Hampden Planning Board hears Summer Street subdivision opposition

[0:32] Planning Board Chair: So I know we still have a few people coming in. If they just make sure they sign in, we'll get started. Welcome, everybody, to the August 12th Hamden Planning Board. We have an agenda that we're going to follow. And similar to our last meeting, just for informational purposes, we will hear from the developer. Then we'll have town staff comments, and then we'll take public comment. We are going to limit people to three minutes again. And same as before, if there are people who wish to speak over people are welcome to provide their time to that person. Jacob will again take the people's name so we keep track of it and keep things orderly hopefully. So I will start with our prior minutes. Second any commentary? Seeing none, all those in favor? Yes, chair vote yes. Seeing no old business, we will move on to new business. The first one we have is Robert Truergy Esquire public hearing for a final review of minor subdivision. Is that representative here? Come on up. So before you start, do we need to open the public hearing officially? Yes, so I will open the public hearing on this last [2:54] Justine Drake: month. My name is Justine Drake. I'm a civil engineer with Hinkley Hill designs, and I'm here on behalf of Robert Truergy, who is proposing the rebel road subdivision. It's located off Mayo Road, and it's three lots. So the three lots that are being proposed are within one parcel, and then the right-of-way that will be used to access the subdivision will be on a neighboring parcel that Robert is a Co trustee of 50 foot right away. This is a minor subdivision, and the town has asked us to make some accommodations for emergency vehicles, so we're proposing the right of way to accommodate a fire truck turnaround in the future when the road is built, and also they just wanted us to make it clear on the plan that we would make an accommodation for a fire hydrant, which will be located right on the corner of the proposed rebel road in this general location. The subdivision will be supported with public water because there is public water available off Mayo Road at the right-of-way entrance. location but we are proposing septic systems because the public sewer is further up off Mayo Road and it's further than the 500 foot limitation. Another reason for that is this property sits lower than where that where that sewer system would tie into so it would require pumping and just logistically it makes more sense to have septic systems to serve those lots. Do you have any questions or Robert here is Robert is here if he has anything to add I think [4:56] Planning Board Chair: we're good staff yep like Justine said it's pretty straightforward three lot deeded 50 foot easement for road future road the staff didn't have any concerns for the requested waiver it's just three-quarter inch iron rods instead of the one inch that the ordinance says so other than that we're happy with the submission okay is there anybody here that is for this item that would like to speak for it anyone here would like to speak against it any questions from the board I'll entertain a motion I'm going to close the public oh yeah we'll close public hearing my apologies thank you for noticing that so you can edit as needed the tax map and lot is correct yes my apologies if you look at the report there's one that is appropriate on the bottom no David sorry if you look at the report this one on the bottom of the report it's the right one if there's anyone coming in that hasn't signed in yet would you sign in on that sheet over here on the left side of the door my right Yes, you still need to add the waiver. Thank you. I'll [7:57] Planning Board member: make a motion based on the final. I have been planning votes to approve the final minor subdivision plan for creation three lots in the residential B district. Max map lot 35-0-006. With a waiver requested article 2.1.4.2. Subdivision ordinance, the applicant has requested to use three-quarter inch iron rods. I'll [8:27] Planning Board Chair: second that any discussion seeing [8:32] Speaker F (unidentified): none sir on my left yes [8:38] Planning Board Chair: chair votes yes move on to the second agenda item has the notice requirements be met on this I assume then I'll open the public hearing and open it to the developer ready [9:04] Justine Drake: For me to begin, please. All right, again, I'm presenting on behalf of PJG Properties. They're proposing five single family homes, which falls under the application of a multi-family development, and it's for a major site plan, major subdivision application. So since we last met, the board asked us to, ask me to review a couple of areas, and one of them was parking. So we have added a second parking space to each dwelling unit. I've also modified the alignment because there was some concern over reverse tangents being closer than the required 50 feet apart, so I've made modifications to alleviate that concern. And this wasn't discussed, but I did shift over the utilities at the entrance just to minimize any concern over constructability and just making sure we have enough room to get those utilities installed. Do you have any specific questions? And I'm not sure, I would, I would like Zach, if you want to come up [10:26] Planning Board Chair: if you want to have a seat and have them come up. Sure, state your name. Good [10:44] Zach Gilpin: evening, my name is Zach Gilpin. I live at 167 Kennebec Road, and I'm one of the owners involved with the proposal that we're going to be talking about tonight. In listening to everybody each of the last two times we got together, and I'm sure again tonight, it's very clear to me that there's a lot of intelligent people in the room. There are a couple things that I think haven't been a part of the conversation yet that should be at the very least part of the conversation. So the first thing that I want to really briefly touch on is in their conversations that we've had up to this point, I don't think that the average or typical tenant has had their fair shake in the conversations that we've been having. I've been a landlord for seven going on eight years now, and if it's not a thousand people, it's definitely in the high hundreds for the amount of tenants I've had, and I can stand up here and confidently say that one of them out of all of those people I wouldn't let live at 167 Kind of Back Road with me, and that's 50 feet from where I live. Two perfect examples of that are my sister Marissa and my good friend JJ. And I don't have the time required to stand up here and tell you guys what kind of positive impact those two have made on me. But what I do have the time to stand up here and say is that I would put their character and their morals up against anybody. And so again, I just think that is part of the conversation that we haven't had yet. And then the second thing that I wanted to touch on, I guess to relate this to my first point is, I get, sorry, I guess I'm trying to say is, I think that these things go hand-to-hand. Those guys just starting out in their lives, they're not ready to own a home yet, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to live in Hamden. So the median home sales price right now in Hamden, I'm going to look down because I have the numbers written down. I want to make sure I get them right. The median home sales price right now in Hamden is between $370,000 and $382,000. To keep the numbers conservative for this analysis, I'm going to use $300,000, which is 20 or 25% less than that first number I just said. So a mortgage of $300,000 at 7% interest over the course of 30 years would be, Hamden's mail rate, I believe, is $17.7. So if that house was tax assessed at $300,000, that would be $5,295 of tax annually, which would be $441.25. For insurance, I used $125 a month, which I think I would call conservative. And then for utilities, so water, sewer, electric, heat, and internet, net, I use $300 a month, which if you include heat in the winter, I think that we can all agree that's extremely conservative. So that total would be $2,862.16 per month for the average Hampton house. And I don't think that 's the whole conversation, but I do think that is a part of the conversation that needs to be had. I think it's important that people like my sister and JJ and many other people that I don't care if it's a community in Hamden or community in the state of Maine or anywhere else, people like that, you add them to a community and it makes the community better, and I can stand up here and super confidently say that. So again, I know that there's a lot of really smart people in the room. I know that we're gonna have probably a lengthy conversation tonight, and I'm good with that, but I think that those were two things that I didn't want to miss the opportunity to say, so thank you all for your time. [14:58] Planning Board Chair: Yep, so in the report she, the applicant, added the parking. Everything else had been met prior to the preliminary. So she added the additional parking that you guys had requested and the purchase sale and agreement. We also received in the 11th hour on Monday that you've got a memo from Miles that the title attorney's office finally found that the lot has not been reconfigured since prior to our zoning ordinance, which means that the dimensional requirements for frontage are no longer applicable, so it can be utilized as a driveway and they don't have to beat the road, and that is really the only new information. Further [15:58] Deputy Chief Lindstrom: concerns about the space needed to turn a fire truck around, I was told there's a video which you may see tonight. I was actually at Children's Day and sent the crew to that location again. All that I would add for the planning board is that if you do see the video, they kind of, I made a three point turn. It's tight there. It's tight for most driveways on that road. It's tight in a lot of places within our community. That's why we train. So my stance on that hasn't changed. I just wanted to kind of weigh in that I did receive an email that there was some concern. I did follow up and previewed the video and watch that as well as talk to my staff that responded to that location. And it was kind of a, it wasn't out of the ordinary for us, so. [16:53] Planning Board Chair: So what were you called to the site for? [16:55] Deputy Chief Lindstrom: It was a report of smoke in the building. So it actually happened to be right in the area of where this project's going to happen. And there was video taken when the crew arrived on scene. There was video taken of the crew as they responded and negotiated the fire truck. To my knowledge, there was nothing found. It was a possible smoke, smell, or odor with detectors chirping. When they got there was no smoke in the building and they kind of, they ran their gas meter through the building, there was nothing, no readings on the meter whatsoever, and they cleared the scene. Thank [17:36] Planning Board Chair: you. Okay, we have a lot of people here today. I think we'll ask for people to again, we can address that. Okay, yes, public hearing is open, Ron. Real quick before we get started, would you like to bank up some time so I don't have to keep interrupting? Yes. [19:40] Ron Hajdu: No, that's the first thing I'll address. Perfect. My name is Ron Hajdu. I'm in a butter at 85 Summer Street. I'd like to make a presentation tonight that's going to take 25, 28 minutes. So at 30 minutes, let's say, I need nine people to cede their time to me. I believe I have nine. I have at least nine people, but we have a list of actually, we'll give you the list of nine people. [20:08] Planning Board Chair: All right. So just for everybody's information, I think most of you were probably here last time. What we're gonna do is there's three minutes per person as time is needed you're more than welcome to see it to others but I just need to capture your name so that we can keep track of everybody that's spoken in the time so if I can get nine volunteers just to raise your hand and then orderly one by one speak out who you are David Tibbetts and you signed in today day David all right bear with me just a moment I'm gonna look through the list all right thank you David that's one people retire 67 Peter what was your last name again okay yep [20:58] Jonathan Wood: All right that is three David King 54 Summer Street [21:10] Planning Board Chair: All right bear with me just a second that is five and six thank you Michael oh [21:44] Ron Hajdu: Also I believe Ms Ryder sent a email to you about Chris and Jess Nesmith who were going to dial in but asked instead requested that I speak on their behalf they're a way out [22:01] Planning Board Chair: Of town they're direct providers I did not see your name did you sign in Thank You Sybil that's seven I did not get the previous gentleman's name I did not check that off in the blue hey there we are that helped a lot thank you and so [22:29] Ron Hajdu: You got Chris and Jess Nesmith as well the other eight and ninth are they Are they present? They're not present, but they're direct debutters. They received a direct debutter notice. [22:38] Planning Board Chair: We did get the email, but if they are not here or not dialed in, we are not counting them. [22:42] Public commenter (Summer Street resident): Can we FaceTime them in then? No. [22:44] Planning Board Chair: If we need the time, I'm sure we can address it then. How many people? Yeah. Yeah. Is it 80-82? [23:07] Justine Drake: I'd say 80-82. OK. Yep. Yep. Yep. [23:11] Planning Board Chair: Yep. All right. That is nine, and with you, that's 10. OK. So 30 minutes, and I'll get that going. Okay. [23:18] Ron Hajdu: Let me start my engine here. First off, I want to thank the group. We have a large turnout today, and these people have entrusted me to speak on their behalf. We've talked about this amongst ourselves, and I think people are of one mind on this project here. I also want to say, because of this meeting and the information that came out on the 14th, these are prepared remarks. So I brought these prepared remarks to this meeting tonight to address. At this meeting, we've got a couple of new pieces of information which I would like to address at the end, but I'm going to continue with my prepared remarks as if we did not get any new information tonight because it's the first I've heard of a couple things. So at the end, I'll address the new information that we got. And I apologize. Some of this is going to be a lot of numbers, a lot of dimensions, a lot of citations, but I know you want to address specific ordinance things that you have to meet. So I'm going to address specific citations in the ordinance. I brought some graphics. And I've distributed a packet here. And you can follow along with it. I'll try to stick to the writing here. So the first graphic I have is the applicant's re-revised as of July 14 site plan. And one of the things that I added to it by going out and actually measuring in the field is the abutters house, which is right here now, because that's a small scale and the detail we need to talk about, it's hard to see. On that, I blew up a sub area of that, so this is one inch equals 20 feet scale. This, I don't know what the scale is, but it's large, so you can see it. The abutters house, the house on the applicant's property, and the proposed private road in Summer Street. So I'll be referring to this. I've made some marks on this. It's still too small to see. I can walk it around. I can pass it around, depending on what people want to do. You're welcome to come up and look at it, but I'll set it here and I'll be addressing it briefly. No, that's good, thank you. So just to recap last month at the July 8th meeting, this board heard a presentation by the developer of the revised subdivision proposal for the 8082 Summer Street address. You also heard an extensive public comment period in opposition to the revised project from a large group of Summer Street residents. At the conclusion of those presentations, Board Member Jacob Bollier made a specific motion to advance preliminary approval of the revised project with nine specific conditions attached. That motion ultimately passed the Board 7-0. Unfortunately, the conditions in that motion were largely based on outdated information. It was presented to the board by the town planner in the board's information packet that was provided for that night's meeting. Specifically, eight of the nine conditions in the motion had already been addressed by the developer and were presented at that meeting before the motion was made and completed. So I'm sure the developer was very happy that the, that there, the motion included eight of the nine conditions that they had already met. So just be aware of that. There was, however, a ninth condition, and as taken directly from the recorded video of that night's meeting, that condition was, ensure, quote, all the concerns heard tonight are addressed concerning the ordinances and that plans adhere with all Hamden ordinances and state laws prior to the submission of the final plan. As a result of that meeting, the developer revised their project proposal a second time, issuing a re-revised proposal on July 14th, in an attempt to meet that ninth condition and meet all the requirements of the Hamden Subdivision Ordinance and Zoning Ordinance, which brings us to tonight. You have in your information packet the developer's re-revised proposal and site plan dated July 14th. You also have in that packet a memo from Amy Rider in her dual role as Director of Planning and Economic Development, which restates the conditions in the prior motion as well as the board's concerns that additional parking be provided and I believe as the applicant said they provided that additional parking. That memo concludes with the statement and I quote, the applicant has fulfilled these conditions in the final application dated July 14, 2026. The town staff completed the review on July, on July 28th and did not provide any further comments. The memo also notes an attachment from the town's outside peer engineering consultant, Woodard and Curran, that contains their review and comments on the project. That review was conducted on June 19th. It, however, was a review of the initial developer's proposal, not the revised proposal that made significant modifications to the private road that accesses the project. So be aware of that. The peer review was for a site plan that we are not looking at today. You also have in your packet for tonight a draft planning board motion for final approval of the project crafted by Ms. Ryder that states in two places, quote, the proposed subdivision is in conformance with a Hamden subdivision ordinance, the Hamden comprehensive plan, the Hamden zoning ordinance, unquote, and also in another location, the proposal conforms with the subdivision ordinance and is consistent with a 2024 comprehensive plan. These statements are incorrect, and I urge the board not to accept its final draft order and indeed to reject the project for explicit non-conformance with a Hand in subdivision ordinance. I will leave it to others here tonight who are going to speak to the to non-conformance with a comprehensive plan, but let's, let's focus, I'll focus my comments tonight on subdivision ordinance. So we have the enlarged subdivision or the enlarged site plan. We also have, I apologize, I made this as big as I could with the plotters I had, printers I had access to. These are pages 19 through 21 or 22 of the current Hamden subdivision ordinance, and this is a table. And it says private roads are to be built to the standards listed in the table under section 2.3.7.4. And down here, street design construction standards for all new streets in the town of Hampton must comply with the standards in the following table. These are not recommendations. These are requirements. All streets must comply. And so there's a number of areas where it does not comply, and we're going to walk through those. So on page 19 of the current Hamden Subdivision Ordinance at 2.3.7.3, roadway design standards is the following. Street design and construction standards for all new streets in the town of Hamden must comply with standards in the following table. Most obviously, the private road design does not provide a 50-foot right-of-way as noted by the Hampton subdivision ordinance in the table. Private road right-of-way, minimum right-of-way width 50 feet. Again, I'm putting comments based on what we have available to us tonight. In fact, the design appears to provide no right-of-way whatsoever. The applicant's own application narrative states that no right-of-ways are proposed. So I've prepared this little graphic here showing a variety of, let's call it, buffers or sidelines, setbacks. The terms vary, but the distances don't change. The requirements don't change. This is what the ordinance requires, a 50-foot right-of-way for a private road. So 18 feet of private road, 2-foot shoulders, 14 feet of setback on each side, yields 50 feet. The developer is proposing is 18 feet of private road, 2 feet of shoulder, and about 18 inches of setback from the property line. Now, keep in mind, this is a property line up here, but it doesn't have to be. It could be anything. It could be a right-of-way width, so you wouldn't put a house within here because you need a 50-foot right-of-way. In this case, from a property line, they're proposing 18 inches. Why? Because in order to get a two-foot shoulder, an 18-foot wide private road, and a two-foot shoulder, they're absolutely hard up against an existing house on their own property. Now, at various places in zoning and subdivision ordinance, there are sideline setback requirements mentioned. For a driveway, a private driveway, the sideline setback is, at the very least, is 10 feet. Now, this horizontal distance lines up here. So for a private driveway, 10 feet for a private driveway. For a private road, it would be 14 feet. In the zoning ordinance, there's a sideline setback for driveways of 20 feet. And in fact, in the subdivision ordinance, if the board so chooses, you can actually specify a 25-foot setback if a major subdivision is in close proximity to another use that would warrant a decent separation. It says right in there you can specify a 25-foot setback, and we would suggest that the Butters House, which is 11 feet on this side, is very close to the property that's being proposed for a new road and new development. The new development is at a higher elevation, and so certainly it would be reasonable to expect to be able to apply a 25-foot setback. So let's recap 10 foot, 20 foot, or 10 foot, 14 feet, 20 feet, or 25 feet. What we have is 18 inches. So my notes there go on the required 18 foot width roadway centered in a required 50 foot right-of-way would yield 16 feet of land outside the traveled way. That's two feet of shoulder, 14 feet of sideline setback. That now let's go back to the site plan even enlarged here. The scale is small, but it clearly shows in order to squeak that road between the existing house and the property line the applicant has pushed the road in very close here. It's basically when I'll get into this in great detail in a bit here, there is a basically a vertical cliff here which we'll talk about, but this is why there's 18 inches there. One of the things that we noted in the most recent version July 14th is they the property line has been adjusted a foot and a half further to the south toward the out toward the butters property, and the reason for that is I believe although this is the first time we've seen this the surveyor did the survey and at the end the surveyor has to close the polygon, and so they make a uniform adjustments around all the points and it moves. I get that. So there's two actually two property lines that could be shown here that are a foot and a half apart here, and they start at the same point here and they're a foot and a half apart. Regardless, in my analysis, I use the more conservative property line, which benefits the developer by taking the southerly most. So all the dimensions that I'm going to cite in the coming comments are based on a property line that's been adjusted downward already. It has been noted in previous review comments, but bears repeating here, the abutter will not allow any modification to his property or construction activity to occur on his property to accommodate this project. This includes drainage modifications, retaining walls, the fracturing of ledge underneath his property, which we're going to get into in a little bit here. And it also includes not allowing the developer to leave the unsafe condition of an excess of a five foot vertical cliff immediately at the line of his property. There's an additional restrictive interpretation that could be made from section 2.1.1 of the subdivision ordinance. It reads and I quote buffer the Planning Board may require a buffer no less than 25 feet deep when a proposed major subdivision is located adjacent to a use where separation is desirable. Driveways and new roads may cross Through the buffer strip now this language states that a private road may cross through the buffer strip presumably at some angle greater than zero in order to gain access to the property. Makes complete sense here's a 20-foot buffer private road the audience says it may cross through. What we have in the current site plan is a private road that runs parallel to contain within and a directly adjacent 18 inches from a property boundary for 140 feet. I would submit that does not meet the criteria for passing through. That is running along inside and along the buffer strip. In fact, it neutralizes any idea of having a buffer strip. The road runs for 140 feet within the buffer strip. In the present case, the proposed private road runs directly along the property boundary and is mostly contained within any reasonable width buffer strip for a distance of more than 140 feet. Even a private driveway is required to be 10 feet from a private property sideline. Why would the sideline setback for a private road be any less stringent than that? The sideline setback requirement in a Hamden zoning ordinance is 20 feet in a residential B zone. In short, the private road within and parallel to a sideline setback in close proximity to a butter's home 11 feet away would not seem to comply with the intent of 2.1.1 under any potential interpretation and as I said a minimum of 10 feet 14 feet is the is the right-of-way 20 foot is the normal sideline setback in Residential B and the board could require a 25 foot setback furthermore the perpendicular distance measured between the property line and the house wall on the applicant's property, from here to here, is 23 and a half feet. I measured it myself. Again, insufficient to contain any required right-of-way. Elsewhere in the applicant's own proposed project, single-family home number two includes a soffit corner that overhangs within one foot of the travel way on a critical corner where emergency response vehicles will need the full road width to negotiate the turn. The building itself is two feet away from that turn that point is right here these buildings have somewhere between a 10 and 12 foot soffit overhang this is the corner of the foundation so we're already within one foot of the building is two feet from the road the overhanging roof which is like 14 feet or 12 feet or something is within the within one foot of the of the roadway there we also have overhangs on this building. Finally, the developer is proposing zero screening between their proposed private road and the wall of the abutter's house, 13 feet away. 11 feet from the property line, 2 feet of shoulder, 13 feet away from the abutter's house is a road that at least 10 cars a day are going to be using. Actually, 10 new cars a day. It'll be 16 cars. Any existing bushes or plantings are entirely within the abutter's own property and are insufficient to screen from traffic and light trespass as noted there are between two and a half and four feet between the edge of the proposed private road and the property line so the proposed private road cannot meet the right-of-way requirement or the sideline setback requirement of the subdivision ordinance under any alignment and the project should be rejected under these criteria number two in my review comments in prior site plan revisions I noted that the developer failed to meet the subdivision ordinance which required minimum horizontal curve radiuses of 90 feet or the minimum reverse curve tangent length of 50 feet. In the re-revision presented in your meeting packet tonight, the applicant has attempted to meet the minimum curve radius and the tangent requirement for the subdivision ordinance by drawing a roadway that incorporates a single horizontal curve near the private road intersection with Summer Street. Kudos to them. They managed to meet those two criteria. However, they do this by strategically violating the subdivision ordinance requirement at 2.3.7.1-5 that, quote, street intersections must be as close to 90 degrees as possible. This is a critical design element. It sounds trivial, but it's a critical design element in this particular location for reasons that I'll explain. The developer has created the need to turn not 90 degrees, but 105 degrees back to meet this road. And the only reason they have that 105-degree turn is because they couldn't meet the road. The road could not intersect Summer Street at 90 degrees because they eliminated the second horizontal curve here, the reverse curve that would not be a 90-foot radius and would not provide a 50-foot tangent. So they made the tangents by putting in a road alignment that violates other areas of the road criteria. The reason it becomes critical because of a hundred and five degree turn, keep in mind that's a turn back this way, is because Summer Street's a dead end, dead end up here. 100% of the traffic coming in, 100% of the traffic going out is going this way, and it's not turning 90 degrees either way. It's turning 105 degrees. It's turning out 105 degrees. Keep in mind, Summer Street is very narrow. It's 16 feet wide. Keep in mind, one of our abutters lives directly across the street and parks their cars on their own private property directly opposite here in the one space that they can get off the road and provide. Anybody coming down this hill, which I'll get to, making a 105-degree turn is swinging wide across Summer Street into their apple tree and into their vehicles. I believe that abutter is gonna do the presentation which shows the fire truck that visited the property the other day, by the way, in case there's any thoughts of shenanigans or any whatever. Nobody in this group called the fire department. The tenant on the property smelled smoke, and in fact I had smelled smoke earlier in the day. The tenant on the property called the fire department. I found out about the fire trucks after they were already there, and my wife came in from the grocery store and said, this fire truck's outside, what's going on? I ran out with my phone to say wow, well this is interesting, and we took some video of that day. So, and it wasn't even the biggest fire truck, it was a smaller truck. So Summer Streets are dead end. All the traffic has to negotiate 105 degree turn. Because it's 105 degree turn, it's crucial that the road be laid out with another requirement, minimum radius to the street. The developer does that here by putting a 15-foot radius. They didn't put a 15-foot radius here. In fact, they have an arc that ends in a sharp point on Summer Street. The net result of that is in reality what's going to happen is anybody turning here is going to turn and trespass over the abutter's property, cutting that sharp point. The reason they did that is because by coming out in here and putting the 15 degree arc, it just accentuates the fact that you have a 105 degree turn to get back in here rather than a 90 degree turn. So this is the developer's own center line. It comes down here to station 100, it comes down to station 50, and then it comes straight off here because they did not want to put another curve here because they couldn't meet the tangent or the radius. So fire trucks, garbage trucks, oil delivery trucks, FedEx, UPS vehicles all must negotiate this 105-degree turn from Summer Street to get into the property and to get out of the property. We have a Butters Vehicles Park on their private property directly across the street. We have seen everything from fire trucks now to regular-sized standard pickup trucks. as they make that turn they swing completely across the width of the narrow width of Summer Street so this present design does not meet either the turning radius requirement of subdivision ordinance two point three point seven point three dash two or the intersection approach requirement of two point three point seven point one dash five and should be rejected on these counts the abutters will not allow turning traffic at this intersection to pass over and damage their property either adjacent to or across from the private road. Number three. In order to address that the first 50 feet of private road away from the intersection not exceed a maximum slope of 3%, the applicant has deepened the cut in their initial section of ledge cut to flatten out their originally proposed grade. And I have folded up there a profile showing their proposed grade. We agree with their determination that the centerline elevation of the private road at is 78.20 where that private road meets Summer Street. That's station zero plus zero. The elevation the applicant shows on their centerline profile drawing is 79 point or cross-section drawing is 79.70 at station 50 meeting the three percent grade. However, on their site plan they show 80.00 which is four inches higher. It is at station 50, which is right here. It is precisely at this point that the applicant shows their roadway shoulder, side slope, back slope, and ledge cut touching or crossing over, depending on which property line depiction is valid, the abutter's property line. This necessity was only created in order to accommodate the horizontal layout requirements they tried to meet for curve radiuses and tangent lengths. So, I'm going to give you a bunch of numbers here, and then I'll show you, I'll demonstrate what I'm talking about on this cross section. The existing ground elevation at station 0 plus 50 is 83.0. At the abutter's property line left of station 0 plus 50, the existing elevation is close to 84.5. With the required roadway cross slope of 4 inches, this places the required edge of traveled way finish elevation left of station 50 at 79.37. This necessitates getting a roadway shoulder side slope drainage line back slope and vertical ledge cut of 5.13 feet in a space that's only 4.79 feet wide without crossing the property line 2.0. So we have a ground elevation, let me just cite a typical engineering cross section, there's a vertical exaggeration here up two to one on the applicant's own cross-section, I think it's 10 to 1, and you have to do that. So this is horizontal, one inch equals two feet, vertical, one inch equals one foot. So 83, 84 and a half, they have to cut it down to 79.7 to meet the 3% grade to 50. They have to put four inches of slope to the shoulder for the crown, and they have a shoulder which has to be two feet, and they have a ditch line to bring it away, and they have a vertical wedge cut, which, by the way, is not vertical. You have a maximum wedge cut of one foot, four feet vertical, one foot back. So it results in a corner of the road. It results in a five foot, two inch vertical drop from the property line. We have ledge down here. They're going to have to remove all this ledge. And then they're going to have to come back and put 18 inches of grain in the back, base and sub-base. 0 at the property line, 4.79 feet, all this needs to occur at 0 sideline setback. And not only 0, well, you've got a sideline setback. You've got 5 feet 2 inches of vertical sideline setback. Since this is greater than the width shown under either property line alignment, the applicant's drawing does not represent what will be constructed, and the application should be rejected. The end result of attempting to construct this design will be some combination of trespass onto the abutter's property, damage to their home 11 feet away from a 6.63 foot deep ledge cut. I say 6 now instead of 5 because they have to go 18 inches deeper to put in the granular material. Creation of a significant personal safety fall hazard of 5.1 feet vertical right at the edge of the property line. You've got to help the abutter when he's mowing his lawn and falls off the five-foot cliff into the road, violation of the maximum vertical slope ledge cut of a one to four or maximum side slope, back slope slopes of three to one, ice and water ponding in the proposed road at the ditch line that's pinched between the road and the base of the ledge cut. Keep in mind, we already have water coming out of this along the ledge. Happens in the spring, happens in the winter, it runs across the road into the Butters driveway, it runs across the road into my driveway. And six, a complete absence of sight distance for vehicles leaving the subdivision and turning right onto Summer Street. 100% of the traffic flow. Now this is the first time I've mentioned this, but going back to this drawing. 30 feet back, 75 feet down the road, this is the sight line distance that's required in your ordinance. And guess what? That sight line distance, this is the applicant's own line here. You're sitting in your car, your eyeball is four feet above the table. You're looking through a vertical rock wall that's four or five feet high. You can't see. Your sight line distance is completely wide. [53:35] Planning Board Chair: With that, I'm going to pause you real quick. We just got to help you on some time. I'm sure there's plenty more here. Okay, so I'm almost done. Yep, you're good. I got 30, you're right, I got 30 minutes. I'm sorry. No, you're totally fine. You said Mary, bottom of this. Oh, yep, got you right there. All right, and we'll say one more for good measure. Got you right there. All right, thank you. One, couple more. Yeah, get a couple more. Okay, all right, I got maybe 10 minutes. [54:29] Ron Hajdu: Pam, we addressed that. They denied that ability. [54:41] Planning Board Chair: So Amy presented it. I declined it. Yes. I think we can revisit that. There's, again, a lot on the list. Let's only address that if we need to. [55:07] Ron Hajdu: All right. That's what, four or five? [55:16] Planning Board Chair: Hang on just a second. What was that? Do you know which page you were on by chance? Okay. Yep, got you right there. And then there was one previous I did not capture. That yes, what was your name? Yeah, I'll find you. Yeah. [56:01] Ron Hajdu: So that's the first I mentioned sight distance, but that's the sixth way that this design would at least violate, or all seven of them are, all number seven would be all six above all. Furthermore, to accommodate the maximum 3% slope with the 50 feet of private road within the 50 feet of private road from Summer Street, the applicant has shifted the next 90 feet of roadway to a centerline slope of 8%. This represents a seven-foot rise in elevation in 90 feet between Station 50 and Station 140. Now, I know the ordinance allows up to 12%, which is a heck of a grade, but let's keep in mind we're looking at an eight percent grade 50 feet off of Summer Street, where water on an unpaved road, that's going to result in ice formation, erosion of that 90 feet of seven of eight percent grade, and that's going to wash down directly onto Summer Street. It's not like this is a around three corners in the woods in some subdivision somewhere. This is directly adjacent to Summer Street. Any erosion on this extra steep 8% grade of dirt road, let's be clear, it's not paved, any erosion is going to come down at a higher velocity. That water is, we don't have enclosed drainage on Summer Street. There's no catch basins. There's no ditch line. Water just runs out into the road and down. Now we have water scouring dirt down at 8% grade into Summer Street going down the road. And in the winter, what we have, even with the gentle grade, is we have an ice delta the formation it crosses Summer Street. Ask any of your snowplow drivers, they see it every year. This is going to make that much worse. So I would ask this question based on the information that was in the packet, how is town staff okay with an eight percent grade on any unpaved roadway where stormwater runoff and sediment exits directly to the public road? If the town staff consisting of the director of planning and economic development, the code enforcement officer, the town engineer, the public works director, and the deputy fire chief have no concerns or further comments, as Ms. Ryder reports in her cover letter provided as part of your packet, then perhaps the town should reach out to their consulting engineer for a peer review of the re-revised private road alignment. To summarize, the Summer Street neighborhood residents would like to propose the following motion for planning board order. And you can follow along, this is on page seven and highlighted in yellow, findings. Whereas the applicant's proposal fails to provide a 50-foot right-of-way for the proposed private road, violating Hamden subdivision ordinance requirement at 2.3.7.3 roadway design standards, and whereas the applicant's proposed private road fails to provide any sideline set book setback 10 foot minimum 20-foot, 25-foot, and does not cross through a sideline setback, but rather is located directly against a Property line and mostly contained within 20 feet of a property sideline, violating Hamden's subdivision ordinance requirement at 2.1.1 design standards, and whereas the private road design violates the turning radius requirement of subdivision ordinance 2.3.7.32 on the south side and the intersection approach angle requirement of Subdivision Ordinance 2.3.7.15, and whereas the applicant's private road design is fundamentally flawed so that it violates Subdivision Ordinance 4.5 Approval Criteria Traffic, which I'll quote, the proposed subdivision will not cause unreasonable congestion or unsafe conditions with respect to the use of existing or proposed highways or public roads, and Summer Street's public road, obviously. Specifically, its alignment relative to the space available along the southern property line is not practical to construct. Its construction crosses onto an abutter's property. Its construction is likely to do a damage on an abutter's home over six feet of ledge removal, 11 feet from the home's foundation. This is a 100-year-old house that's built on ledge. Its construction will result in a permanent fall safety hazard. Its construction will not provide for proper drainage, since drainage will enter into the intersecting public road carrying additional eroded debris from the steep unpaved slope and or causing ice formation in the public road. Its steep grade in close proximity to the intersection will create an access and egress safety hazard for emergency vehicles, garbage pickup, oil delivery, package delivery and passenger vehicles and whereas the applicant's private road design creates a vertical cut in excess of four feet on the south edge of the property to within 20 feet of the intersection, It violates subdivision ordinance 2.3.7.3, minimum site distance of 75 feet, 30 feet back from the intersection, for all right-turning Exiting traffic, 100% of the traffic. We propose the following draft action. Based on these findings, the Hamden Planning Board votes to deny the major site plan and final subdivision plan for construction of a multifamily development at 80 to 82 Summer Street. So, that's our position. We've given you specific places in the ordinance that the design, that this design does not meet that, and I think that's a suitable motion to make, to consider, I should say. Now I'll close these notes with one additional comment. We submitted these same comments in a letter to Ms. Ryder dated August 2nd. This letter was included at the end of your packet, your info packet tonight, along with our other letters to her, raising our neighborhoods, the whole neighborhoods, concerns with the project. At the time we sent the August 2nd letter, we did not yet have access to other elements in the packet, specifically the town planner's statement that staff had no additional comments or concerns, and the second being the draft board order saying that the project complied with the ordinance. We were shocked to see these elements in the packet and that no concerns were apparently raised by town staff as to ordinance conformity or the poor design of the private road or the ways that would negatively impact both the public road and the butters property line. We're also surprised that the town apparently did not seek an updated peer review from the town's engineering consultant as one is not referenced or included in the info packet. We would, we would have to believe that such a review would also highlight design concerns with the private road. So that's the end of my prepared remarks. Now I'd like to address two other things. I didn't restart. Am I doing okay? Five and a half minutes, okay. The first I'll start is kind of a subjective emotional aspect. We heard Zack stand up here today and we heard Mr. Louie Morrison stand up here and disparage residents in the neighborhood as being a bunch of elitist whatever oligarchs, I guess we're oligarchs. And let me be very,, very clear in both of these things. I've lived across from the existing property for 37 years. I have never once, not once, ever had an issue with any tenant who has occupied the house or the two apartment duplex behind it. In fact, a couple years ago, another abutter and I rode out on my canoe to rescue one of the tenants' dogs from drowning in the Penobscot River. We have no problem with any tenants. I don't care what their economic level, none at all. Furthermore, we haven't had any problems with the three or four or five property owners, landlords. They've all taken care of the property and addressed issues when called. What we have a problem with are developers in this community that seek to absolutely maximize their return on a piece of property on the backs of everybody else surrounding it. The neighbors, the abutters who have to deal with this, with a dumpster 30 feet from their bedroom window, with other abutters that have a road that's now going to have traffic for 8 units going 11 feet past their house over a 5 foot. What's happening is a cost shift. May not be a dollar cost, but it's a value cost. It's a cost shift from developers to area residents who have lived in this neighborhood for many years and paid all kinds of taxes. The people in this room paid $105,000 last year before a 26% increase this coming year in property taxes. And these developers are taking advantage of weaving their way down a line through this ordinance to maximize their return at the expense of the surrounding property owners. That's our concern, not with people of limited means, not with people just starting out in life. Don't let that sob story color your impression. These people know what they're doing here, and they're doing it all over town, and they're trying to do it in our neighborhood. Second issue, brand new tonight, maybe everything, I should say I should tear up and throw it over my head here, because what is this new information that private roads no longer even need to apply. We're going to do driveways, apparently, because guess what? Whatever. This whole project was predicated on the fact that in order to put all these buildings in here, we need to put a magic road in. And that magic road gave us all kinds of new frontage, which we then could say was less non-conforming, so we could put buildings in it. I don't buy that personally, but let me say I'll live with it. But now we're all of a sudden saying we don't even need that, we're just going to put five more buildings on a non-conforming lot because of what, it wasn't even clear to me what that was, and if that is new information, then you can't make a decision tonight. This is new information that nobody else has had at their disposal, apparently. The town got a letter or from somebody, and there was no notice of this. It wasn't in a packet that was released to the public. It wasn't in a packet released to the board tonight. This is new information. What are we supposed to do? So I conclude. Quiet in the [1:06:13] Planning Board Chair: out in the audience, please. I [1:06:32] Ron Hajdu: Should ask, I am more than willing to interact with this board on any questions or comments you have, different opinions or questions or anything that wasn't clear. I've studied this issue for two months. I've read this ordinance 25 times upside down every which way. I've drawn lines, I've measured distances with whatever scale I had. I prepared notes, so if you have questions or concerns about anything I've said, please address them to me either now or I'll sit down, we can hear other people talk and raise issues at the end before you make any decision. I'd be more than happy to address any concerns you might have, questions from the board. Okay, we're [1:07:11] Planning Board Chair: gonna move on to the next speaker. When I come up and state your name and address [1:07:53] Public commenter (81 Summer Street resident): bought the home in 1987. We've been here 39 years, two years more than wrong. I married my wife on our lawn the month we bought it, so we've been together 39 years, my sweetheart and I. Wanted to thank Deputy Chief Lindstrom, I was the one that sent you the email. Thank you for responding and showing up. We do have the video and with the help of Kanishko, he's going to bring it up on the monitor [Zach Gilpin: Okay,] so this, as we referred to last Saturday, responding to a call saying there was smoke. This is on Summer Street. Just to the left of the fire engine is our property, 81 Summer Street. You can see our apple tree on the left and our parking area with the vehicle behind it. We actually have two vehicles. [1:09:13] Planning Board Chair: Could I have you come on this side of the podium so maybe you're speaking into the microphone? Sure. Perfect. [1:09:20] Public commenter (81 Summer Street resident): So, Kanishko, if you could start the video, you can see how it's – what it's doing is it's backing up into the existing driveway for 8082 Summit Street, which is the proposed Bronco Lane. And you can see how it's having a hard time maneuvering there. [Public commenter (Summer Street resident): Now you] can see it crossing across the neighbor's property, 78 Summer Street. You can see him going across the corner of their lot, which it caused extensive damage to great parts of the owner. So that's an example of what happened last Saturday with the fire truck trying to respond to the call. Now I have another video, if you could bring that up, Konishko. go. Okay, this is, if you could stop that right there, Kanishka, thank you. This is the driveway for 8082 Summer Street, which is the proposed Bronco Lane, and this vehicle is driving down the slope that Ron alluded to, headed towards Summer Street, and he's He's trying to make an exit to head right. So if you could start that, Konietzko. One thing Ron alluded to, the 105 degree angle, the truck would actually have to come out a little bit more to the right. But what I'm trying to show is our vehicles and our parking area to the left there, how close they come to our vehicles when they're coming out of Bronco Drive. So that's one of our big concerns is having vehicles run into ours, especially in the wintertime when that street, that driveway is covered with ice, as Ron mentioned. So that's my concern. And my sweetie here has another. Yes, [1:12:44] Public commenter (Summer Street resident): my concern is the blasting that's going to have to take place in order to construct this subdivision. As far as I know, I'm the only person in the neighborhood who has ever experienced blasting. Shortly after, my husband and I moved in, a gentleman named Richard Toll built a house down below us with his driveway abutting our right side of our property. I'm sitting on the couch with my dog at the time and there was a blast that I confused with an earthquake because my whole house shook. Now let me tell you about ledge. Our house is built down from 81 Summer Street. It's built into the ledge on the riverbank and in our basement the back third of our basement is ledge closed off by a retaining wall [1:13:45] Planning Board Chair: Can I pause you for just one moment? Can I get somebody to cede their time? [1:13:53] Public commenter (Summer Street resident): I will be much longer anyway. I just had this horrible experience that actually traumatized the poor dog I had at the time for the rest of her life. But I know that if blasting is required to put in this subdivision, Our house, on the same ledge, because it's all right down, as Ron described, is going to take some damage. So if that occurs, I'm going to ask for a pre-blast assessment. And I'm going to know the names of everybody involved in case there's any damage to my house. We've been there for 39 years. Thank you for your time. [1:14:48] Planning Board Chair: Do we have somebody else? Thank [1:14:59] Ed Netto: You for hearing all of us tonight. I won't be very long. I wanted to, my name, by the way, is Ed Netto. I am at 72 Summer Street. I'm a direct abutter. I just wanted to mention a few things that our lawyer has said about this project. The abutters have hired a lawyer to take a look at this whole thing. And in general, he agrees very much with what we've been concerned with thus far, especially Ron's mathematical proposal and his engineering. He's agreed with everything that we've pretty much sent to him, okay? But one of the things that he did question was the developer's financial capacity to construct an adequate multifamily development. I'm quoting here from him. In their application, the developer submitted a letter from its lender stating that the lender is committed to finance the proposed development. Further, the developer estimates the cost to be around $400,000, plus an additional 15% for contingencies. The estimated cost of construction presented by the developer may be underestimated, which can be of concern if the developer is not properly budgeting the cost to complete the development with adequate work quality. I am suggesting to you, based on my lawyer's advice here, our lawyer's advice, that you guys at the board properly vet the developer's financial situation. The other thing that he did mention was that he found no evidence in the proposal that the developer has submitted, that he has the technical capacity to complete this project. The developer does not present any evidence of a track record for other developments that have been completed, nor do they identify the contractor who will complete the work. That said, this is another factor that he said I should raise to you folks. Folks. Those two things are major concern for us because one of the things that my partner Pamela and I did at 72 Summer Street in 2021, we built a studio, two-story, okay? Same footprint, roughly, 20 by 24 feet, roughly, and it cost us $80,000 to $90,000 in 2021. And we had 20 feet to go with the hookup and the electricity was there and that was before the lumber and construction costs went up. Anyone want to give me a little more time? [Planning Board member: Gotcha.] Thank you. Continue this, it'll just be a minute. So the question is for us in 2021. In 2021, $90,000 building essentially the same area building, two-story. How is the developer going to, the question is how will the developer, and I think this is what the lawyer was stating, how can the developer build five buildings, do all the construction, do all, whatever it takes to get that in there at an estimated cost of four hundred thousand dollars and still keep a quality a quality building and everything quality everything and also will it fit into the comprehensive plan that was stated recently that this project will fit into and so those are our concerns and our questions and we'll hope we're hoping that you'll take these into consideration thank you Do [1:19:32] Planning Board Chair: we have others as well that wish to speak? [1:19:49] David Vaughn: David Vaughn, 78 Summer Street. I'm that guy along whose house, 11 feet away, this would pass. Starting with the meeting last month, reading and having, thanks to Ron, so much interpretation, I am truly dismayed at the function of town staff and of this board of being lockstep of there being a packet that presented was presented to you folks on the board and apparently was rubber-stamped last month and I fear that it's a setup for that to happen again. I don't doubt you're intelligent people and I would like to have some integrity in view. I ask you please to vote your consciences. There has been compelling testimony heard. How can it be cast aside as the road requirements were by the Deputy Fire Chief last month and how can the comprehensive plan at last month's meeting be waived aside by Ms. Ryder and then in her comments say that this fulfills the comprehensive plan is consistent it just sounds to me as if folks in this town represented here by staff are in the pockets of the developers it's the taxpayer interest that should be represented please vote your conscience is [1:22:09] Planning Board Chair: there anybody else like [1:22:29] Catherine King: most of us in this room my name is Catherine King I live at 54 Summer Street my family and I have lived in Hamden, have lived specifically on Summer Street since our son, Jeff, was born in 1996. So we're just turning our 30th year here. You've got a camera? Sure. I'll try. Like most of us in this room this evening, well, most of us in this room this evening, including me, were here at the last planning board meeting. And in some combination, we urged you to consider a number of our concerns. We urged you to consider the increase in the traffic that will inevitably come with 10 new vehicles and the impact that will certainly have on the safety of folks who use our road for running,, walking their pets, their dogs, and pushing their babies and baby carriages, teaching their little children to ride bicycles and more. We urge you to consider that. We said we understand that it's not a compliance issue, but it's a concern to us. We told you that we're concerned about the impact that this project will have, whether or not the Department of Environmental Protection believes that it's enough to deter. heard this developers is not the same question as whether it will impact the wildlife that use 80 to 82 Summer Street in the area as a corridor it will have an effect on that we told you that we cherish the historic character of the homes in our neighborhood and we urge you to consider the language in the comprehensive plan that recommends design of new construction be consistent with surrounding areas and Jeff spent a good deal of time in fact isn't most of the entirety of his three minutes detailing the historic character of the architecture in that neighborhood and none of that seemed to matter particularly the issue about the language that in the comprehensive plan that as my neighbor said just a second ago we were told that it's unenforceable it's not it's not an enforcement mechanism it's sort of aspirational and we don't have to pay any attention to it and yet in the order that came out of last of the meeting last time front and center in the second set of findings that came out of this planning board is the following language the proposed project minimizes unreasonable departure from the character materials and scale of buildings in the vicinity the buildings are two-story residential that will cohesively meld with the existing buildings in the area and yet they won't any more than putting a pickup truck into a line of classic cars will make that pickup compatible or consistent with the style of those vehicles they serve is there somebody else who would I don't I don't need it I'm gonna finish my sentence and I'm gonna sit down but they certain although they serve the same function they do not have the same character and to say that they do is to tell us [Ed Netto: that to] agree with something that simply isn't true is [1:26:11] Planning Board Chair: there somebody else my [1:26:27] Jonathan Wood: name is jonathan wood 20 summer street i don't have prepared comments listen to this now for last month this month you asked you spoke last month about the fact that you guys pay attention to ordinances that is that is your role is to make sure that projects that adhere to ordinances we've heard how many ordinances are have not been adhered to it's it's kind of overwhelming the that I sort of rolled my eyes at the idea of the video until I saw it and then I said there it is right in front of us what's going to happen what is happening now and what's going to happen with this acute angle that the developer had to create. It's insanity. And you are obliged to push this, reject it at best, and at the very least, push it off. To have something come up the night of about what half of us aren't quite sure what we heard, no ability to respond to it, is your responsibility to, if not reject this, to realize that you can't carry on tonight with a vote saying okay with this. It's not okay. And emotions aside, the concrete stuff that was presented here tonight is just overwhelming. so no prepared statements but you 've got a you've got to do the right thing here okay five of you not seven but the five of you can do the right thing sure [1:28:29] Planning Board Chair: yeah if somebody wants to did you just come in have you signed in okay thank [1:28:45] Public commenter (Summer Street resident): you again for taking the time to meet with all of us tonight as you can see this is a really impassioned group and I know I said that last time me personally I moved to Summer Street when my son was three I was a single mom I had nothing and this is all I own with my partner Ed we have worked literally non-stop on our property to bring it to where it is now it's our heart and soul basically and we're continuing to work on it we still have projects going of course and I do feel like Zach I want to say directly to you had said to me at the walkthrough we're not doing this to basically piss anyone off and I appreciate that you said that to me but I also want to acknowledge that there's a time and a place for everything and I would implore you to consider that the spot that you have chosen is simply not conducive to what you want to try to do. I think it's great that you're trying to build your career and do all that, but I want you to consider where you have chosen to put this project. It makes no sense whatsoever. Not only is it disrupting all of these people, especially us direct abutters, but it is completely against the comprehensive plan and the character of this neighborhood, which is the oldest neighborhood in Hamden. So please consider that. I also would like to as a direct to butter insists that the board put this off at least delay until Woodard and Curran, which is the third party objective group civil group, to take a look at a project like this with the new information because they are going they had gone on old information and I would demand as a direct abutter that this be reviewed again with all of the information that's been brought to light this evening. So again, thank you everybody for being here tonight. Is [1:31:04] Planning Board Chair: there anyone else who'd like to speak? Would the developer rep like to address any of the comments? I'm [1:32:12] Justine Drake: gonna start from the beginning, top to bottom, as I wrote my notes, but please let me know if I've missed anything or if there's anything you'd like to address in further detail. I mean, it's hard to argue with video footage from the fire truck interaction, but one thing I will point out is that the circulation, so they had shown the fire truck backing into the driveway of the proposed development. The circulation we're proposing is to enter off of Summer Street and then the fire truck would have an opportunity to turn around at the proposed fire truck turn around like any other vehicle would, right? So you, so the video showed the fire truck backing into the existing driveway and turning around. So the circulation that we're proposing, if they were to ever be called onto the site, is to enter the development, head to the end of Bronco Lane, and then turn around at the fire truck apron. So they wouldn't [1:33:23] Planning Board Chair: so unfortunately again, oh sorry, yeah, you're not on a microphone, so I would, I would encourage, we'll go through your comments. Do you have a comment related to this? Yes [1:33:37] Deputy Chief Lindstrom: So I think now is a good time to do that. I just want to point out, that video showed a fire truck backing into a driveway. We would plan to pull into that driveway. I've worked for the town now for 23 years. I've been responding to emergencies within this community for about 23 years. I've responded to addresses on almost every single street in the entire community. There are challenges. Is that driveway we have used for the past 22 years, that exact driveway, so that situation that you showed has happened numerous times over my career here, and it would continue to happen utilizing the same thing, the sand that you saw that was disturbed on the end. It rained the previous night before and all morning before our response, and again, we've used that same driveway to access the existing properties there. So the other thing I'll point out is, Summer Street in its totality, there are numerous residences on Summer Street, not just this property, that are difficult for us to access. [1:34:43] Ed Netto: Period. But you're making it more difficult, right? That's just- [1:34:47] Deputy Chief Lindstrom: Yep. I'll just point out that accessing, without this project even considered, we've been accessing it for 20 some odd years. [1:34:56] Ed Netto: It's not just fire trucks we have an issue with. [1:34:57] Deputy Chief Lindstrom: Okay, but that's what's been keyed in. [1:34:58] Planning Board Chair: I'm going to put an order here real quick. So in our rules and order, please address any questions that you may have for anybody presenting through the chair, right? That's in our rules and order. Just to keep everything very civil back and forth, please address any questions that may come up. There will be questions. Please address them through the chair. [1:35:18] Deputy Chief Lindstrom: I'm going to wrap this up just by saying when I reference other places in town that are challenging, I could reference Ferry Street, Rowell Road, Cottage Street, Dudley Road, Pleasant Street, Hopkins Road. Those are all nearby. If we go out the other side of town, we talk about Merchant Road, Goodall Farm, Piper Woods, Partridge, and Fowler's Landing Road. There are challenges. That's why we're professionals in our field. We train with this fire apparatus. We can put them in spots you would never even imagine we could put them, and these guys are trained very well. So I know that there's a lot of controversy around the fire trucks being able to access this particular property. But I'm telling you we can do it. So I just I want to clear the air on the fire side of things. I did take some offense to the fact that as a taxpayer in town with three children that attend schools in town, I'm heavily invested in this community. I care a ton about this community, and that's why I've served my entire half of my adult half of my life has been serving the community in this town doing this job off, so I did take a little bit of fence when our integrity was called into play, because I am looking out for the best interest for the people sitting here and the rest of the people that live in this town, and I want that known. Thank you. I'll just caveat [1:36:34] Justine Drake: very briefly, and then I'll wrap up this item about no, you need to wait until she's done, and then just very briefly on the accessibility issue for the fire truck, we do have anecdotal info, we have an anecdotal statement from the directive letter at 84 Summer Street that the ladder truck for approximately 1450 foot driveway was able to access that driveway, so this entrance will be about 30 feet, so that is an improvement from the existing circumstances, moving on to the question about the 50 foot right away, so something I didn't cover in my initial presentation is there was a lot of concern initially that the which is allowed, but there was a lot of concern from a butters and hampton residents that they the applicants didn't own the property, they have since closed on the property, so they are now owners of the property, and they closed at the end of july I believe, and we had title look into whether the property boundary had been altered anyway since the frontage requirement had been established in the 70s, and it was determined at that time that it had it, and that's where the question about the right-of-way requirement came in, so we could have met that non-conforming concern, sure, yeah, so initially when this application was presented the applicants were under contract to purchase the property, they didn't own it, I'll repeat it again, they didn't own the property at the time, however it closed toward the end of July, and the title attorneys confirmed through looking through their title research that the property had not been altered in any way since at least the 70s when the frontage requirement for 100 feet of frontage was established in the 70s, so we could have moved forward in two ways, we could have confirmed that the property wasn't altered in any way, or we could have considered doesn't change it dimensionally in any way, but we could have considered it a private road, and when we initially established that private road from a logistic standpoint it doesn't really Make a whole lot of sense because these are not individual lots that are being proposed, it's one single development. The current owner will maintain ownership of the entire property, including the proposed buildings. When the properties conveyed, they will not be allowed to split the homes off individually because they're not individual plots, they don't meet individual lot requirements, so this will always be one single development. So from a right-of-way perspective, it's, it would just be kind of a check in a box, it would just be an exercise. So we didn't initially propose a 50-foot right-of-way, but if it's considered a multi-family development, that's not required essentially, so there are alternatives from that requirements perspective [1:39:58] Public commenter (Summer Street resident): would [1:40:05] Catherine King: you [1:40:11] Justine Drake: explain? Sure, so Ron was so gracious to provide this table of requirements. So there are two ways to look at what we promote, proposed for access to the property could be considered a private way or it could be considered a multi-family driveway. The only difference in requirements between the two is a private road requires a 50-foot right-of-way right up here, and a driveway does not require a 50-foot right-of-way. So in either case, it would be allowed. Does that answer your question? No, but I don't think anything about this process, not in a way that you'll be satisfied with the buffer. All right, and I'll move into Ron's discussion about the geometry of the road. So the ordinance does say that a new intersecting road or driveway should preferably be perpendicular to an intersecting road, but it does go on to say that it can be anywhere between 60 and 90 degrees. So I'm going to reference this angle, he referred to it as 105 degree angle, but I'm going to reference it as an acute angle because that's the way I've been studying it. So this proposed intersection angle is 79 degrees, so it's well within the tolerance allowed by the ordinance. And then he went on to state that a 15 foot radius would be required. So from where that inter, 79 degree intersection is, we would, we would be required to have a 15 foot turning radius, which would bring up, just for visual sake, it would kind of bring in the road in this direction, but there's no real reason to do that. So basically what I've shown is greater than, if allows more space than a 15 foot radius. And that's just because practically vehicles are going to have, they'll have a wider space available to turn right off Summer Street than they would if we had just shown the 15 feet. We could change it back to 15 feet, but I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to do that. So there was a lengthy discussion about this side slope here against the abutting property. When I had initially designed the entrance, I had vocalized to town staff and I had even commented on it at the last planning board meeting that as an engineer it would be my preference to not, to ask for, I guess, maybe very further requirement to enter the first 50 feet at 3%. And that's because there is already a side slope there, but it would increase that side slope, and then it would increase the following vertical slope after that. 3% 8% honestly is very common. But it is steep, but it is very common, so I'm not overly concerned about it. But I do think that it would have been a better design to not hold strongly to that three percent. However, that was the response was to that was that there would be a strong opposition to any requests of waivers. So unfortunately the this side slope was a result of that design requirement, which is 0.75 to 1, and we are proposing to have a special erosion control matting installed along that slope just to prevent any further erosion from it. That is acceptable for slopes less than one to one. As far as sight distance goes, this so this slope does decrease as you get closer to the intersection, and you can see at the very end it matches existing conditions. So as far as sight distance goes, what that refers to is having visible visibility on each side so you can safely enter and exit the entrance. So there is an ordinance, as I'm sure most of you are aware, on Summer Street that you have to allocate at least 23 feet back from the edge of the paved road that you cannot build any structures or have any interferences to allow for future widening. So we have allocated that. I can look further into site triangles if needed, and I did have a preliminary discussion. The problem with the site triangles is the it references that thirty-foot number by DOT, like if you're looking at it from DOT standards, the position of that triangle is usually identified, it's usually identified as like as you're looking at it from a person coming approaching from either direction, a certain distance from the center line at a certain elevation, and the ordinance doesn't really address that. So I would need further discussions with the town engineer just to understand exactly what they're looking for. But I believe that the 23-foot offset would cover that area. [Planning Board Chair: I've] Presented in the application material from a stormwater perspective that probably because we were required to reduce the slope, that there is not a concern of increasing stormwater runoff from the original condition. I think the impervious area total is about like a hundred square feet greater than the existing condition, so it's a very small number increase in impervious area, which is gravel pavement, which is not being proposed in this situation, rooftops, anything that would that runoff could move faster than it would if it were covering like a vegetative material. So I think that's the reasoning you'll you'll see in the stormwater analysis, that it's essentially the same. Traffic was discussed, so there's a large concern, understandably, of traffic, and I'll just remind that we looked at it from two perspectives. The more conservative approach was considered, which was looking at it as though vehicles accessing the development were for single-family homes, which is not really the case here because they're just one-bedroom houses, and even in that scenario, an estimate of five vehicle trips in a peak hour, so the highest you'll see was the resulting estimate from that review. Lastly, or not quite lastly, but I guess I would just counter, there was some discussion on the developer seeking to maximize opportunity on the development, and I think what we're proposing here is far from maximizing opportunity. So this is in residential B district, which allows eight dwelling units per acre, and the property is just over three point six acres. There are three existing dwelling units, and they would be allowed, I believe, 26 or 27 dwelling units based on that metric, so we're proposing a total of eight units with the three re-existing, so I think what we proposed here is far from maximizing the return on the property. The dumpster was mentioned, so the dumpster is located along the eastern property line, and there is a buffer in between that was just proposed, you know, because logistically it seemed to make sense to put it at the end of the turnaround. If I don't want to speak on behalf of the developer, but I think if there was a large concern over the location, he may be open to relocating that, not that it's a requirement, but I just want to offer that opportunity. So blasting again, this is a site plan application, so the investigations needed to get to this point are limited. If the developer chooses to seek more information on the financial implications or the constructability implications of having to blast or remove ledge in any way, they could do that. But again, as we discussed in the last meeting, that would be the responsibility of the selected contractor. And if they could hammer out ledge or they could blast, and if blasting is the selected method of ledge removal, they would be required to do a pre last pre blast survey, just as one of the abutters had indicated. So financial capacity, the estimate was prepared with the applicants, based on the applicants experience building very similar homes. He's built similar homes, the contractors that he partners with have built very similar homes in different locations. He also has experience installing utilities himself, so I believe that number is well-founded. However, if you would like more detail or information on the origin of that number, we'd be happy to provide more detail. And then on that same token, technical capacity, it wasn't specifically required of the application, but I feel very confident that the applicant would have no issue providing evidence that he has technical capacity to complete the project. In terms of the comprehensive plan and how the applicant could move in a direction that would satisfy i guess i would just make it's a very subjective requirement to say this project as a whole does not meet the comprehensive plan so i would i would say if there are any suggestions on how we could move closer to that concern we would certainly be open to hearing them and that is there anything that you heard this evening that you would like more detail or more thorough response [1:51:52] Planning Board Chair: We've been taking out, so we'll kind of just go through, so I just want to [1:51:59] Planning Board member: So we can get into that at some point, but I want to know, so say it's considered a driveway, correct? [1:52:04] Planning Board Chair: It's considered a multifamily parking driveway. Okay. [1:52:07] Planning Board member: So when we look at the driveway rules up here on your sheet, doesn't that change a lot of that requirement as far as blasting ledge or any of that? [1:52:20] Justine Drake: Well, there's actually no requirements on blasting ledge or ledger. [1:52:24] Planning Board member: Well, I mean, if it's a driveway, they won't have to blast anyway, will they? [1:52:27] Justine Drake: Well, they would, yeah. The concern is for the utility installation. Okay, so it's off the road. Not necessarily. I mean, there are things you could do for the road to minimize ledge removal, but the gravel is much shallower than the utilities will be, so I think that's the main concern. Regardless, there's no like purview in this application to have any major concern. The only requirement that would be different between the public road versus the driveway is the 50-foot right-of-way. All other requirements seen that remain the same, so it would be an 18-foot to a travel lane with two foot gravel shoulders. The gravel thicknesses are the same, the slope requirements are the same, the distance in between horizontal curves is the same, so nothing else would change. Could [1:53:31] Planning Board Chair: we have your comments? Yeah, I just wanted to [1:53:35] Town staff / engineer: David's point there. The multifamily driveway standards are the same as the private road standards except for the need for a right-of-way. When we design those after the project a year or so ago, a couple years ago, when we designed those new private driveway multi-family driveway standards, the town engineers essentially suggested that it didn't need to have a right-of-way, but all the other stuff should be the same, mainly for being able to get fire trucks to be able to get up there, so they had compacted gravel and all that other stuff, and it wasn't just a bush hog and you know tamp down a driveway for these multi-family developments. Anything [1:54:22] Planning Board Chair: else on your side before I think Ron has some comments but [1:54:33] Ron Hajdu: I need to ask first off, so do I need a three minute response or can I respond to [1:54:40] Planning Board Chair: individual comments? How does that work? So there has to be several people in the audience who could raise their hands. Am I correct? I haven't spoken. Just state your name. I [1:54:54] Ron Hajdu: I guess I, so I'm not offering new information, I'm I'm responding to comments, so what, why am I, so I presume Amy or Miles or the developer. They're not held to a three-minute comment, but I need to... [1:55:08] Planning Board Chair: This is the public commentary part, so usually you wouldn't have a chance to come back up, [1:55:12] Jonathan Wood: but I'd like to hear what you have to say. Fine. Let's get started, then. Was there anybody else? [1:55:19] Planning Board Chair: Mike Jellison, 13 Summer Street. Mike Jellison. All right. Stand by. [1:55:32] Ron Hajdu: I don't know. I don't know how many we've got. We're up to six minutes so far. All right. Well, let's go six minutes, and we'll go from there. All right. Ready? Go. I completely agree with everything Jason says. Everything. The driveway across the street from this development has probably got a 15% grade and goes downhill. There are tight driveways, there are tight roads, there's tight everything in this town. I get it. These are not things that we've permitted to have through this board. These are things that have existed for 100 years or were done individually, did not come before a subdivision plan. So here we are permitting something that violates the same kind of standard on the basis that, well, we do it elsewhere. That doesn't make sense. Everything else he said I completely agree with. Next. Justine's comment about the lot predates 1971, so it doesn't need the frontage. This is the whole project that we're reviewing here. If this is not the case, then we need to take all this stuff, throw it away, and start from scratch, including with a new application with new application fees. The whole purpose for putting this private road, which they said over and over again was a private road, is because they needed to create this artificial frontage in there to put these units. If you're going to go back and say, well, this lot doesn't need frontage, then I'll go back to saying, well, then it's a nonconforming lot with 80 feet of frontage where you need 100. So let's all of a sudden, you know, one of the criteria you judge this by is are the actions taken here today making a lot more nonconforming or less nonconforming? If you go back to that, I would say you're making it less nonconforming because you have 80 feet of frontage in a 100-foot zone, and instead of three units on it, you're going to put eight. So more nonconforming. Justine was right. Right. The ordinance does say you can vary all the way to a gore of 60 degrees from 90. But it also says as close as possible to 90 degrees. They couldn't make this road 90 degrees where it meets Summer Street. They've chosen to make it something different. Why? Because to make it at 90 degrees, they have to demonstrate that they violated other aspects of the ordinance, specifically the tangent length between reverse curves or the radius of the curve. So they've chosen to meet certain aspects of the ordinance at the expense of other aspects of the ordinance. So the fact that it's 105 degrees as opposed to 90 degrees, that's something of their own choosing. Justine says their preference was not to make their ledge cut, but to keep the road going up as it completely, as it existing, it does go up. So, their intent was to violate the ordinance in terms of road, because guess what? That's more than 3% grade there. The reason they had to make the cut is to meet the ordinance requirement. So, their preference is not to cut. Now, one of the things they could do, I suppose, is come back and request a variance from the Time and time and time again, and I've asked last meeting, and they've said in their application they are not seeking variances. If they are now seeking variance to do something that doesn't meet the ordinance, then guess what? We're back to square one again here, and we've got to continue to another meeting. Justine says that the vertical cliff falls away. I would point out that within 20 feet, they're showing at least four lines here, one, two, three, four, on this piece. These are one-foot contour intervals. So by their own drawing, they have a four-foot cliff right here. Stormwater. She's right. We don't have much more impermeable area, and we don't have more geographic area. But what we do have here, which I don't think they've accounted for, is a much steeper area. We've gone from 3% or 3 or 4% to a 3%, 8% slope. When you have greater slope, you're going to have faster runoff. I don't know if we'll have more gallons of runoff, but we'll certainly have more velocity of runoff. More velocity is going to result in more erosion on that road. It's going to result in more debris washed out into Summer Street, coming down Summer Street into John and Lee's house directly across the street from this road, down Summer Street into my driveway diagonally across. So yes, I think storm water evaluation needs to consider the fact that you've now put in an impermeable surface, ie the road surface, that's an 8% grade for 90 feet draining water towards Summer Street. Traffic, I don't really have anything to say about traffic. Justine mentions that there's three and a half acres that could put 68 houses in here or whatever. I'll point out that the vast majority of this is wetlands and a stream. Okay? I guess they could go vertical, but we have a height limitation. Dumpster relocated. Okay, so they're open to relocating to dumpsters, so it's not next to one of the butter's houses. Okay, great. I'm going to ask the question, where are you going to put the dumpster? Are you going to put it in the snow the deposit area right here, which is already inadequate? I've pointed out in other comments and other letters, which are appended there, that in the area provided after one snow happens, about a six inch snowstorm, you're going to have a 10 foot pile of snow. So is the dumpster going to be In there too. Where else are you going to put the dumpster, right here in front of the existing duplex? I don't know, they put the dumpster here because this was the only spot they had to put the dumpster. So I don't know where else you'd put the dumpster. Blasting. So this is a planning board and this is a planning department. You know, I think part of your mission should be, it has to meet the ordinance, but it has to be constructible to the ordinance too. We can't just say, okay, this cartoon that's shown here meets the ordinance, so go ahead and build it and then leave it on everybody else to say, well, they didn't make the slope right or you know the road is wrong. I think when it comes to issues of blasting you have to scratch your head and ask yourself is what's being proposed here possible because if it's not possible or if it's likely to result in damage then it shouldn't be approved at the start. I'll also address something Lee said she's worried about her house and blasting and blasting damage to the house. I'll point out directly across here is their house and there's a steep hill here directly across. If the contractor blasts the ledge here, it's going to split this ledge and we're going to have additional fissures in here. We already have utilities, water and sewer going down here. It's going to open that up more. We're going to have more water seeping down in here going out here and coming out on the steep bank directly across. They parked their cars there because it's a terrace. What's going to happen is that's going to turn to mush and it's going to come out of there because groundwater is going to come out of there from blasting it. So blasting is more than just cracks in a house on day two. It's how's the ledge left. Financial capacity, I would point to the developer's existing development on Kennebec Road. Go out there and look at it if you haven't already. I can't believe that this board would have approved that project with a driveway that's in the present condition that it's in. It looks like just a mud hole, like a woods road or something at this point. So, yeah, I don't know if they have the financial capacity or the technical capacity to meet the requirements. Comp plan. Yes, it's subjective, and we raised it and were shot down and said the comp plan doesn't apply here. It's aspirational. We can't enforce it. The reason we raised the comp plan again in front of this body is because in Amy's letter, she says it meets the comprehensive plan. They're holding the comprehensive plan up as validating this project. How come we can't hold the comprehensive plan up as not validating the project and yet now all of a sudden it's being turned around and the plan is perfectly allowable to hold up to justify this project? It doesn't make sense. Dave's comment, I strongly disagree, or I didn't disagree with it, but I take an issue with it, but then it was corrected by Miles. Absolutely right. Multifamily driveway, private road. Virtually identical in terms of the requirement except for one thing. 50 foot for the right-of-way, for the public or the private road. No right-of-way requirement for the driveway. However, elsewhere in the ordinance, and I don't have the citation, but we can look it up, there's a 10-foot sideline setback. So let's do the math. Everything else is the same. You need a 10-foot sideline setback for a multifamily driveway. You then need a 2-foot shoulder. That's 12 feet. You then need an 18-foot road. That's 30 feet. You then need a two foot shoulder. That's 32 feet. I go back to my drawing here, which shows a measured distance of 23 and a half feet from the property line to the wall of that building. That's a hard wall. That's not like some fuzzy distance off outside the flower bed. That's from the property line to the wall. 23 and a half feet. You need 32 feet just to build a multifamily driveway. And oh, by the way, I'm going to stand on ground and dispute the fact that you can do what you're trying to do here and just call it a multifamily driveway based on some 1971 lot. It didn't change since then, well then let's go back and say, okay, it's a non-conforming lot. We're making it more non-conforming. I'm done. [2:05:12] Planning Board Chair: Is there anyone else that hasn't had a chance to speak that would like to? If not, I'm going to close the public hearing. Staff, any other comments? [2:05:28] Town staff / engineer: Just if the board has any questions on anything, we're happy to answer them. [2:05:36] Planning Board Chair: I've got a few questions that I've tried to keep track of, so bear with me as I'm flipping through everything. [2:05:43] Town staff / engineer: All right, cool. My three minutes are up. Me too. My computer just died, so I'm going to be on paper. [2:05:49] Planning Board Chair: Before you start that, does anybody on the board need a break? If not, we'll continue. But if anybody does, I would have to take a five-minute recess. Okay, go ahead. Ahead, so one of my initial questions was if this was being proposed as a private drive as it was initially being proposed during the preliminary round, or if it was a now a multi-family private drive. And it just to confirm, it is now a multi-family private drive, is that correct? And then another thing that I wanted to really understand is the memorandum that Miles you sent from the code office, the dated August 10th. I'm just gonna read it for public note, but just to help me understand it as well, so Subject: non-conforming status of four dash zero dash zero two three. And it reads, the code enforcement office has been provided with documentation from the applicant's title attorney's office showing that map 44 lot 023 is shown in the same configuration in the current deed and in a deed from 1960. Any lot pre-March 13, 1979 that does not meet the zoning ordinance dimensional requirements is considered a nonconforming lot of record and may be used for any approved use if it meets all the dimensional requirements except for lot size and frontage. Therefore 44-0-023 can be used for multifamily development use residential use B3 with planning board approval without the need to reconfigure the lot to achieve the current required 100 feet of road frontage for that use. So first question, has this been reviewed by town legal staff? Okay, so this was a legal letter from the applicant's title, but the what you received Miles was a letter from the title attorney, correct? Okay, and the request in that letters, if I'm interpreting this right, is that they're saying that because the lot has not changed since the ordinance was written, it does the 100-foot road frontage for the multifamily use does not apply. Is that accurate? Correct. Okay. So thank you for clarifying that. I think I still have some doubt or questions around the setbacks and dimensions and numbers and all of that, all of it, right? I'm not a roadway design specialist. I do technical supports for a cybersecurity company, right? Like I don't I don't know all of these numbers and how they apply to a real world, so I guess I was a little concerned when I saw that it didn't go through peer review. That's something that I as a planning board member rely extremely heavily on, because like I said, I don't I don't know that technical ins and outs like the minimum radius and things like that. So Amy, just curious on what happened there and why that didn't go back through. Procedurally, we never do peer review twice. So that's standard procedure for every subdivision if there's not any drastic changes on the plan. So staff reviewed the changes, some of which the applicability of Ron's comments aren't accurate. So that's why we didn't review his. When his comment came in on August 8, I did review them with legal and with staff as well. So but historically we only do one peer review at the preliminary. Okay. Yeah, and I That does ring true with what I've experienced. I'm just thinking back through that I know that ordinance says that if there's drastic changes then we can send it back through. But it's kind of at the discretion of town. So, okay, yeah, I think from my perspective, I would have liked to have seen it go back through, especially with all the question. Yeah, I... Do you want us to speak to his concerns? Because we're happy to. I think we should definitely talk through those, for sure. I'd also be curious to see if the developer's interested in, you know, pushing back the approval window to send it back through peer review. You know, it's for public understanding the way that this works is we had our public hearing, we opened it, we closed it. The process is we as a planning board have to act within 30 days of the end of that public hearing or else it defaults as an approval. So in under certain conditions like something like this where, you know, I myself, you know, I'm a John, just a planning board member, but I leverage that data, I leverage that information. I'd be very curious to see the professional input that third peer review on it, and the developer has the option to extend that if they wish, they don't have to. So I think that's, I think that's where I'm at with it. There's a lot of numbers flying around, but with that said, unless anybody else has any more questions, I'd love to hear your input or talk through the concerns that were there. I [2:11:57] Town staff / engineer: can talk with some of the ones that I took notes on here, and being in these ordinances every day, one thing to start out for those that aren't in ordinances a lot is always trying to figure out applicability of a certain section on whether it's actually applicable to the design that you're looking at. So I'm just go down here on Ron's page that was highlighted, number two, because we've already talked about number one. Number two, the subdivision ordinance 2.1.3.5.7, if you take that back up to where And look at it's applicable. It's applicable when you're creating lots for the 10-foot driveway setback. They're not creating lots, so that whole section 2.3, 2.1 point 3 Lots is not applicable to this application because they're not creating Lots in there in their design. The zoning ordinance 20-foot setback isn't applicable. Our setbacks, as you guys know, are for buildings, not for roadways, driveways. Our setbacks and zoning are structure setbacks. They're not, they're not driveway setbacks. There was another discussion about a 20-foot planning board discretion. I'm trying to find the reference to where that was. That's not a setback, that's a buffer, and they're, you know, they're different. They're not, they're, they're two different things. So there's not a setback, it is just a buffer area, and that would be up to your discretion on how to, how to determine what cross through means. That would be a planning board decision on that one. [Speaker F (unidentified): 2].3.71, maybe it's 2.373, that's not the right one either. Hold on, 2.371 number five again talking about street intersections must be as close as 90 degrees possible. Again, moving up the thing, that's only when streets are being proposed, and again this is a multifamily driveway, it's not a street, lane, any of that. So again, not applicable in that whole piece. Just a quick [2:14:48] Planning Board Chair: clarification, I understand the applicable part, but by sweeping that turn out, it brings, does that bring it in conformity with those rules? I can't [2:15:02] Town staff / engineer: speak to that. Okay, I have an engineering technology degree, yeah, but I don't, I'm not an engineer. Totally understand. I do have to say though, in doing all this work, we have found there are inconsistencies in here that we need to address as a, as your staff for your planning board. That being said, on that same standard, our town engineers reviewed this at least three times, and part of the bottom of that one talks about it can be, it needs to be as close to 90 degrees as possible unless approved by the planning board with the recommendations from the public works director or town engineer. Town engineers has no, has had no problems with how it was designed, so I do have that there as well in [2:15:53] Planning Board Chair: The comprehensive plan, it is subjective, but our number two goal and our plan allows for a range of housing options for all ages and income levels. So you know, it is in there. It is single-family homes, they're not apartments. So just because it doesn't look exactly like the older homes, we can't say it doesn't fit there. That was our thought there. I think that's just about everything. One Question for Ron. You had mentioned a an additional 10 foot setback that you had seen somewhere in the ordinance on the road. Were you able to look at that and find that? Because I want to address that. That was the law applicability. [2:16:51] Ron Hajdu: Myles mentioned that. It's right here. Let me point it out to you and then show you what he was saying. So we are creating a lot, we may not be subdividing and selling those lots, but we are creating a new [2:17:39] Planning Board Chair: lot. And just to clarify, I want to make sure that I understand this with the town staff, is there is no boundary change proposed, correct? No, that was the [2:17:54] Town staff / engineer: original proposal, because we did not have the deed trail back at the preliminary. The original proposal was, as Ron said, to make that c-shaped lot to get road frontage in order to do what they what they are proposing to do with this. Now deed title search that shows it's a non-conforming lot of record, that is no longer the case. They don't have to create that to get the road frontage. They can lawfully use the lot for any use that's approved by the planning board permitted with the road frontage they have. They don't have to create new road frontage to be allowed to do that. [2:18:31] Planning Board Chair: Okay, yeah, understood, and I followed that. It was in the initial proposal, it was a private road that they were building, that was modifying the lot, they were modifying it to get that road frontage. But when they reverted back to a multi-family development private drive, or I can't remember the exact terminology of it, that's no longer changing that lot in nature. It is the same lot just with a different driveway way going through it. Yeah, so they're not deeding the road, so the block configuration does not change. And keep in mind, as we said, multifamily standards are the same as private road standards except for the right-of-way. So nothing has really changed as far as how they're gonna build it. They need the same way if [2:19:19] Ron Hajdu: they need the same minimum maximum slope, all that stays the same. Yeah, heard the [2:19:24] Planning Board Chair: The roadway design standards still apply because we specifically define that, and that goes back a couple of years when we didn't have a definition for that, and that was a whole other can of worms. Right. So, okay. So, the one that you had found, I don't remember the exact number, but the 213 something. [2:19:43] Ron Hajdu: Yeah, it's highlighted there. On the next page, I'm sorry. Yeah. [2:19:47] Planning Board Chair: Two, one, three, five, six, and seven is not applicable because it's not changing lots. Because the lot is not changing. There's no proposed change in lot. Adding [2:20:08] Ron Hajdu: five additional units to a lot that has three, a non-conforming lot that has three units, and you're adding five, does that make it more non-conforming? [2:20:20] Planning Board Chair: It's within the allowed use of the lot. [2:20:24] Town staff / engineer: Lot it is a it's a non-conforming lot of record it's not currently a non-conforming site development if it was a non-conforming site development then we would be talking about something different but it's it's a conforming site because multi-family development is already the current use on the site so it's a conforming site development it's just a non-conforming lot [2:20:47] Ron Hajdu: Understood okay thank you and I'd like to address one other comment that Miles made about how sidelane setbacks roads so I Miles made an incorrect state I do it is [2:21:03] Planning Board Chair: A structure run I'd like I'd like to hear your question as a planning board member thank you so [2:21:18] Ron Hajdu: Since we're splitting hairs on ordinances and definitions I let me tell you one that I found that I was genuinely surprised at that I didn't know that a road could not be had to be more than a sidelines or I should say let me say I didn't realize that a sideline setback applied to a roadway but it does a sideline setback applies to structures are a defined term in your ordinance so if we go to structures so I do I do want to be [2:21:51] Planning Board Chair: Real like yeah this will be quick like tight and like I want to hear your question right what's the [2:21:57] Ron Hajdu: Question the question is a roadway is a structure because it's constructed on the ground so the sideline setback of a minimum of 20 feet applies to it or 10 feet if you want to say to private if you want to call it a driveway so what I'm saying is no matter what if we're building something new or expanding something we need to we need to honor the aspect of some kind of an offset from the property line okay whether that's ten feet because we call it a multi-family driveway now whether that's Twenty feet because it's a structure and it has the sideline setback. When I built my garage in my driveway on my property, I had to abide by the by the sideline setback for the [2:22:40] Planning Board Chair: driveway in the building. So let me just make sure that I understand your thought or question here. Your interpretation is that because a roadway is being constructed that the construction constitutes needing to conform to the setbacks. Okay, heard on your interpretation. That's not my interpretation. I don't share that with you. Totally fine. You know, it's that's something that we've never practiced. It would make a lot of our ordinances is actually null and void if that was the case, but I totally heard on your [2:23:20] Ron Hajdu: interpretation of that. Ron, can [2:23:37] Planning Board Chair: you what are you saying as a definition [2:24:20] Ron Hajdu: requires a location on the ground. That's a structure. A setback, the minimum horizontal distance from a lot line to the nearest part of a structure. That's the definition in your ordinance. There's setback requirements and the definition in your ordinance for structure. So under those two definitions, I would say a road is a constructed feature. We have to put gravel down, we have to blast maybe, We're constructing it. It's a feature. It's a permanent feature. It's on the ground. Setbacks. It falls under the need for a sideline setback. In this case, the sideline setback that's being proposed is 18 inches. I heard. All right. Sorry. I'm very passionate about this. I've read this so many different ways. I understood. do it understood thank you any [2:25:31] Planning Board Chair: other board members have questions for staff not [2:25:37] Speaker F (unidentified): really a question but just a couple comments. The first one being I'm glad the air conditioning works in here. It's great. I don't do AC anything that I say is not something that's it hasn't already been mentioned right. So obviously there's been a lot of discrepancies about the pit like thinking that there's a secondary peer review with Woodward and Curran which Thank You jacob for clarifying that it seems like you folks think like you've been blindsided about this memorandum from the 70s and you Know the status of this law. At the same token, you know, Ron's been very good about sharing his information with us and town staff. You folks have hired a lawyer, and that was the first I've heard of that this evening. So I would, I don't, I guess my initial question to that is, why did you not want to share any information from their comments? Well, no, why wasn't like his, obviously he generated a report, right? So why wasn't that shared to either town staff or to us? Or okay, it also seems like we all have different interpretations about our ordinances, and everything revolves around that. You know, a lot of these projects that have come to us, and there's one that just comes to mind most recently, you know, we ended up doing a site walk, checked it all out. The developer was willing to work with, like, the abutters and come to some sort of resolution, and right now it just feels like everybody, we're just going around in circles about all the same things. And, like, I guess my question is, like, what can we do about this? I mean, really, like, you know, if, like, if. You need to come up to the microphone. [2:28:21] Ed Netto: Ron has laid it out beautifully. I mean, I don't want to fight about this. This has taken over our whole summer. And I respect you folks. I really do. I know you have decisions to make. This is not a good decision, and it, the fact is that we have presented so many things, so many ordinances, so many, we've responded to changes, we've done every single thing that you've requested, and then the planning boss over there, Amy, comes back with a totally different game every single time. It's happened three or four times now. Why is it that we taxpayers don't have a say in this? Why do we, why do we have to be like altruistic about building houses literally behind our house? This is not a good thing. This is not something that we paid for in our taxes and moved to this town to raise our children and our families. We know development needs to take place, but the developer has two buildings already, go in there, build them up, build the place up, work with the tenants that are there that have been there for a hundred years. Why do we have to go through this entire thing to just, to be ignored through the whole thing? We have been ignored entirely, and I think we need to be heard. Our concerns are legit. We're not just being a bunch of old hippie millionaires over there. We're not, first of all, we're not millionaires, and I'm asking you for some respect. John asked for that earlier. At least table this and take a look at it again, at least, at the very least. I am passionate about this too. Do you have [2:30:22] Planning Board Chair: more question? Thank you. And it's, it's a little disheartening to me to hear you say that you're not heard, because I know that I've spent at least six hours of my life, right, going over this, reading comments, sitting here listening, talking, and working through this, right, as a, as a landowner, as a property owner. You know, I own land out on Catapult, right? I have the right to do what I want on my own land, right, but there's ordinances in place, there's rules within the town that say, hey, these are the allowed things that we can do, because we're, you know, we don't want to put a hundred units out on Kennebec Road where they can't get a fire apparatus for life safety, right? So that's why, you know, ordinances, that's why all these things exist, and there's these processes, and that's why we have public hearings, right? I understand, to have this conversation and work through these, but at the end of the day, we are bound to our ordinances. We, as residents, we as planning board members, are bound to our ordinances, and I mentioned it in the, in the initial review, right? If you don't like any ordinance that we have, I invite you to come out to one of our workshops. I invite you to join the planning board. [2:31:34] Ed Netto: Right, we have a spot open. If the developer was gonna build a skyscraper behind there and he met all the ordinances, would you go for it? There's [2:31:45] Planning Board Chair: an ordinance against that. Okay, let me talk. Okay, there's a height maximum, and then beyond that height maximum, there's a certain setback that you have to be away from a lot line. So if you have a hundred acre lot, you could go up pretty darn high. It's allowed in the ordinance. We allowed that as a town, but so I'm gonna have you sit back down. Any big, we're not, we're not in public here anymore, so I appreciate the conversation. I just again, I want to be very, the [2:32:18] Ed Netto: the question I have for you is, do you ever reject anything? Absolutely. So far, three, four, five months ago, we started out with a driveway, then we went to a road, now we're back to a drive. Let's have [2:32:29] Planning Board Chair: a set it's i just have it so we're not in public hearing anymore i 've got a comment as well and that is that i find it offensive that you folks think we haven't spent time on this the staff has spent in an entire it's an amazing potentially waste of taxpayer money because a lot of the issues brought forward were not valid some of them were but we are residents of this town and we have to consider what's best for the town i'm sorry i look at this and see five small single unit one bedroom buildings, which I think does fit that character. I understand that you guys don't like it, but if a developer bought that land, he could go in there and put 22 bedroom townhouses in there that would not fit that, in my opinion, but it would be allowed by the ordinance. So for the town of Hamden to have five one bedroom structures, I think is very good for the taxpayers, for the residents. It doesn't benefit your area, I understand, it increases traffic, etc., but the lot was for sale, somebody else could have bought it, could have done nothing with it. That's my view. [2:33:51] Jonathan Wood: You need to [2:34:20] Speaker F (unidentified): come to the podium, please. Thank you. [2:34:22] Jonathan Wood: If you've done things in the past where you got together with a developer and a community to try and make it right, then do that. I would, you know, if the option is to make this as least impactful as it can be, maybe that is the thing. And I appreciate that you spoke up today and you said something. I was sad you didn't do it a couple weeks, a month ago, but I'm glad you did, and I appreciate it. [2:34:57] Zach Gilpin: It's not an easy thing to do. It's very uncomfortable. I respect you guys going up there, too, but it's not easy. [2:35:02] Jonathan Wood: And I appreciate it, and I think you asked the question, and I'm at the point personally where how can we make this as least bad as it can be? Because I'm out of butter, too. I haven't said that in the near 25 years. I still have some investment in this as well, up, but maybe we do need to do what you suggested. You asked, and I don't know, Zach, whether you'd be willing to get together and have a conversation and talk with the people who feel it's going to affect them in an incredibly personal and invasive way. It's not about the tenants. It's not about the tenants. It's not about, like, you know, class and all that. It's not that. It's about people right there. And so maybe you ask, do it, I don't know, would you be willing to meet with the people who are directly affected by this, people whose dumpster is right there, and would you guys be willing to go there? Because that sounds like what you asked. [2:36:12] Planning Board Chair: It doesn't have anything to do with our process. You guys in together is an [2:36:16] Jonathan Wood: amazing idea could happen, but you'd have to work that out. So we did a site walk. [2:36:34] Planning Board Chair: He was talking about the other development that we did a site walk, met with a developer, met with some of Butters, so we did a site walk here. That was the reason we [2:36:41] Speaker F (unidentified): did the site walk. We rarely do them. It just seems like nobody wants to work together, and I really don't understand why, honestly, like, you know, well, we were there for a site walk that [2:36:56] Jonathan Wood: wasn't, that didn't actually involve, that wasn't like come to, come community, and that didn't, I don't believe that was what, we appreciate that you asked the question. I think, how can we make this, Jacob, [2:37:39] Planning Board member: is it possible for us to make a motion to ask the developer to work with the residents here in this room from [2:37:56] Planning Board Chair: my take, and this is just having gone through this several times, I think the developer has tried to work and meet some of the requests and the demands, like there's the buffer, aren't, yeah, buffer is the word, the right word, the vegetative buffer amongst against the dumpster area, the multi cars park, right, so you know, we had this form, we had the public hearing in the, in the preliminary, and there was a lot of concerns that were raised in, and part of my motion, right, Ron, so I did it word for word was like to meet the concerns of the ordinances and in the things that we had heard, right, so reviewing the plan, you know, looking at the buffer, that's, that's, they're looking at additional cars, looking at the roadway engineering, there was a lot of engineering put into that roadway. I can, I'm not an expert in it, but I can tell there's a lot of engineering there. It feels like there has been collaboration, but it's, it seems like it's still not meeting the demands of some of the community, so and at the end Of the day, from my perspective, that's where we as a planning board kind of come in as a community of, you know, we're here, we have this process to go through and understand the ordinances and map what's in front of us to the ordinance and make the decision proceed that way. This is certainly one of the toughest decisions that I'll make as a planning board member, but you know, we can certainly ask it. I don't think there's any motion needed or anything. [2:39:36] Planning Board member: Well, I also had questions still or about the 18 inches versus the, his example was his garage on his own property, he had to follow a setback, and I'd like to understand more how he came up with 18 inches and Jeanine. [2:40:04] Planning Board Chair: From my interpretation, and please feel free to chime in if I'm incorrect here, the 18 inches that you were stating was from the roadway that's designed to the lot line. And what he said for his garage was he had 10 feet from the lot line for his garage, the principal structure, which is what's considered the setback. I think it's side yard setback, or potentially roadway setback. I don't know how it's configured for you. Multi [2:40:53] Ron Hajdu: -family driveway, you need 18 feet. So here's 18 feet. Then under either interpretation, multi-family driveway or private road, you need two feet of shoulder. Then you need a side slope because you want water not to lay in this shoulder and create mud or in this road and create mud and potholes. So you need a drainage way, and the maximum slope you can put in a drainage way like that is three on one, so that's three feet horizontal for every one foot you drop. Then you've got a back slope, and then you've got a ledge cut here because there's a ledge. Now the applicant has talked about, yeah, if they can get a variance, maybe they won't do this. Maybe they'll just run the steep – keep in mind, this road is coming out at you towards Summer Street, which is out here, and it's dropping. So, what they've said is, well, we didn't really want to do this. This is what meets the ordinance in terms of slopes. We didn't really want to do this. We would rather do something different, which to me would seem to require a variance to get a greater slope out to Summer Street. When you do this, and you figure all these numbers here, so zero is the property line, and you have these dimensions and you have these dimensions, they have an existing house that's 23 feet 6 inches from here. So if you jam all this over this way, you're left that you have to get all this in all this stuff in 18 inches, and it requires four and a three-quarter feet. So to do this properly to a design between the property line and the edge of the shoulder would require four point seven nine feet. Let's call it four feet nine inches, and what they have is 18 inches, and that was based on their own scaling off their own drawing. So 23, all of this is driven by the fact that we have a property line which is fixed, obviously, and you have an existing house that's fixed. So and I'm not an [2:42:50] Planning Board member: engineer or mathematician super [2:43:06] Planning Board Chair: clarification they have 23 and a half feet and they need 22 feet and that leaves 18 inches correct is there a motion that somebody on the board would like to make either way that they feel comfortable, and then it could be discussed further. [2:43:35] Planning Board member: I would like to make a motion to table this. [2:43:39] Planning Board Chair: So if we table it, gets approved. Well, not necessarily. In 30 days, if there is no action taken by the planning board, then it automatically gets approved. So it's possible to table it. It's also possible to push out that 30-day with agreeance from the developer four weeks from today. Yeah, whatever the math works out to. No, it's it's 30 days from the public hearing. So first off, there was a motion made, correct? I don't want to run your meeting. So is there a second? If there's not, it dies. Okay, like I mentioned during my comment, I am not an engineer, not a roadway engineer. I would like to I feel like the roadway has changed fairly substantially since we initially met and since it went through the initial review. I'd really like to get additional input from whether it's what occurred or a different third party review, right, like again, I am I am not an engineer. That's where my biggest doubt is. Are you making a motion? Not yet. So I guess I would I would ask the applicant if you would be willing to extend until our next planning board meeting to allow for time for this to go back through peer review. Yes. [2:45:44] Justine Drake: Please, you stated that the road has changed drastically from the original submission. What's changed is I originally showed a curve here and a curve here and it going perpendicular to Summer Street. The footprint has actually changed maybe inches. There's only a couple inches to spare, right? Certainly not drastic changes to the road design. So I would just consider that. I think we've, we've discussed this project ad nauseum on a technical level. We've reviewed and it's not that we're trying to cut corners. I mean, throughout this meeting I've heard cartoon, rubber stamp. I take great offense to that as an engineer. Many of what's been brought to light or brought in question has been disputed, a great number of those items. So I would just consider that as a board and again, I've worked with staff very closely because I, we are not inherently trying to avoid any requirements. I as the applicant would be very hesitant to agree to some sort of extension or additional peer review that's already been you know, dug through the weeds. There are real dollars involved here. I personally have other commitments that I'll be taking care of shortly. So I just want to say on behalf of the applicant, I don't want to speak for him, but if I was in his position, I'd be very hesitant to agree to an extension or agree to any additional review that's been extremely thoroughly covered, heard, and totally understood, and I totally [2:47:45] Planning Board Chair: respect like all the engineering work that you've done in that. Like I said earlier, like you can tell that a lot of work, engineering work has been put into this roadway design, right? It's a complex situation to fit into that area. I think me as a planning board member, that's where I am. It's beyond my knowledge and that's where I really rely [2:48:07] Justine Drake: on that outside, you know, party that, yeah. And I think a lot of what was originally, again, the requirements other than the right-of-way haven't changed. So that was already addressed in the initial review. Those have been responded to by me and town twice. So I would argue that the original peer review is still very applicable to this iteration of the project. Heard [2:48:34] Planning Board Chair: hang on just a second. So Zach, I'll ask if you care to speak officially on this. Yeah, I agree with my questions. Okay, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, absolutely. Real quick question, if you [2:48:50] Ron Hajdu: Very quick question. You asked the question about significant road changes. Would you consider a four foot to five foot to possibly six foot ledge cut 11 feet from a house to be a significant change from prior versions? [2:49:04] Justine Drake: That's not even in the purview of the ordinance. [2:49:06] Planning Board Chair: The question is to me. No, you're good. I just don't want to get back and forth going. [2:49:11] Ron Hajdu: Because I don't think the first peer review had to consider that. [2:49:14] Planning Board Chair: Heard and understood. And Amy, real quick question, the initial peer review was both site plan and subdivision, correct? Okay, thank you. So it's, there's, there's two different ordinances that we have to consider here. There's subdivision, which is, you know, when you're actually splitting lots and, you know, there's certain standards there. And then on major, there's also site plan where there's more of the building structure, the, you know, life safety, that sort of side of things. So I just wanted to make sure that it was both subdivision and site plan that does take into account those things like life safety and drop. I can think of back to something out on 202 where there was a big sheer drop right off the back of the multifamily development. And we said, well, you should probably put a fence there. And they did. So that's what comes to mind. But did you want to respond to that or do you have a follow up question? [2:50:11] Justine Drake: No, I would, I just again, this, that's not even under the purview of the ordinance. And I think like just to echo what your last name, but just echo what you said, the reason I said initially that we wouldn't request a waiver for the road requirements, even though it was my preference as an engineer, it's because it was made vehemently clear that you would not support a waiver. So if we table it, maybe we come back with ten units and then the compromise is five units. But other than that, you know, you guys have made it very clear that there would be absolutely no wiggle room in the design. You only want the project to die, right? That's not true. Okay, so they're shaking our head with Jacob's ideas because other because [2:51:01] Catherine King: we've heard your numbers. Okay. [2:51:04] Planning Board Chair: So the question is finished. Appreciate you coming up. If you want to sit back down, if we have other questions, we'll have you come up. Sure. Thank you, Amy. [2:51:16] Speaker F (unidentified): And Miles, I just have it, and not to put you guys on the spot, but obviously you have a lot of experience working with Woodward and Curran. You know, if this was to get kicked back over to them, what do you think they would say? I [2:51:31] Town staff / engineer: Don't think we can speak to what they would say. We would probably ask the board to draft the exact questions you want answered by them. In my years working with Woodard and Curran, if they are, they do a very thorough job, and if they don't mention something in their letter, it means they didn't find it. They've, and as Amy can attest to, they find things that we sometimes like, oh that was in there too, you know, one sentence. Jacob's really good at doing that for us as well, but one sentence in a, you know, hundred and something page document. So if that is the way the board, I think we would ask that the board draft the questions that they want answered, and then I don't know what their timeline will be. Normally we give them 44 there. The 44-day deadline is based on Woodard and Curran's deadline from us sending them stuff when they guarantee they can have something back. [2:52:37] Planning Board Chair: Is there a motion to be made? [2:52:43] Planning Board member: I'd like to just to make sure the individuals in this room truly get every answer that they want. I would like to make a motion to seek an updated peer review from Woodard and Curran. [2:53:05] Planning Board Chair: Is there a second for that motion? Seeing not, is there another motion that somebody would like to make? Somebody has to do it. [2:53:51] Planning Board member: I agree with a lot of you. Do I want it in my backyard? No, but I've had the same problem. I had to buy the land and somebody would have built my backyard. Everybody has to deal with it today. I'm sorry. People are going and going everywhere they can find a spot. We're all in the same boat. [2:54:12] Planning Board Chair: There was a motion. Is there a second? Seeing the second, is there more commentary or questions? Seeing none, can I start on my left? Ryan, yes. No, yes. No. Chair votes yes. This passes. Gonna move on to town planner report. I will be on vacation next week, so we will not have the workshop, but in September I would like to start the workshops again to go over the new state mandate and what not. Can I just ask that you reach out to me within a couple of weeks to coordinate the agenda? Can you just reach out a couple weeks ahead of time to coordinate the agenda? Let's have everybody just quietly please exit. What I was asking was just for the workshop that we do want to have, can you just reach out and we'll sync up and set the agenda? Thank you. I [2:55:53] Town staff / engineer: Got nothing for you guys. Yeah, I got nothing other than to say, I as a preface, as coming up, Amy and I have spoken, we are going to have amendments to zoning and subdivision because as you guys know our ordinance is a mess, it needs a complete rewrite, but we do not have the staff ability to do that anytime soon, so we keep finding you know a missed word here, there that changes a lot of [2:56:22] Planning Board member: things. In the comprehensive plan there was not very much interest in that at the time. I was a part of that and it was extremely difficult to get anybody in the town to participate in the comprehensive plan. [2:56:49] Planning Board Chair: I think that is a general statement that a lot of times people are not very interested in helping out until it affects them. Thank you. Thank you. Totally fine. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful night. Is [2:57:23] Planning Board member: there anything else? I just want to also say that this has been the most difficult decision brought before the Planning Board that I've encountered myself. I [2:57:39] Planning Board Chair: agree. If there's, there's nothing else. I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Unanimous.