##VIDEO ID:Xr3Jzbsg6Qs## I'm calling the Tuesday February 4th 2025 meeting of the Esau meal planning board to order is there anyone in the audience or on Zoom who might be recording this meeting seeing none and hearing none um we'll move on so I'm gonna call the role U starting on this end P hon Bill fona Russell Denver Cassandra Cher Willow Rob Terell and Rob chill plan director uh first item is approval of the January 7th 2024 meeting minutes moved do I have a second second any discussion hearing none all in favor say I I I and that item passes uh there's no public hearings and so I turn the meeting over to Rob Rob W he met you rob yes so um Jamie could you promote me to panelist chance please out you all should have a copy of the slides in front of you so you know it's a hard to read on the screen I appreciate all of you coming today by the way I know it's hard to come to a meeting when there's nothing on the agenda but keep it brief all right can everybody see that yes we can I'm going to try to make this bigger so I can see it better cool all right so as I kept bringing up in the past three meetings I attended the citizens planner training collaborative webinar series I went to three of them and they were all within two weeks of each other so it was really convenient to go to these they're in evening on Zoom wasn't any sort of inconvenience but today I'm just going to go over a brief recap of three topics that were discussed at three of these webinars that I want to so General overview um the three webinars I went to were on site plan review special permits and variances although I'm not going to talk about variances too much because that doesn't pertain to your board that's his Z board of appeals matter and then writing reasonable and defensible decisions and that last one's kind of weird because of the title but as you can see they're all pretty close to each other uh within the same week or so and just overall goals I I was hoping just I know you guys already know your stuff you've done this for a long time especially you Russell and you Pete um just trying to reinforce that knowledge you know there's stuff that are you referring to my age your experience the experience well you are the chair after all um just to reinforce that knowledge then give some New Perspective and updates I've learned recently and it's only seven slides long TR to keep it all right so site plan review um here's what you already know you know that it pertains to both buy right and discretionary uses so for example if a property need both a special permit and site plan review because of the use and because they're building something that triggers site plan review you already know that it's the opportunity for the board to review development and apply all of our local criteria to any sort of development project you know that it's a tool to examine potential impacts from development AKA uh ordering conditions on there that protects the health wealth well-being and safety of ab budding property owners and can also be applied and used to do Amendment protected uses so solar to schools okay to religious institutions Etc as long as what they're building is triggered by site plan review and that's the way that we do it in our own bylaw you're not prohibiting the use to exists but you're allowed to add conditions to it through site plan review so would that pertain to churches too it would yes if it's a building yeah um yeah so since I've been on I've dealt with two Church issues one was the solar onw wood mhm and the other one was the church on Kibby they were yeah but churches aren't really built see them too church thing like two years ago St PA oh yeah St Paul's Church we had we had quite a bit of dealings with the one on um arker Street also where we learned that the church can pretty much do what the church wants if it's a US relay thing yes if they're building something then they have to come to the town right okay um because you know obviously religious us are protected under the do Amendment the almighty do amendment that protects everything yeah um yeah so just moving on so here's the new information that I learned that would be valuable to this board so supposedly state law does not actually enable site plan review there is no statute that gives towns the ability to use site plan review this is actually shaped by case law and home rule over time so site plan review has been around for a long time each municipality has their own interpretation of How It's applied and how it's used so in this town for example we do it based on construction so if development is commercial over a certain size it needs it no matter what in other towns they have it on their use table so each specific use either requires a site plan review requires allow by right but no site plan review or special permit so the way the town interpret it is very vast and Broad so there's not really one one size fits all like for special permits for example so that's why there's a lot of gray area and vagueness when it comes to site plan riew and that's why you have to rely on case law to really determine where it's effective and how you can technically use it so as I mentioned earlier it's a tool to Share info and determine compliance it's not used to shape development and the reason why I want to stress that is because you know the developer has the right to build up to the maximum potential they're allotted to under law the municipality cannot technically prohibit them from building past a certain size if they're allowed to go beyond that size and the reason why I stress that is because I'm not going to point any examples but I've seen other communities where they limit the size of a building to a certain square footage because they're afraid of how it's going to look if it goes up to the allowable maximum limit under law that's what leaves the municipality open to lawsuits and that one's pretty black and white but there are ways you can determine compliance that are allowable under these case laws and these include parking traffic and circulation so you can require certain parking minimum to be applied you can require they design the site in a way that works for the project you can do it so fire trucks can get around the back to put out the building when it's on fire public health and safety is kind of the key here when it comes to these conditions you can do it for drainage and roadway construction so if their drainage is terribly designed you could tell them look we don't like your drainage come back to us when this is better protect all those abling Property Owners we don't want people having puddles in their front lawn because of your inability to design a good storm water system you have S engine lighting is another one so if they have those blinking LED lights that shine in every I don't know somebody driving down the street is getting blinded constantly by lights you can prohibit that um utilities and screening so screening is one that you are allotted the power to require through conditioning and site plan review so for example if there's a I don't know storage of vehicles in the back you can absolutely require a fence or a tree screening Arbor whatever you want that's within your powers to do so and lastly design review and I'm going to talk more about design Review Committee at the end of this meeting today you can require that buildings adhere to our design standards if you wanted to once the design review Comm is populated again if you don't like the way a building looks you can absolutely have design Review Committee weigh in on ways they can make the building look better for the area it could be design Aesthetics could be scale like if there's a an out building next to the main building that doesn't look like it fits you can require they make it fit so it looks good um those are things to keep in mind when determining compliance site there's also two Core case up there I really wanted to briefly go over um that essentially shapes the uh legality of site plan review so the first of which is YY Dugout versus B of appeals of Canton it basically sets the tone that site plan review should be understood as a regulation of a use rather than its prohibition so site plan itself cannot prohibit a use that's a special permit or essentially the town saying we we don't want that use to exist here it's your way to make sure the use fits better in the community with the powers you're given under state law the other case that stood out from these presentations was credential Insurance Co of America versus Board of Appeals of Westwood and this one was pretty important because it determined three ways you're allowed to act on a site plan review application the first of which is to denied if all the the required information is not provided to the board so if they're missing a whole traffic study or a whole storm water report drainage analysis whatever you can technically deny it and tell them to come back when that information is provided to us the courts will be in your favor if that's the case you can approve it with reasonable conditions if needed and the word reasonable is very vague here because you don't really know what's reasonable that's open to interpretation you could say it's reasonable because it addresses a public health and safety issue because Al say it's reasonable and then the courts could interpret a different way and that's why I kind want to emphasize the word reasonable but I think that would be more or less project by project there's no real definition no so it goes like I said project by project Case by case and it's a it's to address a concern you're trying to prevent from happening you're looking out for the abutters you're looking out for the community of all you're looking out for the town's resources if the town can't provide a certain resource utility to that property maybe they have to to invest some money on their end that's another thing you could technically require too and I'll get more into that a different time when we have a project that they actually come to us okay um and the last way you could go about this is to deny if no reasonable conditions can satisfy the problems of the plan and that's your Avenue to say a sewer system is undersized to support a 50,000 square foot Warehouse that has a lot of drainage going out because the town cannot provide that source for that business business you can deny that s plan review it wouldn't work at all unless developer is willing to come in and pay for those upgrades and work with a town you you could say there's no reasonable condition that could be satisfied to make this work here so that's why we're denying your application come back to us and redesign this whole thing so it works so that last one's pretty important because you're basically saying that a project that's impossible even though it's allowed by right is impossible because you don't have the utilities the site doesn't work you have a steep hill that drops off into a river behind you how about traffic traffic's a tricky one because you have to prove that that use is going to generate more traffic I know the warehouse has a lot of vehicles going there and and to be honest I wasn't too familiar with that project but it sounded like traffic was a concern and I think it was because you guys condition they can only turn one way going out of the building or something like that um well for me it was the the volume and also why I voted no the first time was because we're charged with um preventing um I trying to say congestion yeah and that would by saying yes to it would go against what I'm charged with as my one of my duties at on the planning board does that hold up I mean that's what that's what we're supposed to do so that's that's where if you remember Mike pill that very first meeting yes on all this he said this will end up in court and it will be a battle of the experts yep and I think that's then it'll be expert on expert on whether it would cause congestion in which that intersection probably could not handle did anybody ever look at the utilities can he makes a valid point what's that ever look at the utilities and yeah the town the town so they always did before review of these projects there's actually a requirement that you have to go DPW and get them to sign off on it um and for something like that It's tricky because when you think about it you could alleviate congestion issues by making a better intersection if you make it easier for people to go in out then that's a reasonable condition because if the use was to go there you have these giant tractor trailers coming and going like 50 times a day that is a public safety concern 100 at least a day yeah probably 300 a day I think if you in that situation hypothetically I'm not speaking about something that happened but hypothetically if I to provide information to you as the board I would say work with them on trying to redesign the intersection to avoid this issue moving forward having them go just one way out is hard because what if they want to go the other way essentially restricting their ability to move anywhere the point the point of the point of for me is that they look at their GPS Y and they're coming from Connecticut it's going to say peas Road or it's going to say Chestnut Street because because it's quicker and shorter and if they're coming from Boston Road it's going to say the rotary so it's not just turning left or right yeah but it's the it's the convergence of everything on that one point of 330 Chestnut Street agree to me if somebody really a judge or whatever really knew what the ramifications were and what was going to be happening they would have they would probably you know say it's not a good project so this well if they were to go there and see the site and see the intersection they probably would agree with you and say yeah I mean it's hard to support this volume of traffic with a badly designed intersection yeah particularly the RO not even the rotary it's brutal yeah but I mean I think the proper terminology is not congestion but more congestion more because we always have we have congestion everywhere yeah safety and that's growing and that's growing too unbelievable yeah it is can I ask you a question on um so public process First Sight plans yep it's always been my understanding that it's a public meeting and not a public hearing so no it is a public hearing because the way yes because the way we have it in our bylaw is that it has to adhere to the same public hearing process as special permits okay and we specifically state that so that also means the appeal process is the same too I'm going to get into that actually in the next slide okay so let's let's talk about that that's a good way to bring that up uh so the old way of doing it I'm sure you're all very familiar with that landord judge who issued you to do it this old way but the old way of doing the appeals process for site plan review was to get a denied building permit for a zoning related isue then once you get that denied building permit you go appeal that to the zoning board of appeals once you appeal it to the zba that would go to lanc court afterwards or whoever is the higher authority the reason why they're trying to move away from that is because it pits the zoning board against the planning board you don't usually want two towns to fight each other on the same project one say yes one could say no it gets pretty ugly it is it's gotten ugly yes some some moves that you disco what were you thinking yeah the zba I mean uh that's what we're trying to prevent that's that's the reason why communities have been adopting as I mentioned 48 section 17 which judicial review process for zoning so that's the process we currently do for special permits so going back to that old way the reason why that judge told you guys to um have the denied building permit for the um the applicant and then go to the zba is because they wanted to exhaust all local options available when realistically that's kind of like the old school way of looking at it that's not really the way most communities are doing it today they're doing it this other way which is how special firm is are Tre and in this case we're lucky enough that it's in our own bylaw already that we say you follow the same process for hearings for notices even for drafting decisions filing and for appeals as special permits and the reason for that is because it's in the statute you can't argue against the statute if it's there pretty black and white um the courts don't usually go against 40a ever they always say strictly follow these rules of the zoning act and that's why most communities go in that direction oh um It also says if an appealed site plan review has conditions with it so if you instill conditions in site plan review the courts usually diver the site plan review to the site plan review Authority in any sort of appeal so if it's an issue that the court doesn't see as worth docket most of the time they just remand it back to the planning board and just say figure it out again like do this hearing again which happened to you guys um and that's just how it is for all these land Court sort of cases unless it's like a groundbreaking precent that we've never seen before usually they don't give it the time of day um so that's pretty much it for site plan and I'll definitely take more questions at the end of this but I do have two more slides that'll go over very quickly so the next one is special permits which you already know about special permits that pertains to discretionary uses so uses you can deny legally if it doesn't satisfy all the required criteria up front you also know that it's given the ability under 40a which is the zon Act for one of five entities to technically be called the special permit granting Authority these entities include the planning board zoning board of appeals the zoning administrator which I've never seen a zoning administrator issue a special permit before I never heard of that that's something that most communities don't even do the select board could be the special permit Authority or the Town Council so for example the city council in hoio is one that issues all their special permits in this town it's you guys the plan board in ammer it's their zoning board of appeals it just depends on where you are it also states that local bylaws must have clear standards for valuating petitions you already know this those findings that we have the specific review criteria the reason why I stress so much that we have to apply those to every project is because one day somebody's going to hate the ruling that the board makes and they're going to want to challenge you in court why did you make this negative finding because of this condition right here this criteria did not meet and the judge going to throw out the case so that's something to keep in mind and you guys already know all the information anyways three new things I learned I'm just going to briefly touch upon is the types of special permits you can award to people or even have available to people and the list is pretty extensive and I'm just going to name these out so you can actually give a special permit to increase density on a site you can give special permits to go in a direction to award a dimensional variants if you wanted to so if somebody doesn't have enough area to build a house on and they can still put a house there they they're just off by like 20 square feet or something they could come to the planning board or whoever and get a special permit and it's totally legit under state law and other communities do do that and that wouldn't be called discretionary then yes because you can deny it so if it's not a good project you can say no we don't like it it's because you don't satisfy all these criteria okay next applicant you can do it for what's called transfer development rights also known as tdrs so basically what that is and you see this a lot in Hadley so a property owner say like a farm wants to give their rights to develop on a property to somebody else that allows for the person receiving those rights to build something more intensive so for example route n Hadley those are all TDR properties the big shopping malls they wouldn't be allowed there with base zoning a farmer somewhere else in town would have to sell those rights somebody else and in the process they got special permit for the planning board had it it I've heard they don't work very well because you can see at highy you have all those big store retails yeah um yeah but a Farmland would be in a a a special zoning anyway where their taxes are different and all that don't they have to change that back over to developable type of uh property well zoning yes you could but at the same time they want those farmlands to be protected in perpetuity they want those Family Farms to stay there and the big reason why people do the tdrs is because they want to make money off their land without having that land turn into like a big subdivision or something or into a big shopping commercial building establishment so you'll see if you go on the outskirts of Route N9 Hadley it's all Farmland right and the reason for that is because they pick one spot along that Corridor where all the development can go yeah and everybody else is just Family Farm Family Farm and that was done on purpose and it was because of those tdrs so that's one way to look special permit you can also do it for Planned unit development so for example the fields of chestnut that's a planned unit development that's a lot of buildings single family homes on one giant property that all designed at the same time um and you can also do it for shared elderly housing so there's a lot of categories you can apply to special permits and we don't have to limit to just the type of use you can do it in these other avenues if the town feels that it helps with people to build residential housing or if you feel like it's going to help with commercial businesses that's an Avenue to consider in the future uh the next thing I want to discuss were recent amendments it says 2016 that's not recent but I feel it's important to mention these because they're not really discussed too often and they're kind of pushed in the back burner but the first important rule from that 2016 amendment is that new zoning does not apply to a special permit that was issued before the legal advertisement of a zoning Amendment if the use or construction of that specific permit has begun within 12 months after issuance of a permit and unless construction is continued through to completion this number was previously six months so say somebody gets special permit to build a restaurant less than 12 months later they haven't started anything for the restaurant zoning gets rid of restaurants in that zone Al together as long as they start construction or at least applying for a building permit before before that 12 months expires they're okay okay they're essentially grandfather that grandfather Yeah that value used to be six months but now they extended to 12 months so doubl the amount the other one which is pretty important too pertains to when a permit laps is so if you're awarded a special permit it used to be that you had two years to do anything with it 2016 it was Chang to three years and most communities never knew that wow one of those things where it came out wasn't really advertised or made aware as such and everybody still opera on assumption that you have two years to act on your special permit and because of that it's three why the three I wish I could tell you yeah I wish but here another thing here you can mention is that you can't extend beyond that three years so unless a permit has a set deadline within it that's the only time you can technically extend the deadline of a permit if there's no deadline mentioned at all three years that's it three years if they're not doing anything within that three years good luck you have to wait two years after that to apply for a permit again mean I I could see that if you had 200 acres of land and you only had $20 yeah and you need to get you know millions of dollars to develop it it might take you three years y to do it so I can I can see that that's a reasonable thing okay and then you know year four you would have to apply for the permit all over again right so that's the only downside to that yeah you have that three-year window which is good um well even two years I mean you know the you know the rules so you got to go go find your investors yeah yeah now that it's three years it just get another a year extension but usually or just just taking it that long to do it I mean pretty poor businessman if you're doing that yeah no kid most people I've talked about special permits they do the thing right away they they start the project if anything special permits like a roadblock for them yeah and they're like oh I have to get the special permit to build my 20,000 foot Warehouse how come like yeah but they've already got their financing lined up yeah exactly and I rarely see the only time I see people delay a special permit is when they're doing like a single family home construction project or maybe they're putting a house on like a really weirdly shaped partial or something they have to find the funding to build a long driveway uh anything that's just a homeowner doing it not like a corporation or a developer store connection something like you know something like that exactly um and then lastly conditional approval so the way conditional approval was interpreted in this webinar that it's a special permit that's granted but you have conditions with it and the way that you can aot these conditions to be in terms of how strict they are is that they have to be reasonable clearly explained and within your Authority so you can't force them to do something that you as a board don't have the authority to force them to do you can't require additional approval by another entity unless say they're within that jurisdiction of that entity so even if they're in conom jurisdiction or not in concom jurisdiction you're not allowed to technically condition that they have to go to conom you can say that they have to follow all local state and federal laws but that's the extent of it and it's pretty much implied from the town's review that we're going to force him to go to conom we're going to force him to go to the health department go to building Etc and they stress that because there's been discrepancies where you have these decisions from like 10 years ago where they say you need a certificate of occupancy for an existing building maybe that doesn't relate to today's rules and there's a huge Cy there in that condition versus what we're doing today it could require review from the superintendent of DPW to make sure your parking lot looks good right when they're not doing any work to the parking lot so the way they're trying to prevent unreasonable regulations is making it clear that you need these conditions here that make sense they will benefit the community and it's not something you're technically allowed to not force them to do so you can't go beyond your Authority I'm trying to say and the last one that I attended to is going to be very quick and brief I don't even know what this one was but the way it was titled writing reasonable and defensible land land use decisions the title itself was really misleading it was actually just about how to follow procedures in a public meeting for these types of permits and that's all it was I didn't learn anything about writing a decision but I did learn some facts that I could briefly go over the first of which the way to Define defense Ban's decision one that follow with Fair participation which the both permits that we Award with this board include findings of fact and legal conclusions and I'll go over what findings of fact is later on is reasonbly supported by evidence observes the statutorily required form of vote so if it's special permit four of you have to be here and vote Yes if it's a site plan review three of you have to be here vote Yes um if more than two people vote no for site plan review denied more than one person votes no for special permit the quorums are important because that's what gives the legitimacy of the vote and decision on all these petitions lastly you have to reach your decision and timing matter and observe all the legal deadlines and advertising requirements if you don't follow even one of those things the whole hearing is tossed out n void it's like it never even happen that's why we're very strict with when we advertise the hearings in the paper because if we're off by a certain number of days or if we're on day 95 after hearings been closed to render decision technically the applicant gets constructive approval which means they can't the board can't get any conditions imposed onto them they just go on and get their building permit so why do we prepare these decisions we prepare them in order to build public confidence to avoid litigation that's a big one provide transparency to ensure the decision-making process is consistent objective and fair the last one's pretty important for using the special permit criteria so we look at every petition application the exact same way we're not biased we look at it from a perspective that we're going to a w and treat everybody the same way unless your project requires a certain type of review above what we already do then we'll spend that extra time on a Case by case basis but general idea is be fair be transparent allow for public participation make it accessible so for special parent decision specifically I do want to reiterate that the obviousy require super majority vote so four out five members have to vote Yes order to award it and only the members who attend the meeting for the mulls rule can build any petition for special permits so findings of fact and what that means essentially that's when you review all the criteria and make your findings for each petition so you look at the evidence you look at what they're telling you you make sure that all the findings you make apply and are satisfied from what they tell you so for example if there's a criteria that requires traffic congestion that are anticipated to be um relieved or they prove that these issues won't exist if they can prove that to you somehow whether it's with a traffic study with plans Etc then that's that criteria is satisfied if there's a criteria that says um you're not going to produce any loud noises dust or odor if they can prove they're not going to do that with their use criteria satisfied if there's no proof or evidence saying that they're not going to make those things happen you can require more information for them you can say hey prove that you're not going to create all this noise uh do a sound study or something uh prove that you're not going to create all this pollution the trouble with all that stuff is you can make the numbers do whatever you want them to do traffic studies all that type of thing it's up to you as the board to believe them or to not believe them you have to use your best judgment because if it's an expert telling you that the sound levels aren't going to go above a certain decel for a bigger project and obviously the experts more credible than the them so you can do what's called a third party review where you have an expert come in review all their documents and tell you truthful look at their plans they can look at their uh traffic studies storm water Etc usually we do this for like solar projects if it's like a huge 20 acre project we'd have an expert come in and make sure their design is good that it's not going to destroy the habitat or the community and the applicant under state law is required to pay for that study so if it's a large Solar Company we could say hey planing board wants you to put up 20 grand to do this peer viiew you have to do it or else you can't approve your project that's still allowable under state law and under our zoning bylaw because of the scale uh and that's all had I guess those summary points to the bottom just to reiterate all the rules closely observe and meet all the deadlines because they will come back can bite you in the butt if you don't conduct a thorough findings effect and instill reasonable conditions to protect public health and safety you guys have any questions for me all I could say is a lot of stuff you're talking about I could relate to because we I've been through it on my experience on the planning board yeah a lot of the stuff site plan review with drainage and all that type of thing if you begin buing you don't build all of it right you have remaining perit you just didn't finish building that y clocked at that half it usually depends soe by case the law observes you starting construction if you have to prove you have to stop or certain good cause Bridge you're allowed to delay the clock because of that so say for example your investor pulled out last minute and it's almost year three and you didn't start the project yet you could work with the town or the board to kind of delay that a little bit further because of good cause that's the only exemption really that applies to that you built a warehouse on one you have f for a second one you built the first one and waited a few years yeah and then built the other one what's what is the clock between those two one I don't really know the answer to that one because you already started the first building and both buildings were included in the same project usually if you're waiting a long time you didn't build the other project The Building Commissioner would reach out and tell you to do it you're not allowed to build but again that that usually doesn't have it too often so I don't really have a good answer if youing that fair enough scous all right any old business hearing none just get out of this sorry all right so director's report I'll go through this quickly so I gave you all the next six meeting dates we have two public hearings coming up at our next meeting on the 18th the first of which is a zon Amendment hearing for assisted living in the industrial Garden Park District the exact use is called convalescent Assisted Living congregate elderly handicap housing or nursing home the petitioner build the plant is trying to petition to change that from a no to a special permit in that district and then we have a special permit hearing for a business called Sublime therapeutic massage 28 North Main Street which is like the Hub of Massage Therapy um that one's also expected at that same meeting let me just if if I can so it it seems like the town overreacted on the issue of Massage Therapy maybe 10 years ago yeah right where they so there were several um individual businesses businesses that were providing more than massages and the town really cracked down on all of that you know police came in did raids they did and so now they're requiring special permits on everything to me I equate it to like a hairdresser or you know we see these people that do the braided eyebrows and braided eyebrows yeah they do it there's one uh there's one on Maple Street braided eyebrows braided braided eybrow whatever you call it yeah tattoo no no they're braided she's work for somebody else threading threading okay isn't that the same thing no it's not at all the tattoo par well she's saying yes and you're saying no no I know what you're talking about but braing is like when you do this with your hair okay all right they call that personal service shop yes broad use K or you have so so would there be some [Music] um would there be some interest in deleting that requirement from the from those allowing and allow it is kind of a we don't require tattoo parlors and to to come in and yeah and they have to be massage therapists have to be State licensed course they do yeah yeah so I agree with you well I'm not no I'm not saying yay or nay just saying I think there's interest how about that okay WR about that I the thing I mean it was family wasn't it pretty much family that hadl and yeah you know there was other issues there you know it's another thing I mean most of the time it's like a single practitioner it costs money FES time you know that that type of thing you're always going to have your outliers right any Unfortunately they they didn't get caught by us they got caught by the police if they're going to get caught they're going to get not so there's there's General agreement yes that we would like you to draft up you know the appropriate language language etc for removal of the requirement for massage therapists to get a special permit you may have that available for the next meeting whenever you know whenever you I don't think it's a burning issue just no it's just deleting a lot of text and yeah sounds good to me okay all right I'll have that available for next meeting all right so once I get this note down I'll continue through the rest of my report all right so we have those two hearings coming up in the next meeting um there's upcoming event so supposedly the billing department is having in open house tomorrow morning from 8:30 a.m. to 10: a.m. is someone from the board able to go and I can't I can't I'm good I'm won't be able to if you want to meet the new Building Commissioner that's the whole point of the event and there's going to be coffee and donuts provided so okay yeah building building department Center Square he can show up to will local so I think people pretty well um all right so plan dep projects and updates we have two hearings that are before the Town Council first of which is adus a second reading before the council is scheduled for February 11 2025 before the joint meeting with the planning board regarding the topics we discussed earlier the solar B amendments were adopted and voted into law by the Town Council at their January 20th 2025 meeting there were any issues that were brought up from that review um it was essentially just cleaning up the language and making it formatted correctly and updating the language that contradicts state law and contradicts itself in certain areas of the text so um you sent out the amended copy of the Adu yep you highlighted the language to Town Council yes so pretty much Ralph paage got what he wanted it wasn't just one person it was the whole committee that weighed in on it um at least So the plan sub committee meet met last Thursday to discuss these changes and and were you weren't you going to be inviting us to that meeting and let letting us know when it was going to be so these meetings happened last minute I um who's the chair of that Anna Jones yeah you can definitely reach out to her and ask her okay the only thing is they meet in like a a back room in the manager's office so you want to say that there's a conference room off the town manager room anybody's welcome to join but it should be in a bigger room in my opinion okay space tight space yes okay so um yeah that that happened on the 28th and obviously you're more welcome welcome to chip in for the adus at the second reading on the 11th uh complete sheet Grant so I recently put an application not recently but I put an application together back in August 24 for sidewalks on the Eastern side of Westwood that run from Mel Melrose all the way down to Maple Street we got that funding from the state got about $446,000 from Dot and 1,700 ft in total of sidewalks DPW already had that money e March and their sidewalk mitigation fund whatever it's called so now this kind of doubles that amount and they can use that funding that's there already for a different project if they wanted to so we just increased our sidewalk capacity for projects we're going to do over the summer um mass gaming commission has a grant program called the community mitigation fund which I'm sure some of you have heard of uh essentially the town submit a huge comprehensive application which includes several projects from different departments fire police Town manager Health uh the only project that my department submitted was a transportation related project for a preliminary feasibility study of redesign the rotary so I want to ask the question why did you choose that because we didn't have any other projects that fit within the scope of 60,000 they prioritize other projects above that one and this is the manager's office and not myself so it was the town manager's office who decided to put in a request for the refiguration to study reconfiguration so I proposed it as a project idea okay and I gave him a few other options too why because of the traffic related issues that are caused by the rotary one of which is the backup from the rotary all the way past the high school on Maple Street you have the traffic congestion on the other roads such as Shaker Road Summers Road North Main Street leading to it the rotary itself and I've been through it a couple times I I'm very skeptical to go through it I've sat there at a yield and waited for two stop signs that cross each other to go one at a time you're stuck there for 10 minutes the reason for this study is to do a high level early on you can do this or you can't do this redesign here's some funding sources you can consider that could help you with a better design and actual plans later on and we're also going to do public engagement process just to see if people actually want this so it's more of a planning study you'd be talking about taking of land and everything to fix that you know why it's why it is like it is don't you I don't know the full story well the try used to come down North Main Street and there was a a table that turned the the train around sent it back to Springfield so when they came in in the old days everybody dispersed and that's how how the rotary got made yeah so I mean when you when you look at it CU I've tried it when you look at it you actually have to take yeah that's that's still what happened no I know well you you were the conductor right yeah I actually remember I actually remember the thing being constructed as a little kid driving down there you around with electricity anyway I was just a TI but anyway if you looked at it you'd have to take property and change things it's just I don't know I don't think it's much of a good excuse how much money is you know this isn't the first one I mean you have maybe construct a bridge in the center but yeah back I'm sure good uh of the rotary you saw metal Clover Le yeah you redesign with the trolley people put just bring the trolley back yeah there you go yeah there you go I just want people to understand that it's not the planning board requesting that this be done so yeah okay thank you yeah no problem and um hopeful that we'll get the funds to do that project lastly design Review Committee I did submit advertisements in a few different places uh in the reminder to do two advertisements in their News section um social media with the help of Rebecca leisi and on our website gave him a deadline of February 21st when we'll accept applications I told them how to do it they could send me a cover letter and resume I can review it have them apply with the application form and then go from there usually the way it works is we would have applicants apply then us for all theming authority also ask individuals in the following place to apply as well they're strongly encourage to Architects business owners graphic design professionals landscape designers or Architects and Urban Design people people who have a sense of style they know how buildings or sites could look and fit certain metrics that I'm not really the best of giving that somebody who was more of a design professional could could bring to the table so that's pretty much all I had for my reports and I thank you all for your time and for coming today and Russell I know you want language for that motion yes go ahead there so the motion that's appropriate for that is that you as a board will vote to lift the planning board's requirement of a deed restriction for trees on the property of 25 Stonehill Road okay do I have a second second any discussion hearing none all in favor say I hi hearing none that item passes so I will have a document available and I'll let you all know when you come by sign it probably sometime later this week okay uh they have enough time for their closing so okay motion to adjourn so move second all in favor thank you