[Music] [Music] good evening the meeting will come to
order um I see with once again attracted an enormous crowd and we invite selectman Brown to please come forward and join us if you would forward as I can come yeah there's no seats tonight going to have to go to the podium oh to
stand up just pull a seat forward yeah I guess I mean don't don't be an isent than can you hear me now it's a lot easier than getting up and down every time you
need yeah be one of us as you were move over get up there it's almost like they knew the last weeks yeah oh right that's
planning okay how many of you brought your books in so you have today's agenda rather than last time it's all the same material so we just didn't get to the last three or four items on the agenda right we're starting with tiny houses
tiny homes corre okay but but it is a public meeting and we do have an order first thing is public comment Mr Brown do you wish to say anything I'm just happy to be here we're glad to have you in that case minutes Paul M CH I recommend approval of the meeting
minutes of Fe February 11 2025 with the corrections from Bob Larry second okay it's been made and seconded all in favor I the minutes are approved now
tonight um we're having a discussion and the good thing about this is we never get a chance to meet unless it's a public meeting so this is our chance to actually know what we as a group think and that's the purpose of this meeting is to find out what do we think in the
plural rather than what do individuals think so we're going to be discussing let me see 1 2 3 4 5 6 78 particular topics I hope that we get to them all um and I asked um Jed if you would please give us an introduction to
each one as we start so we begin with a common understanding of what the state was thinking so so if I may um the five 1 two three five items on your agenda for tonight um I'll just list
them for the for the good of the U listening public so we've got um tiny homes that you want to discuss uh you want to discuss the starter home bylaw transfer development rights inclusionary zoning and multif family zoning and then
of course we've got um the town snow plowing and trash pickup policies uh which are included in your book and then Charlotte you wanted to discuss some outdoor lighting um components right so to start off the tiny homes uh
discussion item as you know the legislature passed the affordable homes act as part of that act was an inclusion uh or an allowance for communities to consider themselves or be designated as a seasonal community that
seasonal Community designation carries with it the requirement to ad opt a zoning bylaw that would allow for tiny homes and tiny homes are defined and I'm reading from the material in your packet says a tiny home is defined as a detached structure containing a dwelling
unit containing 400 F feet or less in floor area excluding Lofts so essentially the my understanding of the legislation is that the seasonal Community designation is is meant to um
identify communities that have have a seasonal population change right so Falmouth is one of those communities it's clearly a tourist destination in the summertime yeah except we apparently didn't make the 35% cut correct so there's a first pass of communities that
automatically get in and our understanding is that there's a uh committee at the state level who is determining how the other communities on the cape might apply to become a seasonal community so Let's Pretend Falmouth does that and and says yes we'd
like to be designated one of those requirements is to adopt a zoning uh bylaw that allows for the construction of tiny homes so that is sort of the lead in the preface to your conversation um it's ambiguous as to
what else would be required in that bylaw but essentially you would be allowing for structures 400 squ ft or less is there any incentive for seasonal communities to do that I'm unaware of some I I I don't
know as of yet my understanding is that's still being worked out what are the incentives of becoming a seasonal community so more details are forthcoming um but tiny holes has been an initiative across the country for a
while um uh but as we talked about at the last meeting you can currently if a property owner really wanted to they could build a 400 ft primary dwelling on their property if they if they really wanted to so in essence although you
don't designate tiny home as a use it's essentially allowed currently as are adus adus you can go up to 900 ft but it doesn't require you to so you could essentially create a 400t uh Adu if you if you really wanted to so we have no
regulation in our zoning laws about the smallest size you can have correct and there's no reference to a tiny home in our zoning byw currently okay well so now we're open for discussion Jim well I
have a question when they when they're talking about tiny homes do they really mean one little house on a lot are they talking multiple houses on a lot because for me it really doesn't make sense to one to do one the
land values it doesn't make and then no one will ever do it when you have an average lot cost is probably about $200,000 and you want to put a little teeny house on it economically that is
stupid and so what I want to see where this conversation's going are they I think you almost have to say tiny homes multiple like four or five or three or four four and then we can have that
discussion and the only thing I'd let everyone else talk about but uh it's almost like Back to the Future Cape Cod used to do this all the time a long time ago and it's kind of it it we didn't do it here that much in fouth but Dennis and all those other towns had Tony homes everywhere anyways I needed the
clarification on what we're talking about yeah unfortunately there's just not a whole lot of detail um right now in the state law I think um just like accessory dwelling units there are rules that were just released in fact we just
received a model uh zoning bylaw for adus uh a few weeks ago and I think that's likely to be trickling out um as we proceed forward as to what a tiny home bylaw might look like um but it is
something that the town probably should consider at least this board should consider based on the fact that there's a lot of interest in designating Falmouth as a seasonal community so it's something that we should and we can certainly do some research on any other jurisdictions that have adopted a tiny
home bylaw to see what other people are doing anyone on yeah so uh the only way it would work is if there are more than one unit on on a lot so where can we do that could uh somebody uh in my neighborhood in hatchville with a
Halfacre lot put five or six tiny homes that are permanent structures and have a shared septic system would we allow that um because because then you start getting into uh trailer park territory um I would rather see four or
five tiny homes on a on a lot as opposed to a big huge uh trailer park uh or we could have uh an RV park uh with uh the the trailer is like on sipa whet uh if we're looking for seasonal uh accommodations for people and again
where do we put that and uh who's going to manage it does a town have a piece of land that we could put a bunch trailers on for seasonal workers and rent them out to seasonal workers anyone want to contribute to the conversation yeah my concern with the
tiny homes issue is there's a reference in here to movable tiny homes which appears to be motor homes trailer parks we have a a neighbor who has a lot of Trail homes and I don't think that's the kind of thing we're talking about here
it says if you have a movable tiny home you has to be registered motor vehicles uh Department Motor Vehicles it seems to open the door to be on Wheels it has to be on Wheels Paul yeah that's what it has to be on Wheels to make it a motor motor vehicle not just the true
yeah but we open two mobile homes so then it becomes what's the difference between a trailer and a in a tiny home you know uh so if we were going to have a tiny home development on a a piece of property then they would not have to be
mobile they would have to be permanent structures U because then you're looking at uh water and septic I mean you've got Supply these units with uh water and you have to have some sort of septic system whether it's composting toilets or or
whatever for J do you have any examples any counties or states that have done this successfully I no I don't but we can we can certainly look into it I actually have read about these several years ago this is not a new idea right
and I have no idea um how far it spread or but the one that I read about that sort of caught my imagination was in uh outside Seattle Washington and I don't remember how big the lot was cuz I wasn't thinking about that at the time but they had built them at the periphery
of the lot it was a sort of an in town lot and they had the little tiny houses around them and each one had a little porch and the whole middle of it was a common area yeah it was really Charming so Mary and I are looking at it thinking wow you know that' be great to retire to
that and we could do it a bunch of us could get together and it would be all our Pals and we wouldn't have to be driving all over town it just seemed like a really good thing to do and the fact that the state hasn't defined it doesn't stop Felman from trying to
Define it if we wanted to if we wanted to make it possible and switch in some of the other ideas that are scattered throughout throughout the uh the new law some of them deal with modular homes so instead of building houses one by one by
one you know you get so you can do that there are other ways that you can cut down the expense of doing it um and make it possible but we could Define it here we don't have to be restricted by what the state saying it doesn't have to be
400 ft which seems like you know I wouldn't have my own bedroom I don't like that so you could make it the size you want and have the rules that you want if we wanted to do it John I think the other option would be uh for this community in particular if we wanted to
take take a certain section of town and rezone it to 5,000 foot Lots uh on the sewer like we did with u mix residential commercial overlay District I take a certain section on the sewer and allow 5,000 ft Lots then you
can put a 400t house on that is there any land available for that I don't know but I'm just saying I think that not just for our community but maybe that's what the what the Commonwealth is thinking about for other communities maybe in a city or you know
an infield project yeah or something otherwise it doesn't make any sense no it doesn't it doesn't as it stands it really doesn't so that's my somebody did have an acre and they uh wanted to put several of them on there kind of I I
Vision like the old uh Fish Camps that you'd have up in Maine with all the little cabins around that's kind of what I Envision Pat yeah I a lot of what we're doing right now or should be doing I think is blue skying and I know a
number of years ago I thought it exactly like you were saying you know that maybe you'd have like a meeting house or something in the center of it too that might have a guest bedroom so that would reduce the size of the house that you'd want but 400 sare ft I think is too tiny
to live comfortably in I don't know what the optimum size like a studio apartment yes my first foiler is only 400 sare ft but are we it depends upon who we're trying to encourage to live in this little camp area well we're trying to keep things affordable and we've always
talked about letting the market kind of help us with that so if you're looking at small units that are more affordable and more towards uh uh transient workers uh you know seasonal workers U as opposed as well as uh people who first
move here uh that may be single and need well I see it as a really great thing for people who are downsizing they want to stay in town but they they no longer want to take care of a big house dog you might want to consider also you could have like a tiny home overlay district
and try to Define that maybe there's some places that could fit but you could also maybe consider it as an accessory to an existing house oh yes you could mhm you could yeah it's I mean it would then be
accessory dwelling unit but yeah yeah expanded y um I think for the size I don't I think uh 400 is too small I think there were on
the list is also Starter homes and I would like to uh everyone just visual visualize what a 30 by3 house is it's 900 square fet what's this room probably close to that that yeah
yeah a lot of these can fit on an acre they could a lot of them and they could have the proper setback with the communal system and it also would be moving in the direction the state's talking about I don't think we need to go down to the tiny homes that start
anything that sounds like a mobile home for me is out out of the picture for fouth I mean yeah I agree with you I'll I'll die on that hill but I think smaller houses we've always said let's just make them smaller to try to make them more
affordable and I'm you know looking at the the 30 by3 is a pretty small house I talked to a lot of people I couldn't they say oh it's too small for me but if you're starting off it's a two-bedroom house with a kitchen and a living room and a porch That's not not bad right so
uh I think particularly if you do the common area so with it with kind of merging the it's our you can't normally you don't have more one more than one accessory part to a structure but if we just called it a smaller house uh thing
and looked at the the 900 ft or something like that something that's restricted to two bedrooms uh and seeing how it can work on our land would make more sense I I would definitely don't want anything it sounds anything like a mobile
home that just not for me let me ask you all a question does it look to you as if tiny HS is enough of an idea that we like it that we ought to be working on developing it more fully to deal with it I'd like to now the 400 ft does not include a loft we don't have to stick
with the 400 no but I'm saying so that 400 ft is not really 400 ft because there's a loft that can exist without being counted in that 400 square ft a cube so 400 by 400 by 400 no 20 by 20 by a in
basement but uh why not expand on the Adu and and allow more you know one or two or whatever uh so let's say you have a garage then put another unit out behind the garage or two units behind the
garage if you got the space and the septic capacity for it uh so not restricted to just 900 square foot adus I I well we could just call them smaller houses too because it's hard to call them accessory yeah yeah we bump into a whole
bunch of other stuff the definition doesn't work right we need accessory so let's mark it down as okay we want to look further into this so we'll call this developable the next thing we come to is the starter home bylaw which this kind of bumps into same thing dad did you want to talk about that one first
sure yeah it's it's a along the same principle it's Jim to your point it's getting back to uh the 1970s when they were building small single story ranches and maybe small twostory capes you know
1300 1400 Square ft so this this idea um this starter home bylaw it's Master General General Law chapter 40 y it's somewhat akin to the Mr Cod District right so the idea would be that you have to EST Lish a zoning District
within Town it has to be developable up to 4 units per acre and the structures that are allowed in that District cannot exceed I believe 1,800 Square ft there's other Provisions in this um text that I
was trying to remember exactly the parameters but the basic principle is that you designate an area within town it's not an overlay it's an actual zoning district and you say within this District these are the things that can happen but but primarily it's focused on
creating smaller structures that are more attainable uh just like the one that I bought U 1300t twostory Cape it's nothing fancy but it meets our needs it doesn't it's not overly large um and so
that's something that you may want to consider there are incentives to doing this so again it's very similar to the 40R program where if you adopt this District you have to go through the state um uh process of approving it um and you can be eligible for incentive
payments if you followed all the rules so again there's benefits to establishing that going back to the 5,000 squi for lot uh you could put a a 12 to uh 1,400 foot house on that and
we've done this in mashby where someone donated the backyard and we put a ,200 ft house in the backyard uh and we've done that out in the Outer Cape as well well the way they they they've subdivided their their
property so well and now anybody in town by by right can add an accessory dwelling on any lot in town now under current state law this starter home thing they're saying to do just their rules it's 1,850 Square ft which is
bigger than what we've been talking about so far but it also says you can put an accessory which we already knew you could but then it says you can put up to five accessories and they can be a mix of commercial and residential so this really is more sounding downtown
is um anyone want to comment on the way the starter home thing is sort of given to us by the state it has to have a minimum of three bedrooms right okay now the 1300 ft 1400t home it's fine we brought our kids
up in that three kids I mean two kids had another kid in there lost we lost one there aition you didn't have to [Laughter] P so it's perfectly doable they're very
reasonable it's a cape or whatever they call it a hat you know the the Dormer salt box no it's not cable it's under the EES the upstairs that's a cable is that totally a cape okay cuz they had
another it's definitely yeah one and a half story with the raised roof yeah well no our well yeah it does in the back it did it's a dmer in the back it's a dormer in the back it's a larger Dormer in the back no I just comment a dormer in back right yeah it was my
first home yeah and they're perfectly livable Charlie a question yeah Jen um you showed me a copy of a bylaw that this the attorney general is looking at correct is that something we've
submitted to them as a draft this number two that says that the planning board can approve more than one accessory it defines accessory is 900 square ft the whole relationship to the size of the house meeting the zoning but
more than one is that uh what's what's happening with that is is that if the Attorney General approves that is that a pilot we now have yes yes so that we could have more than one and on larger
Lots although the only trouble is defining them as accessory is a little bit complicated the label might have to change but maybe they're just small houses that's essentially what they are instead of instead of yeah this call I think if you took away the label of
accessory limited to N I think first of all uh a thousand I I've built a lot of condos and you can get a two-bedroom in about 900 squ ft no problem at all and it can be very luxurious you can have two baths a big living room combination I built them they're not bad so you
don't really need 1,800 square fet and that's twice the cost yeah so if we're really trying to drive the cost down I think if the state likes the 900 number we should try to see if we could see that yeah two two units at 900 versus
one unit at 18 right or especially from talking to John about his experience having multiple units on a d system actually makes it work better so there might be some really good logic to the
the nitrogen loading and everything of having three or four you know smaller houses on a lot and I can tell you I've mapped it out you take a an acre lot and you want to see how comfortably you can fit 900 squ foot houses they fit on it
real easy you it's they're teeny little squares you know when you when you when you look at it so I mean I don't know that's I think I'm a little afraid of going down to 400 I think that's too much I'm also afraid of saying it has to be 1,800 because I think that's too
expensive I happen to live in a 900 ft apartment and I have two bedrooms and a huge living room and dining room combination room Al together and two baths it is second floor walk up it's going to be good for me when I get older but it really is a good I think 900
square ft is is very livable I have tenants that are living in 600 squ feet two bedrooms so I just want to throw in from my perspective John are we talking about starter homes
now we are same thing yeah because the state gives you a definition of a starter home zoning District yes they say it's a zoning District um they say a particular particular number of feet they give some other requirements and they will give you a $3,000 per unit
incentive which is too small to incentivize much of anything I believe I'll read out loud a couple of their caveats for a 40 y zoning District starter homes shall be at use permitted as of right at a density of not fewer
than four units per acre of developable land area that's that's number one star home District shall incorporate sustainable develop ments that apply to all starter home developments not less than 50% of the starter homes to be developed in a proposed starting home zoning District
excluding adus shall contain not fewer than three bedrooms etc etc the whole thing is laid out for us if we want to adopt the 40 y District that's your starter home District but unlike the I I don't think they're given us the option to make any
adjustments to this am I correct that's my understanding except the Adu at 900 ft in two bedrooms well under multiple adus under the starter home bylaw yes depends which way you go there is an alternative to do
the adus that are 900 F feet in two bedrooms I'm just concerned that the three-bedrooms more septic it's it's it's greater density it's also more expensive I'd like to say that the state this unlike the accessory uh unit the state passed the
law and said that you can have them on any any lot by right it's a law these aren't laws these aren't these are things that you can consider doing and adopting locally which means that you can monkey around with them any which way you want these are really ideas of a
way to do something and if we regard them as ideas I think it will be easier for us to arrive at something that we think if we want to that would be suitable for fouth rather than reading it as if it were a law because it's not we we could have done these things
before they wrote this true so so just to clarify so very similar to how you established the Mr Cod District you essentially followed very closely the requirements of the 40R
uh state law meaning you came right up to that line but you decided we don't want to adopt a 40R District we're going to do it very similar but not go through the state process you could in theory do the same thing with the starter home bylaw but if you wanted to get those
incentive payments and fully comply with the state law you would then have to adopt would be the advantage to that $3,000 per unit is piffle well I mean it's better than zero so yeah you could take a mini vacation you could or or several many
vacations um but the point is if you wanted to actually adopt the 40 y you do have to uh comply with all the requirements that the state has laid out that being said of course you could say well we'll go right up to it but we'll take out some things and we'll do it on our own I just don't see an advantage to
accepting what the state laid out yeah the challenge I'm sorry I'm just going to say uh I always intuitively thought that a starter home for young people especially would be a simple thing to just do a two-car garage with a room above it a bathroom and a a kitchen but
it's expressly prohibited in town we can't really do that you can't just build a standalone garage so it's just another thing that to throw out there for consideration I don't know if anybody thinks it's a good idea but I have a friend who actually is living in another town in that same kind of
condition I think it was pre-existing so he bought a lot that just had a two-car garage on it and uh he's living there and he's making plans to put a Breezeway in a house next to it but right now he's getting by with what he has the thought that comes to my mind as
you say that is were we to go ahead with something that would be an amalgam of tiny homes start homes but small affordable good for young people starting out good for downsizers is to not make it so rigid that you wouldn't be able to do that to have the
flexibility to do it because I believe in the starter home one where there was much more of a narrative it does say you need a site plan right so there'd be no reason not to make it flexible and just make your
proposal But realize these are the purpos that it's serving to see Paul it's interesting my first reaction looking at the start home bylaw was this is social engineering what isn't every law is and is that what we're really trying to do
but it is a district same as Tiny home district and I'm not sure why there's a big difference between the two I'm not either I'm not either Jim well um in our local comprehensive plan we've talked about uh infield
development and I one of the things by creating a district is a little powerful but we also if we gave flexibility just to take a look at bigger pieces of land that we have in areas where there's all 20,000 squ foot Lots but somebody just happens to have a a bigger piece of land
with not enough Frontage on it it's totally landlocked but it could they could put more houses on it that maybe that's a special well as the accessory apartment says you could do that maybe we could first I'm a little concerned about taking a whole neighborhood a whole area and say okay this is a
district and everyone's going to be there as opposed to looking at a comprehensive plan and saying why don't we look at these extra pieces of land and infill it all where we already have the streets and structure and I don't think it'd be as devastating as a neighborhood it kind of just that go
along to the plan we came up years ago making it fit a little better by just allowing more homes on a bigger piece of land meeting all the Z Zing meeting the title five 10 you know per bedroom that's why the three-bedroom gets a lot more expensive yet the more bedrooms yes
the septic system goes way up two bedrooms work since I don't know there maybe we should identify uh how many big pieces of land are single family Zone that are that are two acres and are also in the right near downtown in the The Village areas that
we could do the in p a problem that I know that we're going to face people will say you're spot zoning this is in our neighborhood of single family houses and now you're trying to put in little Cottages four Cottages per acre I'm not I'm not do that we
understand there's no such thing if it's a town plan long range local comprehensive plan it's not I understand that too but that's what we're going to aot push back they always say that but it's always wrong that's all I'm pointing out but I think it would be a kind of a Charming addition to a
neighborhood yeah better than a mega mansion yeah kind to be like a 40b by right actually yeah that's basically what it is the thing I didn't like about the starter home thing when I read it is it sounds like a ghetto that you have to
create a Zone just for starter homes that won't be any bigger than this that somehow The Building Commissioner can't refuse you a building permit so this is like a a free pass to cheap housing and it just I I don't think we should do that to either people who might live
there or to to the town I don't either John so so what they're saying is on this 40 Y starter home District Four units per acre so one of the most expensive parts of having a
home in our town is the land like Jim said you can't find a lot for less than $200,000 anymore right now maybe you can but that's pretty pretty difficult to do so and and when you talk when you use
words descriptive like you like a ghetto and slum I mean we have all the vistas 7,000 square foot Lots 7200 square foot Lots all the SEO Shores there's so many communities in our in our town that are
only 5,000 7,000 square ft and they're and they're wonderful to live in everybody's living there and and I'm just saying that because we're so used to acre zoning now we think that you have to have an Acres owning uh for a house and and what's the state
suggesting if we're going to have affordability for firsttime home buyers or even seniors that want to scale down you have to have more density or you just can't it's not going to work the numbers will not work and and like uh
Doug Doug just said it's like a 40b by right and I'll give you an example there was a um a six flot development that just got completed in East fouth Acres only so it was 7 and2 Acres six house
Lots approved the gentleman is doing the the 40b development on brickk road is 7 and2 Acres 7 and2 acre he's got 28 homes going in there and you drive in it it doesn't look like a ghetto it's not a
it's not it's not a bad place that it I'm just saying the the density if you take the cost of the land and divide it by six or you divide it by 28 that's where you get your affordability that's why 40 BS 40 BS work because you get so
much more density per land use because of the land use and and this is something that they're asking us to consider to to do that's not it picture if instead of that 40b developer putting in I've forgotten now the name he's given to that street instead of just
putting in the street full of however many houses it's now a Zone and so everything from say um uh by the stoplight there by the the store all the way up to 28a that has to all be
only tiny houses that makes it a ghetto then it's that's all you're allowed to do in this big area multi-acre area that's that's making it more nearly like a ghetto to have a neighborhood size thing because you chose to do it there
that's totally different than restricting it to one kind one size for a big area to me street by Street fine the other thing that's an unknown while we're blue skying is remember the health department
is looking at new laws and this is going to be a killer it's going to be expensive um everybody having to put in an AI system if it was a shared system it would be cost effective it would be
but otherwise it would work better yeah but if you're having to convert whole neighborhoods it may mean that that we're going to get more land that way we're going to get pushed into that either way it's not just the health department they're just reacting to what they know is coming from the state oh no
I understand that duck and they're working on how to do it right now I I keep reading about that um they wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the state looking down we wouldn't be doing it anything I
know yeah so that's going to come into play with what we're talking about here too and you're right if we have to put it in AI system it makes more sense to Cluster smaller units around it so it makes it
more palatable for the town perhaps but maybe not as a Zone I don't think so no s yeah I I I'm a little bit worried is making the Zone I I I think looking at our the infill idea that we had for local concer plan
we had and doing in clusters around our town centers with this public transportation and infrastructure would make it look like a nice Village as opposed to like driving in neighborhoods okay everyone here's got 3,000 square foot houses oh bang there's a whole neighborhood that that I'd rather see it
mixed up a little bit you know stir up the pot put bigger slots smaller Lots scatter it all around and and make it I'd like I'd rather live in a more diverse neighborhood in one neighborhood where every's in the same that's what makes it a neighborhood don't you think
so I think so yeah yeah no I I agree with the infill idea and 40b kind of does that because they find a loose piece of land right and they make it all work on just that land where everything else around it is still yeah normal and and sometimes you they're so nice you
don't even notice it you know it it works with 40b all I'm suggesting is if we if we as a community don't come up with some way to increase our density in in in a way we'd like to see it done it's going to be done anyway I
think we should do all of it and but I think we should do it our own way right and I I I'll give you one more example you know recently you we approved a subdivision in East Falmouth um I I refused myself it's off of AAP Pesca
Road and what's that road Lewis Lewis Lewis yeah Le that's 11 houses so on what 12 acres was it okay yeah so right next door to it right now on about an acre of land there's 12 Apartments being built yeah under a 40b that's kind of
okay buting it it's right next door to it I'm not I'm just saying I like that I'm just saying it's going to happen it's happening already but we're going to get the density whether we'd like to have it or not we're going to get it so I think
as a community we should try to plan for it and try to put it where we'd like to have it the way we'd like to have it and then maybe we would have fewer uh it could be that we're in agreement already no but here I just want to point out to John I because I'm very familiar with that subdivision I looked at it hard
they're all able to put a an Adu in their backyard right now and that 11 becomes 22 by right right right now but they're all they're all acre lots and they're all they're all denitrification if I remember correctly and let's move the conversation a little bit different direction how many of you have looked
often or recently at the Cape Cod commission's uh suggestions of how we should do our next master plan the next local comprehensive plan and they set out different areas of town for different levels of density different height different feel and so forth that
so within each there might be diversity that you're talking about but in fact they still leave areas that are more open land areas that are tight little V villages I think it would behoove us as we look at a way to do our own local version of tiny starter homes whatever
you want to call them to look at that knowing we have to move in that direction anyway and realizing you would want to not make everything in fth possible to be identical all over town to keep different areas of town Doug I thought another thing that was
interesting in their planning was the uh pre-approved plans you could get a stock list of pre-approved plans that could make it easier for people to build cookie cutter houses PL well yeah they can be historic looking they have some that for historic districts yeah just
recommended you know simple things that you can look at it and say oh that will work so you already know it's not it takes the complication out of the the development well remember the little company that came here I say little cuz I don't know if they've grown since then
where they already had pre-approved um adus and you could just buy one of their plants and they put it on you're a lot I think that there'll be an industry around providing those houses one Jim you brought up right at the beginning of the conversation the uh the otter Cape um that has sort of
little cottage areas that were all rental and when I was a kid my family would rent one called Captain Carpenters down in provin Provincetown and it was great you know you could walk downtown but you're right on the beach and you get your own little cottage and it was
it was I don't it seemed huge to me but I was you know short one more thing it just generally you could consider choosing some areas and reducing from two acres zoning to one acre or maybe half acre maybe it
wouldn't be entire swats of land but just some little areas that are like maybe say close to sandwich Road or close to Route 151 or some areas that you feel like are more prone to be developed without impacting those people who cuz sometimes you got areas that are
really nicely developed and the people are going to push back if they say well I bought because I got two acres zoning that's why I put my Mansion here I don't want to you know have half acre zoning pushed down my throat but you could probably find some places where you could reduce that and just give people
an opportunity to ra rather than reone a section if you just allow people to subdivide a piece of property randomly wherever it happens to be well you that's rezoning changing a lot size would be a resoning it's definitely rezoning maybe you do it I
think it is resoning maybe you do it in order to develop the villages so that each Village would have um you know an area right around that Village so that you you know grow The Village without having uh it sprawling everywhere in England um
you drive around and things are looking pretty good in many places not everywhere and they had for many many years like you know half a century the idea of green belting mhm so that they could preserve their Village and then there had to be a green belt around it
so if you wanted to build a uh uh development we would call it it had to be beyond the green belt or find enough land which there wasn't any within the village to preserve that Village feeling that would be another way to kind of be sure it's Equitable that we didn't
somehow Shield uh the two acres Z in one part of town and pushed it somewhere else which I think you'd have to watch out for well that's kind of like a cluster it is a cluster so if we just increase the density or we already have right now if you have acre zoning and
you got to we have 10 acres you got to put 10 houses you put them on quarter acre lots and you have a big open land I mean we could just redefine the cluster and that would be almost exactly what you're talking about well what kind of timeline do you think this should be given for fouth to develop um it's
greater density for smaller places smaller uses of tighter uses of the land when when should we try to get this done I think we should start I think this is the start right now to develop what we'd like to see see so maybe once a month
you could take it up yeah well then if we want to stay ahead of the state I think if towns don't start moving the state is going to start laying down Zoning for us they're already beginning I I think the Adu is making us do this right away I mean it's the state's already done it
you could also right you know take small st each meeting you could have something could be like maybe you'd come up with an idea to say that a thousand feet on either side of Main Street could have some greater density just by right just by its proximity to Main Street or
something you know there's a lot of small steps you could take without trying to come up with a giant plan right that would definitely be easier to do Paul if you remember several years ago comp with a nice project that fit in with the local comprehensive plan in the
area where uh friendlies used to be it was a nice development walking area and near all the utilities and so forth but the owner of the property didn't want to move that route he was going to do his own thing and here we are several years later we still don't know if there going to be housing in there right that was a good
concept that was Kimco you're talking about yeah yeah right well I think we picked the wrong size we limited it to 20 units per acre and we should have left that more flexible we could still make it more
flexible at the time it was done hack the housing assistance Corporation recommended the 20 per acre but I think that they were you know overall yeah I think at the time it was the Department of Housing and Community Development dhcd and then they changed over to what
they are now known as the executive office of Housing and livable communities I guess I I I think I got my inform information from seminars hack ran over in mashby for a while so I've just labeled it hack I'm sorry yeah but I do think that there are options that
the board can consider even um reducing the lot sizes for example in the RC District which is a lot of May Vista um a lot of those property owners have to seek a special permit anytime they want to do a renovation um and so if you're reducing those lot sizes to something
that's uniform in that District you not only create you know smaller requirements but you also relieve them of the need to seek out a special permit if they just want to increase their law coverage what have you um so that I think there's some flexibility that you
can start to think about in the in the bylaw itself but I do think that tiny homes especially considering it that it's tied to the seasonal Community designation which I I get the sense that the town is interested in doing um that
might be something something that's more on the Forefront um than on the back burner if you will Ex except that if you do that though Jed when you're tying it to the seasonal U designation you can't go over
the 400 square foot in the Loft and I think we're all talking about we don't like the 400 square foot concept totally understand so we would have to figure out a way to understand how others have done it um um because to Doug's Point earlier it
could just simply be an overlay District that you're allowing and it could be in selective areas in town so you satisfy the requirement of being a seasonal Community but you're not necessarily making it your Forefront of um creating
smaller homes I think we need a better understanding of any advantages um to adopting the state seasonal Community designation honestly the select board the feedback was the same we were a little cautious and
wanted staff to look into it more what we'd be signing up for right and what kind of control we would have given up in doing it yeah I'm surprised that you feel like the town is interested to move that way I we to get that kind of sense well there's a lot of folks who understand um that it is you
know our population changes dramatically um and so if there if there are incentives for designating the town as a seasonal Community again I say if then there may be some incentive to do that um but we just simply don't know that
yet because I think the I think the premise was you know we'll set up this advisory council at the state level and we'll sort of figure out what that incentive is um we haven't seen it yet um so it's hard to say that necessarily if it would be advantageous I I feel
like there wasn't really an incentive it's just the incentive would be to provide an opportunity for your residents to have more affordable hous I think that's all basically yes we don't need to adopt the state's language in order to do that corre we can we can provide that something that's been
locally designed approv and then it's possible to do here we don't we don't need them in a way you know if they up the money you might SE I'm having a hard time getting recognized no I've had my hand up over
and everyone else just speaks up and I just minutes I'm trying not to talk over people and I'm just trying to follow the rules and I just had to mention it every time I see Jim's hand up I I I try to interject yeah anyway
um I I think we need some numbers to help us I I right now you can't build on a house a lot pre-existing unless it's more than 7,000 square ft I would like to know all the 5,000 or 4,000 foot Lots we have already
and then I'd also like to uh talk about we've talked about transfer of development rights right now transfer of development rights is Li limited to within the same little subdivision if we would open that up to much larger areas not huge but you know the whole part of
town we may find that we can create 20 or 30 or 50 more I don't know but I I know as I drive around everywhere in marav Vista I go that one's only 6,000 ft² it's not buildable and there's a little you seeum in F with Heights but the the the marketplace does it by
itself if they can find it through transfer development rights it's not too fast but it does happen if we would expand the ability to do the transfer development rights and identify where the smaller lots are maybe the market could start taking
care of some of this for us and I think that would be more infill in building and as opposed to design you know rezoning a whole area and I think that should be like a first step of combining an expansion of the transfer development rights and let's identify all those
smaller lots and let's people figure it out for themselves I own one you own one we swap it around I mean I've seen big houses built in found with Heights on small Lots they gu you know I I can point it out to you they're on some of them have water view Homes Bob
Tom um oh shoot I forgot what I was going to [Music] say it was kind of already answer way the way we oh uh no we haven't talked about uh the possibility of using land
out at the base it's not our land well it's state land though yeah but we could we could request they devest themselves of some land yeah they looking for ideas yeah I mean I I I look at the end of Sandwich Road there the sandwich gate that area
there where U Mass maritine has their their yard for the their boat auctions M um and it could be a lease deal or could be you know some something could be done there and I and I'm looking at it more as uh Workforce temporary housing for
for summer help as opposed to yearround or it could be year round I guess too is it true to say that this board has for years triy to avoid developing things along 151 because of the aquifer yes true and that's right where that is our
local he specifically for not doing that what's going on now and you got uh 26 is further up on sandwich Road uh you've got the Saxon thing going so that ship is sailed as far as developing and traffic along that
car I'd like to see if we couldn't get organized to move forward on the tiny home and starter home whatever fma's version is going to be and have some subgroup as we have done for developing adus developing Mr Cod a subgroup agreed
to work on it and bring it back to the board is there anyone here who's willing to work on this going forward I'll work on it Bob anyone else Tom anyone
else only if you win that's it B's looking away he's a short-timer I'd be interested in in looking at the numbers that I asked for with the smaller lots and looking at transfer development rights and see how that could How Could Happen organically that could play into it they could as
opposed I'd like to look at maybe it's nothing but yeah TDR is is somewhat restrictive um because and it's a it's a nice segue into the next topic if if I may yeah um so I'll put that Jim I'm
interested in the TDR part yeah so there is an opportunity to to utilize TDR the problem that I see with it though is that it forces the applicant toate create a subdivision um where you don't
necessarily have to create a subdivision with a TDR you can simply just transfer development rights from one prop property to another you receive credits if your property is within say a water protection uh District or if it's agricultural land um and you preserve it
as such in perpetuity you receive some benefits to do that but the problem is that when you take it out of that and you place it into the receiving District you now have to create a subdivision and I think that severely limits the ability
to use the bylaw I think the intent if I if I'm understanding this all correctly is that then creating a subdivision let's create a cluster subdivision so that you can increase your density in a in a cluster subdivision you create open
space so you end up getting open space in two uh areas and so the town sort of wins because there's extra open space the issue is that it really hasn't been used because there's size limitations you have to have a certain acreage in order to make it happen and then you have to create a subdivision there's a
lot of cost there can I ask a question how much of the transfer development rights is our own town bylaw and how much is controlled by state rules and regulations well our it's all through our own bylaw I don't believe that
there's a transfer of development right State regulation that's so we could change it as we see fit cuz to me when I look at it it looks like the whole thing is outdated and needs to be redone yes in fact there are plenty of model bylaws that deal with transfer development
rights that provide incentives for just doing small parcel to small parcel because the intent is to take development Potential from a property that you don't want developed because it's surrounded by open space take that development ability and transfer to a
place where you want it to be developed in a village downtown places that have pedestrian infrastructure Etc so you just transfer it that's all and you allow that property to remain in perpetuity as open
space I'm talking about throwing out our current transfer development it's too complicated in all those formulas and I'm saying what about if we looked at it okay we we talked about this you know somebody's got uh a waterfront lot they
want to rebuild on it and it's worth a million dollars but we want them to build there but they have a big piece of land say well you can sell those rights five other houses find other properties other in town Inland and build five more houses and and make it flexible so it's not tied down by all those rules but
open to wider areas that solves building where we want and bu not building where we don't want and and redoing the transfer development rights to be far more open and kind of throw out that plus and M I try to follow that thing is really really complicated it is I'm talking specifically examples I've seen
happen in fites because it's all one subdivision originally the old one 19 and there there's people there's several places where they have these uh four 5,000 foot lots and some guy takes well I'll give you 2,000 my right and another
2,000 and boom a house goes up on it and some are water view houses I mean that when you're near the water that changes to a much higher formula but if you weren't looking at Water view they'd be more livable and more cost effective is that how they did the one at the end of acup on the water they've got three
houses jammed together on what looks like one lot I don't know you ever go down aesca to the water yeah I think that's pre-existing no no two of those well one house has been there for maybe four or five years sort of slightly pre-co two have popped up
since they match zoning or how do they do I don't know you look at it you say how do they do that the only way I know they could do it is pre-existing non-conforming and I think the other sorry Doug got his hands up now I just put it up when you started talking I saw you getting ready to say something so I put my hand
up just going to say uh I agree that the whole TDR needs to be redone and I think there should be two clearly distinct sections one for residential and one for non-residential because uh it seems to be more geared towards commercial tradeoffs but that
should be maybe some parts of that could remain and and be the non-residential part but also we need to think in terms of a whole another section which I don't know how it would be funded or what the trade-offs would be but you got a lot of people in areas like uh milfield Street
where their lots are going to be underwater and you might want to offer them an opportunity to leave before they have to leave and they walk away with nothing maybe they could leave in advance we could put some green space up maybe they'd find a place in hatchville or somewhere where they could you know
get resettled that guy in well Fleet wishes he had some transfer of development rights there yeah yeah so I don't know how that would be done the town would have to probably come up with some land maybe that's where we could go to the uh military and ask for some divestment of land to provide relocation
space for people that are in these dangered areas yeah is the military open to requests they're they're redoing their master plan right now and they're divesting themselves of potentially seven acres for a Compost Facility they're uh
looking to divest and downsize they're out they're Outsourcing their utilities and stuff they're trying to be more streamlined and and Nimble so yeah they're looking right now is an opportunity to get some land out there if we wanted to Tom what's the group
that the contact out there at the base General foe but he's leaving in June but uh they they have these Master planning meetings going on now y so we could uh you know participate anytime you can just get notified to get on the list I'm on the list I went to one last week uh
week before last about the uh potential for the composting facility but the general made it clear he said you know we're in the midst of rethinking our whole master plan and we're looking for ideas and offers from people like Carrie parcel was there talking about the
Compost Facility and that's just one idea so there's a lot more yeah is is the town represented in those meetings um we've gone to one the Capon commission had a um sort of an introduction meeting introductory
meeting with um Mass development who's sort of spearheading if I've got this right spearheading the housing component um that was I want to say last summer um but we haven't we haven't attended
since bless you ex um there was you know at that meeting there was some interesting perspectives from all of the community so I'm not quite sure where they've gone with the housing as of yet but uh I don't think it's got too far yeah I didn't think so and Mike renai
just volunteered to start paying more attention and attending the meetings out there he was at the one I went to a couple weeks ago right so he signed on to start attending in our behalf yeah it would seem that the town ought to really Jack used to participate greatly out there you know even though when he went
to work in mashby and he retired here he still stayed on as a civilian volunteer out there but when he passed we've kind of had a little Gap in attendance how often do they meet I'm not sure if it's exactly uh if
it's bonly or quarterly not like every month oh so I don't know the schedule honestly I just get the notifications and so they're in no rush uh no it's going to be a multi-year plan and they're just getting started
going back to our own task right now it would seem I think two people working on something is going to put a lot onto those two people unless you're willing to do that maybe we should broaden it so that the subgroup is going to look at all the the ideas that come out of the
um that now forgotten its name the the new study the law MH instead of separating them out yeah so so that if transfer development rights helps with any one of the others it could be considered right
and right and make them work together mhm does that make it wide enough Jim if rather than the subgroup doing only tiny homes and starter homes but say the subgroup is going to attend to the housing production options listed here and see how they can um cross fertilize
if you keep the transfer development right in there I would be more interested in that I'm I'm not really interested in like resoning whole swats of land right I I really think a walkable Village I I I'm a really in
favor of their oldfashioned Lo comprehensive plan where we talked about Village centers where you can walk I love living near town where you can walk every everybody should have a look a village where they can go a meeting place a church you know to go way out someplace else and be busted into thing
is not my idea of where I would want to live so if you want to include ways that we can incorporate it inside our existing Villages and kind of following our our existing local comprehensive plan at least in theory I'd rather we wouldn't either include or exclude any
possibility it would be take a look at these ideas that the state has put out and see how we can make uh some of them or all of them work for fouth and help us solve our housing problem but we don't have to do it necessarily on the state's
terms and if that's true I would be glad to work on it Doug do you want to work on it if I'm allowed I'm not on the planning board yeah well last time when we were doing Mr Cod Eric turkington work we met at his office used to be so
you can get have citizens you can okay anyone else want to join so uh when um when well we're used to Tuesdays we used to do Wednesday afternoons yeah when we did the local
comprehensive plan meeting we met almost every Wednesday afternoon yes we did but now that's when my painting classmate okay pain priorities I wouldn't mind Tuesdays I Tuesdays kind
of but we have to be careful oh wait a minute no Tuesdays I tend to work more more than three planning board members however it's a posted meeting you just need to post it yeah it'll be a posted meeting posted meeting
okay yeah you you could so I mean technically there's still a uh subcommittee of the peny board I think it's a multif family yep no it's the M um the [Music] resoning yeah there was a subcommittee
established when you were trying to uh figure out the Mr Cod District M so yeah multif family housing subcommittee um I don't know exactly the process but you know if you wanted to you know meet more than three members then yeah
obviously you'd want to have a subcommittee and post the agenda and have a public discussion we could just alternate one person in and out as well that might work out anyway so it's only three but if we start at understanding that we
need to have an agenda and post it um we can be sure that we stay on the right side of the rule it safer is always best how many days before the meeting do you need to post 48 hours 48 hours yeah it' be nice to post it anyways because then
the public can say hey they're working on this yeah it yeah it works out I mean you could do it if if it works you could do it like say right before the planning board meeting yeah so you could do it an hour or so before the planning board meeting and then just adjourn and then yeah you're into your next meeting it's
a long Tuesday night but right just an idea be like you know no supper we'll just have to make the regular meeting shorter that's all I think okay let's let's do this I'll send out one of those little which of these days you can meet and we can
see who agrees on them we'll settle it down and get it settled before we meet again as a board and see who's going to be there and that would be April 8th right your next meeting so we'll get a schedule before April 8th we're not meeting April 8th oh we aren't no it's
we might have town meeting that night so we're not meeting again till April 22nd okay technically meeting April 7th well before town meeting we have that small half hour yep okay so that allows us then to move on to town snow plowing and
trash pickup policies who who um requested this next to you he's hard to got his hands up again was it you yes go we skipped over inclusionary housing
no it'll all be bundled together oh you're not discussing anything further tonight I think uh that it's fundamentally unfair to say to a development when they're all paying real estate taxes and the same they're paying taxes to the schools that they can't get the same
services at other houses and uh right now we allow that that we do a development and they we bend over backwards to do trash pickup and uh snow plowing and to say to any new developments you're not going to do that
well everyone else has the same service I think that's unfair and therefore we should allow it we should provide wherever reasonably possible it's not up to us it's the DPW they set the standard they set the the guidelines they make decisions on
this they make that decision not us they made their policy yes well that can be their policy but doesn't the selectman tell them what to do or does the DPW tell the selectman what to do they went to the select board with their policy and the selectman approved it so the selectman is what we have to talk about
are you saying that the DPW makes these decisions and not the selectman and not the planning board I'm not saying any of but I'm just you do ultimately have to approve policies but honestly if I approved that it got by me because I had neighbor reach out to me on Old Main
Road and say I don't understand why we can't get trash pickup and I said I don't understand that either it doesn't make sense you have an address on Old Main Road call the DPW and ask them for a a recycling bin and you'll have to wheel your bin out to the road they
won't come down on your driveway and I didn't hear from them again so I assume they were successful but I don't know I'll give you an example okay first of all I've been watching both the town engineers and the DPW push away their expenses as much as they can and try to save money
to so they they don't have to pay these costs and I understand why they do that but I watch I live across from pinoke way it's a long Street every Monday morning I wait to the trash truck at 7:00 they have to back down that Road
beep beep beep they back all the way down and come all the way up they bend over backwards to provide those Leal people at pen uh pinoke way we're looking a little two sub two subdivision of Sandwich Road and oh now you're going to have to take your trash out of the street I think that's fundamentally unfair there still going to do it for
those for those houses that already get it they're not taking it away right but that's my whole problem we're all equal but if you build a road to town standards then they'll do it it's if you're a private road they're not going to do it if you're a private driveway
right if it's not built to the standards of the town right because then if it's plowed so then what you're saying is then what you're saying but that's totally I'm against that too because I'm totally against 40 foot rways great big streets sidewalks on both sides and
makeing look like suburbs we I thought we like to have these country little roads and it makes our town nice and I I think by letting the engineering department and the DP W do planning we're going to end up with a town we don't like it's going to be really efficient it won't cost much money but
it's not going to be a place you want to live I don't think it's a fact that they don't want to do it I think it might be a fact that they're not able to keep up with everything that is going on with all the development they might not be able to keep up with it I think it's it's more instead of you thinking that they're forcing this I think there's a
conversation to be had with wire that why did they do this and he did present it to the select Ford yeah I I I think that there's a bit of a gray area that we didn't think through maybe because like say for instance a big condo development obviously they're going to
have to get dumpsters and do their own trash because you're not going to have the the trash company the lane guess what they do trash pickup okay 28 houses I'm just thinking in terms of a big like place I manage in
mashby that's a the reason why they don't want to do it is because it does cost more money and they need more staff but if we want to have smaller lots and we just got to get more staff I just don't don't cut the services out add more give them more money get them the people they want and make them do I just
think it's fair to let the engineering and DPW Department decide how our town you know who gets special services and who does it I think that's fundamentally wrong I think we should try wherever we can if it's reasonable to do trash pickup and snowplowing for the whole town and
not cater to keeping the DP give them more money that's all they want I don't I don't necessarily think it's it's a substandard um situation either so you have to remember your subdivision regulations require essentially 10ft
travel Lanes with a 12in berm on either side uh of the what do you call of the roadway itself the traveled way so you're it I think that what the the DPW is getting at is when you create substandard roadways eventually
vegetation overgrows um the roadways themselves are perhaps not maintained so it's damage to the equipment it's challenging for them to get in there it creates an unsafe environment I mean the Deep the fact that a trash truck is backing down a roadway to get um to the trash presents
a safety problem no doubt about it it's a safety issue going on for years I just think it's unfair to okay then no you're repeating I I know we did they are repeating themselves too and I'm I'm surprised that the DPW and the engineering department are making these
decisions and well they're not it's really on us it's on the board because they bring the policies and we approve them so what I took out of the one I think that were probably referring to was more with regard to snow removal and
truck access overgrown roads if they're not being maintain as Jed was saying then DPW and the service trucks they don't want to get all scratched up and damaged Town property so that's where they're saying they wanted the the right
to draw the line on where they're going to serve and that's going to force people to maintain the roads so that was the biggest takeaway but I think I might have missed something on the trash part of it I agree in maintaining roads do we provide trash pickup and snow removal on Tower Hill Road and West
fouth it's a private road Fire Tower Road yeah Fire Tower Road that was remember how we fought the those people have to take the trash half mile down all the way to the high part of that if you'll recall the part one up and curved around it's not even paved it's just Rubble Ashby they have to take but don't
they call it no I don't they they do I I don't know I I honestly don't know there is a lot of examples of even old uh cart paths and the people like on Williams Hollow away it's actually a sheared long shared driveway they all have to drag
their carts all the way out to uh Sam Turner Road because that's where the trash gets picked up they don't go down that long dirt driveway snow doesn't get plowed either uh no they have to do that themselves it's private way it's really
a a shared driveway so there's just so many different variations of it I think that the town now is trying to say pay the same taxes I I just think that somebody needs to look at that I think they're just trying to make some definition between what a private road that's a private developers
responsibility I live on one of them and keep in mind if if you would like to see smaller ways there are ways to do that there are um you know you can look into that it's your subdivision regulations if you feel like there could
be a smaller layout that you're more in favor of we can explore that with the engineering division to S sort of see the pros and cons of going in that direction but essentially what we're trying to do is get developers to build to the town standards it may not
necessarily need to have sidewalks on both sides but at least the travel way is passable for snowplows and trash trucks so that they can get in there they can easily and safely um take out the trash clear the snow and there's no
issues some of the issue that we have in town too is private ways that are gated right and so that's a that obviously presents a challenge when DPW truck is trying to get in there to plow and the gates are down so it's another layer of
um complexity that they have to deal with and so they're just trying to create some clarity and some consistency moving forward and that was part of that policy correct if it's gated they don't go in I can see gated you close a gate you can't expect somebody to plow you right you can't but maybe we just force
them to uh keep it cut the trees down and keep it wide I mean that's a reasonable thing to do make it more accessible as opposed to cutting down Services is it true to say that this isn't under the purview of the planning board correct well it's not necessarily under the purview of the planning board
but you don't forget you are the creators of new roadways in town so when you're allowing a subdivision to go in let's use the Lewis Street uh subdivision example you want to work with the developer to say look the policy of the DPW is that you won't receive these Services unless you meet
our town standards so please make every effort to meet those Town standards and let us know if there's a valid reason why you can't and valid being you know it's going to eat up too much space there's you know U wetlands in the way whatever it may be other than we just
don't want to pay for 22 ft of of travelway and and if I could the the development I was talking about on Old Main Road when the person called me I said I don't understand why you're not getting trash pickup he said well apparently it's in our planning board decision that that's a private
development and those services are not included so that's something that you know you you might want to advise your applicants to say you know tell your tell your uh customers when they buy this house it's something they should know mhm so they need to have the 20ft
ride or how wide does it the travel a to two 22 ft so 22 ft travelway surface that's inclusive of two 12in BMS on either side of the road but the paving is 20 ft or 18 right so if you take away you know 12 in on either side that's 2
feet from 20 too you got 20 ft of pavement two lanes 10t travel Lanes those are tight the minimum that's the born Bridge that's Bridge yeah I mean you're not doing 65 right you're only supposed
to be doing 45 over that bridge anyways I just I'm I've watched the engineering department push back the way to cut save their staff money more and more and cut and service less and less i' I've watched the beach committee lock up our beaches because they don't want to clean
them I've just watched the every town committee want to cut their budgets and just restricting Services more and more and I just think it's unfair I'd rather find force the people to build adequate streets and give service to everybody partnership yeah it has to go both ways
I agree but definitely something to keep in mind though when you're approving the next private development so that's what we were talking about we we've talked about it with Lewis neck with Lewis I'm sorry Le Street we talked to him about it while he was developing it so he was aware of that and there was Kaba Kataba Lane yeah so he knows as well that they
know but I wonder if the residents who buy the well there's only one the guys in Kaba is the only one but Lewis Street I'm I don't know and they didn't ask for any waivers so they will be getting the services right yeah so it's not an isue street is built to our standards so
they'll get them so maybe I'm saying we should fight harder making the streets more oh accessible I the owner the option or we should provide an alternative to the wide to the width that U may be overwhelming but you know
the town does make exceptions the street the Dead End Street that I live on um is 17 ft wide MH and it was built that way sometime in the uh 70s in zoned at that time so it goes backways and yet the
town um provides trash pickup they plow it when they can they can always but we don't get much snow anymore so it doesn't matter but they certainly provide trash pickup and I think they make every effort to do it if they can they certainly have for us yeah I think
the fire department has said they want a minimum 18 ft wide and so I think that should be the minimum 13 ft high and cut the trees and and that we should make them do that and if the private roads need to have the tree cut they got it they should they have to do it because
we the trees do grow back oh yeah and so we we we need to do that but I'm just concerned about just cutting off the services I think we got to find a way I don't think I don't think the intent is to just cut them off it is a concern but it also comes to us with each um request for a
subdivision we ought to be looking at it can I have another question sort of related is it possible that this board could choose not to approve private roads and just say build it to the standard and and make make the developer apply for to be a town accepted Road
right from the beginning uh so yes and no right so the the yes part is of course you could but you can't force a developer to designate their Road as public but you could you could um not allow waivers and make them
adhere to the town standard and still be a private road there's a balance to be struck though one of the reasons there is not as much building as we would like to see is because of the expense of it MH so each time we increase the kinds of things you need to put in to be acceptable we've increased the expens of
it and cut back on the number of times it's going to happen it was very interesting to me that in the state report in the newspaper thing um Mrs Monahan wrote up a really good short summary that was in this week's Enterprise saying that the state needs to build 222,000 houses uh in order to make up
for the shortfall in the state so people will stop outward migration well that sort of is about the chunk of missing Federal funding for public housing interestingly enough and it's about the money and each time we make it more expensive we cut down on the amount of
housing so I just want to point out there's two ways that roads get created sometimes it's not always a subdivision it's a determination of access on an old ride of way that's been there for a long time and the state already has a formula right there it's only 18 ft wide and it
has and and the then the tree has to be cut 13 ft and when we triy to do less than that we got remanded back and they got it anyway that you know so we we I was the one that said it's not pass possible and the state said you have to let them do it that was uh fire fire
tire road so we don't need a separate um no I'm just saying it's not always a subdivision that doing there sometimes they're created by the determination of access on Old rights of way we should have that and writing somewhere we do no in our zoning book totally different thing totally
different totally different thing so moving on I think we've really the subject now John I just want to clarify that if you put a new Road in and build it to town standard when you're complete it when you're finished with it you can
ask the town to accept it as a Town Road isn't there quite a list waiting for go front the board of Select to do it I've heard there's a long list well it's a long list but that's because it's roads that were never uh built to standard right and so it's
challenging for the residents to get the money together to do the engineering in the first place to submit to the request for the request to be accepted and so that makes for you know it's a huge list of old ones but maybe if it was a new
road and you know it's up to standard all the engineering is fresh I don't know I don't know if they would cut to the head of the line or not that's a good question I don't know but I know I know when you complet it and the and the engineering department signs off you can ask the board of selectman to accept it
as a Town Road why why isn't it automatic if it was built to the right standard private proper I don't know private right I don't know but it's something we should probably look into some developers choose to keep it as a private way
because they just don't want to create it as a public way they they would rather have it maintained as a private way I don't we don't necessarily get into the details of that that's up to the developer to decide but ultimately the developer in a subdivision passes
that responsibility of Maintenance onto the homeowners association so that in itself can be a challenge for new homeowners who are moving in and don't understand that but absolutely if you design the road to town standards
and the town inspects it along the way your chances of becoming a public way are dramatically better uh than not doing that has been that your experience so I just did two roads two subdivisions and when I completed them I
talked to the engineering department and they said that they would not give a positive recommendation to the selectman because the road that these two new roads are off of is not approved was never approved it's built at a town
standard but it was never approved when it was built so they said that they would not give a positive recommendation so it's a catch 22 in this case it is well that makes let's say you built a Road off of Route 28 a new subdivision you would be and you did it
to town standard you could request so you either do it immediately or you can never do it later well like Doug says if you do it later the road could be in some kind of disrepair but why not do it right in the beginning when it's or just got stamped as but in
your example you can't do it right at the beginning because the road you're connecting to didn't do it right away that's what I was told you built the road at the wrong place I didn't know until I found that out I know that's you can't know everything but in both cases there there
are associations that uh not take care of the road they collect fees etc etc so there's there's a way around it there should be an appeal to all of that do you know you can appeal without a lawyer for any of the things that a board in town does you don't need a
lawyer you need 10 taxpayers and you can address issues like cell towers so moving on um outdoor lighting now I had asked for this one because in my neighborhood suddenly we had a great deal of light that hadn't been there
before and we were didn't want it there and had to look into this and it is it turned out um I think you've brought this up him crazy sorry it turned out Jim you had already talked about the um dark sky rules and you each have them in your
book and I found some others and it was interesting to me that there are already um a number of communities here in Massachusetts 63 municipalities as of 2025 already have outdoor lighting
ordinances and among them are several Cape towns barnable harwitch Truro and Provincetown Plus chilar on Martha's Vineyard and uh net around and I'll hand around this
list of want to look at it you can down I got all of this just by Googling here are the Massachusetts towns with outdoor lighting so there are ways to do it and there's a lot of uh information on what are the things that you think about when you think about outdoor lighting and
you're probably familiar with these also but you can take a look a question can we do that as not part of a subdivision and just make it a bylaw in general these are bylaws in these towns it applies to all the lighting in the town we have the right to do it division but
we could say it's a bylaw everybody has right are there copies of that you just passed that I didn't make copies no so I think we could have copies maybe for our next meeting sure or we could share them yeah but I was running out of toner yeah if you give us examples we
can take a look at them and try to figure out which ones are zoning bylaws which ones might be General bylaws and we can give you a sense for what that difference might look like right what they would look like and I'd just like to read the general principles so you can get kind of a the general principles are to minimize
light pollution at night protect residents so that light from somebody else isn't encroaching on your property ensure safe navigation whether you're walking or driving um have full cut off fixtures meaning they're designed to direct light downwards and minimize
light emission above a horizontal plane so no up lights height restrictions you kind of have them too high so you couldn't put up a tower and now put a uh some sort of big light um on your Couer or whatever light trespass limitations
people talk about your light trespassing onto my property into my eyes and shielding requirements specific lighting types whether or not you can have led with that kind of glary light that they have color temperature are they going to be warm lights cool lights these are all
things that are part of many of these regulations signage lighting Municipal facilities for town halls and Parks and so forth lighting zones so that you might have like downtown lighting Village lighting residential lighting
and then there's permitting and enforcement so those are parts of it and I guess these will be duplicated and shipped around so why don't we hand them down anyone want to comment on the idea of having lighting regulations for
Falmouth I like to see that well I think it's uh having lived in the town for a really long time and also been a boater and really enjoyed sailing Vineyard sound at night and now seeing and also sailed up and down the East Coast where you go by
Atlantic City and New Lake City and you when you're off Coast you see a loom the whole Sky lits up you can just see these big bubbles of light we're starting to develop that in fouth the quisset development that they've done in Woods Hole when you sail at 19 and you go by that their qust development they have a
loom you can see it's lit up the whole Sky it's changed everything from the way it used to be and if we continue doing it we're going to look more and more like Atlantic City and I really am in favor of down lighting no flood lights everything on the ground making it safe but not up in the sky and I think that
that is something uh I I've heard talk at many plan they talk uh you know dark sky principles I've heard the all the Architects talk about that I think which should that should be mandatory across town I agree own opinion when I stand in the backyard of my place I'm sure would
drive I can see town at night right just Illuminating like a glowing really Hub oh absolutely from North from North fman East F East from East yeah it's on Great Bay but it's on the upper reaches of Great Bay across from falmouthport
and uh you know especially on a dark night it's really really noticeable inquisit you just see this sort of orange glow theom you you can see it if you if you ever travel the East Coast at night you you you can see
this you see the Looms going oh what city is that what town is that they light up the whole Sky we don't need I suspect for me where in my particular location that I'm talking about is because of the mall and the plaza are kind of in line with each other right that that's where you're get you're seeing that yeah John uh where would uh
where would this be used if we adopt in any of these was it be on residential would everywhere I think it'd be for the whole town the whole town the whole town well I don't know we'll find out I think that's how the other towns have dealt with it it's townwide you just bring everything down and shine it down
no big high flood lights flighting up a whole field like a baseball field or light up the whole parking lot yeah you bring the lights down you you have the lights on the ground and you don't let it go across the property line no light trespassing imagine what it's like for the people who live near Fenway Park oh
yeah he live there moving on I know when we when we do commercial developments we moving on we have have control of the lighting the associated with we've been doing this for years we have been yeah we every commercial development but I think before you try to have this uh be enforced in the whole town we should
find out what other communities have done oh I think that's our first step and Jed volunteered to do it for us I volunteered the planning department to do it well and it looks right there right are you going to do site visits for every one of these communities is that your plan yeah at night there with
provinc toown and make our way and take take pictures when he says we it means ye Bob do you have a comment I we talking about the lamp post at at someone's the end of someone's driveway
that has the the Lan type of thing now you've got to change it so it's a downward you just put a top on it well they do have Tops on them but the light shines on the on around the sides of it have yet for discussion we sh we have to
review those I mean we were raised that lighting is safety uh not only for being able to walk but also uh to prevent crime um I don't know I
just dark sky doesn't mean dark land dark sky means you're not putting the light up in the in the sky you're keeping the light on the land where the people walk I have I understand dark sky and it's wonderful in its concept but I can tell
you going down woodo Road and trying to find our street that has a street light up there that's cone is like that you can't see where the street is that's not safe so you haven't gotten home oh I get
home but it's very difficult the only reason I can see where our street is that one of the neighbors bought some high-intensity reflector tape and has wound it around the pole so you could see where the entrance to the street is despite a lamp pole because it's an
LED it's not safe Paul I been I have a personal issue where the lights across the streight Shina of my house but only in the winter time right and I talk to the owner and
whatever you have there might be helpful if I talk to him again if I get that Tom him undecided undecided whatever you do make it a light of the town too of course I mean it does by default but it should be
written in there right right because we have to lead by example if we're going to impose something well we'll get more information find out what the other towns particularly on the cape um are doing and see where we want to go from there and how to get
there okay anyone have announcements I guess I have one oh okay that's not good regrettably I'm closing my art gallery I can't afford it anymore oh Jim I'm so sorry I am still I'm moving my license to Robert Paul I'm still working on Main Street but uh I'm
giving up my space I can't afford it w wow that's a bummer I'm sorry to hear that chip it was a practical thing it uh just I was when I was uh you know I was really lucky I made a lot of money on Kendall Lane I had a huge business it
was roaring fast but when things slow down I I can't carry the art gallery on my uh real estate work anymore so I I rented the office out in two days and another company's going in there and they're going to sell art at HomeGoods so it'll be similar but they
won't be running all the public things I did or having any political with all the Republican things that I did before or noska or all the other things that you did I was kidding when I said Republic but that's that's a loss to the town well it becomes it was fun but it became
I can't afford it I'm sorry so it's okay I've got over it so uh I'm still going to be working on Main Street I just won't be uh running the AR Gallery h
any other announcements I have a question that might lead to an announcement to the public Tom did take out his papers he was pulling my leg earlier for I'm assuming it's the three-year term it is but there's also a one-year term open
does anybody know whether anybody has pulled papers for that yet I don't know if he's pulled papers but I know I stopped by this morning I stopped by this morning check the book nobody has pulled papers for the onee seat we're running out of time I think it's the
28th isn't it 28th yes to get the papers they have to be in on the first by the first so that leads to the announcement please people if you're thinking about the one-year term you've got now to do it I know a person who said he was going to do it it's not in the book not
anymore no it's not in the book that person oh may not well maybe somebody sees the vacancy after the election there only a couple more days left then we get to a point but then what do we do because that's not happened before do we then have to
go the same way we did before when Tom was appointed so it's a joint select board and planning board appointment to that vacant one year what the townwide election sure I understand that so I'm not sure the select board can do that didn't they I thought you were talking
about after the election yeah after the election yeah if there's a vacancy vcy then it's a joint decision and it worked and of course somebody could write his or her name in and be the only vote too everyone could write somebody's name in
absolutely they'd have to accept a nomination maybe Paul maybe Paul doesn't get to leave yeah yeah one more year Paul one more year I thought about it actually did you did do it Paul please you're going to be bored
otherwise so we've got a good fallback we could couldn't we all of us yeah we can yeah you have nine signatures right here yeah right you'd be all set I need 41 more okay future agenda [Music] items no we cut out there wasn't any
general correspondence so we'll entertain uh let's see our next meeting is actually April 7th but it'll be very truncated and it will probably be over at the school yes it where the town meeting's held so our next real meeting is April 22nd and we'll entertain a
motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor I I 422 [Music]