hi I'd like to open uh the planning board meeting of Monday April 14th 2025 at 700 p.m with a roll call roll call dave Gabrian Bob Goslin Jonathan Barnett David Gleason okay thanks um now do we
have anything to go over before we start anything do you have anything to go over before we start the agenda um I do not okay uh we have to wait another minute no we don't no 70 71 site plan review but it's not a public hearing so we can
start this right away uh this is 211 and 213 Main Street map 46 lot 100 Jones River Community Chapel and um there's somebody here to uh present like to take the podium
please state your name and your address good evening i'm Joseph Goldberg i'm the pastor of Jones River Community Chapel um my address I live in Plymouth am I on the mics are on as far as we know oh sorry um my address 36 South Metal Road
in Plymouth Massachusetts um but I am the pastor of 211 213 Main Street Kingston um one of the reasons we're coming before you today is we've cleared out an area of our property that used to be um housed um barns for um stables for
horses and people who used to come to our church so we have a um our ministry uh that we do on Sundays and Mondays have grown to the point where we need additional space uh so we cleared out some of the overgrowth in that area um and our hopes is to add additional
parking um spec specifically for Monday night we have a Monday night AAS group uh that meets there and um they're parking at the Beal House they're parking across the street at the um the funeral home and um our neighbors Mayflower has been kind enough to let us
park there um I took over the church about two years ago and one of the things that the neighbors for anything in in permanent like pavement we were thinking like a reprocess asphalt or gravel uh to put down to kind of key with the aesthetics of the area and then
landscape the area so it all matches so that's pretty much where we're at right now okay s you want to add anything to that um sure all right i have some information to share if I can make this work
today okay works on your screen so this is the uh parking lot that we have they're at Center Street and Main Street and that's a a picture from the assessor's office of the of the church
as you're driving towards the center of town on Main Street and this is kind of hard to see but I'm going to my cursor is over the back part and that's where they cleared for um they as he described they took down some
trees and some brush the trees were probably 5 to 8 in DBH in terms of size so they've been there a while and there was no notice to the neighbors or the town that they were going to do that work it's less than 5,000 square ft
okay um that's the like a hundred years ago there was a carriage house and barn back there but it's been woods for quite a long time i've been alive
as long as I've been alive i don't remember cars back there so this is this is the view i'm going to start with this slide this is the view of the clearing from the adjacent church the Mayflower Congregational Church so
if you're standing in their parking lot looking away from their church towards this church you can see that there's an earthn berm that was left um around the perimeter that is being used to kind of
keep the storm water there right now um that's not ideal and then looking at it from Center Street you can see that they there's no apron or anything protecting the dirt from tracking into the road and there's
a low spot so um you know we definitely want to see something there that would improve what we've got and whether it's reprocessed uh you know recycled asphalt or whether it's gravel we need a drainage plan and I've spoken with the reverend about the
need for an engineer to take a look at this especially with the standing water knowing that there's a um this is pretty lomy soil so it's not it's not sandy so what I'm saying is we need to have some sort of a drainage design um set up we need
to get rid of that earth and berm that's been left and then decide how we want to maintain that storm water on the site and maybe let it percolate in right so my other comments are I don't know if you had a chance to look at the staff
report but um they are you know they are protected from zoning to some extent because they're a church and also because they've been there for at least a hundred years so they preede zoning and they preede all of our regulations but
when you look at the other churches in the area they've all got uh paved parking lots or gravel that are um you know well maintained and we this is in the historic not district but there's a lot of historic homes here so the other
concern is that at least we have meet the uh minimum standards for screening and landscaping around the parking lot and my primary concern is the residential um house immediately next to this so
behind the churches there's a house and there should be some sort of screen it could be a fence andor a hedge or it could be a hedge again I've talked with the reverend about that and my understanding that um is that he's been talking with the neighbor about
plantings um along that side to alleviate the view and then on Center Street um the requirement in our um off- streetet parking regulations is that they have a 10-ft landscape strip along the parking lot so that it should be
flower beds or some sort of um landscaping rather than what we see which is uh you know it's an unfinished situation that we're in yeah definitely i could see the need that we want to get some engineering involved here um to get this
straightened out yeah so I've I've asked that we have a filing with storm water calcs from an engineer with the landscaping shown that we could bring back informally before the board
or if you desire it could be before staff um I know that the residents in the neighborhood um were surprised by the land clearing and are here to comment so there's quite a few I think residents that want to make some comments as well
okay okay i mean you know I certainly noticed you know I drive that road every day i mean Monday around 6 to 7 o'clock as I go to the town dump so I noticed like your butter should be cleaned up and there should be some kind of a
natural buffer put buffer put in there whatever that might be but I do think you have to have it engineered and see what the soil conditions are there and then that from there we can decide what's going to go down for for base yes i mean that's that's a good start do do
we have any idea like how many cars on an average Monday are there and how many cars would end up in this cars on an average Monday are there and how many cars would end up in this back parking lot is it going to alleviate the problem well I mean no we didn't we don't didn't
get a plan that shows the striping because they're they're talking about the possibility of gravel so I don't have that information i wasn't sure if it did well I would think that if they have it engineered even if it's going to be gravel he could show how many spaces
could be on yeah it'll definitely help to alleviate the problem of the on street parking that takes place are you guys like near capacity when you have your meetings like No sir um I've had the building inspector to the
building uh we actually just did our inspection a couple weeks ago i met with the police chief and the fire chief we all had a meeting in the building and they said they rated us about 180 i wouldn't put 180 in the building but on a on a Monday we go around 120 um so
that's really where we're at on on an average um as far as the the the parking and and stuff's concerned um we recognize that parking on Center Street was a hazard that's why we worked hard to get those vehicles off Center Street
um so this isn't so that we can add more people to the building it's to alleviate like maybe getting some of the vehicles off Mayflower's property onto our property um so that's really what we're trying to do we're not trying to add to the group or grow the group any further other than just trying to organize the
the groups that we already have there presently but is there any control to say like what let's say 60 more people started showing up like h how do you like how do you keep more people from coming i guess that's the question well this is where I'd have to work closely with the AA group um since since last
January a little more than a year ago I've been at every meeting making sure that the capacity isn't reaching their limits parking is being done in a in a better fashion than has been in the past um the group leaders of the group uh work well with me on trying to make sure
that we get everything off the roads we put cones out to keep people out of certain areas so we try to add some organization where it really wasn't there up until about two years ago or a year and a half ago okay so you certainly have a lot more
people at the AA meeting than you do at your congregational meeting yes sir um hopefully that changes uh but yes we presently on ju just to give you a little bit of a overview of our church uh we run between 15 to 20 people on a Sunday everything we do we pay out of
pocket we don't have any loans on the property uh we've been slowly redoing the building bits by bits um we just redid a whole children's area in our church um we just we're working on repairing the roof we just had a roof put on a few years ago cost us about
$40,000 um so everything we're doing we're doing as a small group out of pocket um the clearing of this um it's it's completely out of our pocket it's cost us probably $3 to $5,000 to clear this little bit and this this is simply
so that we can be more neighborly i mean we didn't clear this to make our neighbors angry we cleared this to get the parking off of Center Street that was one of their biggest concerns when I took over as the pastor they was like "This is out of control." So I've tried to add some control to the chaos um
tried to get people off Center Street so if you drive down Center Street on a Monday night between 6:00 and 7:00 because it's only an hour a week there's no cars on Center Street we get them on the property and this past winter I think we had to do it once because of we had a big snowstorm but other than that we we try to get that street alleviated
um the neighbors came to us and they said that they weren't very happy where the smoking section was so we moved it to a whole different area so the point I'm trying to make is what what we're doing here isn't so will eventually benefit our church on a Sunday but it's really to help alleviate the stress on
the neighbors while they're there on a Monday night we're not trying to aggravate them we're not trying to make their life worse i'm trying to make we're trying to make their life easier while we're trying to help people um and I've told the neighbors this and I'm telling you this that if I didn't see
fruit from this Monday night meeting I would have killed it at its core and ended it right there on the spot but I've gotten drunk drivers from getting back in their cars i've saved somebody from trying to take their own life um we've I've had an 18-year-old kid uh for the last four years his mom's been
coming to our AA group who made it to his 18th birthday where he didn't think she was she would make it he called an ambulance for her overdosing on alcohol poisoning um and the point I'm trying to make is I'm not trying to dump all this news on you we're I'm putting up with
this aggravation and and and frustration to help meet the needs of our neighbors but also seeing an impact in our community um to see somebody whose marriage is back together to see someone who has a family obligation that's you know being met again it's really why I'm
I'm putting up with this and why we got a small congregation of 15 to 20 people willing to invest into this Monday night group so if you find folks tell us "Hey Joe you got to put up this bushes you got to do this landscaping you got to do this engineering," we'll do it we'll do
it in within our budget and in time to do that but we're committing to getting it done and done right so that it meets our neighbors needs it meets the town needs and we can put something out there that you can be proud of when you drive by it saying "Yeah that looks very good i'm glad glad we did that and we're making a difference in the
community." Sorry I didn't mean to just droll on anybody else um I would just say that um everything you're saying you you know the fruits of your labor very very noble i mean I I applaud you for that um I I
think that the biggest thing in these parking lots that we see is standing water so I think some spot-on engineering would be would be very very helpful because when we when you drive by there you don't want to see standing water so the water has to drain go somewhere nice keep the parking lot dry
you know the plantings and everything that we're going to need you know to help help the neighbors have some sort of buffer which you seem like you're completely open to that absolutely so um I I'd say that in my mind that that is the most sensitive um part of all this yeah and and to be honest with you our
church has been blessed with a beautiful building that's been there for a very long time whatever we do we want to make sure we complement it very very very cool building yeah i like it so and if those of you haven't seen it you got to come see it she's beautiful inside yep
i mean the church has never had a real parking lot no it's always relied on on street parking so okay anybody else does anybody want to speak to this from the
community yeah sir state your name and address of the mic please adam Sherman 215 Main Street just have a couple of observations and comments um having lived next to this chapel for over 40 years I'm well aware of their
parking needs see it constantly um in fact yesterday in the parking area under consideration there were four cars parked there for services through the various incarnations of the church
building I've rarely if ever seen a parking problem for religious activities number of years back they were getting on special Sunday occasions um there were considerable parking on
the streets for an hour it's understandable nobody was upset about it that's what happens when you live next to a church the activities of Monday night they're referring to are not religious activities however
um and it it seems to me that all of this is being considered for again a non-exempt activity and I question that i also question and and have concerns that
these trees were taken down with without permission um in your agenda it's saying extending the gravel parking lot there is no gravel parking lot now it's not an extension as as
presented and I don't see the need for expanded parking for the church activities it's pretty simple we wouldn't be here tonight if it wasn't for
uh being reported to the town about the trees um the gravel would already have been put down um we were told that was scheduled for the a day or two after the building inspector was there and it wasn't
um the parking on both sides of the center street um our chief Mark Douglas um was very concerned about that and put a stop he's the one who put a stop to that because it was impossible to get
emergency vehicles down the street um I don't see any great number of additional cars that would be accommodated by by this to be done before paving or gravel
is done that way we know it will be accomplished that's all I have to say bal did you have something to say um I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous and other programs along that line are
educational programs and they are exempt they're exempt yes yeah yeah because I think uh the church is pretty wide latitude in certain areas right it's an exempt use yeah yeah
um my turn yes please go to the podium rosanne Pratt 10 Center Street and um I've been a resident of Kingston for 53 years i have lived at 10 Center Street for 50 plus years and in my
lifetime and my husband's lifetime who was a lifelong resident of Kingston we have never seen parking as bad as it is on Monday nights uh why are they making a parking
lot why for 20 cars on Sunday okay we have been threatened for 10 years that they will be making a parking lot there i have frequently queried the building inspector the
police department the fire department concerning these issues on the Jones River at the Jones River Chapel on Monday nights the chapel has cleared the lot and left two dangerous trees up
there ask me how I know about dangerous trees my husband was number two man on the Kingston tree department for a few years and then became tree foreman and he pointed out many times to me the tree
the two trees that they left are terrible and now they have dug up the roots so what's going to happen to those trees they're going to go down i don't want them coming down on my yard i don't want them coming down on the church yard
uh about two months ago they took down they cleared that lot they left Oh they left the brush off to the side of the lot for over two months this was a particularly
dry summer particularly dry uh we live in a neighborhood composed of old wooden buildings what would happen if that brush caught on fire does anybody know boom the
neighborhood's gone i did attempt to notify the fire department about this problem roadblock again we lost a green area it was a sound buffer from the traffic on Main Street it was stated that the chapel
would be putting down gravel i don't want gravel in my yard i don't want to walk on Center Street and twist my ankle from the gravel uh I see the mud coming off the parking lot now stands to reason the
gravel will travel if I go for a walk on Monday evening I don't want to dodge cars on the sidewalk i don't want to walk on Main Street we all know there's no speed
problem on Main Street i especially don't want to be a pedest see a pedestrian and auto accident unfortunately years ago there was one in front of the congregational church and
Gordon Pratt sent me out there to try to help them i don't want to see that again it took me months to get rid of that idea i know there's a lot of ifs but this isn't isn't even half the
problems that I have endured with this group on Monday nights i don't want myself or my neighbors to be bullied and told we were uncchristian i have no problem with Christian activities services weddings
and small meetings AA meetings we all have friends and family that have been impacted by addiction if the decision to allow this
parking lot to continue I want it done not peace meal get it done it's a mess i don't want to see another year of ugliness and uh some of us will remember
Joanie Mitchell and others will remember Counting uh crows song the big yellow taxi remember that one don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you want till it's gone they pave paradise and put up a parking
lot now the town planner suggested many things and I approve i like them a lot um I would like to know how couldn't get a fire truck or an ambulance down there and I'm done fix it
i walk your neighborhood all the time so I'm well aware of how narrow the road is yeah good evening all susan Sherman 215 Main Street and before I start I was just at Solstice and I have regards for the
board from Sue Ber oh nice um I'm reading this and I have a packet for you uh so let me read it so I don't get distracted here i'm not opposing the presentation made by our town planner
for the gravel parking lot she did a great job she set some good things in place i will say that I'm sorry that it proceeded as it did removing all the trees etc without consulting the
neighbors we have always had a neighborhood and people in that neighborhood as you know have lived there for 40 50 years including the churches would never take down trees or to the lot line without discussion with
your neighbor thankfully a call was made to the town and the work was halted now that's why we're here for your endorsement i also will take this opportunity to put on the record that the venue is inappropriate for the
Monday night activities cars are parking at the Beal House Shepards Mayflower and both sides of Main Street in excess of 90 vehicles with so many crossing Main Street many of us remember 20 years ago
in fact that was the cause of an accident with two Mayflower Congregational members were killed because they were walking in between cars aa is a well-known organization one
I support it's a nonreligious group therefore I question where we are a residential area and this is a non-church event happening each Monday
night falls under the Devon Act rather than the town's bylaws i give you two examples of this bingo at the Catholic Church which it was a non-church event and it had to be discontinued
also Cherry Street an NAA meeting which was parking on both sides of Cherry Street that too had to be disbanded from that location we rely on you the town to
provide us with residents with safety i hope there is some way a more appropriate venue can be found for this necessary parking with necessary parking sprinklers and etc to safely accommodate
this group a personal note I would never have a pool party during Sunday morning services i live in a neighborhood with all churches i wouldn't do it we are simply asking the same love thy
neighbor i say this to you Joe Goldberg and to the Jones River Chapel once again I Adam Roseanne and our neighbors wish to extend to you with a basket here I've got it a basket of
cookies and let me read this so I don't get it wrong our wish for your success at Jones Ri River River Chapel and our intentions not to malign Christian values or values of AA but
rather to embrace our neighborhood no one entity has the right to adversely impact a neighborhood now I will say just in hearing what was said that I appreciate what Val did and I
just want to mention the um curbs those curbs are very old antique curbs and I don't know if they can be redone so that they don't get lost i think that would be an important part and the cones I feel like I've moved to a town that I
don't even recognize anymore every Monday night cones are out everywhere they are picked up but I again say for 40 years we've lived there up until the eight the last eight years we never had a problem people parked
they were congregants they parked on the side of the church down on Center Street we never had a problem what we had a problem with is when unfortunately and I will say it AA came in and they don't care they park on both sides they park
in front of my driveway i can't get out i mean this has got to cease i don't know how this plays into the planning board but that's all I have to say but I really do wish the Jones River
Chapel will be successful as a chapel i'm not so sure how I feel about it and you know that Joe i've said nothing i haven't told everyone and thank you for your
consideration it's referencing why it's not it is a nonchurch and I don't think it comes under the demon act so for just to for the sake of correction it's a the reference is the Dover amendment which is part of the
state zoning and it's a it exempts educational uses religious uses and and other similar uh uses so that there and it it comes from discrimination from neighborhoods with
those uses being proposed in those neighborhoods so the idea is that they're generally exempt from zoning um and that's why I mentioned the do amendment so we you know we are walking on a fine line here we are not here to
establish the use we're here to look at the parking lot and and yes I do agree with the Dover amendment however I don't think it applies because it is a
nonchurch event again it's not our purview and I don't encourage you to go there yep i just wanted to clarify something one of the reasons why we cleared this area out and if I s if some of this is caused
on ignorance on my behalf I apologize to you um it's simply because the neighbors had a concern with parking i've worked really hard over the last year almost year and a half to keep parking off of Senna Street um to be a more neighborly
person that's the whole purpose of this it wasn't any mal you know I wasn't trying to deceive anybody wasn't trying to be a bad neighbor i simply cleared this area off to alleviate the parking to be a better neighbor and I deeply apologize to my neighbors if what I've
done has caused them heartache because that was not my intention in any way shape or form i'm just I mean we do have a land clearing law bylaw now but this is not this doesn't trigger that because it's less than
5,000 square feet exactly i mean I came out two weeks ago and my neighbor cut like a whole bunch of trees down right on my property line what was I going to say they're his trees i couldn't do anything about it i wasn't happy about it he's going to put up a fence but you know would have been nice to
know you know um Aaron Benoy 26 Jones River Drive um asking this not as assistant town planner as a resident and lifelong Kingstonian um just to be clear if there were 120
people for mass on Sunday congregants would that be a problem and they were parked everywhere everybody knows that it's Main Street there are churches everywhere we can't hear sorry sorry sing a notice from the booth of
course not if there were of course not if there were 20 120 cars at the Unitarian Church for a service for a wedding everybody would accept that this
is all non church event it's non-church event and it's every Monday night just like every Sunday there would be a service in here but no no not necessarily sue what thanks we don't want to get into an
argument here okay if I may I just want to encourage the group that all of your remarks should be directed to the board and not to individual speakers please thank you
uh my name's Peter Burke i'm at 15 Center Street uh directly across from the proposed parking lot um for the past 24 years I've had a front row view of everything that goes
on at that church and I've seen it from a vibrant church in the beginning you know 23 22 years ago where Sundays there'd be multiple services cars would park on the grass
um they'd park on the street to uh the Brazilian community um maybe 10 years ago that have services twice a week sometimes on Saturday that have a party out back i look out my front window i
see the stained glass window in the church i see whatever goes on in there i enjoy it i think it's good i think it's good for the community um you know Center Street serves as or has served as a um overflow for funeral
homes when there's a big funeral in town um not a problem um occasionally things that go on in town whether it's uh something on at the library or something at the town green I
mean cars get parked on the side streets um when when AA came um my only I guess problem with the parking was they parked on both sides of the street the street's not wide enough to
handle that can they park on one side sure it's a street town owns the street they can park on it i've never had a problem with that i don't care what side they park on just park on one not both um I've had parties where I've had cars
parked down the street all the way down um things happen um I think if it if it was controlled um a little better in the beginning we probably wouldn't be where we are now um as far as I'm concerned the church owns
the land and they want to pave every inch of it it's their right you know I'll have to look at it but I have no control over it just like if I wanted to pave my front lawn my property I'll do what I want um I personally I think AA
is good um they do good work um I think um a little more control in the beginning with the parking probably would have had a different outcome here my my only issue is for the the parking
is if they do do gravel to have some type of an apron to keep the gravel from going in the street other than that I mean that's uh that's part of I mean we I' I've been lucky as far as it has as far as it's
gone where I could look out and see green grass and shrubs and trees and scrub brush and whatever else was growing back there but I knew it wasn't going to last forever because at some point in time something was going to go in there that was going to have a lot of
people again you know it could be pavement it could be paving all the way across to Mayflower you know and I can't stop that and you know kind of they have the right to uh so I think what they're trying to do now is trying to be accommodating at least which I give them
a lot of credit for doing um you know they're going to do the best they can can they get it all done in you know a week no it's going to take time things take time you know I spend time on my yacht i can't do everything in a weekend
um and I try to be neighborly and I try to stay out of stuff and I try to mind my own business because I don't like people in my business um I just don't um but they I think they have for the most part done a pretty good job taking care
of the place painted new roof um they keep the grass cut for the most part you know I mean they've done a lot of things they painted the fence a few years ago so it's I don't have an issue with what they do over there and I'm right like if you look at the pictures when you're
looking across the parking lot you're looking at where I'm living i mean it's like right there i see it all and that's really all I got to say and whether I'm making people happy by saying this or not this is just my opinion so thanks for your time
if I as I stated the other day when we were talking that I did not think that this was a planning board issue we have control over the site plan which is what we're here to do um that being said
I don't know and I'm just asking the pastor this just just something to think about is if there's a possibility of splitting it up so that there's not so many people there on one night we actually um last year last summer we broke it up into three different groups
we had a Saturday morning group we had an early Monday group and then a Monday night group um we can't force people to go to the others and this particular group for some reason sticks together um we we did two other groups to kind of alleviate some of it um but it just for
some reason people wanted to stick together on this one it's it's not your um and I'm probably shooting myself in the foot for saying this it's not your normal AA group where people just kind of come and they they they do their meeting and then they leave these folks are connected they connect outside of
this they'll meet two three times a week at other locations they were if somebody's not there on a Monday night they're making a phone call where are you they they check on each other um honestly I know a lot of people say "Well this isn't an organization a a religious organization." Since I've
started going in the last year and a half they open in prayer and they close with the Lord's Prayer i don't know what the definition of a religious organization is but I'm seeing God's work on people i'm seeing lives change and I've told the neighbors this last
year when I came to them and told them that we were going to cut down some of these trees I I spoke to Miss Pratt about it and I said "You I'll even let you pick the green bushes we put up." So because she said her biggest concern she didn't want to look at a parking lot i said 'If that's the case I'll let you pick the bushes and she said 'Yeah yeah
I'll do that so this was last year um we had conversations with the neighbors of what we wanted to clear out what we wanted to do to alleviate parking um and I told them during this time that if I didn't see fruit if I thought that this was just another meeting that was going
through the motions I'd cut it off at the vine but I've seen lives changed i've seen what happens and some of these folks come now on Sunday mornings um and I'm just being honest with you all right thank you um we just want to want to
keep it to the parking lot if we can i'm going to say something about the parking lot once again Roseanne Pratt 10 Center Street yes they have approached me like I said for the last 10 years they have said they're going to do it they're going to do it they're going to do it
yes Joe did say that he would put up um trees or a buffer or something like that i came home from my church one Sunday and saw two men cutting down trees no notice
whatsoever i said to myself Roseanne go in the house put your blinders on just mind your own business go into the house the you hear the tree fall like that and I heard a guy scream "Hey you almost hit
me with the tree i don't want to see this i want somebody in there to look at these trees that they took down okay um through the chair in fact um AA
considers itself and I'll read this it's a common misconception sue we're not going to deal with the use the use if you have a problem with a use you do have to go in front of you don't have the the authority I agree you don't you don't have the we don't have the authority to determine if that's an
accept can you tell me who does have the authority if I could intercede here this is not something where somebody has the authority to talk about the use because it's exempt however uh it sounds like you have a safety
issue with respect to the parking and and traffic issues so I encourage I encourage you to try to set up a meeting as a neighborhood with the police and fire and with the the reverend to try to
sort this out but this is not something that this board can take up and it's not something that the town is going to take up unless you're going to introduce a concern that's a civil matter related to the town's actions regarding this use
okay so I think um we probably need to get some more information here right we want to get uh engineer my recommendation right now um would be that the gravel apron be installed
immediately for 25 ft from Center Street inwards to um keep additional dirt if people are driving in there off Center Street that they sweep and clean up Center Street
immediately that within two weeks they get an engineered plan to the town for review by police and fire for the parking lot whether it's gravel or paved and that'll be subject to review and then come back before the
planning board and that would have the uh any any information about lighting any information about um the condition of the trees and would include resetting the the curbing
yep can we in addition to what I had she was talking about too that's what I'm talking about okay yep so I'm adding those recommendations to the recommendations but you know the the while it's exempt the we have
jurisdiction over the parking and I think it's really important that we deal with the the parking lot being designed and built properly um the other issues that have been brought up tonight are not under the purview of this board we just have a question on You'd have to
go to the podium i just want to understand this properly so you're saying that there's nothing to be done by the town unless there's a civil action no that's not what I said i said I encourage you to meet with the fire oh okay and police and the reverend
to try to sort out these issues okay i see i'm discouraging my board from engaging on the use because we have no purview over it and I believe it's an exempt use yeah so whether I agree with you or not it doesn't matter because I have no jurisdiction in that area so that's what
we're saying so what we really want to do is talk about the safety in the parking that's what we want to do and if they you know if they come back and you know police and fire look at it and they say it's not going to meet the safety demands that they that they require then
I don't know we'll have to do something no we're not looking no this let me Okay we are not going to ask police and fire to review the site plan for for safety they're they're they're reviewing it under the purview of site plan for a parking lot that's to be
constructed this is a broader issue that needs to be addressed by police fire and the neighborhood about whether or not there's adequate parking for the use regardless of its ex its exempt status and maybe there's something that could
be worked out if something can't be worked out that's not under the purview of this board i'm just strongly recommending that the neighborhood take this up with the selectman police and fire to try to sort out a solution that they might be able to abide by all the other
churches use off streetet and on street parking so it's a combination on Main Street that we have for everybody it sounds like they have quite a few cars coming in for this particular event just like other congregations would be having additional cars and they're referring to
comments from fire and police saying that there have been some issues in the past so I encourage a more formal program be set up but that's not something this board has any purview over and the police and fire would not be reviewing the neighborhood traffic
issue for the board that's in fact where I'm confused i totally agree that you have no jurisdiction in many ways but you're authorizing the planning board will be authorizing a parking lot that is
not substantial enough for the existing that's that's something that so an an applicant has the right to request right construction of a parking lot they've requested they've done it without pro probable you
know the appropriate mannerism but they're here now right they have the right to ask to build a parking lot and it's our jurisdiction to review the parking lot to make sure that it's to adequate standards your issue sounds like it needs off- streetet parking
sounds like a what it needs off- streetet parking and that it needs additional um management issues that you need to take up with another entity and I've stated that more than once mhm okay so I'll make a motion that we
continue the um the site plan review subject to the conditions that Al just put forward i'll second it second how long two weeks to come back with the engineered plan with the landscaping is that a realistic
time frame i just I'm not sure i don't know maybe the reverend could respond okay it's been done without any notice and I think that we want to encourage that they take this up rather quickly put the
apron in place immediately and sweep the street agreed i just wasn't sure if they'd be able to get an engineer in that time but yeah we'll what you want us done immediately we'll do right away we'll get it done um you just lay it out just because I'm not sure what the apron
is so forgive me for my ignorance on that um as far as the flight the uh plan the drawings are done it all depends on expenses um because we won't move forward until we get you everything you tell us to so that's we can't do anything more until you bring the
engineered and landscaping plans to us yes and I'm hoping that you do that post haste since you know that you've done this without proper notice absolutely so my encouraging you to say two weeks is something that I mean like not drop the ball they may come back to you and say
that they need a month but we'd like you to try to be as quick as possible the gravel apron should be installed immediately and I can help you with that by meeting you on site to describe it more you know more carefully but that would keep the dirt from tracking onto
the street okay and literally sweep the street sweep the dirt back in to the site yep that we can do so yeah you tell me when i'll gladly meet you so we can get that taken care of for the apron um tomorrow morning I'll go meet with our engineers who did our plot plan and uh see if we can get that ball rolling
right away and find out what the expense is okay back to the motion we have a motion so two weeks two weeks motion yep have a motion and second all those in favor say I i i
okay so reconvene in two weeks well we are not meeting until um Oh okay may because town meeting town meeting okay oh we do but my hope is that we'll have the plan in advance and I'll that'll
give me time to get it reviewed by police and fire so that we're not wasting time you know so it'll be on the agenda for the next meeting but we want the stuff prior to that yes we we'd like it in two weeks okay okay
thank you thanks everybody thanks everybody we're leaving it because I've heard Val's very good presentation before yeah i'll leave it at the discretion of the board if you want to hear a 15minute presentation tonight or if you're you know I I I made it for the
selectman the other night um I think it's worth seeing i've shown it to Tom what's it what's it about it's about us the corridor that uh which is just 53 and and uh Main
Street Main Street oh okay not just pause for a minute here like let everybody clear out okay thank you i'm learning hey guys could you guys take could you guys take the discussion outside please thank you i might as well
thank you thank you okay okay thank you Bill thank you i I did this presentation for the selectman um there's a jacket yeah good to listen to
us still meeting thanks um okay so we are we're looking at um the same situ the same presentation that was done before the selectment so
for those viewers who watched that you can tune out you've already seen this um a study was done of 3A and 53 from the Ducksbury Town Line to the Plymouth Town Line recently by the Old Colony Planning Council who's our
regional planning agency and working in cooperation with the town and I just wanted to start by looking back the um road is a historic road it's been there a very long
time in fact in 1795 it was on the map and it was there from before then because it was I think it was a trail that the Wampaog Nation used you know along the uh coast is that Potting Way Road
no uh is is this is a 106 and 27 oh today um but this is the C this is 53 and that's Rocky Nook there if you get your bearings so it was known as the
Great Road by 1830 there's a drawing that I have here of uh Plymouth that was done showing what it was like in 1830 and it was all wooded except for what you can see kind of cleared along the coast so
the pilgrims and all have been here for maybe 200 years at this point but Plymouth is it's still mostly coastal and so was Kingston and people still traveled by buck board and horse and this is a picture that's hanging here in
town hall of some former residents by 1845 Kingston was connected to Boston by the trains and this is actually a view of Paddle Street where the train station was that is the cross this striped line that
you see and the road corridor is coming up like it was on that last map and you can see these little black dots along it those are houses but you can see like Rocky Nook isn't built it's actually a hill at that time and the village is
still sparssely built out and this is um in 1876 not long after that uh buck board photo this is a view of Kingston looking from the mouth of the Jones River back towards land and you can see that it was
forested um at in 1885 just like we saw in that picture from Plymouth that it was mostly forest hay fields and um you can also see some orchards and I'm running my uh cursor along the corridor
that we're talking about or in other words the road and here at the mouth of the Jones you can see a train heading out of town and the Jones River Landing is there by the late 1800s and early 1900s we had cars this is a view of Summer
Street around that time i don't know when it this view was taken but uh you can see the old cars and the old dress well maybe you can tell us this look familiar [Laughter]
all right so with mom's not here we we needed that we needed that Aaron we did tom's not here so you're hanging fruit that's right so with these uh with the car you can see subdivisions starting to pop up and
um some new roads and you can see that town hall has been built and we have the cemetery that was established by 1903 so it's kind of interesting you know that's starting to take shape and that road is still there and it looks exactly the same got Crescent and it
heads right up to Ducksbury this is a view that's got uh Mr bousard's grandfather's house in the picture and this is Summer Street in 1927 and this is looking towards town
center and then came Route Three in the 1950s and60s by 1950 it was connecting the Southshore to Cape Cod and by 1960s it connected all the way through to Boston and that really changed the character of the area
as we all know there was a building boom following that and now we have a new road that's become the road to Boston instead of our great road and with that you can see we had a boom
in the 1960s and 70s and right through to about 2010 of building in Kingston and population growth and lately it's leveled off to 7% for the last 20 years or so we are not growing in terms of
population and in fact recent uh demographic information tells us that about half of the population is 45 or older so we've got a much older population than we used to have building is slowing in the 1980s
especially the late 80s this bar would be off the chart this is about 80 units and there were like three or 400 units being built in the 80s this is 1990 and you can see that's about a a third to a
quarter of what was being built in the 80s and then it keeps going down so we have fewer and fewer new residential units being constructed on average this is on 5-year intervals averages and the same's happening with
commercial building permits it's dropping off especially lately because of the water moratorium but also because of the um we just don't have a lot of commercial growth we're we're relatively built out so now I want to look
forward um why do we do this we look so we can plan for the future we can plan and look at road water and sewer needs or what planners call infrastructure and also look at economic opportunities one thing that we've started to do is put our signs up that
say welcome to Kingston they look nice yeah and and change you know it's time for us to keep looking at how do we invest in our communities so that we are thriving and we need to do that because we can see that we're not um we don't
have a lot of new growth refreshing our our situation so we need to look at that this study that we did incorporated the master plan the municipal vulnerability plan uh the town transportation assessment that we did last year and the
recent update to the open space and recreation plan among other things and to make it simple um we've divided it up into four sections going north to south to talk about in the
north end which is near Ducksbury we see that in 1903 this was all residential and it was small lots so it was very different than it looks today today it's very commercial there's
three large shopping plazas and when you drive through it you get the sense that you're on a very big road there's traffic lights there's wide pavement so it's very car oriented there's drive-throughs in the master plan we
called for encouraging the reuse of existing buildings new buildings close together and near the street line and three stories maximum with mixed use development meaning mixing commercial with residential and um that's a little
challenging because if we look at it it's already built out with these shopping plazas so this is something that we're looking to see in the future perhaps when these are not there anymore so how how do we wrap our heads around
that uh we also talked about infill which means adding buildings within the parking lots and within in between other buildings to make the sense feel closer to the street and we talked about street
landscaping design standards or what I would call in planner speak a streetscape so um the last thing I noticed in the in the um master plan was that we looked to reconstruct exit 20 and the Tarland 53 by by CVS that
intersection in front of Big Y so it's challenging to meet the goals of the master plan here because it's a state road it's not a local road and it's mostly built out so we have to keep our eye on it recently we have had what what I was
talking about with infill with the Dunkin Donuts Starbucks um the ATM and in the uh Kingsbury Square Plaza and the UPS that was built the warehouse building that was built at the uh industrial park we have a new apartment building under construction opposite the
uh stop and shop intersection and we have exit 20 scheduled for reconstruction hopefully in 26 2728 timeline so it's moving a little bit because we're looking for some additional funding and um we're
currently using your money introducing that 53 Tarkland intersection into the tip um and I'll show you those in a minute we also picked up the Blackwater Conservation Area off of Winthrup Street and we have a couple of vacant
storefronts and empty buildings starting to show up in this part of town this is the proposed reconstruction of exit 20 uh formerly exit 10 if people aren't sure where this is this is the town line between Kings if you're
driving away from Big Y and crossing the highway instead of the uh kind of nothing there'd be um hopefully some roundabouts to control traffic and make it safer there and believe it or not we think we
can solve the whole intersection at Tarkland um and CVS and the intersection in front of Big Y as one large project as a roundabout and it fits and uh our engineers already met with all of the
property owners and they're supportive so we're going to introduce this into the tip we hope this spring and apply for grant money to um do the engineering design and see how see how lucky we are what the study recommends is that we
really keep an eye on these vacancies and what's affecting those and also um look at reszoning mixeduse developments talk to the plazas and make sure that we keep our eye on on what's happening there and see if we can encourage
redevelopment that continues to help us thrive so moving on here's Town Center again and here's the cemetery and there's Town Hall when it used to be on Green Street and um it was heavily
developed back then and and it remains that way today many of the structures are still here today it's very car oriented your experience driving through it is more about the traffic signals and the um the
street than it is the buildings and the landscaping so we have similar concerns in terms of the look and feel of driving through the corridor and I looked at the master plan and it called for in this area increasing sewer capacity to encourage
investment so that's a uh something that we've accomplished as a community again streetscape or landscaping enhancements introducing on street parking but I'll say again it's a state road so that's not really something that we have
control over um but we also talked about constructing some off- streetet parking and we talked about allowing mixed use at a moderate scale and really focusing on a walkable town center recent activities in the area include that uh Mass Highway is planning to put
in better crosswalks all along this area in the coming year um we recently applied for and are waiting to hear any minute now whether we got the funding to reconstruct the pedestrian crosswalk at the Green Street um where the um library
is and do some work on the sidewalks there if we get that grant I'm excited to hear that the um highway department will be looking to reconstruct the sidewalk on the other side on Green Street so it' be a really uh good bang
for the buck if we're able to do that um we have new mixed use behind the post office we have um that that parking space that everyone was so um enamored with but really trapped us in terms of
traffic has been taken away we have the new brew pub A3 pizza we have the new apartment building at 55 summer and we print plaza invested in their parking lot and did a makeover
which um was a big improvement mixed use is now allowed and staff is working really hard on Maple Street the old fire station that's kind of falling down it's used for storage but there's water in the basement like it's really in rough shape uh we got grant money to do a
phase one and phase two site assessment what does that mean we know it's polluted so we're we're measuring how much pollution and what we would have to do to clean it up and then we're going to apply for the money to do the cleanup um this spring and then hopefully it can be reused for low density housing that's
similar to what's there in the neighborhood um you know we'll have to decide how much of that land we we have under our control but definitely the fire station we also uh conservation just received a design grant for dam
removal on the other side of Maple Street further down uh so it's private property but there's a dam there that's in bad shape and the idea of taking the dam down is something that the property owner is favorable to and it would help restore fish runs and uh it would be
really good for the stream and for water quality we're also meeting with uh people about the culvert for the that's called Stony Brook when Stony Brook runs underneath it actually runs underneath uh one of the buildings on the I don't
know what I call it the east side or the north side of 3A there you can't really see it when you're driving through but it's a relatively small very old covert and we want to make sure that we are talking with MASDOT about the sea level
rise question when in the future we have these heavy rainstorms and water comes flowing down that stream already now it gets within a foot of the building and we know it's a floodway we want to make sure that we're doing what we can to prevent problems on 3A so we're already
talking with our uh regional planning agency about that and and posing questions to people about how we can work together to because looking at that and understanding how or what might need to happen to to handle that covert may
be needing to be resized and that it's under a building uh is a big project and it would also impact u our downtown town center so we want to really wrap our heads around that and see how that impacts infrastructure and we have also applied
for funding both from town meeting and other sources and to ARP for an accessible trail behind the senior center the study recommends that we look at a town center revitalization plan which would include streetscapes mixeduse
opportunities off- streetet parking walkability the possibility of using the railed um as a trail and the flood storage capacity I was talking about a minute ago um now we have the crossroads which
back in 1903 didn't exist we didn't have the highway now if you think about that area the Charlie Horse Duncan um we've got the pizza place we've got Keegan's
Creations we've got uh Cancun we've got other KFC Ordas you know we've got lots of right off the highway um restaurants there and we need to start thinking of that as part of our community it's it's got a a lot of neighborhoods around it
it's very walkable area and it wasn't addressed in the master plan recent activities in the area include um more better crosswalks for Masdot uh the new Dunkin Donuts Plaza building that was constructed there's
been some reinvestment by the private sector and some of the old houses along Main Street which is good to see um Keegan's reused the Duncan brothers reused the old U Burger King but we are seeing some vacant spaces in the strip plazas some buildings that are getting
overgrown some buildings that are not being used um and we know that the hotel itself which was a hotel became transitory housing that use the transitory housing will end this year and so we've already put up uh a call to
the owners to say you know we need to talk about what's going to happen with this building after the that use sunsets and the study recommends that we do what I just described uh possibly looking at some intersection improvements at Spring Street where the
El Knife trucks come out again that's working with the state uh sidewalk improvements if we can and also to keep an eye on that former hotel site the south end this the last area is
Rocky Nook and again um that whole area used to be called Rocky Nook now I think we think of the Nook as the uh the piece that juts out but correct me if I'm wrong my whole life been like from the house
like bridge over yeah so it used to all be Rocky Nook and think about that that was that used to be where everybody um you know there were like big hotels and all these uh wooden structures for the people that came on the train to relax
and have a holiday away from Boston and then when the uh trains connected to the Cape and then we had Route Three I think of Cape Cod as the new beach resort for the Bostononians and we are now using we have our road that isn't being used the
way it used to be used it used to be for hotels and and restaurants and things on your way to the Cape so we've got to really think about what that this this road means to us now and uh what we've got is uh the Cobb and Drew building
which is literally falling down into the street we have some dilapidated and empty lots we have um some structures that are residences that are also not in great shape and once again we need to really
look carefully at where our future is going to be on this road in the master plan we talk about transitioning from an autooriented strip to more of a mixeduse again combining commercial with residential enhancing
walkability the possibility of connecting with Cordage Park along the rail trail is something that we're investigating um encouraging redevelopment patterns near the street line smaller scale mixed use and improving the uh the Howland's Lane and Crescent Street intersections once again
it's a state road so we're really need to step in one of the things that we can do is do some of the preliminary engineering and engage with the state on design ideas so that they can introduce things into the tip which is where we might be able to get federal funding to
help us with some of these intersections um it takes time and it takes an investment by the community to take that first step recent activities include as I mentioned some reinvestment by private sector in limited areas if you think of
like Cumberland's was a brown field or polluted site that got cleaned up and reconstructed but that was a while ago um we I've talked with the people that are using Coben they're not the owners uh we don't know either one of us who the owner is but finding the owner would
be key it is the key to finding the funding to clean up that site redevelop that site uh we have a grant that was submitted through our regional planning agency to look at the rail trail as a feasibility study again the idea of connecting
Cordage to Town Center to Marshfield I'm not sure it can be done but we're looking at it you know and more crosswalks the study recommends that we focus on Smel corridor improvements um look at reconstruction of Crescent
Street and Howland's intersections investigate that rail trail uh consider reszoning the industrial district on Prospect Street to either residential or mixed use because that's an industrial use in what's become a residential neighborhood
and that doesn't really fit the area anymore um talk with property owners of vacant underutilized and dilapidated properties and try to encourage land assemblies and redevelopment and look for zoning opportunities so our common themes
are looking at guidelines for future redevelopment of what we feel we see when we drive down the street the the buildings and the street landscape we need to work hard as a community to communicate with Mass Highway and invest in that preliminary engineering so that
we can get the conversation started um we need to continue to seek ways in our community to reinvest and improve on our road sidewalks and bike and pedestrian um movement and we need to support
reinvestment in residential and commercial properties however we can that could mean zoning adapted to uh different areas of the corridor like the four sections I just talked about um downtown revitalization planning and exploring resources for lower income
residences or struggling businesses to be able to reinvent reinvent and reinvest in their properties um I didn't give you the handout so I'm going to skip that and ask if there you have any questions
what about the other side of town near Sacred Heart well that wasn't studied as part of this we just focused on the car 53 down through Summer Street to to Plymouth i want to say it looks like an amazing amount of work that you you've
been putting putting in on this i I I really am very intrigued about the idea of the um roundabout at uh at um Big Y what Kingsbury Plaza yeah that that that would be amazing that plaz has been well that whole intersection has been just a
mess for 40 years so that'd be amazing it would be nice though to see as you stated Val the um kind of we have that like auto strip theme going down to get to really get that to change yeah and I
I I think that's the role of the planning board if you will to look at these design standards start talking about um you know how do we how do we accomplish that we have a little bit of seed money um I can apply for grants but
first I want to sort of start talking with those different neighborhoods and and with this board and look at the stuff we've already done you know we've done a lot of work in the master plan where we d we drew all kinds of cross-sections and design standards but we didn't take any action on it and I
think there's a lot of opportunities for us to start to work with our community on a more not the whole corridor but like section by section say what do you guys want to see what would fit here and include the businesses in those
conversations it'll take time um and the goal is to just keep moving keep steady and um you know I've I'm only one and I'm going to lose Aaron and and I'm not going to be able to do this by myself so
we're going to need to you know team up with other boards uh look for grant money to try to get some of this done but I think it's important that we do it uh because I think that what we're seeing is some signs that of disinvestment and some signs of of
neglect that we could really encourage the state uh to reinvest and we could encourage our community reinvest in this this uh this beautiful possibility that we have in front of us instead of um not you know it's a lot to try to bite off
as one big thing but if we do it in small parts I think it's more manageable whoever is watching I want to I want to state that it's a bunch of crap that we're losing Aaron just putting it out there whoever was watching for the record well I'm I'm upset but um
I understand the town needs to make cuts but it's it's unfortunate that it's in planning because that makes it harder to plan it's just I mean you're doing so much i I mean just what you just presented right there i Yeah I've had to watch this like 15 20 times yeah aaron's
ready to do that if I make her watch it again that's going to be the worst thing ever think Is that a money issue or is it a lack of work issue it's a It's a money issue what is It's a money issue the budget it's a it's a money issue but
also the generalization is oh the planning board's not busy so the planner must not be busy and the and the building department's not busy so it's that's what I heard is what the excuses are but that's not it's not accurate no just because you're not meeting that often doesn't mean I'm not working
really hard and it's really unfortunate that the perception is that because we don't have as much building going on that the planner is not busy well I find it kind of ironic that they kind of talk out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to uh trying to maintain and have good people but okay now we have
good people and now we're losing good people so it makes absolutely no sense i mean I I I know the town I guess I could go on and on i won't but you can hear me that sucks so I feel like we're making a
lot of good progress right now and that's what and it's just going to it's going to get it's going to get bogged down and you're going to be not able to do a lot of the stuff exactly there's nothing the board can do about it well I had invited you to some of the
meetings with FinCom and others but no one came sorry so at this point at this point it's town meeting where else did they make cuts do you know this is it this is the only place they This is the only position that's
being cut okay i know the school had a budget issue too but it's separate kind of they sorted out their budget issues so they won't have police everybody had to Yeah I know police was unhappy except some um do you want us to do the minutes
get the minutes done so lovely i'll make a motion to accept the minutes of uh March 10th 2025 as presented okay we got a motion second got a second all those in favor i I
I'll make a motion that we accept the minutes of March 24th 2025 as presented i was not here for that so uh hold on not present so with two people we can still Can we still vote on this with two
people voting i was here and John was here uh Bob is here i think we need three okay let's unfortunately let's we got to wait that one's up okay
um before we end tonight I I definitely wanted to say something about um you know we lost Christine H this I just heard last week and she worked uh as our admin for uh a bit here on the planning board and her husband John also served
on the uh at least I knew he served on the zoning um on the board of the zoning board of appeals and I was just sad to hear that and I'm sorry i'm sure John's probably not watching but uh just wanted to make make mention that we didn't you
know we feel bad about it and sorry to hear anybody else have anything to say about it i know Jonathan you I think it was she was gone before you yeah she was a sweetheart she worked in the building department too i bumped into the Frells the other day at the post office on
their way home from her uh funeral funeral i didn't even know yeah anyway just wanted to make a mention tom may have more to say when he comes to the meeting next time is there anything else anything else you
guys want to talk about no okay it was a pretty good meeting it's a little contentious okay well hopefully it'll go smoother next time we got a motion to adjurnn maybe so move second all right
we got a motion to adjurnn in a second no debating it so uh all those in favor say I i i meeting adjourned