purposes and shall be sealed from shielded from interference with abing properties lighting of the solar energy system shall be directed downward and shall incorporate full cut off fixtures to reduce light pollution so I think for what we're talking about that's adequate I mean where you get into the level of lighting analysis that the gentleman spoke about um it's like the Haniford

and Falmouth when that went in they had this one of the top lighting experts in New England and uh and so most towns just go with a certain allowed foot candles or intensity at the property line yeah at the property line but what he showed was that by using different colors you can have uh more illumination with less energy and less impact and then typically everything is now shielded for to avoid sky solution what they call but that seems to be way overkill for the few lights that are going to be on a solar energy system that nobody's going to be there there's probably going to be a security light on the building and that's probably going to be about it what's your experience yeah not much liting at all okay does that answer the question yep um the decommissioning plan who follows up on when the um engineer submits a new

estimate so that's in uh this provisions on page uh I think notification change of ownership actually I'm sorry decommissioning plan requirements on page 21 on page 21 13 B13 yeah so it says a decommissioning plan identifying the party currently responsible for decommissioning a timeline and process for decommissioning the system and an Engineers estimate for the cost of decommissioning including the costs of removal disposal of all the equipment uh roads fencing and other Associated facilities above or below ground and site restoration so the planning board is going to review that decommissioning plan with or without assistance from a peer review consultant so probably you're going to have they're going to submit an Engineers costs current based on current prices and then uh the planning board can review that if it seems reasonable accept it if you're questioning it then have them get a peer

review so the planning board will approve that initial decommissioning plan including the costs then what it says is that that has to be updated uh in number 14 they have to provide they have to provide a financial guarantee and every five years that has to be updated it's going to be the code officer that's going to review that and enforce it but is it a responsibility of code officer to stay on task with the time frame yes all the time mhh and that the cut but

here's a couple of catches is that the initial developer and then if there's any change of ownership uh they have to provide uh submission to the code officer with a certification that they are aware of all of the requirements and so it does require some followup by somebody and typically the code officer is in the best position to do that sort of accountability for the town do we have any history of any being decommissioned and how that's worked out I I don't know what our history is within the state within the state it's so new it's very they last they last for 25 years 25 years so I'm I'm worried about year 24 and who's monitoring that

and is it being done properly I think is it's tot it's totally different than going through and getting a building permit for a house it time frame wise so I would um I'm not sure about 25 years Alan plumber code enforcement same person that was here before um and I'm not sure about 25 years because I'm not going to be here however these these um projects change hands very rapidly and I hope um there's something in there that spells out exactly what the code enforcement code enforcement officer needs to review every everything in one concise location on transfer code enforcement will do this this this and this exactly because that that happened in Mechanic Falls that we had three sites and one of them changed twice in a year this language came from Falls so one one year two times and so that was in the it was very it wasn't spelled out really well there about what I needed to do it does discuss that they have to

notify you and so on and so forth with a certain time frame and provide written certification that the new owners understand all the requirements and if they fail to do that the town can go to them and say and can shut it down right right until they get it back so I get that certification is a key component yeah is that in this draft yes where is that it's uh let's see page 24 for item

follows up every five years that this thing is updated code enforcement I mean it's the days of calendars he takes his calendar and goes out five years their requirement what's that can we make it their requirement but what if they don't do it that's the thing it is their requirement but who follows up we just had an instance where a subdivision came through and the developer didn't he fell through on his performance guarantee for a roadway exactly we didn't know that so well I think not picking on anybody past or present I I think we've got it's a different law being since Allen has come on board I'm not talking about necessarily personalities but yes I think we're paying somewhat for the sins of the past in some areas and so the expectation would be that the code enforcement guy would have it would establish a calendar thing for this and for subdivision bonds and for any other bonds that are out there that there's

going to be a ticker that says you know that solar project is four and a half years old and I need to follow up with them and hopefully they'll come in I mean the the good ones probably do but what I'm saying is I I'm I'm up for retirement in five years just me and the turnover in any of these jobs is high right so putting it on the if you put it on the developer and they fail if you have something in there says if you fail to do this we can automatically shut you down if it gets noticed down the road boom all done 19 on page 24 says failure of the owner operat to properly and fully be commissioner within one year uh I'm sorry 18 failure to notify the code officer maintain a performance guarantee through non-payment of Prem that shall be evidence of a breach of approval if not remedied within 30 days requires to notify the Public Utility Commission so all of that you can't do more than this

I don't think that's great yeah I mean the fact that any one person is retiring in five or 10 you don't build a system to say you know nobody can that's right where do you live just so we can write this down start put it under 20 unless you really want unless you really want them to leave um okay any other questions on this because I have one but Tyler did you I I have a bunch a lot of them are like kind of just small details but some of them might are into long conversations so I apologize um that's what we're here for page 23 item

seven um this is just I think just a definition talking about the vegetated buffer it says uh of at least 50 ft wide measured from each boundary line of the solar project site and I just didn't really understand what the boundary line of a solar project site was is this more defined like it makes it appropriately invisible to the public or is it like the fence or is it what the developer says well I think if we go back to that U Cumberland example might

bigger try can zoom out so the project site is a small portion of the total property so what we're talking about is this area right in here is what they have to buffer they don't have to buffer the entire property that's the intent of that l okay and then it would be up to visual impact to say you're buffering the whole site and this doesn't make any sense part of that language about the visual impact assessment is they're going to look at what the abing uses are so if the power line is the next property on one side that doesn't need any buffering if it's three single family homes on the other side or or Road Public Road on on the two sides those sides is where the visual impact analysis and visual imp buffering would be

11 about noise MH um I think on the previous language it was just noise emitting devices which was confusing and now it just says inverters and Transformers MH um I still feel like it should be made General since and since high voltage or high voltage lines that are add to 60 htz you can hear and if we're only talking about inverters and Transformers it might be helpful to call out like we you still have to meet with noise ordinance um ah but the 400 feet

thing okay so this this is intended to go beyond the basic noise limitations so the the provisions of Section 5 point whatever it is the noise the you know the allowable those deciel requirements will be in place for this project like every any other use but what this says this is adding a foot 400 foot separation to the nearest Residence from the that equipment in order to provide additional protection my comment that's the anten anyway to say to just maybe add an like inverters Transformers and any other noise producing can I take a shot at it please okay uh if I were to make a motion it would be um all noise producing um I

don't have a word for it right now but items whatever must be at least 400 ft from any residence with 400 foot r r indicator from the no okay any noise generating equipment let me start all over again any noise generating equipment must be at least 400 ft from any residence with a 400t r radius indicator from the noise generating equipment shown on the site planine so that would take care of all noise generating equipment I think that so I think that was the original language and I like this because it's more specific but I think it still needs to include noise generating equipment I wanted to say inverters Transformers if they generate noise it is included is it not yeah yeah but I think noise generating equipment makes people question like is that an inverter and if you say inverter cuz most typically it's going to be inverters and Transformers but also technologically down the line maybe a

new type of inverter is no longer referred to as an inverter even though but it's not always generating well we don't know it hasn't been invented yet so any starships that land or the exactly I'm sorry Tyler that was a cheap shot so if you just changed uh invers and Transformers to noise generating equipment like in the last phrase does that work Tyler saying he would like to have have not all inverters and Transformers will create like sometimes trackers create like the Hydraulics with the tractors I know the inverter in my basement is like very quiet yeah until it switches on and off all its relays and then it's very loud but like relays is not on this list so does that mean relays but if it if it generates noise yes I mean it would seem to me to have be impossible difficult to have an all inclusive if so 20 years from now inverters are noiseless if there's no noise coming from it it doesn't have to be 400 feet

away from there is what I'm trying to get to okay I see yeah yeah so I guess you could ask for a list of equipment and ask what their DB levels are which they required under the submissions to do so if you just change in the first U

line of number 11 if you change inverters and trans Transformers to all noise generating equipment must be at least 400 ft from any residents with a 400t radius indicated from the noise generating equipment shown on the site plan does does that fix it suppose it sounds that sounds not good self- referential item line but it's just repeating what what you're measuring yeah oh yeah okay that's true yeah yeah okay so I will make a motion that the paragraph 11 will

say all noise generating equipment must be at least 400 feet from any residence with a 400t radius indicated from the noise generating equipment shown on the site Point second motion a second further you are in favor of the change I just motioned uh 5 Z I believe okay what else

um are you I forgot to ask you guys okay sure that was the 10 yeah that was oh conversation anyway uh page 24 um item 14 uh it's talking about keeping things properly maintained and I just was wondering if vegetation should be included on that list I just didn't see it in any other it does it does it there isation when they talk about vegetated buffer it talks about must be installed or landscaped and maintained great okay that's number seven yes what I was just we just talking about earlier cool um below that item 15 it says any substantial modifications to the solar energy system uh I just what is a substantial mod well exactly that's subject to interpretation but then does that mean they could go ahead and do it and then be like well we didn't think it was substantial right why not just say any modifications we might need a definition well if you're replacing one solar panel with another if you're replacing a single

solar panel do you want them to come to you no but what if they're like moving the access road or something that's a substantial change right but to us it makes sense but there is no definition so they could any change that modifies the footprint of the solar array system of the of the project of the site plan yes yeah or the code there's a statement the code enforcement officer May approve minor modifications that do not maturely impact any of the approval performance standards um and then words to the effect that uh he will similar to what he has to do for the uh mediumsized thing he any he will

then the code I'm trying to say is the code enforcement any change just got to the code enforcement guy that are you know and he will determine if it goes to the planning board or that's if that's a same plan putting more on this well if he feels like it's a major change he kicks says no that's I'm not going to make that decision it goes to the same I can determine that pretty quickly yeah yeah okay cool okay so I've got to come up verbi us to change it correct I don't know I don't you do I think it's cover it is good y

the this is this one's just I got grammatical on it um 182 on page 26 underneath going to say this 182 solar energy system comma roof mounted or building the or as modules fixed to frames which can be tilted towards the south at an optimal angle I just wanted to take out which can be tilted toward the south at an optimal angle because I didn't feel like it was necessary and I thought it was

tilted is separate does that they tilted to the north yeah why can be tilted okay would you like to make a motion to that effect I'm tired I yeah sorry okay that was the last one too so great um I would like to make a motion to change the definition of solar energy system roof mounted or building integrated to uh remove toward the south at an optimal

angle from the first sentence second one other one other part point the Tilted part does that matter fixed different Fram which can be tilted like it's just if they're on your they're on a roof right yeah I would take that well that that allows them like say you got a flat roof on the school system yeah that allows them it clearly allows them to put a tiltable right pole up there with that on top that's think that seem doesn't seem to be hurting anything it didn't okay okay would our grammatical expert agree it's your Mo there I AG right toad

doesn't take out take out words it's already such a long thing it doesn't make sense to even have that to me um the tiled no toad South yeah yeah right I think he's made that motion he has it's been seconded so anybody no further discussion all those in favor of that saying roof mounted and building integrated solar energy generating systems means a solar energy system which solar panels are moded on top of the roof of a structure either is a flush mount of system where is modules fixed to frames which can be tilted period the definition also includes a solar energy system that is an integral part of a principal or accessory building and include but are not limited to photo voltaic or hot water systems that are contained within roofing materials Windows walls skylights and awnings so move seconded all those in favor raise a hand five five nothing so Tyler's on a break Juliet we're back to

you I have one I think just one other thing um sticking with definitions so page 22 C1 we talk about all equipment shall be placed at least 100t from any property line um equipment are we talking like the fence are we talking the inverter Transformers panels any not the fence not the fence the fence is 50 ft well the the setback for all of the

development is solar panels is 100 the fence can be Lo surrounds that developed area but the fence itself doesn't have to be set back 100 feet okay so it's solar equipment solar equipment okay M okay do we feel the to Define that further or you want to put excludes

energized maybe just solar solar equipment maybe just adding that in just add the word solar solar energy equipment do we have a motion yeah I'll make I'll make that motion to change C1 to say all solar equipment shall be placed at least 100t from any property line I will second seconded uh move and seconded any further discussion seeing none please raise a hand if you agree or accept uh unanimous Alan I'm off I had

one just I've been sitting here a lot of time to think but um my uh question George is on back to land use table on the solar energy medium scale if does it make sense here if it's going to be an automatic shift from the code enforcement to the planning board should we say that here either as a CER SL site use C CU or whatever it may be and the code guy is Mr Alan plumber from

The Code Enforcement office is shaking his head yes that that way somebody doesn't come in and says but it said you and I didn't want to read three paragraphs back it seems to be something where cons consolidating that stuff okay so what we would do if you want to do that which I think is helpful so what we would do is in uh that table 44 we would put CER

and which stands for site plan review in both cases we now the problem with that is that applies to everything else that's a conditional use here too so that they have everybody has to come for a conditional use review for all of the things that are in this table and if they're adding a new building or they're expanding their parking 2500 square feet I think it is they also have to go to site plan review so that same issue is all through this table and we don't everywhere say andite plan review and sight plan review so spr is required for every CU right every time there's not not if they're not uh building any new buildings so if we go to eight I think that's uh that's in here yeah so go to page 25 so the code officer already has to for all non-residential uses if they're putting any new building construction non-residential site plan review is required if they're expanding existing buildings that are

non-residential planning board site plan review if they're creating any change to parking or drives in excess of25 00 Square ft other than agricultural gravel they have to go to planning boy site plan review so all through table 3.1 we don't say that and the code officer has to know that and has to apply it it's the same here but there's probably other things that are missing so this just covers 32 through 50 I guess I guess what I'm trying to get to is One-Stop shopping so that if I want to put in a solar system and all these other things maybe you know with next year or whatever we change the others but if I want to put in a solar array medium or small I know and I you

know only they can do with one stop with the code officer is small yes medium is planning board and code officer and large is planning board and code code officer and planning board twice and I guess what's before us tonight is this 44 the solar line and and I know we're trying to get away from going 40 places in a in a code to do that and so do we fix we start with this one saying either CEO code enforcement or just go stra if it's an automatic thing why would you even go to the code enforcement guy why would you just not go to because everybody that comes for a permit he's they're going to be going to the code officer for an electrical department to do this and so the code officer in addition just like he does with building or septic or anything else first thing he looks at is his zoning can they do what they're asking the permit to do so then okay I understand that but just code enforcement either

slash uh so we could we could do that but once you start down that road because the confusion that that will then create is if you only do it for that one people are going to think it's only required for that one when it's required for every one of these other condition I got you but I think what the solar developer is not coming in to put a garage in not coming in to put in to a new building or a private sewage Disposal system so I guess what I want to do is is I think we need to do that we need to uh in this case and I think the good news is is that those kinds of things should get caught in this codification stuff I think this comment was brought up right before the same comment I heard it from somebody I don't know if it was at the last meeting or something public meeting but I think it for I agree like if a developer is looking at what they need to do and they only see code enforcement that's what

they're going to think right oh okay that's all I have to do when in reality they do need to come in front of and the Builder does and I get that the Builder is going to or you know whatever else it is that he they have to do new how I mean they don't have to come to us for a new house I mean I'm I'm not sure you quoted some stuff George and I've lost that page but new building construct they don't come to the planning board for that for conditional use if it's non-residential oh non-residential okay so I got you yeah um so I don't you change it in five places now or you just change it in one I guess I'm trying to get in the habit of doing that and if the world's not going to end if we um we don't do that

[Music] thoughts I agree I agree no better time to start than years right with the three years years I would I would bet on three years I mean if we add it all right now for the ordinance review in April that would that would probably good that might be confusing if we think codification is going to catch it I think we wait till there just to avoid the confusion of thinking this is somehow

because I'm going to make a motion that we do and then it's not the first time I've lost if I cannot convince you they if they have to if they're coming to me anyway then I'm going to say well you need to go to site plan review with that if they say well it doesn't say that here I'm telling you you have to go to Cy review well it does say it someplace else so it does say it in there so if you put it here they're going to know that and I would say I would I would make this correct if you don't feel like it's correct now I would make it correct at this point unfortunately you don't vote uh do you let's see if you pers let's see if you persuaded my colleagues uh pers we're we're tearing up your thing here you guys have any thoughts on it I think I think guys and gals I think it what you're saying makes sense to me I mean as if I were installing solar panels it would be nice to have look at one page not have to go through the

comprehensive plans to see entirely what we need we do to George point we do need to go through and fix other other places at another day I see your point makes sense to me okay I get to vote uh so we'd have to add a new item so what you do if if you want to do that I think what you would do is on the line 44 because that's the really the only part we're changing the at this point is you would add in column rra you'd add uh

Amper sand spr site plan review and then over in the table we would Define spr means planning board site plan review would you keep the CER in yes CER and spr and do the same thing over in equa for protection okay can you make that motion I think I can make that motion um so the first thing so I will make a motion that we change this hard work by the Conservation Commission to add on page I

guess it would be six but under uh section 3.1 table of land uses in reviewing Authority we would add a u acronym spr site plan site plan review correct yep okay so that's pay that's that one so we would add slight plan review and then on the next page on the table itself in on line 44 solar energy systems along medium scale that would say CER Ampersand spr and also over under equa for protction my fingure was moving that way but also under equa Acer protection it would say CER and

do we have any further discussion seeing none alen Plum persuaded me because I was going to vote against it I same it's fine it's okay no one's feelings are hurt not at all uh I I'm just showing you pros and cons well apprciate each one has each one has pros and cons that's a good good thing to add to our list and I think would be an easy thing to do if we've gone through the you know for next year so we have a motion in a second any further discussion seeing none all those in favor of my motion please raise a hand 5 Z and that I do believe

uh is my and I guess under 10 and I Know Chief looked at it and Allen's looked at it Calvin's looked at this but under 10 page 21 an emergency services plan acceptable to the fire chief to accommodate the town's emergency vehicles and equipment so I'm thinking that includes you know if there's things that burn funny in solar panels the chief has has looked at that and said you know I can do it or not you know they have to get the chese blessing yeah well don't thinking of electrical vehicles I think a lot of fire departments have a problem in putting them up don't when you get it that's the reason we didn't go into depth on the battery on the battery storage so yes that is you know watch it burn and then clean up the mess when you're done so uh not we but those folks okay so motion a second no further discussion uh we already voted that we're done right yeah yes okay so we did fact I those are my only questions

[Music] concerned you're buying Juliet time to find more Alan plumber same guy as before um does it say anywhere Alan plumber are code enforcement that's it yeah um does it say anywhere about construction time frames allowed construction time frames during construction like phasing yes I think that's covered under storm water requirements because pile driving is really really loud yeah mhm and and people are annoyed and they will get annoyed in the area so if they start before in the morning well we have don't we have times on cover start construction construction

subis 730 just want to make sure that is a big problem we can certainly when you review the plan in front of us you can certainly remind us of that Miss Gaper yeah I had one question so we scratch storage we're not including that this time around if specifically if we do get an applicant for storage system can we

refer to this or what do we this is going to be limited to solar energy systems so if there is a storage facility associated with it yes if it's a standalone next to the power line nothing to do with solar yeah it would not be covered by these regulations what would we look at you would look at add conditional use first and foremost and the fire I've already had one per company contact me and said fire is going to be a big issue and explain to them the conditional use criteria and so I think that's the way you're going to have to deal with it until such time and usually for a lot of this stuff the cell towers and solar systems and energy developers want regulations in effect to tell them if you meet if you meet all these standards you will get your permit as opposed to conditional use Criterion depending on which way the political winds are blowing you may get your permit you may not and you you have to

invest all that money putting plans together and not have anything to stand on to say wait a minute your ordinance says this but under conditional use and the reason I would guess a ccum however is a lot of towns don't do that because the conditional use gives them more in some ways more leeway so we can I mean I went looked at those two uh battery stories things and it raised great concerns I had you know one this is up in Rumford uh what let's hold off on battery storage let's get this voted on sorry so we have uh are there any questions or comments because I think we're at the point where we are ready to vote on forwarding or not this this uh

draft Amendment to the SEL board sorry do have one more question George you mentioned that this requires an electrical permit it's just electrical there's no building permit required for this I don't think you would need for unless well with the building part if there's a building with it but not for so foundations pile driving road construction vences that's not a building permit no building permit needed vences vences don't need one anyway and pile driving generally does it's not a it's not a building so I would re a building permit and other will the other place that work doesn't require just just the electrical permit but if there was a building a a sheding get a building Drive driveway goes through Drive Road Road Cut Road

commissioner permanent okay thank you any other because I'm about to make a motion on the whole no you looked like you were getting ready to say something okay about to say uh I make a motion that we we recommend approve recommending this to the select board with the changes with the Amendments changes George that I would like to make sure that we have I I think I have made notes on them um do we need

to read all of them well I can just reference them uh the first one was the uh calculation of surface areas uh the second one was C11 what was that um visual the lighting I'm sorry noise generating equipment clarification uh the third one was the roof tilt getting rid of that language right uh roof mount getting rid of that Superfluous language and then uh

we added solar equipment to noise generating that was the next one and the last one was just clarify and then they uh adding the site plan review clear establishment that you need site plan review in that table so those are the changes you got the solar equipment change yes that was the other one yep okay I think I've got a little notes here so let me try doing this and with and George and everybody can jump in if if I get this wrong but okay so I my motion is that we approve the

solar draft the draft amend to enact standards for solar energy systems recommend uh approval of that to the select board at their next meeting with the follow as presented with the following changes so under land uses permitted in zoning we will add a definition for uh site plan review spr

mhm we will on uh item number 44 on the land use table we will change for medium scale we will add that'll be CER Ampersand uh spr under um AP aquafer protection it will say CER and um SP SL plan review see there's nothing there nothing there on page 23 is the next one I'm sorry 22 is the next one 22 yes under performance standards all medium scale and large scale solar energy systems shall meet the following standards paragraph C1 all solar I will add the word solar equipment shall be placed at least 100 ft from any property lining the next one uh is on page 23 of your package but uh the same performance standard item number 11 it will say all

noise generating equipment must be at least 400 ft from any residence with a 400t radius indicated from the noise generating equipment shown on the site plan and the next one I have P 26 page 26 the solar energy system roof mounted or building integrate paragraph 182 shall read solar energy system roof mounted building integrated roof mounted and build buing integrated solar energy generating systems means a solar energy system in which solar panels are moded on top of the roof of a structure either as a flush mounted system or or as mules fixed to frames which can be tilted period the definition also includes a solar energy system that is an integral part of a principal or accessory building include but are not limited to photovoltaic or hot water systems that are contained within roofing materials Windows walls skylights and awnings and I believe one more page 27 Oh yes the

solar surface uh solar energy system surface area surface area means the total area of the solar solar panels is that that the language that we approved before want to use the same language second it we have a motion and a second any further discussion seeing none and very quickly asking for a vote please uh raise your hand if you agree it has passed and to you too and your committee commission thank you very very much and jul I know Juliet get some extra credit too because she put a lot of time and effort into into doing that I'm sad I wasn't there but that was a really good meeting it was I think yeah

in a weird bureaucratic nightmare way so yes although I must admit that when we got into discussions of kilowatts megawatts gigawatts I my eyes closed a couple of times even drinking coffee but thank you very much we have one more as a board one more thing that um you all can leave so what's the plan on updating this we'll make the updates and then I think it to good question I think from here it goes to the select board I'll incorporate those changes if you've seen on the website yeah housing is density is already to go this next part is already posted on the website I held off anticipating some changes on solar uh so tomorrow I will edit edit the drafts and get them to Kim she'll put them up on the website we'll do a packet for the next select board meeting which is probably Tuesday I would think because they're probably going to want to get the Su rather and like that now on the website it says they're being

presented to the select board but have not yet been adopted by the select board correct and we may need to ask Jerry who he would like to if he wants somebody at that meeting to answer questions I you or I or whatever so so I'm sorry I'm a little bit late but I just checked the ordinance because I haven't been called about this but the construction times we have voted on it it ised issue but you might want to think about this issue down the road yes okay but thank

you please send us a note [Music] okay okay the next one is fees and so that George's proposed some language on fees so just to remind everybody in 2022 the town meeting voted to pull the setting of fees out of the land use ordinance and put it into a separate fee schedule that could be amended by the select board on a periodic basis to address needed up increases in the fees over time uh to reflect increased costs so everybody thought at the time that that's all it needed to be done but when they started implementing it select board members started raising questions about what about fees that aren't mentioned anywhere in the luse Ordinance do we do that so we went to the town attorney Town attorney gave an opinion said no you can't so if you're going to enact new fees they have to be approved at town meeting and it makes sense because when the town did addressing back 1990s they wanted to facilitate and

encourage people that would have to change their addresses they would not put a price on that they would pay for it so whenever you enact a fee certain activities people expect to be included in their taxes others they don't so if you're going to an act a fee the town attorney's opinion is this the decision to enact a fee has to be done at town meeting once the approval of charging a fee is approved at town meeting then the select board can set the amount of that fee so this these amendments would do just to conclude they would list all of the current ones and add occupancy permits after Thea permits subdivision sketch plan which we don't currently charge for amended subdivision Shoreland zoning solar energy systems driveway permits and e911 permits that are not mentioned as fees in the current land use ORD and we've looking at both you and the codes enforcement guy this covers all the work that we're doing or

in the case of solar we'll do in the future is there anything out there that's missed speak now or forever you're welcome to join us Mr Alan plumber from the code enforcement officer so Alan plumber code enforcement officer um so I um have talked to George about this and we disagree about this list um I feel like it's should be much simpler if you create this list you're now creating another list that must be maintained so if we have something in this list now but we don't have something in the list from five years from now and we neglect to put it in this list the select board now can't make the change because it's not in this list if you don't have a list if you just simply say if it's referenced in the land use ordinance the select board may change the fee that's very simple anytime a new ordinance get placed gets placed in the land used ordinance the select board may change the fee without adjusting a list

in any way but where do we show the fees it's the fees of the a fee schedule separate fee schedule so we can still do that that's that's what's being done right now but that's still a list that needs to be maintained right it doesn't you you don't I don't believe you need to to have a list the difference is whether you go to town meeting or not so let's just say like cell towers is not on this and so when we have a cell

tower uh ordinance then we would have to add when we go to the town meeting for cell tower we have to say we have to change this list to add cell towers versus just just leaving the just saying there is a fee for it within the cell tower period in the land use ordinance if there's a fee in the land use ordinance the select board can make that change simple direct if it's already no list maintains or later on if you add something to the land use ordinance because someone we get a new permit that says people are going to make fits we don't know what those are but if the the select board decides or you decide that there's going to be an ordinance about it it goes in the lane use ordinance you don't need to add them to the list it's already in the land use ordinance therefore the select board can change it because it says the select board may change any fee schedule that shows any fee that's associated with

something in the land sources but I guess what I'm saying what I like about this is that all of the fees are together in a list so if I'm a developer and I'm coming in oh okay so it's going to cost this and this and this versus if there's no list oh no there is a list because it's in the fee schedule that references the so there is a list so do this then like

I'm just wondering why let me yeah let me ask a question do we because I T I also tend to agree but in the attorneys you know withhold all opinions um do we need to list them all separately because at one time we had talked about doing what Mr Plummer said is there what they have said to us is that we have to list them all individually I think it's harder to do it that way because what he's advocating is what the way it was set up in the first place if you go back to article five and six uh article six sets the subdivision says in here they shall pay a fee and it used to set the amount of the fee in article six and there was one in article 7 there was one all scattered throughout there and when we started this process my thought was to take out all of those references that are scattered throughout there and just have the list in article 18 and and you cannot add a new according to the town attorney you cannot add a

new fee without going to town meeting and amending this ordinance so whether you amend it in 20 places or you amend it in one place I think it's more efficient but you were saying going to the town meeting but going to a town meeting if you're adding a new fee schedule it's going to be it's going to be in the ordinance and the ordinance has to go to the town meeting yes correct so why are we doubling the work because the town attorney has said you cannot just have the select board added to the uh no that's not what he said no that's why what I'm saying what I'm saying okay I've provided a new fee for cell tow building widgets cell towers cell towers and we we're providing the ordinance the ordinance is going to the town town meeting yeah and it's approved and it's in the land use ordinance at that point right but the question is where in the land use ordinance do you put it do you put it within each individual section all the

way through the ordinance or you put it in one one article which is what this is being didn't we just say that there's a fee schedule in here yes where is it sorry it references the fee it's not in the the fee schedule is not in here but why can't we say the fee schedule is supported by the ordinance by the land use ordinance why isn't it in here because the if it's in here it cannot be changed except at town meeting if it's this is an I I see is part of the ordinance well this becomes part of the ordinance as well just just the list of Fe I yeah just so I guess the question I have is in the land use ordinance now do we cover all are all of these and it

we're just obviously solar's not been approved yet but is our all interest driveway e not is there somewhere in the existing land use ordinance that says because if I understood the attorneys okay if I understand what they said George correct me if I'm wrong is if in the talk where the paragraph that in the land use ordinance that talks e91

addressing if it does not say underneath that paragraph he didn't say that he said it has to be referenced in your land use ordinance having it in section 18 of the land use ordinance is referencing it in the land use ordinance yeah and I think the question is do we need to list every could we just say uh

uh accept just just delete the line that says the following are fees for services rendered in the administration of this land use eliminate that line it says all permit fees shall be established in a fee scheduled adopted annually by the select board based on analys of to so on and so forth so does that not give them the power to add a fee for and I don't know

what it has to be within the land use ordinance period like for instance right now I don't think it has e911 addressing anywhere that's what I'm asking if it doesn't then we then what's the difference between going all through these whatever 25 lines and making going back and changing each paragraph in the land use ordinance and saying there's a fee associated with e91 if the associated with demolition with reinspection yeah we don't talk about e911 in here right well it'll be added to the I mean there's an article for e911 okay address there's no fee mentioned in article8 whatever it is it will be mentioned referenced in article 18 yeah that was forward going forward that's the only point of this I guess my question is did the attorney say that for all of these different items it must say for insance driveway

it must say somewhere in the land use ordinance there's a fee for that that there is a fee for doesn't say what this is somewhere in I'm talking about now so under whatever paragraph with in a land use ordinance but but in every thing you could just say rather than listing it you could say when you create the cell tower ordinance fees are contained in the fee schedule adopted by so but we'd have to go back to each each item that's the fee schedule so that's the fee schedule that's not my question my question is the attorney uh and Georg the most contact with them the did the attorney say that for every one of these for you

know that where we discussed building or demolition or occupancy that in that paragraph e91 the answer is still no he did not say it has to be in that paragraph all he said was it has to be in the lane use organs this is in the for that particular topic any of these fees yeah I understand but I guess my question is it's not now in the land use ordinance 911 it will be if this is

right now I'm talking right now today right now it's not okay so right now today it's not in there so how do we how do you what he saying but it has to specifically address e911 but somewhere in the LAN specifically to the to e911 entrance driveway it specifically has to say there is a fee for that what and I like the idea of a generic statement but if the if what the legal opinion says is that you have to specifically address um each of these items I don't think we can do that but by specifically addressing it when it says cell tower and at the end the Fe will be noted in the fee schedule for the town yes I'm not so that's noted in the land but right now we'd have to go back and all these things that are not now noted they're not noted in here then you have they have to be noted somewhere specifically so for solar we'd have you pulled them out you've pulled them out and put them in the fee schedule so it's

separate not all I mean E1 e911 is is my example so if we don't do this we have to go back and make a change to the parag the article that addresses e911 to say your verbi that a the will be established on that but what I don't understand is is you're you took you previously took all the fees out of the land use ordinance if put them in a fee schedule right because you didn't want to update update update update update update update you're going to have to update update update update update this when every new ordinance comes out I mean I hear you but if the attorney is say the problem at some point in time you have to State specifically e911 so how hard is it for us to say um E9 cell towers is something

that's up and coming so when we do the cell tower thing we just make uh what comes after y uh Z whatever comes after y I'll say cell tower that's right okay you going to or you update so you create that but now we have to go back and change we don't have anything for e911 so we have to go back and add it there we we have to because it doesn't exist the right words don't exist in that article the ones that don't exist because all those do so just the new ones are the ones you would add the thing that says if it's in the land use ordinance so that stops the updating of this list which you don't want to update lists you've that why you pulled it out of there so my point is made I think and if you don't your point is your point is made but at this point I'm saying whatever number there are four five or six we're going to have to go back and change six articles to say this is covered in the whatever verbiage that

you're talking but if the verbiage you put here is if it's in the land use if it's in the land use ordinance it's the the select board can if the if the article if the information that you're going to put a fee to which it has to be if you're attaching a fee to it it has to be in the land use ordinance if it's in the land use ordinance there it is automatically there maybe this would be a good thing to do when we do the codification well it'll be part of that yeah I going be part of that discussion and I guess I hear what you're saying and it basically like simple and this there is an extra step to this but are there things that are in the land use ordinance that we don't plan to have with Fe are I think there's a lot of things in there that don't have a fee associated with it but we could add add one after the fact I guess I'm okay with going with this list at this point and and again that's something I think good point

since you're the the uh the pushing the codification is those are the kinds of things we should address with them and so three years from now we may they may say hey you don't need that but I that's my thought at this point so I open up I think right now if we're having legal advice to add this I think it's something booes us to do that because it is someone challenges this and we go against legal advice we're going to lose yeah and the town attorney isn't going to care whether you put it in each individual section all the way through the ordinance or if you just have this one list he isn't going to Care it didn't take time to go through and pull it up of all of the individuals so it's in some of these we can do that when we do the clarification that's my feeling but other thoughts I agree not that we do not appreciate your your thoughts I know yeah I know what he's saying thank you yeah thank you for that because it it

you guys are at you're the ones who cut people come in and say do you have a fee how do I know what the fee is O you didn't put a cell we you forgot to add cell phone towers and stuff like that but other thoughts so if I went through this list right now Grant I know some of them are new but the majority of these had been in the land use ordinance before were they identified I if I went to building Electrical Plumbing did it specifically say under building electrical and plumbing there is a b no not building electrical and plumbing okay then we need it yeah I I think that we can sort this that answers it for me because I'd have to go back and to the land use ordinance and had the word b for each one of these categories in the OR throughout the ordinance right and I it's not I I guess what I want to do is is it's going to come out all wrong but I'm not running for mayor but we are not capturing a lot of money on stuff

there's a lot of fees that are not be either not being captured at all well was a lot better this year than it it was much better this year I mean we had far fewer permits and more fees collected uh now these guys are on the budget committee so if that helps um so I would like to ensure that we are in fact you know collecting it and like it if somebody comes in with a solar energy project that could potentially be a fairly significant fee that's not a $50 $500 electrical fee that's a significant so I don't want to miss that you know I guess is is my point and and if we can use this to capture that if in fact we've got them all now uh going forward

we can then ask the codification folks is there a simpler there the lawyer is going to look at it could we use this sentence as a catchall on paragraph one of the article or how do we write that or do we do we just keep doing this I'll make a motion that we accept 18.4 permit application submission requirements as

any further discussion um conveniently it's listed A through Z can we get rid of the ABCs and just leave a list but numbers instead of letters whatever well if you ever have a legal citation like someone like say they do adopt they're going to want a specific big fee for uh Sol Farms you know like

he's saying $88,000 $20,000 somebody challenges that it goes to court they want a specific reference of what they climing our basis for charging it so that's just go y a a BB right yeah right now it's up through what dou I guess I should flipped so we' use double A or or you know that's what you do AA I I totally appreciate what Alan Plum the code enforcement has said but when the question was answered to me that we do not have these fees listed for all these items in the current ordinance this is a quicker fix for now yes versus having to go back and find out where wasn't it and we're

comfortable that this covers current and future permit right these we over that together right time being yeah yeah I mean as it it doesn't have cell towers right no but cell towers is when we add a cell tower paragraph or should we add cell tow as a d our first doua we don't have anything in ourin don't know that can we can I've talked and this is maybe we have to get verification but if anything requires a conditional use we can establish and I did that is in the legal opinion so we could have a cell tower conditional use permit application would be set by the select board yeah even though we don't have so if one came in we could go to the S board be like hey what do you think about cell towers they they would have to create the fee they would have a differential conditional use permit fee for for the different types of uses we just could home OCC home business might be $50 solar cell tower might be $1,000 you can

have differential conditional use permit fees depending on but any fee that you charge you have to have a basis for charging it based on what it cost the town to provide the service so you can't just say well big energy companies they can afford Oh They'll they'll pay whatever you ask no you have to say this is going to cost the town staff time board time what we require as I recall peer review and a whole bunch of other stuff so yes I mean but there but that is both of you and all of our time doesn't matter but you have to be able to justify it is very expensive to and that was a discussion that we asked the solar commission to not get into impact fees because the town doesn't have such a thing right now so that's a whole another discussion probably outside the planning board it would be up to the select board to sit down and say yes we want to have impact fees of whatever term you want to use for a Solar

Development because it has an impact on open land so so we have a motion in a second to to do this a you know paragraph the B's as presented can I get a raise to we have yeah it was just under conditional use right $50 so I guess it let's get a vote then we talk about how to do so do we have a vote we have a vote raise your hand if you want to approve as is it is done so that is our official thing and I guess Alan I would look to you to work with the select board to say you know we I want to develop in George and your other friends out there in the business we need to have a a cell tower conditional use fee because this is what you know I think it's going to C you had mentioned I think going going up there and inspecting it at 200 feet or whatever it may be it's not necessarily in your uh not my wheelhouse that's for sure so actually are you volunteering to inspect them no no I just wanted to back up for

a second I know we've already voted but this was um a public comment was allowed for this should we have opened it up to public that's a good point does anybody out there have thank you very much were there any public comments on this because we could unvote I gu that's a good point but I thank you for or you could forward comments onto the select board yeah whe there any anybody out there you certainly can email us so all for all three of them to kind of wrap this up this all three of these articles will go forward as a package to the select board board it will be on the website for people to review I don't I can't tell you what the select board's process whether they'll take public comments or not on this um they certainly take emails and other other forms it will go to them they will uh approve or disapprove or modify the language uh send it back to us the planning board we will we hold the

official public hearing so that is an an official public hearing and past the other things have been public public information uh meetings uh and discussions so sometime that has to be no more than 30 days no less than seven so if the town meetings the 6th of April no earlier than the fifth or 6th of March no later than the 31st of March

whatever that is so sometime in the month of March we will have to have formal public hearings this what we did last year was that a Saturday or do we want to do me no I think we did it on a week day right uh week day after yeah it was at 6 or 6:30 at uh I think we had a coule we went went down to one because all that was left was uh resource protection and we will do that not the Conservation Commission on solar so sometime in March and we'll talk about at the next meeting okay and if we have time in March we'll we'll do it at the regular meeting do we want to vote on we already did I so sorry we did we voted yes I did have a question though if say a cell phone person comes in can we go and request a fee and then go back to the person the the applicant and be like this is your fee like like um they come into us we start looking at the application we're like shoot we don't have a fee for you can we

go to the select board be like what is the fee for sell I think my guess is what we should do is we should establish and that was my comment to Allan is that and if there's conditional use home business cell towers I don't know trailer par whatever else is out there storage just those guys need to they they guys the select board need to say okay for the South Tower use we're going to have Allen's recommendation is a th we'll go with a th for the home business we really want to encourage that it might it's not going to be a th000 bucks and 50 bucks or whatever the right the right fee is but they should be doing that because they still have to they'll set the solar fee they'll set the 911 funding for or cost fee so wonder if they going to start working on these like next right after the Articles yeah the fees setting

the fees I don't right after we vote no this has to be approved right I mean are the town boots can't Happ until April so I think probably my limited experience between now and then they're approving or you know sending a recommendation back to us on these three articles plus budget plus all their other business my get guess is they may task Allan and George give us a fee for you know what do you think is the right fee for last time I provided the interim Town manager with a full comprehensive report on the fees uh in June and the

select board acted on it around October or November so but the truth J we no longer you interims gone and and so yeah I mean but it's at their their Pace I mean they depends on a lot of factors but you know I don't I would bet it's it can't officially announce it until this is approved yep okay thank you all very much official no we need a motion I was thinking Him in Advance do I have a motion to adjourn I will make a motion to adjourn and a second second I think we're done I don't think we need do we need let just to be honest approved this is yours hey thank you all very much for your time audience Mark welcome