Bangor Planning Board votes 4-3 to reject Ohio Street arterial reclassification

[0:56] Jonathan Boucher: So we're we're live since we don't have officers yet. The 1st thing we have to do is the election of officers. I'm wondering. I'm wondering if Matthew, could you go close that door over there? So we can hear properly. So. Basically, how this works is we take nominations of the chair and then if somebody doesn't want to be nominated, they don't have to be, but and no 2nd is needed either. Either and so once the nominations are taken you all can vote on who the chair will be and then whoever is chair will then do the vice chair election so [1:38] Kenneth Huhn: I'd like to nominate member Boucher for chair any [1:44] Jonathan Boucher: Other nominations except great so roll call vote remember Cartier remember Brush remember Brush your vote did you hear the question the voting for member Boucher to be chair do you vote yes or no Okay. Member Hayes? Yes. Member Huynh? Yes. Member Janice? Yes. Mr. Whitford? Yes. Member Hobson? Yes. All right. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. It's 7.01. Good evening and welcome to staff, board members, and members of the public. This is the January 6, 2026 meeting for the city of Bangor's planning board. My name is Jonathan Boucher. I'm your new chair of the city of Bangor's planning board. I have some introductions I could do but would you like me to skip right to the elections for the vice chair? Okay so would you like me to I'd like to at this point I would take nominations for a vice chair yeah [2:58] Kenneth Huhn: Yeah I'd like to nominate Jenna Jonas is the vice chair thank [3:04] Jonathan Boucher: You are there any other nominations for the vice chair Janet would you remember Jonas would you accept the nomination yes okay so with that said we'll do a roll call vote let's start with member Brush yes member Hayes yes member Hobson yes member Huynh yes member Jonas yes member Whitford yes and the chair votes yes would I ask member Cartier to vote in this [3:49] Patricia Hayes: Well I vote yes would you vote yes I vote yes and whether you count it or not you can figure [3:54] Jonathan Boucher: About it later today congratulations thank you I think he votes if there's nobody terrified now so with that said we'll move into introductions as you've heard some of their names already other board members in attendance tonight are Ted Brush Trisha Hayes Greg Hobson Ken Hyun Janet Jonas Ross Whitford and alternate member Justin Cartier board members are volunteers from the Bangor community city staff members in attendance this evening included include planning officer Anya Collette assistant Solicitor Grace Innes, City Engineer Jefferson Davis, and Planning Analyst Matthew Altiero, we thank them all for their help in the preparation for this meeting. We covered the elections, which was the first item on today's agenda. Next would be to go on to old business, which include the meeting minutes for December 16, 2025, and the adoption of findings for the decision on Map Lot R21-009, Pasha Road. So starting with the meeting minutes for December 16, 2025, are there any modifications or comments? I think it's worth noting, and that for this one I want to clarify, will just be the members who are in attendance for the for the minutes who be voting, so that would just be remember Brush, Hayes, you and Jonas and myself. So I'd like to see a motion. Move to approve. Second. The second from Member Jonas. Roll call vote. Member Brush, yes. Remember Hayes, yes. Remember Hewn, yes. Jonas, yes. And yes. Unanimous passage. Minutes. Moving on to our second item, it is the adoption of findings for the project named Map Lot referenced on Map Lot R21-009, the Pushaw Road. Any discussions on this? Any motion for the findings? If not, can we see, is there a motion to adopt the findings? [6:27] Kenneth Huhn: I moved it. Sure, I moved that the board find that the applicant has met all the requirements. [6:36] Jonathan Boucher: But we're looking for the adoption of the findings. This is one that we passed. Okay, are we, do you have a second? I'll second. All right, remember Jonah seconded, so we'll go to a roll call vote. Remember Brush, yes. Remember Hayes, yes. In this case we would include Hobson and Woodford, I believe. So remember Hobson, yes. Upper Hune, yes. Number Jonas, yes. Woodford, yes. Chair votes yes. All right, next we have our introduction of new business. So the Planning Board has two main roles. First, we review amendments the land development code, which typically include either changes to zoning districts or changes to the text within the code. Our review of these amendments includes adherence to the comprehensive plan, as well as considering any applicable concerns from the public. Our vote on these items is in the form of a recommendation to the City Council as to whether the item ought to pass or ought not to pass. The City Council makes the final decision on zoning and land development code changes. There is one code amendment item on the agenda this evening. Secondly, the Board serves as a regulatory authority for land development permits, commonly known as site plan review, but there are no land development permits on the agenda this evening. Information on the City's codes and standards and the comprehensive plan can be found at city's website. The item that we're covering tonight, the review of tonight's proposed code amendment, will be as follows. The code amendments are staff-led changes, so we will first ask the staff to present. Once the item has been presented, we'll allow time for public comments, for public comments. The person should come up to the podium and make sure the green light is on. It might be on red right now. The person should come up to the podium, introduce themselves, state whether they are a Bangor resident or an abutter to the property, and indicate if they are for or against the proposal. It is also helpful if you present your thoughts based on the city's codes and standards and the comprehensive plan, as these are the primary documents used by the board to make our decisions. All comments and discussions should remain respectful and considerate of others. Once public comments are completed, we will close the item to public the comment, and the board will then deliberate on the proposed proposal using applicable standards. So our item, our new business item here, the code amendment, is the amendment of the land development code by removing Ohio Street and State Street from the minor arterial street definition and adding Ohio Street to the major arterial definition. And the way we'll get started it here is I'll turn it over to Planning Officer Colette to present. Yeah, it's right here. She's asked, I wanted to turn on our monitors. Do you want to monitor up? If I just press power. Hold up for the moment. Oh, you have to stand there. [10:11] Kenneth Huhn: New technology for us, you [10:58] Speaker F (unidentified): all set? Yeah, I think we're ready for you. All right. [11:15] Jonathan Boucher: So I'll start off with notifications for this change, why and how we sent out notifications for zoning changes and text changes. Basically, whenever we make a text change that in effect allows certain uses, primarily commercial uses in an area where there weren't commercial uses, or we do the opposite, we have to notify everyone in those affected properties in addition to the properties next to those properties. And we also have to send or put an ad in the paper. And so in this case, there was quite a large mailing for this change. What the proposed change is essentially is a change to the definition of major arterial street in the land development code. Currently, it's listed as a minor arterial. We would be changing that to major arterial. Additionally, State Street is listed in both places, both as major and minor arterial, even though it is clearly a major. So we think it was erroneously listed as a minor. So we're proposing to remove that. Just in general, the definition of major arterial street is that, and it says keyword generally, a highway of regional significance with average annual daily traffic in excess of 10,000 vehicles and containing more than two lanes in at least some sections. And so I'll get to that in a little bit, but just speaking about what this change does, essentially it introduces some new uses to Ohio Street depending on the zoning. And I had listed in the notice and up here as well those particular uses that would change and the zones that restrict them to major arterials. Materials. So it's things like nursing homes, offices, medical offices, and in our RNA, which was a pretty big segment of the area that was changing, you're looking at uses like large landscaping service businesses, sales of farm products, and places of worship. And additionally, most of the uses that would be changing with this are conditional uses. And so when you look at conditional uses, if this did change and somebody wanted to propose one of those conditional uses, they have to meet a higher level of scrutiny. You have to look at the traffic impact on the road. You have to look at does that use fit in with the surrounding neighborhood, the intensity of that use, the scale of that use. And so if you feel that it doesn't, if it has really negative impacts when it comes to that, you have the discretion to say no, this use shouldn't be allowed there. So there is that additional level of protection. Additionally, this change doesn't result in any physical change to Ohio Street at all. It's just basically a change to what would be allowed there use-wise. Otherwise, there are no plans to change Ohio Street physically, and this doesn't relate to that. We did feel as staff that we felt that the potential uses that would be allowed by this wouldn't result in sprawl. We felt that they were pretty limited in impact, particularly since a lot of them are conditional uses. And we also felt that in the zones where they were allowed, they were in conformance with the surrounding area. area. And some, in fact, might have a beneficial impact like direct farm sales. There are working farms along Ohio Street, and we felt that allowing direct farm sales would help those uses out. And also the other effect that it would have would be bringing some uses into conformity. I noticed one member of the public gave you a handout with some comments and talked about some existing uses that are listed here that are already on Ohio Street. If that's the fact the case then those might be legal non-conformities which means they're allowed to continue to exist but if they want to expand or redevelop it could cause issues for them because technically they wouldn't be allowed under the code so that's how that works so the reason that we're proposing this there was a potential applicant who came forward they were interested in adding a recreation center along Ohio Street however just because somebody comes forward with a request doesn't mean we could just go ahead and do a text change we look at you know what is going to be the impact on the entire city and the zones does this align with the comprehensive plan and things of that nature so again like we looked at the uses like having active Farms along Ohio Street they would be allowed to have direct farm sales there are some churches that are legally non-conforming on Ohio Street that would be conforming if this were to change. And then also going back to the definition, paying attention to that word generally, while Ohio Street doesn't strictly meet that definition, it is very close to 10,000 trips a day and does serve a relatively large geographic area. So we felt that it generally met that definition. So when we talk about the comprehensive plan, we did adopt the comprehensive plan in 2023, and that established a vision for the next 10 years. And it also established this feature land use plan and a growth boundary. And the growth boundary is, you can't see it very well here, but it's a thick black line that kind of outlines this portion of the city that where we have sewer and water infrastructure primarily. And outside of that growth boundary, we don't have that infrastructure and the comprehensive plan does say, you know, we want to limit water and sewer infrastructure to that growth boundary. So that's the primary controlling factor on development and the intensity of development and where we put infrastructure. So when we are looking at if we look at changing zoning or we look at adding a development, this is what you would be looking at. And also the fact that, you know, if the city is looking at its infrastructure, it looks at the growth boundaries as well. We're not going to expand outside that line and when we, when we have development come in, we always see that the water and sewer infrastructure is one of the primary controlling factors on whether it can go there. We don't really see intense development where there is not public water and sewer. So this is the most important piece when you're considering like what is going to control the intensity of development in the future. So and this change to Ohio Street doesn't change that growth boundary at all. So I wanted to clarify that. So the process from here is you all will receive public comments through the public hearing, you ask us questions and then once you close the public hearing you can discuss the item and then you would make a motion on whether or not to recommend the change to council and as that ought to pass or ought not to pass and if you vote that it ought to pass there only needs to be a majority of council to approve it. If you voted ought not to pass then two-thirds of council would be needed to override your vote. So their next meeting, the council's next meeting is next Monday the 12th for when this would go to them. So I will sit back down. Now typically we can do staff questions before we open up the discussion to the public. Anya, I'm playing officer, would you like us to open the discussion to the public first or I think so, yeah. So With that in mind, we're going to open up the public comment. So anyone who would like to come up to the podium to keep your comments, you know, first of all mention a reminder to mention whether you're a resident of Bangor, if you about the Ohio Street, and if you're for or against it, and then you can give your comment, try and keep it on topic. Do we have any members who would like to come up? Yeah, please. Good evening. My name is Joe Pratt, longtime resident of Bangor. Graduated from Bangor High School, wife graduated from Bangor High School, two kids graduated from Bangor High School, and I've been a resident for 49 years with me tonight are a number of folks from my area and I think as a group we're here to oppose the change of Ohio Street to a major arterial Street before the Planning Board can properly consider this change we feel that the council should or the Planning Board should consider why the change is being proposed, what problems will the change resolve, what benefit will be realized by Bangor residents and property owners on Ohio Street, and what will be the negative impacts for Bangor residents and property owners on Ohio Street. I haven't heard any good answers to these questions yet maybe they'll come up in the Q&A session in the December 18th letter the notice that we got of this meeting as well as the handouts that we got tonight and the comments that we heard from the planning staff there's a description of 11 uses that were described as currently not allowed on the entirety of ohio street the handout tonight describes them as currently prohibited this isn't true they are allowed there are currently 40 plus examples of uses included in the not allowed list that are already located on ohio street this includes three private schools a level four nursing facility, gas stations, convenience stores, commercial businesses, commercial office space, a needle exchange of school bus storage and repair lot, many commercial apartment complexes, hundreds of residential rental units, several non-profit organizations, and several places of worship these uses already exist today and they have for years it is clearly not necessary to change ohio street to a major arterial street in order for these uses to exist they already exist the december 18th letter also says in the comments tonight also said, that the proposed change would introduce new uses to Ohio Street. What new uses? As we've already discussed, most of the uses that are on the not allowed list are already in place, and they have been in place for years. It's not necessary to change Ohio Street to a major arterial street to allow these so-called new uses. They already exist, and the process by which these uses were approved already exists. Additional development and new uses come before the existing planning board. They go through a review process, and that has been successful for years in allowing development and proposed uses. We don't believe there's any need to change that. Also, changing Ohio Street to a major arterial street would destroy the little bit of residential feel that still exists. Does the planning board really want to squeeze out the remaining residential area with more space for strip malls? Is that what we want? Do we really want Ohio Street to see an average daily traffic volume in excess of 10,000 vehicles? That isn't what we want. This is what the proposed change would mean for Ohio Street. Street. As the December 18th letter points out, Union Street, Broadway, and Essex Street, all of which parallel Ohio Street, are already designated as major arterial streets. There are miles of undeveloped space on these streets. If there are traffic issues on those three streets, fix those traffic issues on those streets. Don't convert Ohio Street to another street that will have the same problems. Don't make Ohio Street, rather, we don't want to make Ohio Street a more attractive shortcut to what exists right now. It's not necessary to change Ohio Street to a major arterial street. A process to approve development and new uses is already in place, and improvements can be made to streets that are already designated as major arterial streets to address any traffic issues. We urge the planning board to recommend not approve to this change, and we thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Pat. Thank you, Mr. Frat. That was very well spoken. I appreciate your input. Planning Officer Colette, would you like to reply to any of his, of his points? I think you addressed a number of them during your meeting, saying that there's no change in the physical layout of the street or no immediate change to any of the existing uses. This is a matter of documentation and Definition in the planning code, yeah, it would only impact those uses and zones that I mentioned. It wouldn't result in a zone change that would allow for more things like strip malls. If there's already a zone like shopping and personal service district there, that's one of the only places that would allow a strip mall, and I don't think there's any shopping personal service along Ohio Street, so there wouldn't, that wouldn't be allowed there as is. And also, again, if there are some of these uses already on Ohio Street, they may be legally non-conforming, which they were there before our current zoning, so they can continue to be there. But again, if they want to redevelop or expand, then this would prevent them from doing that because they're technically not [27:32] Speaker F (unidentified): allowed under the current zoning to be there. So when we talk about the legal non-conformity, we're [27:36] Jonathan Boucher: talking about items like, oh, I'm sorry, this is still public comment. Did you have anything else you wanted to state, Mr. Pratt? Any other members from the public, remember to state your name and if you're a resident. Hi, [27:58] Public commenter: i'm lisa miriam i live on ohio street i'm a resident of bangalore and i oppose the proposal. I like to sit in my yard. I don't see 10,000 cars pass by me. I see kids on bicycles, a bicycle group that goes down my road. I see strollers. I don't see 10,000 cars. And so therefore I oppose. [28:28] Jonathan Boucher: Brian. Yes, sir. Oh, thank you. Yep. [28:35] Public commenter: My name is Cindy Levesque, and I do live in Bangor on Ohio Street. I live on [street]. Funny story, I moved there about 16 years, no, 10 years ago because I couldn't have my chickens in Bangor. So I moved to Outer Ohio Street. It's important to me, the lifestyle that I've created or we've created there, to keep that as our sanctuary. And cars already go by there disgustingly fast. There is so much traffic and they fly by. I can't imagine opening up that area to even more traffic. I mean, there's historically family farms that we want to, we want to preserve that way of life, and if we open that up today, we don't have nursing homes and strip malls right now, but in 10 years from now we might, because there's land right above me that may go up for sale. I certainly don't want to lose the integrity of our family farm to have an industrial building next door. I mean, I'm a nurse, I've worked in nursing homes, but I wouldn't want one next door to me. It's just not a place for it to be. I oppose it. [29:52] Speaker F (unidentified): Back in [29:55] Jonathan Boucher: the back. Yeah, you had your hand up. Thank you. Thank You my name is Rick Bronson. I have lived in the first block of Ohio Street from downtown for 50 years this year. I have some understanding of it. I have read what you have sent to us and I can't say I'm opposed or in favor yet because I don't know enough. This tells us that there is no one seeking this change, so therefore I don't know why we're here tonight. There is, in my view, plenty of space on the existing major arterials for any development push that could be happening for one of these types of businesses. And if you really look at Bangor, 50% of it's vacant anyway. But someone wants to do this regarding Ohio Street. Now I'm going to take a couple of wild guesses and you don't have to confirm, but I've lived there long enough to know that Eastern Maine Medical Center would really like to do something with the original Ross home, which is across the street from me, and they moved out to Broadway with Sylvia Ross's money, and they're very happy to have the money, but they're not happy to be stuck with that building under the terms they got it and they can't seem to change it. This is not the first time that there's been an attempt to change the rules regarding Ohio Street. Now, I don't know that it's the medical center that's trying it this time, but you'd have to convince me it isn't. And so why then are we giving in to this one who got all the money, they got Sylvia Ross's money, they got the building and they took it under the terms, they took it and my guess is they're still looking to change the terms. I will tell you this about the first block of Ohio Street because I think many of you don't know this. When you get up on a Sunday morning and you look out there, you're looking at a fine New England residential street. Ohio Street is in multiple pieces. The first piece coming out of downtown out through the interstate is one sort, then from the interstate out a bit further it's another sort, and then further out it's yet another sort. So I don't think changing the whole thing for a single purpose makes much sense, and I also not happy to be here to be told in your letter to us that we don't know who wants this but we should go through all this anyway. Way I don't think that makes a lot of sense and I would think until you are prepared to give us a clue as to what might be coming, you maybe have to put this away. Thank you Bronson. Hello. [33:13] Grace Innis: My name is Hannah Weisgerber. I'm a resident of Bangor, but I don't live on [street]. I'm neutral on the proposal, but I think I agree with Mr. Joe and that traffic would be an issue. And so he said if there are problems on existing roads, then fix those first. I agree with that. The road infrastructure in Bangor is really poor. And I think if you were going to make this change to change Ohio Street to a major arterial, then you said you weren't considering road development, but I think that should be definitely on the list of considerations because you will be opening and I admit I don't know exactly in which zones what and what uses are allowed. I don't know the zoning map like that, but if you were going to open it to more intensive uses, I think that it would be important to fix the state of the roads and the sidewalks and you know out of bike lane because I think that Joe is correct and the very intelligent man who spoke before me is also correct. It would be nice to keep the nature of the street pretty residential, but so neutral, but roads [34:34] Jonathan Boucher: Do we have anyone else who'd like to speak? [34:49] Public commenter: My name's John Schneck. I'm a former state representative from Bangor. I live on outer Ohio Street and I'm here to talk about outer Ohio Street. We don't have sewer. We don't have water. And if the map was still up there, we'd be able to talk about that, but that's not in the, that's not under consideration for these changes. But if we make this a major arterial way, we're going to have stoplights on every other block. It's going to cause changes. And from Davis Road to the Glenburn line, there's no shoulder. You can't ride a bicycle. You can't walk safely on Ohio Street when it snows. There is absolutely no shoulder, there's nowhere to go. And in the spring and summer, the motorcycles, 20, 30 a week, are going 100 miles an hour when they get to the Smith Farm from the railroad track. Track. It's a test track for speeding. And the police can't even put that radar box on Ohio Street because it would have to sit in the street because there's no shoulder. So it's out of Ohio Street, cannot handle more traffic. So if you put stoplights from Davis Road to downtown, it's just going to slow down traffic. Right now, Ohio Street is the only way you can get through town without getting stuck on every other block. And we just don't need this. So we're, we're in opposition to the change. Outer Ohio Street has lots of accidents because people drive off the road all winter long. Every winter we just put that pebble surface on to try and reduce some of the accidents out there, but we don't need more traffic, we need less traffic. And if you do this, you should make a line at Davis Road. So from Davis Road out, it's not a major arterial road. It shouldn't have that kind of higher traffic volume. So you know, I agree with the group. We oppose the change. Do we [36:44] Jonathan Boucher: have any other comment? Thank [36:53] Public commenter: you, Jeff Forney. I live on [street]. That's Mr. Schneck, one wonderful neighbor. I'm in general agreement with his points there, but I think I'd like to focus more on some of the issues about conformity with the code and the comprehensive plan. I did submit a written comment stated January 5. So I won't repeat them in detail, but I do invite the board to review those opposition statements in full. Regarding the redefinition, as staff pointed out, major arterial is defined generally as a highway of regional significance with average daily traffic in excess of 10,000 vehicles and containing more than two lanes in at least some sections. Ohio Street in its current form does not need either of those conditions. My staff essentially admitted that Ohio Street does not meet the volume traffic requirement. I did submit as Exhibit A to my comments and opposition, a Department of Transportation, annual average daily traffic study, and the most recent one indicated that the most highly trafficked portion of Ohio Street at Griffin Road is under 10,000. It's at 9660, but technically then it does not meet the definition. Other parts of Ohio Street have far less volume of traffic. For example, out near where I live at [street], the volume in the most recent Department of Transportation study was 1,770. So it doesn't meet that first definition. I would like to see if staff had conducted their own traffic study to contradict those Department of Transportation data points, and if not, I think that basically is dispositive of the issue. You can't have changed the designation of Ohio Street because it doesn't meet the legal definition. There is also the issue of whether it contains more than two lanes, at least in some portions. I contend not now. There are short turning lanes at some intersections, but I believe if you, if you look at the code in general, the purpose of it, that definition of lane, or excuse me, the lane should actually mean more than two travel lanes to accommodate the volume of traffic for which major arterial is defined. Minor arterial roads like Ohio Street cannot accommodate large volumes of traffic, nor uses that would generate larger volumes of traffic. Boarding houses, schools, business offices, and the like should not be further permitted along Ohio Street, especially out north of Davis Road. As Mr. Schneck pointed out, it cannot accommodate additional traffic in that area. The traffic code also recognizes, for example, that minor arterials cannot accommodate large trucks. The traffic code actually indicates that along portions of Ohio Street, for example, for example, in the winter months, trucks over, I believe, 23,000 pounds are not permitted. Other minor arterial roads also have similar prohibitions. Taking all of those points together, we can discern that, in fact, that term lane, as it's indicated in the code currently, means more than two travel lanes in order to accommodate the volume of traffic. Ohio Street does not meet that condition either. So I think those points are actually dispositive. You just cannot move Ohio Street unilaterally from minor arterial, where it's now appropriately situated, to major arterial. It doesn't meet either of those conditions. Also too, staff mentioned that one of the purposes, perhaps, in this recommendation was to bring nonconforming uses into conformity. But staff also admitted that it's not as if those current nonconforming uses are legally impermissible in their current state. So it's not as if this change will actually benefit those existing owners who just so happen to be historically using non-conforming uses. Their property rights, invested interests, are not going to be helped by this definitional change. Also, I believe that the redefinition of Ohio Street is contrary to the comprehensive plan. I discussed this in much detail in the letter, so I won't revisit all of the issues. But the comprehensive plan generally tries to be all things to all people. I mean, it addresses many different goals and many different policies. But what you can discern from it generally is three main points. The city is under fiscal stress. The investment focus for the city is supposed to be channeling investments into existing infrastructure in the city, and that is within the growth boundary. Relatedly, further development is to be focused on inlaid development to current areas within the growth boundary. boundary. So outside of Davis Road, changing the major arterial that would even permit the possibility of considering even conditional uses that would result in higher traffic levels and more dense use should not be permitted at all. It would be a conditional consideration by the board, but there's no reason to even open up that door for those types of conditional considerations. The other part of the comprehensive plan that's significant here on this point is that there's supposed to be a preservation of open space and existing farmland. That's also a state policy and the comprehensive plan repeats that. There's plenty of open space, undeveloped land, potential farmland out beyond Davis Road, and that condition should be preserved. There's no reason to set up the preconditions in changing the definition of Ohio Street that would likely change that character and go contrary to the comprehensive plan. Thank you. I oppose the redefinition, and I appreciate your consideration. [43:35] Jonathan Boucher: Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Fournier, for your thoughtful input. input planning officer Colette would you like to chime in on any of the comments that he made any of it jump out that's something you wanted to I can just wait till the end very good yeah any other public comment yes I see a hand up in the back hello [44:06] Public commenter: my name is Anna Maria Baeza I'm a resident of Bangor I live on [street] as Mr Bronson in the first block actually across the street from the Ross house and I don't have any prepared comments but I just think that it's crucial for anything that happens in Bangor to take great care of the residents and homeowners who are here because that is the heart of the city and if this is gonna damage those values and the security of the people staying there, living here right now, owning homes, I think It's, in the long run, a very damaging decision to make for Bangor itself. And I think it's very important to think of the long-term value of the city in terms of the farmland that's on Upper Ohio Street and the idea of being able to have people buy things directly from farmers. The state of Maine has a rule that was just passed last year that people are allowed to sell person to person. So we don't need a new kind of zoning for that. We just have to pass that rule in Bangor that they just like in the Blue Hill Peninsula, everybody buys from everybody else. We could do that here too. So I think there's other ways to achieve that worthy goal. So I would urge the planning committee to look at maybe other creative ways to get some things that might be beneficial in this plan and not sacrifice or waste resources that Bangor sorely needs. [45:56] Jonathan Boucher: Any remaining comments? Yep, good. [46:02] Public commenter: Evening, my name is Jack McKay and I live on [street]. I was born on Ohio Street and I've been there for 60 years now. So this is tough because typically, I'm in favor of density and the need to build, and housing is a huge issue. I've seen Ohio State change, and I'm just past Westland Street, and the speed limit goes from 25 to 35, right on that little hill, and so the motorcycles hit the gas right there and doing 45 past my house, and the speed of traffic is a real concern. I was out with my kids for the bus and twice cars went right through the red light of the bus. Once ending up on the, bus was coming here and the car was coming in that direction and they ended up in the lawn about 15 feet up in the lawn on this side. So it's a really dangerous place in Westland Street being right there. The number of cars is really pretty crazy. I would be opposed to this for the most part. I mean, my question that I'm a little bit confused about is that I appreciate that at some point there's a large number of entities that are there now, which got there somehow, and the zoning changed at some point. So are you saying that under the current regime, they would not be allowed to either come into existence in the first place or expand? And if they are allowed to come into existence or expand, do they have to go through a very onerous process? Is it a variance or something? Something and to what degree is that different than this? And so that's one set of questions. The other is again holding that there's, there's benefits to density as opposed to sprawl, there's benefits to using an infrastructure. How is this much more compelling than other places where there could be growth? So anyway, that's, I would say I'm more or less opposed. Thank you. [48:01] Jonathan Boucher: Mr. McKay, any other comments? I'd like to, we, I hope to raise those questions and get some clarification for the general audience when we get to the comments of the staff. Yes, my [48:17] Public commenter: name is Patrick Allen. I'm a Banger resident. I live at [address]. I agree with the rest of the comments offered here. I guess my big question, if you guys are taking questions, is why the push to go beyond the Davis Road if the need is to help out existing businesses with their growth and expansion, and that's where the infrastructure ends? Why go out so far where there's, you know, an obviously lower traffic volume residential area where, you know, really it's, it's, it's not equipped to take that type of density and the load. So thank you. I'd [49:01] Jonathan Boucher: like to think we can answer that one. I would like you to just, it's like an all or nothing. Like if you're, yeah, it's all or nothing. Just because, like, in the definitions, it doesn't split up roads into different segments. It's just list one road as being either major or minor arterial. So yeah, so it would be the growth boundary that would draw the distinction between the vault, like the density, if I'm right. It wouldn't be the road itself. Would be that black line that was on the map that would say after this cutoff point, we expect it to be less and less dense. Not necessarily that it's a, because there's, I think of Union Street or Broadway, they're all major arterials as well, but eventually it pitters out as you get further into the low density. Sure, but in the, information that was [49:49] Public commenter: that was distributed, and it's also just not that it's, it's any fault of yours, we only got the letter like three days ago. What in the world is going on here? Just seems like a big rush. I can [50:00] Jonathan Boucher: I can tell, I can tell there's a lot of concern. That's the curiosity is where does this need [50:07] Public commenter: truly come from? What is the, what is the push, you know, why not a little more notice or a little more, you know, it seems like this is kind of, there's kind of a hush [50:17] Jonathan Boucher: over the real motivation. Why? Thank you. Any other public comment? We'd like to include. Yep. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, if you, and then there's one in the back. I'm stay [50:31] Public commenter: Martha, more, he's president Bangor. I live on [street]. I agree, I'm opposed, but I will say that as they reasoned the corner Davis Road in Ohio Street, I would like to have a four-way stop there or something, and they always said there was not enough traffic. This has been going on for years, so I don't think they're, you know, this the purpose of what, you know, changing the zoning or the planning for this is necessary, but yeah, I would like it to stay the way it is. Been there for 23 years, and but also I was the timing of the letter and how fast it, you know, the meeting you're voting on next week. We just got it right before Christmas. I was out of town, sort of the same thing. So why, you know, why now, what's the rush, why has this never been brought before, why is it being rated on so quickly? So those are my concerns, so no, thank you. [51:25] Jonathan Boucher: I think we have a person in the back and then we'll go to you next. [51:33] Public commenter: I own property on Ohio [51:35] Speaker F (unidentified): Street, I don't actually live in there. Do you mind just saying your name real quick? I'm Tammy Smith. [51:40] Public commenter: Boyle. And my family owns Smith Farms on Outer Ohio Street. And, you know, a lot of talk goes around. And so I guess my question is, there's been a lot of rumors that the property on the corner of Davis Road and Ohio Street, that they are considering moving or putting a jail in there, or possibly people want to purchase it for a training center for Versant, and my question is, do either of those two things have anything to do with this planning board wanting to change the zoning? Thank [52:28] Jonathan Boucher: you. Did we care to comment on that? I feel like we've I have no knowledge of that, and yeah, I'm, I don't have any knowledge of potential jail locations. I don't know what the county is planning. We haven't seen anything come in the office, and the Versant, they are planning a training facility, but I think that's on Griffin Road, so not on Davis Road, so I don't think there's plans there. No, it's on Davis and Union. Yeah, it's Union that went before us. Yeah, it came from Davidson Union, the rezone. Yeah, you're right, that's true. So the answer is no, not that we're aware of, but I think any of us are prepared to speak about that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. We had a comment over here, I believe. Oh, wonderful. Any other comments? Hi. [53:22] Public commenter: My name is John Dion, and I live with Cindy on Ohio Street, it's her place. We're on Outer Ohio Street, and anyway, just speaking from the heart here, but also kind of considering the logic behind all of this. So recently there's a gated field, there used to be a couple of structures behind that gated field on Ohio Street that were recently torn down, and I was like, okay, what's going on with this place and then recently noticed a couple of vehicles out there texas license plate and a european license plate you know one of those long plates streets. It was like, okay, I was looking at this property and why, now? Why here? So I took a drive today down Ohio street. We've been living there for 10 years. I've been living in Bangor since 1982. So I'm not native to the area, but this is home and coming by Davis Road so I live on our outer Ohio Street it coming down past Davis Road you know there's there's just a huge mix of everything houses churches you know transport companies knees and it all blends in okay and as you get closer to downtown you get all these like magnificent structures old structures but still like very viable and some of them are apartment buildings some of them are still single family i was looking for cancer I was looking for, okay, what is going bad? And I really couldn't, until I get to Hammond Street, I didn't really see a lot of decay. It was all like mostly residential, some light commercial, mostly service-oriented entities. and it was like okay this all blends up nicely there were a couple of properties 22 ohio street 320 to 24 ohio street barricaded you know just vacant needing some support to clean and clean it up 374 ohio street 450 ohio street those were all buildings that basically have been shut down so you know i think the city needs to do some work on cleaning up all that but nonetheless overall you're talking about a residential neighborhood and beyond that, we have a small farm. It's, you know, a lot of small agricultural interests. So I guess what I'm wondering is a lot of what is presented here is commercial, right? Boarding homes what are boring homes in this day and age what are they what [57:58] Jonathan Boucher: is a boarding home you're looking for a definition of how we classify a boarding home yeah it's like co-habit like co-living centers okay like multiple would you have a better definition handy it's where you rent a room and then you have like a shared kitchen okay all right i'm fine with [58:15] Public commenter: That because the biggest problem right now in Bangor is people finding a place to live. It's not finding a new place to buy a tractor. It's not finding a place to go to school or a training facility. The main concern right now is people finding a place to live, and Ohio Street extending all the way to Glenburn provides that opportunity. So why do you want to muddle that up, create a situation where all of a sudden property values, land values are going up because commerce is moving in? Why does commerce want to move into Ohio Street? Because it's too expensive to go to Hogan Road. It's too expensive to go to the Odlin Road. So they want to come to Ohio Street and buy cheaper land. It's not cheap, but cheaper land for the sake of development. Okay. There are other options for commerce. Look at the Bangor Mall, look at the facilities there that are underused, undervalued, deteriorating in front of us, okay? And there's pockets of that all over the city, much of which the city owns, and now you want to encroach on Ohio Street for the sake of commerce. I'm opposed to this. Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Dion. We have [1:00:25] Jonathan Boucher: any other, you have any other comment from the public? Thank you, guys. Any other hands? Just so we can get a sense of how many more comments. One. All right, thank [1:00:38] Public commenter: you, guys. My name is Mary Tedesco Schneck. I live at [address], and I just wanted to say that I oppose it, and I agree with all the points that have been made, and I did draft a letter that I sent to the committee, and I just wanted noted that there were at least 15 signatures of my neighbors that felt the same way, and the only reason there weren't more signatures is because it was wicca cold this weekend and I couldn't get to everybody's door. So I just, I just wanted to make sure that you had that and had the sentiment of my neighbors. Thank you, Ms. Snick. Hi, my name's Kyle Mallon-McDonald. I'm actually building a house on Ohio Street right now. It's actually up Bean Estates, but it's on the corner. We're just within the setback of Ohio Street. So we're right there. We already have a needle exchange program that was just put in just moments away from my house. And I find it kind of uncomfortable, the idea that a lot of these areas, is there's a lot of open space around me, and you know, I, it cringes me out to think that there could be a Walgreens or something like that I'm so close to where I've decided to settle my family down, and so that really bothers me. So I oppose looking [1:02:07] Jonathan Boucher: to see if there's any other public comment. All right, are we taking any comment on online? I believe somebody over there. Oh, was there one last hand? I'm sorry, I just want to if you'd like to have something to say, this is your chance. Oh, I understand. That's it. I think we'll be closing public comment at this point. All right, well guys, thank you so much. I can tell there's a lot of great research and thoughtful comment that happened here. It's very impressive, the civic turnout here, so I appreciate seeing that. At this point, with public comment closed, we're going to be turning to planning board questions to the staff. Before we do that, is there any comment that you had prepared based on some of the feedback you've been hearing? Yeah, I just wanted to address a few things. So number one, when we're talking about outer Ohio, just want to emphasize, and people have mentioned, you know, we have the growth boundary and the comprehensive plan, and again, those still limit very much so the development that would happen on outer Ohio, and definitely farmland preservation and maintaining that rural feel is very important in the comprehensive plan. That's why the growth boundary was delineated the way it was, and again as I had responded in to one of the public comments and sent you via email, there are just four uses that would really be allowed by this change in outer Ohio, and that was direct farm sales, places of worship, large landscaping service business, and boarding houses. And so can we pull that slide back up please? Yeah, Matthew would have to get the keyboard there. I can show that slide four. Yeah, so all that area that's light green, sorry about that, so all that area that's light green to the top left there, that's all RRNA, rural residents and agricultural, and so the list of businesses that you were said there [1:04:28] Patricia Hayes: were four, but I remember recall there being eight or nine on that, but no, I meant 11. That's what I [1:04:33] Jonathan Boucher: was asking this slide. No, yeah, I was just talking about RRNA specifically, because that's pretty much all of the area in outer Ohio is RNA, so I just wanted to address that. Also the future land use plan, again, all that area in light green is designated rural residential. The intent is to maintain it that way when any zone changes are proposed, and we're going through a land development code update right now. We don't have a draft yet, but when that comes out, you know, we're going to try to maintain that. Area as it is, and then neighborhood residential is the area between the growth boundary and downtown. It's a yellow area, so more medium density residential development and very limited commercial development. And then you have the downtown core, so that's really the controlling factor on development for the future and any zone changes that might be proposed. And so I just want to emphasize that again. Also when it comes to traffic, again many of these are conditional uses and you would look at the traffic impacts and look at whether it's going to have a really negative impact on the surrounding roads. To address the non-conforming uses questions, yes, if a new, if one of these uses was proposed now and in that zone it was limited to major arterials, they could not do that use now. They couldn't put it in new,, but if they wanted to expand and it really depends on the zone that they're in, so it gets a little complicated. But if right now that they're not allowed in their legal non-conformity if they wanted to expand, they just, they wouldn't be allowed because in the code it says you can't expand basically a commercial use that's a non-conforming use. Also as far as where this is coming from, again I'll just say we did have somebody who was interested in putting a recreation center along Ohio that was near the Penobscot Christian School, but at the same time, you know, it wasn't just for them. We were looking at what are the allowed potential uses on this road. We were looking at the direct farm sales. We were looking at the fact that there are existing uses that are legally non-conforming and their development opportunities are, limited because of this, churches for example. And then also just in general, just to respond to one comment, we haven't seen a lot of interest in commercial development on Ohio. We really only see residential right now. People don't seem to be interested in doing commercial out there. And then also I just want to say the mailing thing is, has been an issue because of USPS delays. I will say that we sent this out with more time than we ever have. We sent it out the week before Christmas, so we typically send notices out, well, we have to send them out 13 days ahead of the meeting, but we went well ahead of that, so thank [Speaker F (unidentified): you.] Planning for board questions, more questions to staff? Oh, go ahead, remember Jonas. Thank you. [1:07:54] Kenneth Huhn: Chair, could you refresh my memory? Back, I think it was last year we did a zoning change on Ohio Street. As I remember, for the flower farm, the CSA, say, and that was to allow them to do sales in that location, right, from their farm. Yes, they had to [1:08:17] Jonathan Boucher: change their zone to the neighborhood service, right? But yeah, and it now, I'm not to say neighborhood service district isn't ideal, because it's a very limited intensity commercial district, and that's why we suggested they go to that. But you know, ideally, really, well, we would have more allowances for agriculture, you know, throughout the zones, but that's something that we're looking at with the land development code update because [1:08:47] Kenneth Huhn: it's complicated. But anyway, sorry. No, that's fine. I know. I just, I was trying to remember what we had done there because, and then the comment about the person-to-person sales, I was like, I'm trying to Google that and I can't find it, but that's okay. And then the only other thing I wanted to bring up, because I want to be clear about this, what we are, this ordinance proposes is changing the definition of Ohio Street from a minor arterial to a major arterial. It does not change any of the existing zoning on Ohio Street properties. So if a property is not zoned for commercial, it would have to be addressed individually as an individual zoning change in the future, right? So we're not going to wind up with a Walgreens because nothing is zoned appropriate for the Walgreens, the Walgreens over closer to me anyway. But yeah, so I just wanted to be clear about that. We're not changing the zoning, we're just changing a definition. [1:09:37] Jonathan Boucher: Right, and if somebody wanted to do one of those zone changes, you would have to look at whether it aligns with the comprehensive plan, right? And again, I don't believe there's any SMPs, shopping and personal service district, or some of those other intensive commercial zones anywhere along [1:09:53] Kenneth Huhn: Ohio. So I don't believe so. I think you're correct. Thank you. That's, I just wanted everybody to be clear, but this is not a zoning change, this is a definition change. Thank you. [1:10:08] Jonathan Boucher: No, we're going to do some board questions to the staff and clarify within the board. Public comments closed for [1:10:16] Patricia Hayes: Now member Cartier. Thank you chair. My question is, we've heard an overwhelming abundance of comments both submitted to us in writing and verbally tonight, over an hour of opposition. We had over 20 signatures in opposition presented to us in print. I've yet to hear any arguments on why we're doing this. So I'd like to hear what it is the city, I you know you still haven't gotten back to that slide I was looking for, the 11 I think member Jonas pointed out there, our vice chair Jonas on the left half of them are blocked that we can't see, but we've got nursing homes, boarding homes, offices, Oh, chemical dependency treatment facilities, is that's the one, the ones that was block there. Is there a latent agenda here from the city that is trying to get the planning board to open this up for something here that we're not being told tonight? No, there is not, and that [1:11:26] Jonathan Boucher: would only be allowed in GNISD and there's only a very few parcels along Ohio Street that are GNISD, and if somebody wanted to change the zoning GNISD that would then come again before you [Patricia Hayes: and] do you mean like G and ISD? That's sorry, that's the acronym for government and institutional service zone, and that's again just very few pockets along Ohio Street, so and they're more condensed in the urban core area, correct. I think that was a zone change [1:12:05] Patricia Hayes: Yeah, so what is the benefit? What businesses is this going to bring to Bangor? Why are we making [1:12:12] Jonathan Boucher: making this change? So as I mentioned, somebody was interested in a recreation use on Ohio Street, and then again we looked at the potential uses like the direct farm sales, churches, things like that [1:12:23] Patricia Hayes: and as was pointed out earlier, direct to farm sales is now guaranteed in the Constitution and [1:12:28] Speaker F (unidentified): cannot be regulated by the city. Okay, I have to look into that law because I'm not familiar with [1:12:34] Jonathan Boucher: it. However, there are other uses too that we looked at, and like there are, somebody mentioned there's already a nursing home along Ohio Street, legally non-conforming, if they want to redevelop or expand that might have an issue, things like that. So okay, so there is, there's a couple [1:12:49] Patricia Hayes: there that I've heard now, but again I don't think it overwhelms the hours of opposition to this change that we've heard from the city. Thank you. I've heard from the people of the city, thank [1:13:01] Jonathan Boucher: you. Any other members? You said you wanted to. Yeah, I just want to make a comment tonight [1:13:09] Kenneth Huhn: Begins. Sorry, I just wanted to make a comment that tonight begins my eighth year on this board, and I have never in the eight years I've been on, seven and plus years I've been on this board, I've never seen a hidden agenda coming from the city through this board. No, I know that there's There's been a lot of things with city council and other things, but this body and the time that I've been involved in has never had a hidden agenda. And I think that what Anya says about trying to open up Ohio Street as an arterial to give the people who are already there an opportunity for the future is maybe the intent. Intent it certainly wasn't to harm anybody that's already there, you know, in any hidden agenda, so I just I know some of you, so I wanted you to hear that. Thank you. Other questions to [1:14:12] Jonathan Boucher: the staff? So I guess I would just open up to discussion in the board. Where the way I'm seeing this is this is largely clerical. This is this proposed change to the code is to acknowledge the state that exists today, the use that exists today, and bring the zoning decisions or the building decisions that were made over the years into not compliance. There was a word you were using before, conformity, yeah, with the like the latest language that we've been looking to craft around the comprehensive plan and create consistency and clean up. I know there's a lot of effort to go through the code. How has this come? Can you give us any background as to how you came across this? Was this when you noticed that I think it's State Street is listed on both, and then you ask yourself what we're going to be doing State Street cleanup, should we take a look at other streets that are basically our major arterials or not and see if there's any other changes at the same time and get that corrected all at once? Is there some sort of back story? Yeah, again, so we had an applicant who was interested in putting in a recreation center along Ohio, but then we did look at all of the listed roads in those definitions to see if they made sense. So we did evaluate other roads that were listed as minor arterials, and we didn't feel that they were anywhere close to meeting the definition of major arterial. Ohio she was the exception, and then State Street obviously is not a minor arterial, so I'm thinking back to the questions that were raised by the public comment. One of them was, what happens if we don't do this and there are zone change requests or requests and changes to people, how people want to use the property out on this street in the future? If we don't update this to a major arterial, what's the process look like for them? And it's very case by case because of the variety of zones we mentioned, but would we be looking at basically spot zoning to meet different accommodations? Like for instance the places of worship as one example, where there are these little islands of different zoning. And then yeah, is that basically what we'd be talking about if we kept it as a minor arterial? Not really sure what you mean by that, sorry. So some of these uses are non-conforming uses. If property wanted to do an addition or a change and it was a non-conforming use, they would have to come forward with his own change first, and then they'd have to bring forward their plan after getting a zone change. Yeah, and then would mean spot zoning to some extent, like this case that was brought up about the flower farm. Well spot zoning there's legal spot zoning and there's illegal spot zoning, and I'll go over that more in your training. But illegal spot zoning is if it doesn't, if the change would not align with the comprehensive plan and if it would not serve some public interest of the city, where court cases have found spot zoning to be legal as if it does align with the comprehensive plan and it serves the general welfare. And in particular the flower farm when they went to neighborhood service district, neighborhood service district is kind of a zone that is in islands because it's often very small scale stores that are in the middle of residential neighborhoods, and that's the nature of the zone. And the same thing with government and institutional service district, it's often placed based on uses like schools and churches that are in the middle of neighborhoods. So it's not, it's by nature spot zoning, but it's, it could be considered legal spot zoning. Any final questions or discussion ever [1:18:29] Patricia Hayes: Credit, just one last thing. I think we need to make sure that we're listening to the people of City of Bangor. We haven't heard any good arguments for why this should be changed to changing Ohio to major arterial. And if you look at the other street that we're talking about tonight, State Street, which is listed both as major and minor, and this would be just cleaning up, and the difference between those two streets. As you drive up, I'm mentally driving up State Street from downtown, going up the hill. It's business after business after business with so many different uses and, you know, all the way down to the hospital. And when you drive up Ohio from those blocks, you're residential,, residential, small, locally owned business, residential,, residential, small, locally owned business. It's a very different feel. And I don't think you can compare the two at all. I would be very much opposed to changing Ohio Street but would be fine with changing State Street or removing the minor and leaving it as a major arterial but Ohio Street is a minor arterial it's one of our beautiful residential neighborhoods and I would hate to see it changed and allow more growth of some of these larger businesses along it thank you I just worry [1:20:02] Jonathan Boucher: There's a conflation happening between major arterial and urban and I think that's just the fundamental confusion that it keeps being reiterated major arterial like a Union Street is major arterial it includes residential and includes increasingly low density residential as you move further and further out of town Ohio Street is like that today and I'm not trying to push you I understand your point but I just don't want there to be a misunderstanding about what happens when you call a road a Flexible major arterial road versus low density I mean low density versus high density and I think that's what the growth boundary tells us I think we've exhausted the discussion I don't want to belabor it any final comments or thoughts before we entertain a motion do we need to discuss whether we should consider carving out this amendment into two pieces one to include State Street one to include Ohio Street do we need to bring forward the amendment with the two combined because that's How it's been put forward here yeah I would have to go through the whole process and if you wanted us to come back with a new proposal we would have to restart it so basically make one just for state street if the ohio right is not deemed yep i see that any questions about that what's being discussed there can you clear oh i was saying could we just say for tonight's purposes let's just do state street leave ohio street off the topic and she was saying that they have to pass together because of how it's been put forward here she'd have to come back with a new round of these one just for state street one just for ohio if we wanted to break them out separately am i understanding that right okay i'd like to make a motion okay i'd like to make a motion oh that's right purposes yep thank you but i do want a motion if we're ready to go to that phase remember here reminder that for these code amendments it should be phrased as ought to pass and then we vote yes or no on ought to pass that makes it easier for when we bring it forward to the for documentation from when we bring it forward to the planning board city council do you see what you're going to make the motion if you're willing to make a motion i'd like you to phrase it using that way we always do as this i 'll put i'll let you find the wording [1:22:43] Kenneth Huhn: i moved the motion that do [1:22:52] Jonathan Boucher: you want to clarify a little bit i think we all know what you're talking about the code amendment that's listed here the code amendment listing here is out [Kenneth Huhn: to pass all] right do we have a second for member jonas at this point we'll do a roll call vote and i'll read down through member brush good no i think ohio street does not meet the criteria for traffic volume or infrastructure development thank you and member brush that i appreciate that you gave a reasoning because that is if you're going to be voting no it's preferred if you give a little bit of explanation that way the city council and the planning staff understand your reasoning member Hayes yes member Hobson yes remember him I vote no because [1:23:51] Kenneth Huhn: it doesn't meet the criteria for at the present time for an arterial for Jonas I vote no for the same reasons as articulated by member brush and member Hune member Whitford no based purely [1:24:06] Jonathan Boucher: purely on the current definitions and the chair votes yes which that gives us a 4-3 split and that might means that it does not pass so any questions or clarifications needed I don't think so okay so that means we are going to be recommending this off to the city council as ought not to pass and they're gonna be able to review this at their next meeting and we clarified what the voting requirements would be for the city council did Some care to reiterate that, yeah, so since you voted ought not to pass, they have to vote two-thirds majority if they want to overturn your vote. It would just be a simple majority if they want to go with your vote. All right, well that completes that piece. You guys are willing, welcome to stay for the rest of our meeting. It's gonna be some planning board training, which I'm sure you guys are all unofficial professionals after sitting through that. We'll give you a minute to head out before we move on, just to let the noise that down. But thank you guys, thank you for all your review and input. It's very valuable to us, we appreciate it. [1:25:56] Kenneth Huhn: Interested. And I feel like turned it down. Yeah,. [1:26:02] Speaker T (unidentified): Don't feel bad about that at all. I would say no, thank you. [1:26:05] Jonathan Boucher: Guys, I'd ask if you don't mind heading out here, just because we want to move on with the training, please. If you can try and keep the conversation down just for a bit. Until you're outside. Thank you guys so much for joining. I'm sure [1:26:20] Speaker T (unidentified): all the fun you can have. Yeah and [1:26:24] Kenneth Huhn: the vice chair wants [1:26:42] Jonathan Boucher: So this point if we can have someone close the doors but move on to the annual training and by the planning team, the legal and the stormwater team, planning officer Colette do you want to start us off with it? Yep, so I'm gonna have either, I have either Rich or Grace go first. I want them to do theirs first so they can leave, and then I'll do mine after. So [1:27:26] Speaker T (unidentified): okay anymore okay [1:28:29] Grace Innis: So I made little handouts for you guys this year, thinking it might be good for you to have something to take home with you, and if you have any questions that come up you can feel free to reach out to me. I'm Grace Innis, I'm the assistant city solicitor, I work with the city solicitor, and I'm here every meeting with you guys, so if anything comes up you can always turn and ask me. So I was going to start off with decision making. So because you're a board that has decision making power, you have to make decisions based on due process. Due process is a legal term, it requires that legal matters be resolved according to established rules and procedures. There's a very long list in here of reasons you cannot discriminate against someone. Basically you have to make a decision based on the information presented to you, not based on who the applicant is. It's based on all of the facts that are in front of you, the evidence that's in front of you. So members of public bodies such as the planning board May not discriminate unlawfully against any person because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, gender, identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, cultural group, or political status. That was very short introduction, but does anyone have any questions on due process? Okay, so we'll move on to the Freedom of Access Act. The Freedom of Access Act is kind of my baby. I do a lot with Freedom of Access requests. So these are requests for public records, but the statute is actually two pronged. So there's the public records aspect of it and then there's public meetings. So this here tonight was a public meeting and we'll start with public records. So one of the goals of FOA is that records of actions and deliberations of the city and its public bodies be open to public inspection. This aids in due process so that people can see what you're looking at when you make your decisions. So any record that is in the possession of the city of Bangor or any public official involving the business of the city is considered public unless a statutory exception applies. I didn't list them all out because there's a lot, and they're all buried in different parts of the main code. But it's safe to assume that any documents or written communications in your possession might be obtained by an individual in the public. So we do recommend that board members create a email address specifically for their time on the planning board so that we can send you communications to that email and it's just for planning board. So if somebody does request your communications, it's super easy for you to pull them and send them to me or whoever might need them. And then public meetings is the other prong. So like I said, tonight was a public meeting. And this is the goal of this is to allow the public to attend meetings of public bodies and as such they must be advertised and open to the public. In your handout I noted ex parte contacts between a public official and an applicant or an opponent of an application regarding the subject matter of the application are not permitted. So ex parte contacts would be like if you left a planning board meeting and you went and talked to an applicant about something pending in front of the board and said Hey, you should say this or something like that would not be permitted, and so this is to ensure that the deliberations of your body are taken openly, so that also aids in due process, so everybody gets the same information, everybody sees the same stuff that's in front of you. So executive sessions do close the public meetings, so about public body may consider confidential matters, and they're only allowed for specific reasons. If there is going to be an executive session, it will be listed on the agenda that is presented to you, and if that were to happen, we would, it would be called openly, and then there would be a recorded roll call vote, and it would have to be three-fifths of you guys would have to move that we go into executive session. Any questions about the Freedom of Access Act? Okay, so we'll move on to the Code of Ethics, and I just kind of did a broad overview of the main ones that would apply to the Planning Board. So beginning with confidential information, if you are presented with confidential information, you cannot share that information with the public. We would flag it as confidential, it won't be, you won't have to guess, we will tell you that it is confidential, and you can't use such information to advance your financial special or personal interests, or the financial special or personal interests of others, and then moving on to the use of social media, members of public bodies are required to include a qualifying statement in their social media posts or in their biography on social media, basically saying that the views that you express are your own views, and they are not the views of the city. This is to assist in ensuring that members use of social media is not perceived as representing the city or the city's government. I personally have one in my biography on social media that just says that the views that I express on this site are my own views, and they're not the views of the city of Vancouver, moving on to gifts and favors, this one's kind of an obvious one, but you can't accept gifts or favors in exchange for making a specific decision, or from people who are interested directly or indirectly in any manner in business dealings with the city. This doesn't prohibit you from accepting gifts from family members or other immediate family, so moving on to representing third-party interests before for city agencies. So members of public bodies may appear before any public bodies of the city on behalf of their own personal interests, but they may not deliberate or vote on any matter which they've represented their own personal interests, see conflicts of interest. You cannot represent a third party interest though, in front of the planning board. Conflicts of interest, we've had a few of those come up over the last year and they usually do come up a few times. So members of public bodies may not participate in the deliberation or vote on any agenda item before their collective body in which they or a member of their immediate family has a financial or special interest other than an interest held by the public generally. I did include the definitions of financial and special interest in your handout. It does usually come up what a special interest is because that one's a little bit weird, but a financial interest is a direct or indirect interest having monetary or pecuniary value, and a special interest is a direct or indirect interest having value peculiar to a certain individual or group, whether economic or otherwise, which value may accrue as a result of the passage or denial of anything before the body, or an interest not shared by the public generally. So if you think that you might have a conflict on a specific agenda item, we just ask that you bring it up before we start going through that agenda item. So bring it up at the beginning, and then we will proceed with some questions from either staff or other board members regarding that conflict, and then the board will vote on whether or not you have a conflict. If it is determined that you have a conflict, we ask that you step down from the dais, and you can either sit in the public or you can go outside for the remainder of that agenda item, and then we will call you back in or call you back up to the dais when we get to the end of that agenda item. And then finally, use of titles and disclaimers. This one kind of goes back to the use of social media, but it is required when there could be ambiguity regarding the capacity in which an elected or appointed official is communicating. It is your duty as public officials to ensure that there is no ambiguity. So I did include a couple of disclaimers that you can say if you are Coming before the planning board to represent your personal interests, or if you're going in front of the City Council or any other city board, and you know, you would just say that you were speaking as an individual, or I make these remarks in my personal capacity and not as a member of the planning board, and then you can proceed with what you're saying. So that was my training. Does anyone have any questions right now? Well, if you think of anything, please feel free to email me [1:37:47] Kenneth Huhn: or call me. Yep, just a quick clarification, because I know you said it, but I want to reiterate it, because we've not, because we've done a different practice in the past. You said that if somebody is determined to have a conflict of interest, they can step down, but they do not have [1:37:58] Speaker F (unidentified): to leave the room. That is correct, right? Yeah, okay, thank you. Right, previously we would just leave the [1:38:04] Jonathan Boucher: room, and it's nicer then this way. We at least get to know what happened in the discussion, right? Yes, [1:38:10] Grace Innis: and yeah, that's just to kind of bring us into compliance with FOA, so that does, so you can continue to be in the room, and you can, like I said, represent your own personal interests. So if you personally have an opinion on an agenda item, you can come up, but you have to say that you're speaking as a member of the public, and not as a board member. [1:38:34] Jonathan Boucher: That's an interesting point. So if you've recused yourself, you can come up and speak at the Yeah. Great. [1:38:46] Speaker T (unidentified): Yes. I have a question. You said that we can turn to you and ask a question, but is there ever a time when you should stand up and stop something? [1:38:59] Grace Innis: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. If there are, let's say a vote is done wrong or something like that, I will jump in and say, hey, wait a minute. [1:39:10] Speaker T (unidentified): I'm just kind of curious be because of the public comment tonight, I mean there was some kind of conspiracy theories flying around there, and I kind of thought it was out of line, so you know, but I don't know what we're obligated to do, or whether it was just me being sensitive, but I just, you know, I don't particularly care for the staff or for us to be accused of having some [1:39:40] Patricia Hayes: Hidden agenda or some, it's one of the reasons that I brought the question directly to you, because then it's on record that there isn't one. And that's one of the reasons I posed it directly to Anya, so that when the public is alluding to these things and it's a concern, that we can address it directly, transparently. I think it's what our job is to do. It's also why I said what I said. Yeah, I agree, and that was a great thing to point out there. [1:40:11] Jonathan Boucher: Is a fine line though as to when we should interrupt a speaker, a public speaker, and there were a couple times where I was very close to it, and I, it'd be great to talk to you about some examples and get better sense of what thresholds we're trying to avoid, just for decorum, but also for any sort of risk avoidance around liability. Yeah, like amendment. Yeah, that was what I was going to bring [1:40:44] Patricia Hayes: up was the First Amendment. Not only the First Amendment, but certain inalienable rights as endowed by our creator. We shouldn't be cutting off anybody, including when they're using four-letter words, expletives, and things that we don't want to listen to, because those are the things that the Constitution guarantees us. And if somebody's up there heated and upset about something and swearing at us, it's their right. And we need to sit down, shut up, and listen. [1:41:11] Speaker T (unidentified): That's my opinion on that. I disagree. I think there has to be some decorum. I disagree. [1:41:17] Jonathan Boucher: We can hold people to standards to some extent, at least ask them to stay on topic, on topic, or remind them to stay on topic, or request them to stand. It's not a matter of silencing someone, is asking them to meet us where, you know, where we want to be met. And I, if I'm understanding that wrong and you need to correct me, I'm happy to. I'll bring, I [1:41:39] Patricia Hayes: don't have it with me tonight, but I had the Supreme Court cases that upheld people at City Council meetings using four-letter words to make their points. Yeah, and I don't see that [1:41:50] Jonathan Boucher: that as being the problem within discretion, like within a certain realm, but so what I guess I would say, and maybe I'll talk with you outside of this, but if we get in that scenario, if you would help intercede with the way that you think the city of Bangor would like to be [1:42:08] Grace Innis: Represented as I'm sure that's exactly what you would do. I'd be happy to do like a First Amendment type training in the future too, if you'd want of like something like that, or you and I can speak as well about that. Anything else? Do you have any cards, business cards on you? I do not, but I can run up to my office and grab a couple for our two new members if you [1:42:33] Jonathan Boucher: guys would like. Yeah, I know that I want to talk to you about, you know, possible potential conflicts with my employment and being here, so I just want to run some things past you on that. Absolutely. [1:42:45] Grace Innis: Absolutely. Yeah, I can grab you guys a couple of cards before you leave tonight. Thank you. Any other questions? Thanks so much. [1:43:17] Rich May: Good evening, planning board members. Most of you have recognized from years past, doing this presentation annually, continually. I'm Rich May. I work in the engineering department for the city, so I work under Jefferson. And Stormwater is a kind of a funny department of its own, where it's me and we have another half-employee as well, but we are an enterprise fund, so we do have a fee for Stormwater within the city. And I'm going to kind of talk about some of the reasons why we needed that funding tonight and also the permit that we have. It's unfortunate that all the members of the public left. We do have one special guest still from the city council, which is great, so we can cover all these topics and just let you guys know, you know, kind of what city's obligations are in terms of stormwater permitting. Let's see, because it's not advancing, this is on right. Okay, all right, so the reason I'm here tonight is because we do have a permit to discharge stormwater from the main DEP. This is all part of Clean Water at the federal level, and it comes down through the main DEP. They're a delegated authority, and then we are the permittee under them. So as a municipality of a certain size, I think there's 29 others within the state, and then there's some that will surprise you that aren't permitted, you know, like Augusta, Waterville, they're below an urban area threshold, thresholds that are not included in these permits. So it's a lot of the larger cities and towns in Maine, but then you sort of get some outliers too, like Milford is included as part of this greater Bangor urban area as well. So engineering is kind of the major driving force for permit compliance, and we get a lot of assistance from wastewater because they're kind of interrelated, even though they are separate permits. And I'm kind of going to go a little bit quick through this because I know most of you have heard it before, and it's been a bit of a meeting already tonight. So I'm going to try and blow through things, but feel free to stop me if you have questions along the way. I always like to remind everybody about, you know, sort of the infrastructure terminology that we're going to be talking about tonight. And you might hear thrown around for other clean water concerns within the city. So a storm sewer is a sewer that collects water from the surface or from underground and carries it normally to the nearest water body. It's normally not treated in any kind of way, with the exception of, you know, maybe some sediment collection in a catch basin. And the no treatment is something that, you know, the public doesn't always understand still. So I always like to, you know, repeat that. Urban impaired streams, those are water bodies that are deemed to not have the life, aquatic life that they should, according to the main DEP. We have a lot of those in Bangor, and that also steps up regulations. Sanitary sewers, that's what we think of when, you know, we have interior plumbing, we're flushing, we're washing things inside a building. Those, that's going into a sanitary sewer, that's going to the sewer treatment plant. That, where that gets complicated is where we have older sewer systems that are both, they are a storm sewer and they're a sanitary sewer, and that can cause overflows especially during heavy rain events. So we have all three types of sewer in Bangor, but tonight we're just talking about storm sewers, urban impaired streams. As I mentioned, you know, there's six of them. This is a map of Bangor. The green shaded areas are the urban impaired stream areas. There's quite a lot of area that is affected by that, and part of our permit now is to do some BMPs, we'll call them best management practices, within these urban impaired streams. So that's something we're working towards as well. So the permit requirements is divided into six sections called minimum control measures, or MCMs, and we'll be kind of hitting the high points on those as we move along. So public involvement and participation, these are largely MCMs one and two, public education, public involvement, to make people aware of stormwater. What we've done in recent years, we've had a booth at the main science festival through the Bangor Area Stormwater Group, and that's basically collaborative of all the permitted entities. In the Bangor area, so we kind of work together just as a economy of scale. We also have an exhibit at the main Discovery Museum. That's part of their river feature that they have. It was installed, I think, a couple years ago now, and so we were fortunate to be partners with them and have a piece there to help educate the public. MCM 3 is illicit discharge detection and elimination. We are looking for pollution sources and trying to stop them. This can be both systematic and opportunistic. We will look at outfalls, and outfall is, you know, the point of the pipe where it discharges to the local water body, and we're testing the water at that point. If we see indicators of pollution upstream, we're going to work upstream and try and find that pollution source and eliminate it, and, you know, things like dumping, you know, we want people to understand that catch basins, storm sewers, they're not treated, so that's part of the education piece of this. Here's an example of, you know, kind of a interesting case of cross connection where, you know, the interior plumbing is accidentally, we would like to think, routed to the storm sewer system instead of the sanitary sewer system. This is a case on Pine Street where a historic building was moved to a new location on an empty lot on Pine Street. I assume what happened is they said, hey, we need to hook up the sewer. They found a sewer stub, they say, great, we'll hook it up, we don't have to dig in the street, everybody's happy. That sewer stuff was going to the storm sewer, so, you know, we want to make sure we're confirming these things before we spend a bunch of money. You know, doing this type of work is expensive, and, you know, we can't fault the homeowner for hooking up to a pipe that we said they could hook up to 30 years ago, so we're paying the bill on this. You can see in the bottom left corner we've got a dye test to confirm, you know, we asked the homeowner to flush a dye tablet, and that way we know for sure that we have a cross connection at that point. We make a plan to fix it. Construction sites, so, you know, you guys all see a lot of development proposals come through here, many of them go on to get built, and part of what we review as staff for those proposals is that they're meeting an erosion and sediment control standard. So I'm just going to kind of go through some of the typical things we see as, you know, being the most blatant things that we see as potential violations. All four of these pictures are construction entrances. You know, you have trucks moving in and off a site as it's being opened up and worked, trying to keep the mud on the site. And these entrances try to clean the tires off the trucks as they exit the site. Silt fence, you can see on either side of the picture here. And then in the center is a bark mulch berm, which is I think probably more effective, but it doesn't have the public recognition necessarily. Necessarily. So either one of those are installed correctly and functioning. Things like catch base and protection on the left, that's kind of a double barrier there. They've got some clean stone as well as a insert within the basin to collect sediment. On the right side, that will be a soil filter pond in the future, but right now it's acting as a sediment pond during construction, just to kind of keep the water clean that's running off the site as they're building. This is where we want to be in the end. On the left, we see everything's green, no more exposed soils, very low potential for erosion at that point. And then on the right, you see an example that we would see in the off season. You know, this time of year, a site's getting finished up, they need to stabilize it, so it's not green yet. They've covered up the soils with hay, and we assume that, you know, they've got some seed in there, and that's going to grow in the spring and not be a concern any longer. So mcm5, this is sort of what happens after all that. You know, their planning board approved, they've done their construction, they have their treatment areas on-site. Most commonly we're gonna see underdrained soil filters, by our retention cells and wet ponds. Those are kind of the most common things we see. They might look like a dry depression, you know, within the parking lot. During a heavy rain event, there's probably gonna be some ponding there, but that's filtering the water, cooling the water before it goes back out into the storm sewer system or a stream, whatever is nearest. And the biggest thing with these is they have to inspect them annually. They have to submit an inspection and certification to the city annually. So that's something that we've worked pretty hard at in the last, well, since I've been here ten years, probably the last five of those, six of those, seven of those maybe. We've kind of gotten on people to start doing them, and a lot of people are now in that routine. Some stragglers still, but we're still working there. We've got some changes for MCM 5. Low impact development has been a topic of discussion within the permit for quite some time. It's been appealed and then the DEP had a permit change that they proposed. Now that's been appealed. We're waiting again. Once the final appeal is done within a year, we have to enact our ordinance. So we're kind of in a wait and see mode on that and it's it's been a lot of appeals so we're hoping to settle that sooner or later and then MCM 6 is kind of holding ourselves to the same standards as city departments we're trying to do the same things that we're asking the others to do in the in the public so that's that's what we're working towards there and doing maintenance on the storm sewer system too that's public work heads that up and they do a great job with it now we've had some recent stormwater projects around town again it's been a long meeting if you have questions about any of those you can certainly ask me and you know this takes a lot of work to do and we're trying to stay in compliance best we can and trying to keep ahead of the new requirements we'll be getting a new permit and potentially after 2027 if it's not administratively continued as what we have now the permit requirements always go up they never go down so we'll be ready for more when it comes. So thank you for your time and your attention. Let me know if you have any questions. Any questions? Thanks so much. I [1:55:01] Jonathan Boucher: think your mic is off. I'm sorry. I didn't have my mic on. Yeah, some of you have seen this before, but I will just go through your roles and responsibilities, comprehensive plan, and permitting. So your roles and responsibilities are outlined in Chapter 23 of the code That establishes your structure, your membership requirements, your powers and duties. You are structured as a board to have an associate members that you always have a quorum. And as far as membership requirements, you're familiar with this as this has been, you know, the process for the past week. We give you a packet the week before, so you can review those documents before your meeting. And you, when you come to the meetings, you ask any questions about, you know, a particular thing on the agenda. Your regulatory authority is also outlined in the state statute for things like subdivision, comprehensive plan, and the Growth Management Act, zoning, and things like that. You are not a legislative board since you don't make policy. That's what council does. But you are a quasi-judicial board, and that you can make judgments on things like conditional uses, for example. And you're also the authority on subdivision and site plans. You also function as the planning committee for the comprehensive plan. That is also written in there. So when it comes to the comprehensive plan, as far as what that is, it's a holistic look at all aspects of the city, from housing to the economy, demographics, recreation. It looks at all of those to see how they interrelate and how, and along with that, and along with a lot of extensive public outreach, it looks at, you know, how do we want those things to look in the next 10 years. And it establishes a vision, a goals to reach that vision, and then policies and strategies to achieve those goals. So state statute does require us to do a comprehensive plan. It also requires us to establish a growth boundary. And so those are bad in the future land use plan. Those are the key elements of the comprehensive plan. Again, you're the planning committee, which is helpful because, as you've seen, you know, you're kind of in the trenches, so to speak, with text changes and zone changes and land development permits. When those come in, you can see how these policies affect land development. And so it's helpful for you to be the planning committee for that. Comprehensive plans usually do last a few years to put together. I want to say the last one was condensed, but it did take longer than we had probably anticipated it to take. But that's honestly, because there is so much public engagement involved. And then, you know, it obviously takes a lot of work to put the plan together. And the process for that is we would hire a consultant to help us do a lot of those events and draft the plan for us. And just as far as some of the examples of public engagement that we did, we did, you know, formal workshops, both in person and virtual. We did a lecture series for people. We did surveys. We went out to different events to reach out to people. We did mailers, took comments through website, we tried to look for every avenue possible to get out, get the word out to people. And I do anticipate as we go into updating the land development code to align with the comprehensive plan, that we would look to do a lot of those same things and try to branch out even more to get people's attention. Yes, and 2023, yes. So as far as, sorry, as far as zoning goes, zoning is the implementation of the land use plan that is outlined in the comprehensive plan. This is the land use plan. So as we go into our land development code update and zoning, this is what you'll use as your guiding document. As far as the process of notifying about zone changes, as I talked about tonight, we have state statute requirements for how we notify people. We have to put an ad in the newspaper. We have to post it in the lobby 13 days ahead of time, and then we have to send notices to, sometimes it's just the owners of a certain zone, and sometimes it's also a butters of the zone. It kind of depends on what's happening, but that's important so that people know what's happening in their neighborhood, and they can tell you what they think. So another type of zoning is contract zoning, and in our ordinance it does say contract zoning can't control the use. But it can control the, like, dimensional requirements for property or operating hours. And contract zoning is basically where if somebody wants to put a more intense use on a property, or go to a more intense zone, I should say. But maybe what they're proposing to do is not a more intense use. Then we might look at contract zoning so that we can kind of put controls on the intensity of the development to meet their needs, but also make sure that we don't open the floodgates, so to speak, for zoning in the future. And so they're kind of limited to, you know, a certain footprint or certain hours, and so that goes through the same process as a regular zone change, except that we draft, staff will draft a contract, and you all would review that and send it to council. Again, question on that? Yeah, what if in The course of our review of the, of say it was not a contract zone, say it was a regular zone change, and we discuss, well, wouldn't we want to put some parameters on their hours in this area, or wouldn't we want to require a setback of this type of that type, or whatever floor plan, you know, some of the things that make it into contract zone. We can't do that in the meeting. We basically have to say no and come back with a contract zone request for the same thing. Yeah, if somebody is requesting a zone change that has to go through that process, and it's happened before. The planning board has denied it and councils denied it, and then they come back with a contract zone cost so for the person who has to go through that the bureaucracy of it 's onerous right they have to resubmit the fees so we have to understand like what the cost of you know time in terms of time and in terms of real money what it is to push it back [2:01:50] Speaker F (unidentified): but if it's the right thing to do. Yeah, I mean, you have to do, you should make your decision based on [2:01:54] Jonathan Boucher: City Council Chambers, and whether it aligns with the comprehensive plan, if it's in the best interest of the city, and we at as a at a staff level, I mean, we try to advise people the best we can before they get to you on whether, you know, we feel they may want a contract zone because, for example, if they want to go to. City Council Chambers, a more intense zone and it's outside the growth boundary, well, that may not be ideal to go to a more intense zone, so maybe we want to put restrictions on, you know, how they can develop that site with a contract zone. That's just an example I'm throwing out, but you know, you know, then you as a planning board decide, is that, is that still a good option, if they, even the contract zone is a good option, that makes sense. Yep, okay, right, and typically we see that a lot in our transitional areas, just because, you know, that is, you know, kind of a limbo area where you're not sure if you want to go to a more intense zone or not, and those typically are supposed to be recorded at the registry, I'm tied to the property, so as far as spot zoning i talked about that earlier there's been a lot of case law on spot zoning and it does differentiate between what's legal and what's illegal and the two primary factors are whether it conforms to the comprehensive plan and whether it provides a community benefit if it doesn't do either of those things it could be considered illegal spot zoning because then it might it gives one property owner differential treatment to others and it doesn't you know it doesn't align with the city's interests. [Speaker F (unidentified): So okay, so] as far as permitting, like zoning is the implementation of land use plan, permitting is the implementation of the zoning. So when you look at the site plan, that's a permitted use, you're just looking to see if it meets the code, if it meets the restrictions in the zoning, and you are assuming that use fits with the site because it is permitted by right. So you look at the basics like does it meet lot coverage and parking requirements and things like that. When you have a conditional use, you have that higher discretionary authority to say, you know, does this really fit, does the intensity of this use fit with the site architecturally, does it fit, what are the traffic impacts. So it is more subjective. However, if you do decide that it doesn't fit, then you should still, you know, say that up front and talk about why you feel it doesn't fit with the site. As far as subdivision, so subdivision is triggered When somebody creates 3 or more lots, and now with the new State law, it's 5 or more units. There are a lot of exemptions in the State statute for subdivision. But the primary aspects of subdivision review are looking at whether they have adequate roadway frontage, adequate utilities, you know, grading of their driveways, things like that. Do they have adequate access to a road. We're kind of unique and how we do subdivision. Some places do a lot more site analysis with theirs, but they don't have site plan review. A lot of municipalities that are smaller have kind of different processes than we do. Also just going back to the five or more units thing, technically in our code right now we still So we are, we're working on our code to align with the State law, and that's and I talked about that with you before. But this is one of those things, the five or more units trigger, so for all site plans that come to us, staff review it before it gets to you. We have planning, code, engineering, fire, and the water district review to make sure that it meets all of our relevant standards. So the general progression of permits, so the first thing that we do with people is we ask them to have a pre-application meeting with us. It's typically a very informal process where they may just have, you know, a rough concept plan, but we talked with them about the different permitting requirements that are involved so they can get an idea of whether they want to pursue that or not. And also when we do the staff review, you know, we do make sure that the application does meet the code so that it's as prepared as possible by the time it gets to you. And then as you, as you've experienced before, some of you, we do a staff report for the packet every week and talk about what was reviewed and then any outstanding. And then we also create the written decision with your list of exhibits, your draft findings and things like that, which is very helpful if we do have an appeal of a land development permit for your findings. If you feel that somebody doesn't meet a standard, you should say that up front, preferably kind of at the beginning of the discussion. But if you're going along making votes on findings, and you feel that they don't mean a particular finding, you can also just bring it up. When the motion is made, you know, before the vote is taken. But it's just very important to be very specific with why you feel it doesn't meet the code, so that you can avoid appearing arbitrary. Also, if you, if you do feel that somebody doesn't meet the code for a particular land development. If the board agrees, you can consider asking the applicant to come back with specific changes that you feel would then meet the code. So that'll make sense. So for what triggers site plan, it's most commercial developments, and then certain multi-family developments. And then also again subdivisions, sometimes if somebody's doing like a very small building or a small adjustment to their property, it will go to staff review, which is called a minor site plan revision, and then larger projects go to you. Sometimes in other municipalities the board may vote to make things a public hearing. We just kind of skip that stuff and make everything a public hearings that you don't have to decide that later on. It kind of makes things more clear cut and also avoids, you know, pushing things to a second meeting. So as far as review times, when somebody does submit a site plan, we typically have 10 to 20 days to review, depending on the type of permit. Sometimes we don't need that long, but, you know, sometimes lately, especially, you know, with workloads and stuff, we do kind of push it to the 10-day time period. And then oftentimes, I would say almost every time, we have comments that we send back to the applicant, and they come back to us, and then we have a go-around. So it can take a little while before it's ready to go to you guys. So if you as the border, if you're unsure about things for a particular land development permit, you can continue that to a date certain. But you have to have a good reason for doing that. For example, if it's a large project, and you just feel you need more time to review it. But you should. You don't have to get the applicant to agree, but it's good to do that. [Public commenter: Generally.] As far as site location of development, that's slota, that's listed up there, that's typically very large projects, triggers over three acres of impervious. If it's over 10, it has to go to the state for review, but between that three and ten acres is when the city has delegated authority to review it. We do still, often we have to ask DEP just to make sure that they're okay with us reviewing it, but they're almost always okay with it. So I know that there's a few times where they typically do like to review things. I think that's with Hassan and some solar projects, but not all the time. And then also as far as impact fees go, we do have an impact fee area out where the mall is, and basically any development, new development that goes in there, we charge a fee per square foot. It and that money goes to infrastructure projects like road projects, sewer and things like that. See what else. And when you are reviewing, you know, land development permits, the basically the standards you're looking at in the code cover things from parking to traffic, storm water, lighting, landscaping, and a variety of different things. So again, though, we are, you know, in land development code update, we're looking at kind of consolidating things so that your process of doing findings isn't so cumbersome. So I feel like I already covered conditional uses, so I think I'm going to skip that. So when it comes to subdivision, I kind of ran through that before, but, you know, in addition to looking at lot access and roadways and Things like that you also have to review the state criteria for subdivision, and that covers things like flood planes. Is it in a flood plain? Does it impact water resources, aesthetics, wetlands, and things of that nature? So they have to meet all that as well. And there's also, there's also a trigger when it comes to subdivision or slow to site location development, and I think that's when they have a, the when their subdivision is going to cover more than 20 acres, and there's different stipulations in there too, but very large subdivisions can also trigger slota. But the basic premise of people doing subdivision and having all these rules is one of the main reasons is to make sure that they do have adequate access to a road, because one thing that happened historically was that developers would come in and they would just like create all these lots without approval, and there wouldn't be a road for people, and so towns would have to come in and fix that problem. So it was a big issue, and then that's how subdivision rules kind of got created and got off the ground. And there are, we do have two different levels of subdivision in our code. We have minor subdivision and then major. Minor is often just one meeting because it's much smaller in scale, and then major, as some of you saw with the john carnes project, they have preliminary One meeting, and then they have the final subversion for a second meeting. So for your decision documents that we draft, we often we put the permit requirement reference at the top, thing that's requiring them to come before you in the first place. We after you have your vote we've put the record of that vote on there. We list out all the exhibits that you see in your packet. It and then we draft the findings, which are the relevant standards to the project, and if you all feel that a particular standard is not relevant to a project that we've put in there, you can also vote that it's not relevant, and vice versa. So that's not set in stone, it's just what we something we draft for your benefit, and then you get to the final decision whether it should get the land on permit. We put specific any specific conditions that have been made in there, along with general permit requirements and the appeal procedure. And then one thing we started doing was at the end, putting a checklist of things people have to do before they get their billing permit and certificate of occupancy. And that includes any conditions that you put on the permit. Yes, that was the end. So any questions? [2:14:29] Speaker T (unidentified): I do have a question. I'm just curious. I know that the different departments all work together so that the packet is complete and reviewed when it comes to us, but as far as the findings, do you, does your office write the findings, or does legal do that? [2:14:46] Jonathan Boucher: We do that, me and Matthew. Yep. Oh, well, and Sarah. Yeah, I have a question. Sometimes, like the solar project set is one example, we require the person bringing forward the plan to secure ACM Conference 29th, you're a certain amount of money as you to be set aside for cleanup in the event that the land is abandoned or something that effect. How do we, how is that decision made with you guys? Why is it just for certain projects and not for others? ACM Conference 29th, it's just the nature of the project, so. ACM Conference 29th, I know, I don't think it's just solar. I can't remember specifically in the code what other uses might require, like a decommissioning bond. But I do know with subdivision, that's something that also requires a bond or some way to guarantee that if the developer is proposing public infrastructure, like a public road, some way to guarantee that gets built. And I think it's just, I think it's just any project where if they abandon the project, they might leave the city with, something to clean up or something to fix. So it's not just solar, you know, it could be other projects to a result. So it's something that you guys just work through at your discretion. It wouldn't be something that we would bring up as why should we consider a bond for this type of project? I mean, I think that you could. I, yeah, I mean, I think that's some your power. I think we would just have to talk through that on a case-by-case basis. Yeah, and typically, you know, when we're drafting those types of requirements, we're looking at best practices, and how things are done in other communities, too. [2:16:47] Kenneth Huhn: So isn't the solar required to make sure that there's enough money to clean it up? [2:16:57] Jonathan Boucher: Yeah, that's right. Is That everything you had for us, yeah, thank you. We have a couple other quick items just to touch on, but I so were there any open discussion follow-up thoughts and land use plan updates? Is there anything that we wanted to turn to there? Well, I would like, I'd like to officially welcome our 2 new members, some member Hopsin and Woodford. We're glad to have you aboard. And I'd like to thank you guys for your vote to be the chair for this year, and I look forward to serving with you guys. Guys, so if there's nothing else, I'll call today's meeting adjourned. It's 9 16, and the planning board meetings adjourned.