Bangor Planning Board reviews proposed changes to temporary sales ordinance

[2:18] Jonathan Boucher: And welcome applicant staff and board members, of the public. This is the May 5th, 2026 meeting of the City of Bangor's Planning Board. It is seven o'clock. My name is Jonathan Boucher. I'm chair of the board. Board members are volunteers in the Bangor community. Other board members in attendance this evening are Ted Brush, Tricia Hayes. We have Ken Hobson's absent, that's Ken Huynh is absent as well. We have Vice Chair Janet Jonas, Ross Whitford, and we have absent as well Jason is an alternate member Justin Cartier. City staff members in attendance this evening include Planning Officer Anya Collette, Assistant Solicitor Grace Ennis, and we have Planning Analyst Matthew Altiero as well. We thank them all for their help in preparation for this meeting. First we're going to start with old business, which includes the meeting minutes for April 21st, 2026. member hayes was absent so we should not vote on this one but is there a motion are there any questions or modifications oh excuse me i had mentioned that member hewn was absent but i see that he's joined via zoom all right so member hewn you'll be able to vote on the minutes do we have any modifications or comments on the minutes from april 21st if not can i get a motion member brush and a second number jonas the second and a roll call vote member brush yes member hewn yes for jonas yes member Woodford? Yes. And the chair votes yes. Next we have the adoption of findings for 96 State Street and 2645 or 2645 Broadway. Any questions, comments? Again, Member Hayes not voting on this one. Can I get a motion to adopt these findings? Move to approve the findings. member brush in a second I said member brush it was member Hune who made the motion and remember Jonas do the second Sarah doing the minutes member brush was the second and we'll do a roll call vote member brush yes remember Huynh? Yes. Remember Jonas? Yes. Remember Woodford? Yes. And the chair votes yes. That brings us to new business and I do have to read a little bit of an introduction, but I won't do our full introduction since there are no, there are no land, let's see, I'll read my, so the planning board has two main roles, amendments to land development code and site plan review. There's no site plans this evening. First, we review amendments to the Land Development Code, which typically include either changes to zoning districts or changes to the text within the code. Our review of these amendments includes adherence to the comprehensive plan as well as considering any applicable concerns from the public. Tonight's meeting will include a workshop on proposed changes to the temporary sales ordinance. For the item presentation, staff will lead the presentation. Once the item has been presented, we will hold time for public comment. For public comment, the person should come to the podium, introduce themselves, and state if they are Bangor resident. Indicate if they are for against the proposal. It's also helpful to present your thoughts based upon the city's codes and standards and the comprehensive plan, as these are the primary documents used by the board to make our decision. All comments and discussions should remain respectful and considerate of others. Once public comments are completed, we will close the item for public comment. I think that's all the information that's applicable to tonight's meeting, so I would like to move to new business, which includes the workshop on proposed changes to temporary sales ordinance. Okay, anybody like to present? Yeah, so we reviewed this with the [6:35] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): bed committee last night too, but essentially what we're proposing is to make some changes to the temporary sales ordinance to add some flexibility for more seasonal sales, especially seasonal food sales. Currently our ordinance is pretty restrictive when it comes to that. We only allow seasonal sales, and by seasonal, I mean a food truck or a truck or a trailer that might stay in place for 180 days out of the year. We only allow those to sell agricultural, marine or forest products, or if they sell food, they're only allowed in the waterfront development district, so you know nobody could do a you know food stand in another commercial district for a certain portion of the year. We also require in certain zones for them to add five extra parking spaces on top of the minimum, even though we have a lot of excess parking already in a lot of these commercial zones. We also don't allow these or really temporary sales at all in the neighborhood service district, and so what we're proposing is to broaden this to allow seasonal food sales and basically all the commercial zones in the neighborhood service district. We would limit that to two per lot. Also we would allow these on vacant lots, make use of that land. They'd still have to get the owner's permission, and then in certain zones like the main commercial zones, we would increase the maximum floor area from a thousand to two thousand, and then remove the requirement for extra parking. We would also reduce the setbacks to 10 feet from any property line, and then we would add a new restriction to prohibit drive-through service, just because drive-through there's a more intense and often it's conditional use. So that's really the gist of it, and happy to answer questions. [8:37] Jonathan Boucher: Any questions from the board? [8:40] Unidentified speaker (Board Member): Yeah, I just have one question. Yeah. In your memo, I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, but in your memo, you indicated that it was a restraint to make them move their commercial vehicle off of the off of the lot, but in the ordinance it appears that you're still requiring that. Let me look here, hold on. If you look at the last the last line of the of your memorandum on the first paragraph, the last line, yeah, it says for example could not be located on a lot for a season in a commercial district unless it is removed every day. Yeah, like that's a encumbrance, yep, but that's still but a one still requires that, so basically the [9:49] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): ordinance sets two different categories. A one is one category where they would have to remove it each day, and then number two is a second category where they could remain for 150 days, and there then there's other restrictions there. So we're proposing to remove that restriction on agriculture marine and forest products, so that then if somebody falls into the second category where they might be there for 150 days, they could then sell food without moving. Yeah, [10:20] Unidentified speaker (Board Member): without moving. Yeah, okay, i'm sorry, i was, it's okay, remember. [10:30] Janet Sanborn Jonas: Jonas, I don't have a question, I just have a couple of comments. I'm very much in favor of this. I think it's really well crafted for a couple of reasons. I really like the removal of the additional parking restrictions because, you know, I don't like asphalt, so I appreciate that, because we don't want to be creating more requirements for parking where we already have disused parking. And secondly, I really liked your point about how this will help perhaps move a vendor from, maybe I'll give an example of the folks across the street for me, Dreamer Food. They started out at Korean Dad one day a week, then they moved their food truck, and now they have a brick and mortar. And I love the way that this really encourages that progression with giving them additional resources and not encumbrances is to be able to get that food truck piece of experience in their repertoire, so thanks very much. [11:24] Unidentified speaker (Board Member): Yeah, any [11:28] Jonathan Boucher: other questions? One question I have is like ice cream trucks, what, how does that fit into this? Because they're not parking per se, they're just driving. Yeah, so they wouldn't [11:39] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): really fall under this. You know, the only thing they might fall under is if they stayed on a lot, you know, from that 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., you know, they would be fine, but if they're just moving around [11:50] Jonathan Boucher: around town, I have seen them do that, like go to different events, and they'll like Park there for [11:54] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): a while, but that's normal. Yeah, that's a different thing with events, so it wouldn't really be affected by this. Yeah, any [12:06] Jonathan Boucher: other thoughts or questions? What's next for this? Are you [12:17] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): gonna continue to draft it and bring it forward? So if you all seem good with it and Council was good with it, so we would put this through for in the formal process, so you'd probably see it with advertising, you probably see it your June mean, first June meeting. Okay. [12:35] Jonathan Boucher: Now this is only, this goes, it goes beyond food, it's also merchandise, it's worth, yes. [12:40] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): Yes, that's true. All [12:46] Jonathan Boucher: right, thank you, thank you, thank you. Moving on from there, that concludes includes new business, and that brings us to thoughts on land development code updates and land use planning. Is there anything new or any updates? No updates, I am gradually reviewing the [13:13] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): Order the new code. It's been tough because there's been a lot of other things on my plate, but I so far I had quite a few comments for the consultants, but I still even I haven't even really gone through most of the code yet. I'm trying to block out time next week and really over the next few weeks to do that. And we have other people doing that too. Matt's reviewing it and Anne, legal and code. So it's going to take a little while for us to get to everything. I feel like everything's kind of going to be, a lot of the work is going to be at this stage for us to kind of go through and make sure that it's in the best possible format before it is released to the public. So it might take us a while, you know, and then once we finish our review, then the consultants have to go back and make changes. So yeah, that's where we're at. Maybe. Yeah, it's hard to say because we also have some things to iron out with consultants to some discussion points. You know, and at the same time, we also have 50 other things that we're [14:22] Janet Sanborn Jonas: So right in the next round of the state modifications is June, right? [14:31] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): Well, they actually just passed emergency legislation to postpone the deadline for that to next July. However, you know, I want to say, like, I want to work on that over the next few months. But it is all kind of tied up with the new code, because we're trying to take what we're doing with the new code. We're trying to make it bit so that we can just pull over what we do into the new code, and so it's kind of tricky, but because we have that extended deadline now I think it might be a little longer before we have the round two changes. It would be, yeah, but [15:06] Janet Sanborn Jonas: Yeah, it makes a lot more sense to just kind of do that in parallel and just weave it together, and then we just do it when we're ready. We don't necessarily have to wait until July, right? We can do it [15:17] Unidentified speaker (Applicant/Staff): if we're ready early yeah i would like to do it before july the other thing too is we're applying for funding from the state to reimburse us for the cost to make these changes and we have to send them the draft ordinance before we adopt it so i definitely want to get this done before july so we have a time for them to review it 's [15:40] Jonathan Boucher: A good plan. Any other comments or discussion? Any other topics? I was gonna ask if there's anything that needs to be signed or anything like that, but I don't think there is. Decisions? There's two decisions. Yeah, all right. With that, it's 7 14 and this meeting of the