Newcastle Planning Board denies assembly permit, proposes right-to-farm amendment

[0:19] Speaker A (unidentified): I [0:22] Chair: believe we are now live. Yes, we're live. Meeting is up and running. I will call a meeting to order. Time is 6.31. Item 1B is amendments to the agenda. I'd like to make a motion that we put the right to farm stuff that I said y'all just as a discussion item we can do it as well you do it as part actually you know we can just do it as board discussion it doesn't have to be a specific agenda sorry retract that's fine anybody else got any other agenda amendments to the agenda anything we need to add no all right moving on review of the minutes from September 17th 2026 do we have a motion on the minutes from who do we accept we have a second Wanda Thank you any comments corrections it was good to do that I'm not the editor [1:45] Speaker C (unidentified): Sorry many issues right yeah right well it was a hard one yeah the problem was the audio was It was terrible, right? [1:52] Chair: The whole carrot just literally do the best she could because she really couldn't hear very much. [1:58] Speaker C (unidentified): Right, and it's noted in several places here. I could not hear the answer. But they're like, there are three where the move by [2:07] Speaker A (unidentified): In second, people are not noted. [2:10] Chair: Yeah, she couldn't hear them. Yeah,, yeah. [2:13] Speaker C (unidentified): But I'm taking up my pet peeve again from last time. That's fine so first of all these obvious things August it says August 20th planning board readmates and then to approve then it says to approve the meeting minutes for June oops yeah sounds good okay misaligned dates there and then discussion says something about specific details not included it was hard to hear that was me that was [2:42] Speaker A (unidentified): Me planning last week with [2:45] Speaker C (unidentified): The issue that I brought up with the mooc application the you remember the issue with the clinic with the permit by rule and the pressure treating lumber yeah and all that stuff which I thought was you know important because they're dp rules that you're supposed to follow that you know I wanted them to get into the notes okay and so we agreed to amend those notes yes so we voted to approve them as amended but this has approved as presented and of course because she couldn't hear what I said Here whoever couldn't have amended the previous notes because they didn't know what the amendment was sure yeah so do you I don't have to do well do you have type notes she can listen to the recording from an hour 19 minutes into an hour 21 minutes 36 seconds here from that from that from that August week okay it rather than my I don't have it I don't know that's why he's needed the previous The previous time of the August. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those are perfectly off. Yeah. Yeah. It was the issue, you know, can originally not get new numbers. I don't know if we need to recount it to the audience. Yeah. Yeah. We have the fresh meeting to be sung and those [4:18] Chair: issues. Yeah. Do you have corrections for the September 17th meeting minutes? Well, [4:26] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, there's the three sections that don't move by in the second year. [4:31] Chair: Do you recall? I was going to ask what she said. I do not. Does anyone recall? [4:35] Speaker C (unidentified): I don't recall. What I would say is go back to the drawing board and try to piece it back together. She tried. Okay, she did try. But I do want, you know, I really do want that information brought up in the August meeting minutes, and this could be corrected by listening to those minutes, because I just restated what was stated there. Okay. So, okay. Is that enough? That's fine. [5:06] Chair: Yeah. So you'd like to revisit or basically ask for an amendment to the August planning board meeting minutes yes to include your comments yes regarding the easy information yes at minute marker [5:21] Speaker C (unidentified): what one it's I think it's an hour and 19 minutes an hour and then that helps right great now it's just a couple minutes you know that's fine yeah so we can ask her to do that and we'll [5:31] Chair: put it on for next month okay yeah I would review it I just don't want these to come that's something I would like correct so that's the August ones September ones well they're contingent well I understand that like yeah anything else for this number once no the [5:58] Speaker C (unidentified): rest of it is just you know she could fill in those missing people names I don't think [6:06] Speaker D (unidentified): she can but I think I feel confident that it happened I mean we were all here we know that [6:10] Speaker C (unidentified): somebody I can't remember okay I'll put inaudible into those yeah just because nothing there doesn't seem like yes yeah I would say change them too she did that not sure yeah I would I would say you know inaudible is the best word just so that it's not ambiguous why they're not there sure for recording yeah I mean it does have the vote counts yes yeah it does yeah that's important yeah that's important [6:49] Chair: that's good for details sure okay great well in that case we've got the motions moved and seconded to be accepted we're discussing them now do we want to just vote down accepting the minutes and the questions that they come back [7:12] Speaker C (unidentified): you can go tell them i would vote right just putting it out there yeah that's fine we are we are committed right yeah that's the way i feel it's great it was it was amazing we knew it was going to be honest it's my it's my pet issue you know which i spent a huge amount and an unspeakable amount of time you know, and I just have to tell you [7:35] Chair: It makes no sense. [7:38] Speaker A (unidentified): What it's worth for? [7:39] Chair: No, that's great, alright. Then all in favor of approving the minutes of September 17th, 2020, opposed? Gee, alright, so we'll do it again next month. That fails zero to four or four to zero, four zero four zero. Thank you, and I'm trying [8:11] Speaker C (unidentified): To take minutes for you, appreciate that. Thank you so much, I can't do both at the same time. [8:18] Chair: Okay, we have no old ones, but we do have some new business, 12 block 49, which is 60 River Road, Newcastle in Baldwin, application for a special permanent special use permit for December news added to the existing vetted practice use. Who's here for that? Come on up if you want, that's for you. Okay, just so we can hear what you're doing, saying on the video recording and for the minutes as we just discussed, check now. Why don't you tell us who you are and what it is you're looking at? [8:56] Ashley Baldwin: Sure. I'm Ashley Baldwin. This is Kyle Markman. We are the new owners of the New Kessel Inn as of a couple of months ago, and we are looking to have occasional things like book clubs, brunches, maybe chef's dinners, things like that at the end, primarily in the winter time, to be able to serve the public. Right now we serve breakfast every single day, and we currently, with how Karen and I have looked at the current bed breakfast rules, cannot serve breakfast to anyone that is not staying. So, and previously, so the inn historically has been a restaurant, it was a restaurant in the 90s, it served dinner from what we can tell from history up until about 2018, 2019, which included to the public, which included to the public. Yes, and that lapsed with the previous owners. They did not serve dinner, they did not Serve the public. So because at least from the conversations with Kara, to be able to understand kind of whether or not we can do this or not, because that has lapsed and it hasn't continued year over a year, we are applying for an assembly permit to be able to again serve the public and more of an occasional [10:30] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, and that where should we have been under the pre-code before this current code? Yeah. [10:39] Chair: Yeah. Yeah. Last recording, great. So... Great. Wonderful. Thank you. Emily, do you have anything you want to add before we dive in? You don't? I don't want to put you on the spot. [10:56] Speaker A (unidentified): No, that's okay. See? [10:58] Ashley Baldwin: I like it. That's alright. I did bring hard copies of the memo and the draft finding of FAC that our office put together. I know they were in the i think generally you know the there's nothing in the ordinance that this clearly does not agree with some questions that we have for the board to consider our work either does it comply with the nuisance standards and it won't create you know undue noise or perking issues or other things for the butters. And so one of the questions is more just to the applicant about what do you anticipate in terms of hours and will there be any outside events? Are we talking the scale of a wedding with a DJ or is this more inside the building where the restaurant was previously? Yeah, so primarily we're talking about inside events and inside events in the winter time. Primarily because of the new castle has built right down the street the new castle has about 15 parking spots there's obviously town parking here which is available for people to be able to park if we need overflow but in the wintertime half the inn closes so right now we have one parking spot per room that's kind of what we tell what we tell folks that come and stay at the inn in the summertime that is we have 14 rooms we have 15 parking spots essentially but in the winter time we only have Seven rooms on so at any one time there's only a maximum of seven guests that are staying at the end which would open the second half of our parking for things like a brunch and all of that would be all inside we are considering the possibility of right now we do full in buyouts for wedding for weddings themselves so essentially everyone from a wedding so like let's say someone's entire family is buying in and they all want to be able to stay in the same place they will all buy the in together And be able to be able to stay there the whole weekend we are considering in those cases and only in those cases being able to with this being able to do something like a welcome drinks from five to eight or a morning after breakfast from 10 to so we're not just serving breakfast to the folks that are staying in the end we can also open that to folks that are that are from the wedding but we will in no way ever have actual weddings at the end we do not want to get into anything so the [13:54] Chair: way I think I'd like to just do this real quick is we'll we're gonna we're gonna open this up for board discussion and then we've got some folks from the audience so we're going to do a little breakdown a little review i'll open it up after that for a public hearing and invite anyone to ask questions or submit a comment and then after the public hearing we'll come back and vote on the application does that work yep all right i'm open for the board i have a tiny [14:26] Speaker C (unidentified): any clerical corrections here is here I go again use the old version of the code article six article seven for you I figured [14:36] Chair: out that's the way I met does anyone want to get off are they on board have questions about the application or thoughts or a [14:54] Speaker C (unidentified): criterion for assembly that reason very there's no parking requirements there's no given it's pretty loose but i think it's really a judgment call on our part so in terms of [15:12] Speaker A (unidentified): function that you want and the capacity that you have in webinar it's like really problem There's no problem crowding, [15:25] Speaker C (unidentified): side blocks being reutilized or whatnot, right? There's really no prescription here for that, right? [15:33] Chair: No. And the code doesn't actually have any requirement for it. Very open. [15:38] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah. Yeah. Open to interpretation. So it can be good. [15:45] Chair: One of the questions I have for you, and you started out by saying it, and I'm sorry. Ashley. actually sorry you and kara had made a determination that the old use was discontinued [16:00] Ashley Baldwin: do you know how that determination was made oh that the old uses i mean historically i know that there hasn't been and like outside folks have not been served at the end for the past five years Julie did do some, from what I can understand, Julie did some dinners. I don't know if she did dinners up until the very end of her time at the end, but I do believe she did some. [16:30] Speaker D (unidentified): Does that correlate with COVID? Yes. I know prior to that, they didn't do dinners. [16:38] Ashley Baldwin: yeah so there were dinners and it's very possible that we stopped and then the previous owners took over and haven't didn't do dinner they took over during [16:50] Speaker A (unidentified): so let [16:54] Chair: me give you my let me just drop a couple things real quick i'm gonna give you some bad news and some good news the assembly use i believe is a stretch for what you're talking about when you read it doesn't sound very i don't read it here if i can get to it 's on page 84 of the code to the bottom i'll just read it for everybody so we all know what we're talking about assembly definition a facility that has organized services meetings events or programs to benefit educate entertain or promote discourse in a public or private setting. Examples include community centers, places of worship, meetings or lecture halls, exhibition rooms, or auditoria. And then it goes on to say that those meeting facilities and places of worship may include functionally related internal facilities such as kitchen multipurpose rooms and offices, etc., etc. So they invest the bent of it and the examples given and point to a more of a civic type use where really what we're talking about with the aim or the goal of that use is the things that lists like community centers and lecture halls and exhibition rooms things like that. But then if we go read two other definitions which I think, the first one is Restaurant Cafe, which is item number 56 on page 89 of the code. The definition says, and this is the one that is not allowed in your district. Assembly is allowed, and that's why we're here. The definition for Restaurant Cafe is a business where food and beverages are prepared and served to patrons for consumption, either on-premise or off-premise. Yes, then live entertainment is that one page up page 88 and column item 39 definition any activity provided for pleasure quiet enjoyment recreation relaxation diversion or other similar purpose by a person or persons who are physically present when providing an activity to a patron or group of patrons who are physically present. So here's what I want to suggest, I don't think assembly actually fits, okay, but the restaurant cafe definition does and even though it's not allowed if you read the definition a business where food and beverages are prepared and served to patrons for consumption either on premise or off premise say anything about only serving breakfast, only serving dinner, only serving lunch, only serving cocktails. So my argument is, I don't even think you need a permit. I think you have a pre-existing non-conforming use. Everyone knows that had dinner served there for years and years. It's set up to do it. And if what you're talking about is continuing the use you already have that never actually discontinued, which is to serve food and beverages that are prepared and served to patrons for consumption either on-premise or off-premise, and that hasn't changed or been discontinued, then even though it's not allowed in the district currently as a newly established use, you have what would be considered pre-existing non-conforming years. Okay, that'd be my argument, but I would temper that by saying that. And the reason we read live entertainment as well is that the live entertainment definition, which is a use that is also not permitted in the district, would not be something that was established, right, and could therefore not come back. And so the reason I asked, but what is it you're thinking about doing, where is it going to occur, is because that idea of having like an outdoor wedding venue, yeah, with live entertainment, would probably, there's no argument that I can see that would allow that used to happen in that district on that site, because it was not established, it cannot be considered a pre-existing non-conforming use, and it's not allowed as a new use. Sure, if you want to do, you know, bring back dining, you know, I understand you have a liquor license, wait, yeah, you know, bring back indoor dining of some variety, that's, you've had that all, that's my art. How do we feel about that? I don't [22:37] Speaker C (unidentified): have a problem. Yeah, I totally agree. [22:40] Speaker D (unidentified): That's simply just a license, but say right to have your breakfast, do what you do, and that hasn't changed in any way, so I think we [22:56] Speaker C (unidentified): they're really not changing the use of the [22:58] Ashley Baldwin: building at all we are licensed with an eating and lodging license and not even with a bed and breakfast license so we have a full commercial kitchen in the end everything is very much licensed for it we've talked to the state about this too we didn't have to do anything with them and both from the health department as well as from the liquor control board or is that one of them like a commission both of them said that we can serve according to them we can circle over so that is that is very much where their stance is, just based on our approvals on a bunch of other things. I [23:47] Chair: mean, even if we read the definition for bed and breakfast, which again, was established after the inn had been operating for many, years. The definition here reads, when a permanent resident provides rooms with a single residential building for temporary overnight lodging, compensation in guest rooms with no in-room cooking facilities, bed and breakfast may include dining facilities and meeting rooms, then goes on to say that there are standards. No more than five guest rooms are permitted. Hourly lodging rates are not permitted, and guest days are limited to a maximum of 30 consecutive days, with the exception of winter months when three months stay over committed even under that used you would have a non-conforming menus right like i said for years yeah and since what says here a better include dining facility what is [24:53] Ashley Baldwin: the other angle that karen and i were talking about when we were talking about this initially was that it says dining air in nowhere the bed and practice definition that says if you are serving in -house guests or not because that was that was another place where we were a little unsure and confused when we were talking about this what i'm saying cara yep yeah [25:19] Chair: now the code does the code is silent about whether a better breakfast can only serve guests that are staying in the facility yeah that just doesn't make it a distinction What are we thinking? Anybody else got anything? Emily, what do you think? [25:45] Ashley Baldwin: I think it passes the straight face test in terms of, I only play a little while he's turning on TV, but I would argue, like I think that the argument can be made with a straight face that it is pre-existing not conforming because it has continued with the breakfast service. I guess my only question back in terms of the devil's advocate take piece would be isn't an expansion that we use because now we're serving additional noodles i don't know that i agree with that but i figured i'd throw it out there for a long time that's a good devil's [26:17] Chair: art devil's i think the argument let's just check they always certainly before they didn't start and we're technically not from not serving breakfast lunch and dinner [26:33] Ashley Baldwin: from the steak yeah well from the state and just generally like we like from a general perspective if we were to have a dinner for all guests staying at the end where we can serve them like what we're we're serving them beer at five o'clock you know right so there really isn't a anything that's precluding us from serving in-house guests yeah at least from our understanding [27:00] Chair: Yes, I can. To answer your question, Emily, I can't think of anything that would force this into an expansion of their use. We just don't have this fine brain. You're either serving food or you're not, and we don't make a distinction about breakfast, lunch, or dinner, beer and wine, like food is food. I don't [27:31] Speaker C (unidentified): know if that was anything. Yeah, I'm just definitely ready to go there's no conforming is that's there in D4 restaurant cafe it just says D4 presidential is it no I think it was D4 yeah [27:54] Ashley Baldwin: The inn itself technically has two different zones. There is a weird little spit just down the road that is technically in D2. [28:08] Chair: Because of right now, it's mostly just like a drainage area. Yeah, like literally where we are right now, where this point runs into right into Liberty, where it meets that point. Yeah, we own that point, right? Yeah, and that's technically we could [28:27] Ashley Baldwin: establish the smallest job. Yeah, right, one seat, it's [28:41] Speaker C (unidentified): not moved into two weeks. Yes, it's the same [28:44] Chair: thing again. Okay, all right, I guess if no one else from the board has anything else they want to say, I'll I'll go ahead and open it up to the public. Does anybody have anything they want [29:08] Ashley Baldwin: to add to the conversation, questions? Yes, I want to know, do they have a parking plan right now? You have 14 apartments and 15 spaces. What is the health part and whatever, the road has been rather congested lately, people because some of the parking spaces along the garage is small, they flow out and they park in the street. The other day there was a school bus us parked perpendicular across the road getting guests on, I could barely get around. This very narrow winter, the snow is an issue at the bottom of that hill. I would like to know what the park, maybe there isn't some type of a ratio of guest rooms and parking spaces and have to factor in housekeeping or chefs and whatnot. Do you have other plans for parking that we have a parking plan? [30:06] Chair: Diane? So I'll answer that. Can we just get the name for the record? Yes, if you could. What's [30:12] Ashley Baldwin: your name? I'm sorry. Oh, my name is Diane Shaw and I live at [address]. Thank you so much. Thank you. [30:17] Chair: Diane. So the code does not have parking requirements for anything other than if you're going to be building or expanding a parking lot by 10 or more spaces, and if you do that, there are requirements for how you do that, but we don't have any regulations that tie occupancy to number of spots. We did when the inn was, I think, initially established, but we don't have them in the new code. If there are issues relating to spill out parking into public areas, that needs to be handled not through the cover, that's a parking problem needs to be handled by the sheriff's department because it's a public way and you can't block the public waste and [31:25] Ashley Baldwin: so what if this an infraction has to be but caught on the spot versus them and my other question is if they get you're saying they don't need anything but for an event is there a maximum as to [31:39] Chair: how many people would be at this book club chef's dinner we the code does not set occupancy limits because that is actually handled by the departments they get there, the state departments that they get their licensing through. So the licensing board will come and inspect the kitchen and the facilities and they'll make a determination about how many people could safely be in this room. It's usually a combination of that review and the fire marshal will review and say a maximum safe occupancy of this space is x number of people so the code doesn't do that because other agencies already handle that and so it would just be doubling up for no need and they would override anything we wrote into our code anyway way their rules to proceed our rules the state law occupancy rates are supposed to cover those yeah great questions anybody else got anything [33:08] Ashley Baldwin: Yeah we're thinking it's pretty occasional for chef's dinners maybe like once a month on a sunday Sundays are nice because most of the in had left at that point and that's also what we're listening about for brunches and we currently serve guests from 8 to 9 30. So most of our guests have already left we have the whole parking lot that's empty because most of our guests especially that place in the winter time if they're coming in probably coming on Friday because most of them leaving on Sunday our parking lot is usually actually empty after 11 or so, it allows her the ability for us to have brunch with a pretty empty bathroom. [33:54] Speaker A (unidentified): How many people foot the dining room? [33:57] Ashley Baldwin: The dining room is pretty small. We're talking about like maybe... [34:06] Chair: Technically, the department, we're like 20 inside guests. We have two dining rooms. We have two dining rooms. with a set number of tables and chairs and things. So I think as of right now, we'd be 20 individuals at a time. And we're really, we don't want to become a restaurant. We serve breakfast to our guests right now every day. And the reason that the assembly originally felt right was because it wasn't a key. And so for the chef's dinners, we were talking about once a month. These things would be not like, we don't, we don't, we wouldn't have a set hours for brunch. That would be maybe the only thing that would be close, where it would be, I guess, up to once a week for brunch, and it would be a continuation of our current breakfast service that would include roughly maybe two to three hours to the public after a current breakfast. Just [35:16] Speaker A (unidentified): follow up might be [35:17] Chair: community, assuming you have a full house of funding and you have a couple guests lingering, and it could certainly max out the parking lot with whatever the additional people are. You had mentioned earlier possibly parking here. Is there a way of getting that word out? [35:48] Ashley Baldwin: We can definitely make sure that gets out to our patrons. I think if this happens, we would be working with the reservation system that can then send messages to them in that case. But just going back to the, we are already too busy in the summertime. We will in no way be offering a public branch in the summer for the fourth vehicle teacher, so we're really only talking [36:18] Chair: yeah, so yeah, great. Any other thoughts, comments, concerns? Yes. [36:29] Ashley Baldwin: Can I get his name? Oh, sorry, that was not right. Thank you. Yes, hi, my name is Rebecca Clark. I'm not just curious, when does your winter start with that season? We close the carriage house in five days. Five days, and then it currently doesn't open. Carolyn and Liz weren't opening the carriage house until like July 4th. We'll probably start opening it in the beginning of June, depending. So you go down to seven rooms in five days? Yes. [37:05] Chair: Great. Any other questions? All right. Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and open up the floor for a motion on the application. What I would say is, and I would make the motion, that we deny the application for the assembly use because it is not the correct use fit for the requested use, the use definition for the requested use. I would make that motion and then we can discuss afterwards. works. Since that's the application. That's the application in front of us that gives a use to add assemblies. So I would make a motion to deny the application. All right. So moved by me, seconded by Kevin. So now I'll open up discussion. I'll start this by saying I believe that the pre-existing non-conforming use was never discontinued and may continue. Without change, and those changes have been discussed. No additional live entertainment, no, you know, outdoor activities, or, you know, bands, or anything beyond what the pre-existing non-performing use was, which we've all discussed. And that's just comments, that's not a ruling or anything, that's just, I believe this is consistent. Yeah, there's an invitation, doesn't stop them from doing it. There isn't a time limit on how long, in the question of like 10 [39:19] Ashley Baldwin: years, and you haven't [39:20] Chair: served a meal does that mean you just didn't get the one year to use any use that's been discontinued for one year you just didn't happen to do it yeah which is strangely true of even things like dwelling we haven't been living in it 's not a house if no one's been living in it yes you lose the dwelling use if no one lives in it for a year or more but if falling was allowed [Speaker A (unidentified): correct in] fact you've been serving, and the previous owners have owners for that, it's established that the serving of food and beverages has not been discontinued use. [40:12] Speaker D (unidentified): Right. This carries on because it has been. Right. [40:17] Chair: Serving it for a little longer on a Sunday doesn't amount to expanded use. [40:21] Speaker A (unidentified): It's just you're doing the same use. [40:25] Speaker D (unidentified): Meaning if you're expanding the use, what appears to be expanding the use a little bit in the wintertime, you're actually not, because you have less, you have half the customers [40:32] Chair: so you're not really expanding. Yeah, I mean, I, but that doesn't matter really, right? Exactly, I, the closest coral area I think would be is it not called Sunny Side Breakfast in Dermascotta? We used to be Chrissy's, and then, yeah, right, so they serve breakfast, right, and lunch, maybe lunch now too, yeah, okay, I think they're up until like two years, so the argument would go, if they decided to just keep, stay open until dinner and serve dinner, are they expanding their use? I'm still just serving food, they're just serving food, which is what they've been doing, and convert serving lunch and only serve breakfast, are they changing their use? You define it as serving food, that's right, that's it, yeah, yep, all right, does anyone want to have anything else they want to add to the conversation or the thoughts? Okay, [41:42] Speaker A (unidentified): go for it. [41:46] Ashley Baldwin: They need to officially vote on your emotions. Oh, I'm sorry. [41:49] Chair: I'm just going to say all in favor of denying the application. What's it, was it the first and [41:59] Speaker C (unidentified): second? Yeah, all right, I'm sorry, now we can vote. All right, yes, okay, so that's four in favor of denying the applicant. Now, Bill Ford, I think we're done, Robert has been satisfied. Yeah. [42:19] Chair: I really appreciate your thinking about it, and all the research you did about it. [42:26] Ashley Baldwin: Very much appreciate it. Yeah. We just want to make sure we're doing everything by the book. Above board. We love it. Yep. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, guys. All right. Have a good one. Yeah, you too. And congratulations. Okay. [42:40] Chair: Generally, this should be public comments for items that are not on the agenda. And the only thing we had on the agenda was the this permit application, but does anyone have any public comments about items not general comments? Seeing that we'll go right to the point, sent out a packet emailed last night, and I don't want to have a big discussion about this. I wanted to get it in front of in front of everybody. That's really just like an introduction. [43:25] Speaker C (unidentified): Did you send it to Kevin? I sent it. Well, he sent it, then Kevin posted it in there. Oh, okay. [43:31] Chair: Yeah, I know you haven't had time to read it all, and that's fine, but I just wanted to suggest, like I did in my email, that the next piece of work we propose doing with the core zoning code is the concept of the of right to farm, which again, as I said in my email, is something that existed as a concept regulations in the prior version of the core zoning code, which was called the character code. When that was all reworked, a lot got stripped out, and so it's come to light recently that what we do have. In terms of regulating agriculture in the condo code, isn't great, we're one, and number two, it really doesn't mesh with anything that we have in the comprehensive plan, which is pretty specific in places about agriculture and agricultural citizens, what the direction of the code and the town should be taking in terms of how we treat them, regulate them, etc. [44:55] Speaker C (unidentified): What kind of code is two restrictions the current code could be construed. [45:02] Chair: So I drafted a amendment to the horizontal code to include the right to farm. Most of it is in, I think it's article seven uses, there's a new section there, a major section called Right to Form, but it does touch on several of the other articles as well. There's a bunch of definitions. And then there's changes sort of throughout some of the other articles where there's references and things that just need to be changed. I just wanted to introduce it and I wanted to see what everyone thought about this being our next parameter work. The reason I wanted to put this on the table before some of the other work is because there is a law in Maine called the Agricultural Protection Act. It requires that when a municipality enacts or proposes to enact legislation that regulates agriculture, they provide copy of the proposed language to the DACF for them to review, the Department of Agricultural Conservation and Farmland, terrible acronyms, and the law requires them to have a 90-day window to review it. They don't actually have any authority to change anything, but they send it around to their various agencies and they provide comments, and mostly they're going to provide a sort of a judgment about, yes, this is in keeping with the spirit of the Agricultural Protection Act, or it's not, and in which ways it's deficient. But because there's that timer, this wouldn't be able to go to a special town meeting until sometime in the spring. So if we decided we wanted to work on this for the next couple of months now, we could then send it off to the ACR, they could review it, give back to us with any changes they may have, and we could put it into the pipeline. Meanwhile we can be actually working on other things once it goes to that, once it goes, okay, we got a three month where it's just sort of, yeah, we got some stuff we need to work on, you know, from our meeting last month, I think one of the biggest things we need to work on is Actually, I started working on it, but then this sort of precedence when I learned about that 90-day window is non-conformity is a issue. We learned that pretty thoroughly and a lot of work. So let's open it up. See what everybody thinks. We [48:20] Speaker C (unidentified): have time to read through it. It reads very logically and well. [48:26] Chair: And that's fine. I'm just trying to create a summary of changes. And then I also created a memo which just sort of looks at places, pulls out references from the comprehensive plan about agriculture, what those goals were that the town identified in the comp plan about agriculture, proposed right to farm amendment, addresses the comprehensive plan directly. So the place to start would be just either reading the memo about the Comprehensive Plan consistency or the summary of changes in the House of Wiser red line version of the Corazonian Code. [49:26] Speaker C (unidentified): It's a lot of reading. It's always easier to read it within the code just to be able to know it's very [49:38] Chair: permissive. Well and that's which is good, that's directly from the comprehensive plan. Yeah, that's a [49:48] Speaker C (unidentified): direct and [49:52] Speaker A (unidentified): fix it was probably funny too I'm [49:58] Chair: Not sure, like I said, it's just a first step. Yeah, I've asked the code enforcement officer to throw a whole bunch of, I stopped in the doctor today and she was reading it. I said, can you just come up with a whole bunch of like worst case scenarios about how this could be interpreted badly, you know what I mean? Because she deals with, you know, interpretation of the code. Yeah, where the rubber meets the road. And she had some good ideas. She was going to give me some numbers. Oh, always. Yeah, always. Yeah. Probably. [50:39] Speaker C (unidentified): Not yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. [50:42] Chair: through it yeah throw our comments exactly and really all i wanted to do was to mention it here it is i think the agenda has a point of discussion for next and bring any comments or suggestions anything you can about it without discussion we'll make some And then we'll decide whether or not we want to continue working on it. [51:16] Speaker C (unidentified): I'm not a farmer, but it makes sense. Specific comments, no time for that. It's a lot of extra material. [51:34] Chair: Yeah, I think it added like two pages to the code total. I want to say. All together, there's a couple of new tables. [51:48] Speaker C (unidentified): Numbers and changes are a lot bigger than the actual changes. [51:50] Chair: Yes, it is. Yes,. Well, describing what has changed and why, that's the harder part. Yeah. And there's some stumbling blocks. I think there's some things we need to work through, like where, you know, agriculture covers both the cultivation of plants, but also animals. And so where the where the line falls in terms of, you know, what should be permissible, where to what degree, and then and then there's other use case scenarios like slaughterhouses, you know, that's considered agriculture, so they may be fringe cases, but we don't have anything covering that right now. Have there been cases where people who wanted to do something that, and I don't recall anything, where somebody wanted to do something related to agri-farm, but I don't know if that's... No. Yeah, there's been a couple of times that the CEO has been struggling with it, specifically in regards to things like poop houses, and trying to make a determination about whether those are what kind of structure it looks right yes yeah exactly are those accessory structures are they residential accessory structures are they temporary structures and the code doesn't deal with them well right now yeah i remember the name of it i mean there was a lot of people it was another [53:54] Speaker D (unidentified): Mostly what we talked about is like noise and stuff, like the chickens and stuff with the different and the different, and that's kind of where we left everything. You remember that section? [54:04] Chair: That how we have a whole section called right in the farm, yeah, because we talked about which [54:08] Speaker D (unidentified): districts they could have, like maybe, you know, chickens, but you can't have roosters. Yeah, we talked a lot about that, yeah, back then, so [54:19] Speaker C (unidentified): this is we're making the original version of this, so we're actually doing creating home with region, which I know is significantly better. Yeah, I was just [54:29] Chair: shocked, I was really shocked that so much had been lost around agriculture, and that was in the first writing of the code. When we rebuilt the code, it was, it was in the first writing, the first, and I [54:41] Speaker C (unidentified): think when we had to invite the whole thing, I think that's where things got, yeah, yes, so [54:50] Chair: we're, we're a rural community. Our comp plan wants us to, you know, encourage. I would [54:57] Speaker D (unidentified): say yee-haw. Yeah, right, don't always feel like the northern part of the town is [55:08] Speaker C (unidentified): appreciated as much as I would like it to be. I mean, this one's important to me personally, and I really want to get it right. Well, I think especially with the [55:19] Speaker D (unidentified): economy the way it is and stuff, I mean, I think there's a lot of people looking to homegrown more stuff and do more, and this is a big part of that, right? [55:29] Chair: I just, yeah, I don't want, you know, little gardens that, or for someone who just has, you know, a green thumb and has a slightly bigger garden or whatever, but they're, I don't want them to be denied doing what they want to do because the code is really deficient and potentially anti-agriculture. That's, that's not a okay thing. Among other issues when I dug into it, of course I was remembering all that stuff that we talked about, and then lo and behold, there's like state laws about beekeeping, literally you can register your bees, and you're not allowed to, by law you're not allowed to say that beekeeping is not allowed anywhere in town, it has to be allowed everywhere now, and you can register your eyes, there's this whole law, but I had no idea, so I want to be compliant with that too, you know, all [56:28] Speaker C (unidentified): of this was undefined, yep. [56:35] Speaker A (unidentified): Okay, Emily. [56:39] Chair: Do you have anything else? I don't. Okay, then without objection, I will say meeting adjourned 7 27. [56:51] Speaker C (unidentified): Is that a record? Get me short of the last few minutes perhaps because [57:02] Speaker D (unidentified): no, I think we had a couple of complicated, yes.