--------- our applicants have uh given up and are looking to continue to a future meeting but the next one on the agenda is 10 West Main Street y I do see Mr perno there oh and here's rich richio is on apologies if we put you to sleep with
byw talk Mr Richie oh no worries um I found it was interest very interest interesting discussion so um I'm going to share my screen just to put the plan back up on the board that we disc discussed
previously and um and I'll just say one more time if there's anybody from the historic district commission I'm not sure if you file the meeting agenda for this evening but n please don't speak or if you didn't please don't speak if you have a quorum okay um Mr chair can you see the
yes do thank you okay great um so basically after we left um we left your meeting we um there was a few outstanding comments from from your board and mainly just um to start off the the discussions with
the historic commission as well um we did have a pro we did have our first meeting with the historic district commission um got some some good feedback from them on the building and um we're we're currently working uh
towards um trying to address some of their concerns um but we did want to come back tonight before the planning board uh refreshed the planning board's memory on the plan go over a couple issue uh comments uh one of the questions was with you guys
to fire department sign off and approval which I believe you should have now in your possession um from uh deputy chief Robbins that we had reviewed the plan with him and we have a couple minor uh issues that would get taken care of
during building permit hydrant locations and some of the fire protection stuff within the building um so that was that took care of of that concerned there were some questions about the number of visitor
parking spaces that would be available on the site which um we basically be looking at uh restricting or providing two spaces for each of the 10 two-bedroom
units um so that would be 20 spaces there one space for the uh for the eight one-bedroom units which would be eight spaces and then there'd be nine spaces per your Zoning for the office SL retail uses depending on what was in those in
the uh the commercial component which leaves uh seven Extra Spaces that could be used for visitors for the residents uh during the day or at night the retail spaces would also be available um um we have increased some
of the um screening on the plan we sh going a um white vinyl privacy fence between our property and the church property after discussions with representatives of the church we're extending that around the back portion
of the building um and we're also proposing some Evergreen um screening trees on our side of the fence to to soften The View and also um provide some additional screening as they would grow
over time uh to the residential property I guess uh which is to the south of of the building um we have a notation on the plan to install either a white vinyl privacy fence or a planted HED R between our property and the uh historical
society's property um we we expect to continue discussion with them on that moving forward um did the historic soci district commission have any feedback on the overall design height scale of the
property um they did have concern with the size of the building so we our architect is currently looking at ways to soften the impact um but at this point we're we're proposing the same footprint as is currently shown and um
we would like I do have some renderings we we did show this rendering previously um and then this was a rendering that we presented to the to the historical commission as well um showing the scale of the building in relation to the
church on next door um and then we also have a side rendering uh this is be from the um the historical uh Society side and this would be from the church
side and then finally from from the rear um but at this point you're asking this board to evaluate the previously proposed plan in terms of scale and size correct correct knowing that the um just
basically given given the uh the timing of everything with the Historical Society we would like to get uh an approval pending or conditional to receiving a certificate of appropriateness from historical knowing
that if there's any significant changes we would have to come back to the board at a later date um for a modification okay so you answered my next question uh in terms of procedure so thank
you did you have anything else that you wanted to present I think I kind of cut you off there a little bit no no I mean the basically yeah no that was really I was I know we we had a good discussion with with your board the last meeting and good night
Maddie night you're good keep going good night and would welcome any uh any additional questions from from the from the board that we can we can try to answer in advance of hopefully uh requesting a you know a conditional approval on this tonight um we do need
to to start the process with massot on the on the curb cut and receiving local approval through the site plan review process is a prerequisite to us filing with them understood additional questions from
members of the board yeah I got one so I brought up in the last meeting uh a technicality and over the past week or
two whatever we've addressed it in our definition for top of the shop dwelling we've agreed to add the additional line I I think we've agreed seem like we said a positive one for that um uses within top the shop dwelling developments shall
be limited to only those allowed as a right or by special permit as prescribed by the zoning District the de development resides and shall not include any use not permitted by such District so given
that multifamilies are not permitted within Village Center core right so we're talking about language changes in zoning re codification this applicant is applied under the current zoning code so that's the one that
applies okay so we still retain the wiggle room here the current zoning bylaw is what this application needs to be judged by okay for all its warts
so just to double check so we are comfortable with the idea that any residential use could have been used for this permit whatever is allowed into the current language yes that was my
technicality which I wanted to find the Technic Al it was in our zoning bylaw it says top of the shop is allowed okay and a residential use but it also says in our table that the types of housing or residential uses allowed are tourist
home bed and breakfast those are allowed single family home is not multif family is not so does this supersede our code and give us the wiggle BR so so what that is saying is that multif family
alone is not allow so top of the shop is so it's residential above commercial but they couldn't just do a a just a a residential building there they have to have that bottom floor commercial to uh to qualify
here to but I think I would say just Pa thank you for your view and your opinion on it I think to a point it's also if the members feel that that the language has a different interpretation they are free to use that
as they vote do keep in mind though you're you're limited on the special permits here too uh just m you know there's site plan approval but you have two special permits one for the uh Water Resource
protection district and the uh the affordable housing um so I just bring that up because the uh the the general special perit condition are you know criteria you look at often times such as socially
and economically feasible not applicable here but again going back to when we were the intent of of this area was to prohibit a residential only type of use in Village Center
core so we would view I would view multi you know being able to do any multif family above commercial such as what they're doing years this was exactly what we were thinking okay but if I could just
and I know this is a quick thing hypothetically in the time period between now and when our new bylaw comes into effect or or if our bylaw fails the reification
fails then by saying this can have multi family above we've granted permission for everybody in the village commercial to put m family by right above if as long as it's above
commercial and and um just so if they get their building permits in before town meeting then they're subject to the current bylaw if the if the permits come in after then I would think that the the
new regulations would would apply I think it would go with the permit approval probably yeah yeah um I'll just ask if anybody's in the zoom meeting and you're un please check that you're muted he a little bit of feedback
here um Allan I do see you with your hand raised joining us uh from vacation I believe so thank you and uh what comment did you have here it's pretty soft if you can get closer to the microphone we can barely hear you how
about little bit better but not much all right well I'll do what I better gotta first point going back to what Steve was just saying our exact intention was multi family over commercial that was the exact point of
this specifically we pointed out Manfield Center buildings multiple times my original point of raising my hand was wondering if the historical commission was presented to the idea of a white V which I absolutely hate I hate
long One V offenses I think they're absolutely ugly maybe if there was a row of or something similar PL on both sides it would ease my about it I would think more towards
AE something more soft especially dist uh yes we actually and I believe um Chris is at the meeting as well Chris P um but we when we had discusss with the church that's what they had specifically
requested um what is the white vinyl on that side um on the back side we were just trying to be consistent I did propose a row of plantings as well in front of that and then um once again we were deferring to
historical and what they would want to on this I um yeah my perspective Alan and you can uh yeah my perspective on this would be it's currently shown in the plan as a white vinyl fence if the historic district commission wants a different fence I think that we would
vote that a minor modification to the site plan in about2 seconds so I'll make that motion right now thank you um Mr chair just wanted just real quickly on the um multif family versus
top of the sh um top of the shop housing I mean my interpretation is that that top of the shop housing line in the in the use is a separate totally separate line item than the multif family or single
family where it would be allowed and and I I don't know the whole every word of the Bible if there's a cross reference to multif family under the top of the shop definition but I I think in my I'm
not a lawyer but in my opinion You' be you'd be well within your rights to to allow the top of the shop housing to be a multif family use understood thank you for your comment there um we do have Mr kemell who I believe is a member of the
historic district commission just to make sure I don't think you have a quorum in the meeting correct so I'll be Bob Kimbell 51 Pine Street you have the historic district commission I'm not a part of that you have the historical commission I'm not a part of
that I am the Historical Society we are trying to keep that distinction we are a bust we we sit right next door we have had some conversation with Mr prono on this property but we have not discussed offense we do want offense we want some
plantings you know we want some things done there um and I'm not too sure what we're in favor of the white vinyl either so it's something we need to have a conversation about my recommendation to the board would be to and I know Mr perck will do this
we'll sit down and talk to the entire uh we're we're a nonprofit 30 301 C3 so we don't the town owns a land but we have designated property of the property as ours so conversation should be had with
the society about what we're looking for number one the other concern we have is this is a very small tyght lot we do not want construction material on our or vehicles on our property parking Etc so
we want someone to take that into account who as this process goes forward but obviously he has the right to do this uh we just want to make sure that we have certain things in place that uh will make our will complement our
property also I interested thank you additional questions from the board I do see somebody else coming up to the podium as well okay you could have kept going you need to stop I had to stop hi uh
Christine Carmichael 15 Barrow Street I am on the Historical Society not the district not the commission um I know this this is going to happen uh and I've expressed my concern about
the parking lot before and and you know after especially listening to that fun MBTA thing right for one I'm not asleep which is you know it's past my bedtime but there were some some talk about um parking and and I don't know what the
requirements are but I know like a one bedroom apartment it's usually maybe a couple can share one bedroom I mean that's how I started out when I was was married and we each had a car cuz we don't work at the same place and Norton doesn't have
public transportation so I'm concerned with the amount of parking that he has available um with his 18 units of of condos um I also have a question about this Village core commercial is there
any restriction of the number of residential things that are there's not a hard restriction on the number number of residential units the district guidelines were designed to you cap the building a certain height and you cap
the amount the percentage of the property it can cover you got to add parking So eventually you start getting to a maximum amount of space that you can build with um to your question about parking they've the parking that they're
proposing they basically split the building into two and they did met the zoning requirements for the amount of retail space they have on the bottom put that in one Spa one section and then the amount of residential units they have on the top
put that in another section I think as they described they have that and then they've set aside what they're looking at as nine guest spots and each of the can you just the total number of parking spaces per unit Mr Richie I think you
mentioned in your initial intro but just to restate yeah we we and this will be a condominium project where we could control how many packing spots the the units are um have uh what they come with
yeah when you bu when you buy unit five you get spot number seven and that's it basically right yeah I mean so we had um 10 two bedroomroom units so that would be 20 spaces we're just a we're just applying a a space for a bedroom for
what they would be um provided um 10 two bedrooms uh 10 yeah 10 two bedroom units for 20 and then eight one-bedroom units for eight so that's 28 spaces we have 44 spaces on site yeah and in theory if
somebody needed two cars in one bedroom they would need either find a unit that came with two unit two parking spaces or they need to find another place to put their second car and that's what we're afraid of that they'll put their second car in our parking lot um and you would be
perfectly valid Towing that car yes okay the the other concern I had and I know Mr pero mentioned having sprinklers in the garage area in case it was a car fire because a fire engine could not get into that garage area um in today's day
and age a lot of people are buying electric car and the sprinkler will not put out a an electric vehicle car fire so so that was our other concern because being so close to our property and being such a large building if that catches
fire it has a potential to cause a fire damage to our property so I don't know if any of that was ever taken in consideration when the fire department find off um I can't speak to the logic that deputy chief used to evaluate the
property and those concerns but obviously he's waiting on the sprinkler system and all the other fire mitigation measures and knows it's going to be a parking area so I can't say that we I mean obviously would be required to meet any fire coats for safety purposes and that would cover
any EV spaces that would be provided on the site okay thank you understood your concern anybody on the zoom meeting who wanted to raise a question here I'll ramble for a couple of seconds to see if anyone wanted to raise their virtual
hand in the meeting otherwise we do have somebody else in Odum here good evening um so I wanted to address some of the questions that came up um meeting with Dean Zer for the church he's the one who actually recommended having a white Final Fence that can all be changed
especially working with with with Bob and Christine about what the plantings will be along the side over there the fence whatever it might be that's all will be on site we'll we'll figure all of that out as we go um but I think I think there is a site plan but we're
okay with yes yes so any issues whether whether the fence isn't allowed with historic or however maybe we'll take care of whatever it might be thank you thank you yeah if and it did come with a requirement to change the site plan as I
mentioned that would changing the fence on the property would probably take us about5 seconds to uh to vote on don't give us that much credit thank you Jim you wouldn't be the one voting on it anyway so
okay additional comments from the board here not seeing any specifically um Mr richio or anybody else are you You' stated at the beginning are you looking for the board to issue a decision this evening or are
you looking for us to continue as you continue to discuss with other boards we would we would request the um the the board to post the hearing tonight and and issue a decision on what's been submitted with the understanding that if there are any changes in the future we would have to
go back uh come back to the board understood um to the members we have the the ability to close the public hearing and or issue a decision if we choose we could close the public hearing and save
just issuing a decision uh for a future session obviously the applicant would like it done as soon as possible but our only concern would be with regards to you know the elections and the board changing over in the next month no I think if we did that we would
be committing that we would get you a decision before that happened okay and that's what we would be that's what we would be looking for okay Mr chair yes do we do we have anything in writing from the historic
district commission as to what they are actually looking for in terms of dimensional or setback changes to this Paul I don't think we did we didn't receive anything from them the applicant has stated that if the historic district commission
requires Chang that require us the modification then they're fine with that so so we can make a con on oh it has to be con their approval yeah and if the approve and if they approve it but only with conditions that would make them change what they put in front of us then
it' have to come back to us with a modification and then if we have to decide if it's minor ification or major modification if it's a major modification we bring notice and do the whole thing over again so additional questions or do we have a
motion to potentially close the public here can just make that into the mic so it shows up on the video I know we up our mics public hearing okay we have a motion from Rob and a second from Jim any further
discussion on the motion to close the public hearing okay hearing none I'll go through the role here starting with Rod um no voting not to close public close the hearing yes Steve yes Jim yes
Laura yes Eric yes Allan yes and I will vote Yes as well so the public hearing is now closed we won't take any further testimony or evidence um do members feel like they want to move forward with a decision this evening or do we want to save that
for not our not our meeting on the 8th but the following meeting before the election take a motion either way I'm fine moving forward tonight have all the conditionals we want to have on there beside the standards standard conditions condition
none historic district commission approval I believe that's the correct body correct PA historic district commission is the correct historic that's correct yes historic district commission y thank you Brian um storage the question about storage being
storage being allowed on site I believe that's a standard condition right no storage is allowed on site site next yeah storage and construction vehicles are required to remain on the subject
property outside of specific agreements with the but with the butters that seems like it goes without saying it can stay on your own property but doesn't hurt us to restate it in this case especially given the historic society's
comment perfect moved one thing that would to approve I guess second so that's with standard conditions and the additional ones we discussed
alen correct okay and we have a second from Jim and the motion is in the affirmative just to make sure everybody is aware okay any further discussion on the motion okay call this before can we get a clarification of the motion is this
there's again two special permits one is for affordable housing the other is for the Water Resource Protection District the third is for the site plan so we have a site plan approval yes and then we have the approval on the
Water Resource Protection District which has its own conditions and then the affordable housing which has its own conditions correct I'll modify my motion includ as the Wetland Protection District Water Resource do we have to make a separate
motion those separate okay and Paul just to confirm the conditions on the Water Resource protection dist permit are um typically just essentially not having a negative or adverse impact on um our drinking water supply because
this isn't this isn't Z three typically this would be geared toward you'll remember our Cumberland Farms we're not doing that but this is you know residential commercial project so as long as it's not having an an adverse impact
okay so the motion is specifically for approval on the Wetland special permit the Water Resource Protection District special permit okay and Rob I'll start with you no Steve no Jim yes Laura yes Eric
yes Allan yes and I will vote Yes okay and the Alan did you want to make a motion on the second special permit for the affordable housing moved with standard conditions
seconded as okay we have a motion in a second and Paul did you want to just restate the conditions for that approval sure that they would have to provide at least 10% and in this case 18 units is to Affordable units which is what they're providing and they're providing
it onsite so we would have to add conditions regarding the requirements for affordable uh for affordable housing and you know making sure that it's over a period of time so forth
okay so Alan that would standard conditions also include the conditions required for affordable housing yes okay further discussion on the motion to vote affirmative on this would just require affir would require
affordable housing if it correct or they can make a payment in right they yeah be they F to follow the affordable bylaw um which is they' provided the units on site rather than a payment in not but yes I mean obviously we can't
require affordability if nothing happens so so further discussion um no is this on building it at all or just specific affordable housing special permit that they've asked for special yes now the first one was on the
Water Resource Protection District special permit this is for affordable housing and then the final would be on the site plant so on the affordable housing special permit Rob I'll start with you again if you don't mind um nope and no
Steve yes Jim yes Laura yes Eric yes Alan yes yes and I will vote Yes so the next is on the site plan we have further action on the site
plan just we just go over really quickly the standards for denying a site plan sure so generally a site plan to be denied we basically need to find that the site plan proposed
is inconsistent with the zoning District or the property it sits with in a way that it can't be cured basically um by the conditions that by conditions that would generally be seen as
reasonable that's a paraphrasing Paul do you think that I've given an accurate representation yes okay I would make the motion to approve is it 13 or 17 I can't read my writing 13 13 with the conditions as
we seconded okay we have a motion and a second any further discussion on the motion okay go through the r one more time Rob I'll start with you again no Steve no
Jim yes Laura yes yes Eric yes Alan yes and I will vote Yes as well okay so that concludes our action on this item um we'll work on issuing
decision and following up in the coming weeks thank you everybody thank you thank you have a good night everyone okay next item listed on our agenda is 361 rear roll colony Road this was continued for March 25th
Paul do you know if this applicant is still with us or if they have fallen asleep okay hello sir I want be there hello how are you can we go to where your background is that would be great uh otherwise I'll ask if you can just give an introduction of yourself and the
project and we'll dive in here absolutely uh my name is uh Michael Edwards I'm from Civ engineering associate and I'm representing Jason Massie for his uh post project it's located at 361 R Old Colony Road um where it it's
located is um just past basically the golf course and the school um and the lot contains a single family residence about 2 and half acres of land and a zon in commercial zoning uh with a small portion in the rear
which is located are you trying to share your screen or would you like Town staff too yeah right now as you're talking I wanted to interrupt you and make sure that you had the ability to uh speak to the picture rather than just try and spell it
out can you guys see that yes okay so here's the site where it's located um it's located in the commercial Zone with a small portion of residential in the rear here's where the site currently
exists um it's a single family dwelling it has Town water it's service by septic um existing driveway there a land isolated subject to flooding which we're currently um in conservation getting that clarified in
regards his jurisdiction and this potential gr pool um as far as the proposed site goes it's just a access Drive coming off the driveway we have a proposed um building it's going to be a trade service with
office paring requirements are met um onsite septic Town water will come from the existing dwelling which has been approved by the town water department and then drainage will be collected in catch basins drain m h so all separator
will be uh infiltrating this B as far as previous um it did go to U the Zoning Board in 2022 the get the use approved uh with some stipulations prining Board site plan review compliance with the vegetation um bylaw
and that no part of the building or a parking space can be within that prop and we have the uh that bylaw on the bottom reference on the plan and the buffer strip shown you have the 50 Foot buffer strip where
joins residential then we have buff strip where it joins all commercial LS I guess that be good time this the board for questions sure questions from the board at this point I this is a site plan
approval um this property is basically right after the guard rails on 123 right I correct yeah kind of across from was it CH Pond yes it's across from the other
industrial buildings over there yeah for the van servicing places there a little bit downhill it's across from yeah there is well there's EV it's cross from like A's gymnastics and the car dealership and yeah
yes do we have fire sign off on the sweep analysis noting it's not signed on open gov and that is a really tight right angle when you first enter so just a question is this do are we aware if the fire department's looked
over the there we go you've got the turning radius already there yes they have uh we I did a preliminary uh meeting with the printing board to introduce the project to get a feeli because we inherited this project from another engineer and we were getting a
story from the client on where it stood I just wanted to bring it to the town before we presented to get an idea where they if they've heard of this where it stands get more information and the fire department was there and day outline what I needed to give them and this is what we gave them and I
saying not good but this is what we gave them this is what they wanted okay yeah if we can just make sure there whether it's you or with Town staff that they uh they check the box that they have received this and they approve um that can be a condition on
whatever we act on if needed same with lighting and Landscaping there's no plans here if we approved it tonight we would need to condition it with a lighting and landcaping plan I think lighting and landcaping plans are part of our site
plan approval requirements Paul right but they did identify um wall mounted lights on the on the site plan itself detail the bot
locations and typically you ask for a you know light study to show what the impacts would be for you know offsite but if these are wall mounted know these aren't 20 ft up in the air and they're downward
projection and in terms of landscaping plans in terms of have you discussed anything with the applicant on that or are they yeah we need to condition that or um is that something that you've reviewed I guess from the applicant perspective from what a landscaping plan would look like for this we we've
exchange some comments about that because again that was a condition actually in the in the zba approval too is to have a a vegetative buffer um and we don't see it here and uh we want to make sure we're enforcing
cba's request and so you could condition it or we could ask the applicant to provide one you could do that too okay um just to add to that I did reach out to the applicant and um informed him about the
Landscaping plan and he said he's going to supply a landscaping okay um so for the board we can condition on receiving um or we could choose to continue to a future session
and look to act on it at that point um so that would be not the eth but the meeting after that I'm okay additional questions from the board I don't see any hands raised in the zoom
if anybody's here in person would like to speak I'll ask you just come up to the podium if you're leg still work okay seeing no more questions to the board our actions would be either to continue to a future meeting close the
public hearing and move forward Mr chair if I might add to that this is going to Conservation Commission on the 14th the day before your the day before the uh our meeting on the 15th right so this would fall into so it be
contingent on approval by fire and conservation right and if conservation had changes I guess uh I'll ask this at the applicant if you are if you are comfortable with where your conversations are with conservation
that's fine whether you would like this board to act this evening and if conservation makes you change things that you would have to come back here for a modification uh or if you would like us to continue to a future meeting and
allow you the flexibility to have that meeting first I think it would be best to continue the me the meeting seeing as we have to be there for conservation any comments I don't foree any comments
changing it okay also [Music] think okay so if you're comfortable continuing motion to continue yeah is there anything further that we want to give the applicant before we continue I
think the Landscaping plan if it's feasible to have that for the next meeting that way we don't have to condition it and we can see it um and now you have a deadline to give your client so that makes it easier too anything further I have a motion to
continue we have a second second we have a second okay anything further at this time before we vote U just from is it the 15 for continuing to correct not the eth we have two things that we see conservation before the next day
probably yeah okay okay so we'll go through the rle here Rob yes Steve yes Jim yes Laura yes Eric yes
Alan yes and I will vote Yes so we are continued thank you very much sir all right thank you have a good night is nice to last one everybody one more 408 Old Colony Road
I and this is Legacy engineering this is an application for marijuana establishment I see Miss Noak on the zoom call thank you for joining and sticking with us I hope you walked away from the zoom meeting sometime in the last three and a half hours is um but I
also see a member here up at the podium so I'll let your team present and we'll go from there thank you Mr chairman Dan Mar Legacy engineer here with alista um PA would you mind putting the plan up that I sent over
sure should be coming up in a second uh Dan was it the layout plan or I sent over a presentation plan okay yeah it was the one from today Paul yeah I thought I copied it over on here but it's it was uploaded to the site yeah no
I I can pull it up I just have to go to a different place great Brian has it up and as as we go through this I know uh I've been through a couple of the marijuana proposals but just um I know a couple of our members
probably have not so just if there's a specific piece where X Y andz is governed by the state Marijuana regulations which is a lot which a lot yes you can just speak to that as you go through it sure I'm just going to I'm going to be pretty quick here I know
it's been long long night um so the site is located at 408 Old Colony Road um it's the former Morse Insurance building very small site it's 9,000 square ft you switch to the B little hous sits right in front of the car wash right yes it's
right in front of the car wash the little it's a one-story building it's about 1,000 square ft um there's paved parking in front to the right behind there's gravel driveway to the left of the building building there's a little bit of Green Space around the back as
you can see um it's Zone commercial it's in the mar marijuana overlay districts and uh Alyssa would like to open a retail marijuana dispensary in this facility switch to the next page right thank
you so we're proposing to basically just redo the parking lot there's no change of substance to the building there's a little there's a little knockout in the corner of the building right here that's two ft by 10 ft they're going to fill infill that to they basically make that
front corner of the portion of the building Square um there's an existing ramp handicap ramp on the side of the building that will be eliminated um it will be constructed along the front of the building along with a new entrance landing and a set of stairs there um and
that would allow us to basically create a one-way driving route around the building you'd come in on the on the left side of the building building there as you're looking at it on the plan and you circulate around counterclockwise and then you egress uh on the east side
of the building I did have a meeting with the deputy chief Robins um yesterday our original Plan called for some par two parking spaces to be located here we have a an unusual circumstance here the
property has an easement over the adjacent property which is the car wash property there's a pave strip there there's two parking spaces there so the property has the deed right to use those two parking spaces for another couple of years we were going to plan to move
those spaces into the site deputy chief Robbins expressed some concern about that and wanted to have at least a 2ot wide access area there so they could pull a vehicle in off the road so we did provide a revised plan here that shows that we're basically going to use the two spaces that we have in the easement
for as long as we have the easement and then once the easement expires if it expires those two spaces would go away would leave that 21 ft to the right of the building as you come in open as a driveway a 21t wide driveway so that the fire department could bring apparatus in
there if they wanted to and deputy chief was indicated to me that he was comfortable with that I know that he didn't comment on on the uh online yet but he told me he would so we did uh address that concern um
with respect to parking there's eight strip spaces presently two of which are in front of the building um zoning requires five we provided a traffic study Chapel Engineering Associates they went through a variety of things one of
the things they indicated was that uh approximately eight spaces is probably appropriate for this we have including the two offsite spaces 15 spaces shown we don't want to be underp parked here here we want to make sure we have enough parking um so that we're not impacting
the road so we think that's sufficient even with the elimination possibly of two of those spes so you go go down from 15 to 13 if the EAS expires uh in a couple of years we have uh a septic system that will be built over here that
was designed previously by another engineer so that would be constructed under the parking area there we have proposed a storm water management system underground at the back of the property there's no storm water management there presently I did receive comments from your peerreview consultant I did speak
to your peer review consultant we're going to tweak a couple of things but I basically have a revision ready to go tomorrow or the next day um there can't be that much storm water in that no it's nothing really substantive so we're basically we're introducing a catch Basin and a water quality tank and an
underground infiltration system good soils there it's all gravel um and then that will recharge uh the first part of any significant rainstorm the at we did provide a booklet as you know with a marijuana facility there's a lot of documents that
the bylaw requests and we provided a booklet with all of those documents uh there's a community host agreement in there um there's provisional lure from Cannabis control there's a comprehensive security plan I don't know if you're familiar with how these things work but
they're all pretty tightly regulated from a security standpoint when you go in the facility you go in a room and you get checked in they scan your license that goes up to the state if you don't get clear from the state you don't go in the building you get clear for the state then you get
buzzed into the building you go into the retail area you make a purchase and then you erress the building security cameras everywhere um it's all very tightly regulated by Canabis cannabis control and there's not a lot more to it
I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this proposed use or specific documents that we provided are they contining to run the delivery service at the same time yes so that's down the road in that case parking need that's why I was curious yes so their
delivery service will remain separate but it's a separate marijuana license goes against all the state and town counts so to speak as far as that I just met within the building trying toate traffic yes yeah we did provide a
traffic study they basically concluded that during the weekdays peak hours 10 to 17 new trips on a road that carries 15,000 plus vehicles that would have a negligible impact on traffic Peds oh yeah most businesses in and out in a couple minutes anyways it's it's not
long-term parking no it's very quick yeah yeah no I think uh yeah I wouldn't think that there's a whole lot of parking crossover between the two sites cuz I know with the previous delivery site the parking is kind of all array around around the back and around the edges of the sites there's not a whole
lot of uh extra parking requirements on paper on that site so no um additional questions for the applicant here yes with the understanding that there's not going to be a delivery
endorsement on this particular license um I did note on the sign on the site plan that the um standing S standing sign will reference delivery is that just for
advertisement can you look to the detail sheet please uh should be one more right there so at the bottom those are the signs I cannot read that from here it does say delivery and home dispensary and Home Delivery Service on the bottom of the
the one to the right there good job speak to that yeah so no there's no um delivery endorsement under uh this retail license I had just put that as kind of like marketing for the delivery
service since the other location is not customer facing we don't have a sign over there um and right we don't want people coming in due to the type of license but I figured that this would be a good opportunity to kind of talk about
both um or Broad cast both but they're they're not you know they're separate licenses you came in today if your car is broken next week I can bring it to you um I just had a question within the booklet itself um if you don't mind I'll
share because I've already got it pulled up so this is on page 10 102 of the booklet the maintenance of financial records um and these questions are probably going to be addressed towards Miss Noak specifically uh number six lucky green
ladies 408 shall adopt separate accounting practices at the point of sale for marijuana and marijuana product sales separate accounting practices separate from what do does that mean that you have to keep track of
sales of accessories different than marijuana is that what that's referring to to be honest it's been so long um since these were written um especially with all the delays that this uh business has incurred but what I can say
is that um the sale of merchandise or non cannabis accessories are separate um they're taxed separately uh they're documented separately and then both businesses are completely separate uh we
have two different point of salale systems two different llc's so they're completely different uh entities okay my hypothesis pretty close it was and that's kind of what I was getting at and I just wanted to make reference to number
seven um it makes reference to a delivery only licy and I think that needs to be updated to retail um and absolutely for sure need to be updated yeah and the same with on page
57 during a power outage it makes reference to the delivery agents should immediately remove product um and I think that just should be the marijuana uh retail agents most definitely yeah I used a lot
I mean a lot of the plans are so similar exact yeah no understood I did like a lot of find and replace but most definitely can update these are small fixes it was also predicated on whether if you were going to have a delivery endorsement then these are appropriate
um statements for this document but just to clarify if there's not going to be delivery control F for delivery I think is the yeah but I think that from our perspective we could treat that as a a scrib news eror that can be corrected Y no you should I noticed everybody jumped
when I did ask if the delivery was going at the same time you know and I wasn't going there at all but watching the reaction probably should just get the word out there Alan I see your hand raised in the meeting did you want to um I just got three quick
things do we have sill stores called out on the plan anywhere Le no start called out um I'll stop sharing hang that's there are some small landscape areas around the building where snow could be wind Road there's also Corners in the
parking lot where snow could be stored in Wind Road do we have a landscap and lighting plant I so there's really no substantive Landscaping there's you know twoot wide three foot wide strips around the building I suppose I could throw some
shrs in there if you want but it's all going to be very very small herbaceous type of so not any Landscaping reement is that what we're looking for we ask given the constrictions of
the site I guess are we asking for a waiver from the landscape plan requirement to the site plan we could I mean this is essentially a reuse of an existing building so yeah so if that's something that we want to include as a condition that we're
including a waiver if um if the applicant would like a us to do so for a formal Landscaping plan given what's been discussed is this actually it's like the entire lot is paved except for the asss
it's mostly paved pretty much a square yeah Square lot it's mostly paved oh I think you said you had three that was two right lighting we have is lighting calleded outwhere so the only lighting
that we would have is building mounted lighting and I certainly can provide that to you I guess the thing that just triggered on my mind what about impace
iing have 100% Almost 100% lock cover yes something trigger in my brain yeah but they do have they have been going through storm water peer review so and we're providing Stone water recharge
when there's essentially none presently we don't have a percentage of in my bra we did not find an impervious coverage limitation there's a building coverage limitation of 33% or 11.1 so it's okay to have 100% pervious
as long as you treat it I think just adding that uh I just did anything further at this point and I'll ask if anybody in the audience wants to make any public comment everybody in the zoom meeting as well from a public perspective while I while I if you
wanted to speak just please come to the podium and your name and address please sir yes my name is Joel shapir I'm your butter uh with the car I know the car wash 412 Old Colony Road um all all this project so I'm excited finally that something's going to get built there so
um I find that very positive I just had a question uh when there was uh no landscape plan is there will there at least be put some Burns because it is a tight spot and the parking spots go right up if they're going to the asphalt right up to my property would there be
some Burns so that go a big car someone hits the gas instead of the break they go over and right over into our our vacuums let's say so it would just be May a suggestion probably not very expensive but just to put some BMS
BSS maybe not BMS but uh concrete but if there was not if this wasn't done does that mean it's the thing a person could I'm sorry I I'm hot of hearing so my and I and I'm being bad here um so if there were no bir let's say we didn't do that is that sort of like a thing where a person with a car could actually just
you almost use that as a root up into your car wash they could just drive right across I mean we've had customers come out of our car wash instead of putting the foot on the brake they hit the gas they've gone straight they've actually gone took down shrubs took down vacuums so I just want to avoid any problems that's all yeah they'd have
they'd have to go wow 20 25 ft to get the a lot no they have to go about 10t 9 ft I'm just looking the edge of the pav surface and the measurement on the map the edge of the pav surface is not the edge of the lot understand okay it goes out probably maybe alista you might know
maybe about 6 7 ft uh beyond the the asphalt okay but you're asking that it not be possible for a car to roll easily through yeah I just don't want to have a car I just you know I just want to avoid any problems you know I guess they make those quick little concrete uh that get
nailed into the asphalt or something just to avoid any problems that's to satisfy you yeah that would be fine yeah no just just it's really for everybody just for this with your point that's is that would that be fall under kind of standard I'll go back to the
applicant in terms of that is that part of what you would consider standard parking lot design or is that something that you would uh note in the plan specifically do you think if that made sense for you no we certainly can put curb stops in those spaces that face the
vacuums I wouldn't want to put a curb because we want his property drains into our property and into our drainage system so we don't want to obstruct that um but curb stops in those two spaces is fine you're talking like the small concrete like 5ot bages they're like 4
in high yeah yes and you're saying those are fine right yeah that would be fine yeah just so avoid any problems on on your side small little issue he will to do it you're fine I think this is easy that's my only real issue thank you sir great and
uh okay further questions for the applicant comments I don't have so so we have a site plan and a special permit here yes I know um Paul for the special permit this is our standard special
permit conditions or these special marijuana ones they would be uh standard in the marijuana is that was one application it's one special it's the special permit for um for marijuana and
then you have the site plan okay the special permit for marijuana has different conditions than our standard approvals yes there are a few in they that I can provide from a previous yeah but is it are
they are the criteria different enough that we should review them before we vote that was my question like but the Water Resource Protection District are our criteria are it's not going to interfere with the Water Resource I could go over what the what your um in terms if the marijuana
permit has a different set of approval conditions they do um I have it right here um so it's the establishment is consistent with and does not dagate from the purposes and intent of this BW or other Town zoning bws that the establishment is designed to minimize
any adverse visual or economic impacts on the Butters and other parties of Interest The Establishment demonstrates that it meets or exceeds all pering requirements all applicable agencies within the Commonwealth will be in compliance with uh state laws and
regulations that the applicant has satisfied all of the conditions and requirements of this bylaw and other applicable Town bylaws uh that the establishment provides adequate security measures to ensure that no individual participant will pose a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals and that
the storage and location of cultivation cultivation is adequately secured on site or via delivery that the establishment adequately addresses issues of traffic demand circulation flow parking and queuing particularly at peak hour and its impacts on neighborhood
uses okay that was more than I thought there were so I apologize um so we close public with that yep the next action unless we have any further comments or questions would be to close the public hearing and then we would move forward with actions
thereafter everybody else motion to close the public hearing second any we have a motion and a second to close the public hearing any further discussion and before we do so I'll just go to the applicant is there anything else that you wanted to say before we do
so no thank you thank so I'll go through the role here again this is to close the public hearing Rob yes Steve yes Jim yes Laura yes Eric yes Alan
yes and I will vote Yes public hearing is now closed we can move forward so we have the special permit for the marijuana which has the conditions that Paul just laid out as well as the site plan and I would generally say that in
addition to any standard conditions I would recommend that the site plan approval also be contingent on Final fire department sign off in the system even though they've already reviewed it but just make sure the box is and we're waving the Landscaping plan
right correct so motion approve with the conditions you just is that for the special permit or the site marijana we have a motion and a second to approve the marijuana special permit
any further discussion Mr we want to just note the uh document changes that spoke about thank you um yes
conent contingent on minor changes to the documents as discussed I just agreed to that perfect okay so I'll go through the role here on the motion to approve
Rob yes Steve yes Jim yes Laura yes Eric yes Alan yes and I will vote Yes okay and there action would be on the site plan motion to approve with
the second okay I have a motion to approve with conditions as discussed any further discussion could we yes could we also add as a condition stops as discussed the curb stops as discussed as
well yes yes on the rear of the site okay anything further otherwise we'll go to the role for the vote why don't we reverse it around Al I'll start with
you yes Eric yes Laura yes Jim yes Steve yes Rob yes and I will vote Yes so we are approved and we'll work on getting the approvals over to you for the next steps for you thank you thank you for
your time this long evening appreciate it yeah I'd like to motion it's 11:23 p.m. thank you congrat congratulations get some rest you too
motion okay all in favor please say I I opposed extensions thank you very much everybody you not going try to beat Cory book's record you're not going to try to beat Cor Part: 2
okay welcome everybody to the joint meeting here of the Norton Planning Board Norton Finance Committee and Norton Select Board so first I'll call the Norton Planning Board to order here and then I'll pass to the select to the
finan committee meeting to order all right I'll call the select board meeting to order we have Denise Kevin Roger and myself alan could not make it tonight and we're going to start our meeting with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you both just to get everything rolling with a couple of ground rules here uh again this is a hybrid public
meeting so members of the public are welcome to participate in in person or remotely uh if you are joining via Zoom we ask that you please mute your lines when not speaking as we do have 57 people in the Zoom call so if everybody was off mute that would get pretty crazy
all the time so thank you very much in advance if you are looking to speak you can please use the react function in the Zoom meeting it may appear with a heart icon that'll do a little hand raise and we'll be able to see that and know that you're looking to speak in person
obviously we can uh get everybody up to the podium so that way they can be heard on the zoom so just in terms of agenda items here for our joint meeting here with the select board and finance committee we have two agenda items one is a
discussion to refine the MBA community zoning for town meeting and the second one which will follow thereafter is discussion and potential vote that'll be up to the other committees vote to recodify the zoning bylaw for town meeting um and just again clarify the
MBTA community meet discussion is anformational meeting the official noticed meeting per the notice in the sun chronicle will be next week at the April 8th planning board meeting so any questions before we move ahead from
everybody okay so with that we'll get into our discussion around the MBTA community zoning paul if you wanted to share the presentation here which all the members have gotten in advance here and we can go through um so we have a presentation
here that'll cover an overview of the topic for anybody who isn't hasn't been following along with the planning board's meetings over the past year plus or so um and we also have a special guest from Chapa who is one of the state agencies working with lots of planning
boards around the state who will give some information as well so just to reset here uh this is an initiative to comply with Mass General Law 4A chapter 3 in terms of the time frame here um we are here at
our joint hearing here public meetings paul on the second slide sorry I'm going too fast for you um the goal is again to have a completed article for April 10th so that way on the ballot printed with no changes needed on the floor for our
Springtown meeting on May the 19th so it's just again some baseline on what the district is and what the compliance requirements are from the state regarding this MBTA but law so Norton qualifies according to the state
guidelines as an MBTA adjacent community meaning we don't have a transit stop in town but we are adjacent to one that does um the state regulations require one zoning district which allows multif family properties as of right as in not
subject to a special permit the requirement is that Norton allow at least 15 units per acre and the district must be at least 50 acres excluding wetlands stateown properties etc and if you multiply 15 by 50 you get
Norton's target of 750 units which again as I've said probably a number of times this is a number on paper and not necessarily reflective of what might actually be built the other note is that this zone cannot be subject to age restricted restrictions so it cannot be
an over 55 community or anything like that and it must be suitable for families with children what is not required under the regulation is that it does not require the town onto the next one
paul it does not require the town to provide the land produce the housing and it can't force the owners of the land to sell it to anybody it also doesn't require the town to proide or pay for any needed infrastructure doesn't require building types that don't align
with the town aesthetics and there is no requirement to develop it only has the right opportunity to develop or replace existing uses and structures over time it also does not supersede any environmental regulations that are in
place so more than half of the cities and towns in the state are required to comply um and again not all of this would be developed at all or all at once um so just something to keep in mind here
we have one slide here talking about financial penalties for non-compliance um there are a number written into the regulation there are a number of grant programs which the state has said you are not eligible for if you are not compliant by the deadline the state has
also been wielding I will just say a big stick in applying this eligibility toward any grant or any discretionary funding they have authority over uh they have written it into grants for fire safety equipment and everything else that they can think of um so the
compliance makes us eligible for these non-compliance means we are not eligible for them uh since 2018 we've received 4.5 million in grants from these programs combined and finally the last one that I'll actually not the last one but one
of the last ones that I'll get to here um we've all seen a lot of things covered in the news about different towns suing the state suing different agencies about this regulation the most recent one was the auditor of the Commonwealth uh determined that the
Communities Act was an unfunded mandate and raised a whole bunch of questions about what that meant what that stood for what direct or indirect costs the state should be expected to pay all of this has really kind of led to a lot of discussion about should the town approve
anything um should the town sue the state all those things um from the planning board perspective our job is to put together an article that we can present at town meeting we feel it will pass a town meeting in terms of what happens at whether the town takes action
against the state or something else that's something that uh we feel is more appropriate for the select board to address so Steve if you wanted to comment yeah I'll make a quick comment on this um the select board hasn't decided or even discussed fighting it um my
personal opinion is it's an unfunded mandate and it's an overreach by the state but again we haven't done that and um I think at this point we're all in agreement to to have it brought to town meeting and see what happens there thank you Steve um and obviously following town meeting
in the fall um one of the feedback that we got was that we wanted to have more engagement with people across town um I'll thank Paul Depy the town planner who has been doing a lot of community outreach with all the different groups
around town um you can see that we've hosted at least we've hosted five public hearings about this it feels like more um and that's just since December that's just since December um we've also used social media a lot we've noticed 450
property owners and abutters from all the proposed areas that we're going to talk about there was a note included in the excise tax bill and it's been posted at dozens of businesses and community groups um so I don't think there's a whole lot of people in town who don't
know that we've been talking about this so um with that I'll kind of get back away from the procedural things here and I do want to introduce Will Ratigan from Chapa here um he's going to give some just kind of overview and guidance from the state talk about some of the
financial impacts of everything as it's been studied and go from there so Will thank you for joining us yeah thank you for having me am I appropriate distance for the mic right now okay thanks um yeah hi everyone thanks a lot for having me here really great to be joining you
all uh I'm from an organization called the Citizens Housing and Planning Association to be clear I'm not here from the state or from a state agency we're a nonprofit um our role is to support policies that make housing more affordable for people with low to moderate incomes um and what we're doing
here is helping communities with their community engagement around this law we do this for laws like this and also other state housing policies that uh impact communities to try to make sure there's solid shared understanding of what these policies mean and how they affect your community uh so um just to
reiterate not the state didn't write the law but here to to tell you what it is and how it's going to affect so we can move on so yeah I just want to give a quick primer on what the MBK Communities Act is and where it came from sounds like just about everyone's here has heard a good bit about it
already but quick overview um passed in 2020 by the legislature signed by Governor Baker in 2021 so very bipartisan law passed almost unanimously by Democratic legislature signed by Republican governor um a lot of support across the board i think it's gotten
more controversial since then but um really started from both parties um it was part of an economic development bill which is something I'll get into later might be kind of surprising that this is considered economic development but there's good reason for that uh and simply what it does it requires every
community that is either home to an MBJ stop or next to one that is to create a zoning district where multif family housing is allowed um and I'll I'll talk more about zoning because first and foremost this is a zoning reform law and what's unique about it and why we're doing all this engagement work is it
allows communities to choose where in town they want to reszone other states have undertaken similar initiatives where they've merely decided okay we need to create more housing we're going to do resoning from the state level massachusetts values that tradition we have of local control here and and while trying to take action at the state level
is trying to delegate the responsibility deciding where housing should go to communities and that's what makes us unique uh and why it exists first and foremost it's reduce tape and make housing more affordable yeah Paul we can go to the next one talk about that um so why was it passed i think there's a lot
of reasons it is the way it is like why it has trends involved but first and foremost it's about housing affordability and I think the graph here tells you everything you need to know uh we've seen home values home prices and rents just absolutely skyrocket in the last decade um 73% since 2016 in
Massachusetts nordon following right along a little bit lower but um you know while Nordon used to be one of the more affordable places to live uh if you look at housing prices today you'll realize that is not the case as it once was um and that is what prompted the state to take action and this is one of the steps
the state is trying to take to make housing more affordable am I am I all good in volume i hear see a note unmuted yeah okay great great perfect um so I want to get some context about the kind of affordability issues
we're facing statewide all good it looked like the North Media Center and laptop muted again i saw you unmuted and then it muted itself again i don't know why somebody must be muted somebody is muting it
thank you stop it all good okay great um yeah so to put in perspective why we're here talking about this why the state wants to do something about housing I'm looking at how affordable it unaffordable it is for people looking for housing right now uh if you own your home right now you're
very lucky and you might be in great shape but I want to give an idea of what the market looks like for people that are are buying or renting right now um so I took this from my presentation to school uh just a typical job so I might have a Nordan public school teacher uh
starting salary almost $50,000 a year um we consider housing affordable if you're paying no more than 30% of your before tax income on it and so um for someone making about 50k that comes out to a little more than 1,200 a month uh median rent right now is 2600 so you are you're
not there with two people um one person you're completely out of luck um and at 20% down with our current high interest rates for to uh purchase median home price in Nordon at 550,000 again below the state average um you're looking at $3,200 a month so you know we're looking
at almost triple what a starting school teacher is making just completely out of reach um and you know to put into perspective what it would take to afford housing here to buy a median home in Norton today you need to be making $128,000 a year so just we're we're
seeing housing really out of reach for so many people and I want to go a little more into that the next slide um and it's not only people looking for housing trying to move here maybe kids moving back home or or folks downsizing who are hurting from this uh it really is people that live here now um so again we
consider housing affordable if you're spending no more than 30% of your income up on it and we consider you uh extremely costbur uh and in Nordon right now um almost 25% of homeowners can't afford the home they're in right now um so they may have lived here for a long time and
they're spending more than 30% or in saw 10% of cases more than 50% of their income on housing uh and for renters that is way worse that is almost 50% of people in Norton uh can't afford the housing that they're in right now um so that means they're at risk of a
potential foreclosure it means they're risk of eviction they could be getting forced out of state um big picture housing is really getting very unaffordable not just for people moving here but for people that live here right now and so uh we really I think should be thinking about what
solutions we can bring forward uh this is one of those efforts not the only one and you know what's the consequence of that this is something I always highlight because it's close to home for me cuz I'm 27 and uh I'm seeing this in my generation uh what's the impact of
this housing affordability on Massachusetts the most glaring one and why this is an economic development bill is that it's driving young people out of the state uh we've seen Massachusetts lose more residents than it gained in the last 2 years um but what's really remarkable is that that's not for all
groups it's really most significantly happening uh among people from age 25 to 44 so people that are in the prime of their lives they're launching their careers they're buying their first homes um they're renting maybe starting families and when it comes time to buy a
house they realize it doesn't potential out to stay here and they leave for places like you know North Carolina Texas Florida where they can keep their good jobs um or find other good jobs and pay radically less for housing and we're losing a lot of people to those states um it's not just hypothesis either have
been surveys have been done about young professionals in Boston um when people talk about why they're leaving the area the number one and three reasons are the cost of rent and buying a home so we're seeing young people leave the state because of this uh and for the economy that's that's a big issue right um young
people are the next generation of business owners their employees for our local businesses you know teachers first responders healthcare workers all the people that make our communities run uh if they're moving to Texas before they get into their careers uh that really is an issue for the future of the economy
and so it's something that um economic development wise we really have to try to address somehow so moving on um so yeah you all know housing is expensive maybe I don't need to tell you that um if you've if you've if you're paying rent or you bought your house recently you certainly
know this um but the question is why and like most things that are expensive the answer is pretty simple supply and demand um we used to build a lot more housing in Massachusetts in the ' 60s '7s and ' 80s you can see on the graph we built a lot of housing uh and then in
the '9s that really slowed down and it has not recovered it's actually gotten worse and although you can see um in blue we used to build a lot of single family housing and then in black a lot of multif family housing in the 90s we stopped building multif family housing
for the most part altogether right we only build a built a very small bit of it that's recovered a bit again but it's not up to the levels that it was in the ' 60s '7s and ' 80s um so you know our population has continued to grow until recently when we've seen some declines we've certainly seen more households as
um we're seeing smaller families so you're seeing the the same number of people living in more households than before and all that together with fewer homes mean more competition for the same homes which means really high prices and the the spike we're seeing now is the result of of 30 years of really slow
home production uh so we need to find ways to to boost home production if we're going to make it more affordable for people that live here and want to live here um going on but uh why is it so hard to um to build homes in Massachusetts uh we don't have to guess
again Chapa works as a convenor across the housing industry um talking to a lot of Am I on camera i I'm Will Radigan i'm from Chapa but I don't know if I'm on camera um we talked to a lot of developers
advocates tenants about um lenders about what makes housing hard to build and the answer we got again and again and again for literally decades is zoning in Massachusetts we have some of the strictest zoning in the country um that makes it really difficult to build homes and because of that there are not enough
opportunities to build compared to other states uh therefore we don't build as much and they're building elsewhere so people go elsewhere um so zoning this is a zoning reform law let's talk a little bit about what that is and then the next one um so I think this is just important
to address from like a conceptual level because I think there are a lot of misconceptions on what zoning actually means um people often think it's think like a reszoning means your land is being taken for some reason or being re reused by someone uh but very simply zoning is the set of rules for how
whoever owns a piece of land can use it um so zoning determines the allowed shape and height of buildings uh the use so whether you can use it for for housing for commercial for an industrial use um and then you know things like the distance between buildings how far they
need to be set back from the road these kind of dimensional requirements um is a rulebook for how you can use your land and right now in Massachusetts uh over 80% of our land is zoned exclusively for single family home meaning you can't build anything else you own the land um
just a single family home you cannot build anything but a single family home in that property even if you want to it's just not legally an option for you um and in many many towns I don't know if this is the case in in Nordan but uh we require an acre or more per lot for
um for single family homes and so now that we're fairly built out at 1 acre per lot there aren't a lot of opportunities to build more and that's where I began um and so zoning reform is not the only solution to the housing issues we're facing uh it's not even
maybe long-term gonna be like the most of many solutions but it's really the first thing we need to do because if we want to make it easier to build housing um if there's nowhere to legally build it then we can't do it and so updating zoning is trying to legalize building
housing in more places um so let's move on talk a bit more about what this zoning reform does um and so again when we reszone an area we're changing the rules for what you can build there and so what this law is doing is it's asking
towns to determine a few areas where it will become legal for current land owners to build multif family housing up to 15 units per acre and we're going to go over what that actually looks like in practice um again it doesn't force land
owners to change existing land uses so if you own a you know a gas station and it gets reszoned to allow multif family housing as well in what's called an overlay district you can keep it as a gas station you don't have to sell it you don't have to change the land use but now if you choose to do so you have
the option to maybe build a couple condos on that property as well um and last but not least and ask communities across the state to do this at once um so this is a statewide issue again we had in the building across the whole state it's not just northern it's not
just another town so if we're going to solve this issue at the state level we need a kind of coordinated effort across the state to reform zoning um and zoning is municipal policy but it's a statewide issue and that's why we're having the the state ask communities across the the
region to go through this process all at once which is why I'm at a lot of public meetings right now um so moving on and just one last illustration of this I want to talk about what uh zoning capacity looks like because again we're
trying to create capacity for new housing we're not creating new housing um and so say we have a piece of property the zoning used to be for maybe a single family house we say now you can build four units there if you choose to um you can see on the left if you have
two units there right now we've now upzoned it to four you can keep it as two you still qualify if it's a vacant lot and we say you can build four units there if you don't build anything it's fine um there's no need to do so you're still in compliance to the law as long
as it's legally possible to build four units there and same thing if the if the lot is filled out with four and you zone it for four you're in compliance to the law so zoning is what you're allowed to build it's not what you have to build
so going on um what the law is doing is asking towns to legalize multif family housing at a density of 15 units per acre and the reason for that number is we're trying to incentivize a certain kind of housing uh we're trying to
incentivize a type of housing that is pretty scarce in Massachusetts right now and that's called missing middle housing so-called because it's largely missing we don't have a lot of it um and it's midsize so it's everything that falls between a single family home and a
mid-rise apartment building so everything from duplexes you know classic New England triple deckers um cottage courts you often see a lot of cottages in the same lot um small apartment buildings all of these kind of um all of these kind of different
housing types are missing middle and we don't have a lot of them so what does that look like let's go into the next one um so who is this for i should highlight that as well um so this is I think there's a lot of misconceptions about
like what who this law is trying to target who is it trying to create homes for missing mental housing is trying to target people with incomes that are too high to qualify for subsidized housing but too low to afford a single family home which I said earlier median sale
price uh is $550,000 in Nordan which means you need $128,000 income to afford it um the way subsidizing subsidized housing works is to qualify in most towns you need to make less than 80% of the area median income which um in this
region is about $73,000 so if your income falls between 73,000 and 128,000 you can't afford a single family home and you don't qualify for um subsidized housing then uh you um
are kind of out of luck right you can't you can't find a housing option you're rent you're renting or buying in the private market but you can't afford a single family home this is trying to create options for those people um smaller like naturally more affordable homes that are these kind of missing
middle housing types um now what does that actually look like let's go on a couple quick illustrations oh maybe there we go but anyway what I was saying on the last slide is you know who is this for um people in the middle class plain and simple uh like I talked
about like a teacher would be a classic person who might be able to afford this local first responders small business owners uh local employees people that are solidly in the middle class making between maybe 70 to $30,000 a year um that's what we're hoping to really
target with this and what does it look like um the way Nordon is designing this is they're really working on um trying to promote more smallcale um missing middle housing so it could look like your classic New England um triple
deckers um two family homes if you have small lots that qualifies at 15 units per acre and is a possibility for this and a few more examples in the next two slides we can go through quickly if you have a larger law it could be a larger building like this where you have 10 units on a half acre and then you're
hitting like 20 units per acre um also meeting the goal of a law but at a larger scale um this is an option as well and I think some of your options you're looking at could maybe allow this but um I know that Paul's really trying to target um and and the planning board are trying to target these smaller scale
development opportunities our our draft language has the cap at 15 so both of these would be more dense than we would be allowing great point yeah so the the other two options are probably a little better and as an even better option on the next slide I want to show that this isn't out of line with what you have right now um you have housing at this
density in Nordon already so I just pulled two examples um 140 Barrow Street three units on a a fifth of an acre 14 units per acre so almost gets you there and then 378 reservoir you this 4unit small building on a quarter acre that gets you right to 50 units per acre so
that's a a perfect example of what this kind of development could look like okay now what you're all waiting for i know uh how is this going to affect municipal finances this is really the big question i know everyone wants to hear it because at the end of the day your wallet is what most people are
worried about um so we don't have to guess anymore um because you're pretty late in the process a lot of communities already gone through this uh at least four communities have commissioned uh fiscal impact analyses from private firms um potentially more that we're not aware of but those are the four that we
all know of uh and all of them have found that this would have a positive impact on municipal finances uh the way that's worked is they've compared projected costs with uh projected revenues coming in from new housing um so they're looking at uh municipal staffing public school costs police and
fire costs cost in other departments and then comparing that to the property taxes and vehicle excise taxes you're getting from new residents um and all of them have found that the uh fiscal impact is not only positive
but would uh increase the scale of development so in scenarios where more gets built the fiscal impact is better than in scenarios where less gets built um again Mansfield Medfield Milton and West Newbury have all gone through these analyses and I want to take a look at what one of those looked like in your
neighbor Mansfield on the next one um so Mansfield did this analysis um and they looked at three scenarios um one in which there was by right development one in which there is um uh there they they were emphasizing mixeduse development
and the third scenario is where they had development and they were permitting additional housing through uh special permits and what they found is that obviously uh revenues go up with more development more people move into down more property taxes brand new properties
tend to be very valuable uh that brings a lot of tax revenue in um and in all three cases um the more that got built the more positive that that revenue balance would be um when comparing what the the education uh and town service
costs would look like and I know I know this is a big question and I I think this is a brief coverage of it one thing I'll point you to later this is probably more for the boards is that the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has done a pretty in-depth statewide study on this um they recorded a presentation
on that I think is really excellent so for more detail maybe Paul can share that off with you because um I think that really gets into the the nuts and bolts of all this may I ask a question yeah sure go ahead i didn't mean to interrupt um how many units is this based on yeah so I should
I wish I had the um the whole study with me they're projecting Mansfield similar I picked this one because Mansfield has a pretty similar population as you all so I think your required minimum is 750 so Mansfield maybe 800 to a,000 or so so the projections are for the max that
would be that would be if everything got built which again um isn't probably totally realistic scenario they're looking a little beyond what would actually get built but they're trying to look at like okay say this actually did all get built what would the impact be and this is what they found realistically every town's going to be a
little different it depends where you reszone how much is actually get built right if you if you're reszoning over a totally undeveloped plot of land someone's probably going to build there if you're reszoning over a very profitable grocery store or gas station probably not so thank you
okay let's um there might be more questions about this but I have a list of questions but I was going to let you finish sorry all right i didn't mean to throw you off no worries i can I can get to the end of this i'm going to let you finish and just write them down perfect yeah let's let's look at one slide from that taxpayers foundation presentation
right now cuz I think this is the the key kind of misconception about growth that we need to move past which is the idea that growth is bad for town uh for town fiscal health and the data says that's just simply not true um
Massachusetts Tax Foundation looked at communities across the state based on how their property tax per capita changed and uh their population and they found that communities with population loss saw the highest property tax
increase um and that's coming from Massachusetts taxpayer Foundation not me so the the data is out there right and they're seeing that um taxes grew the most in times of population loss and they grew less in communities that saw some growth um
communities with the most growth saw a little bit more than those with 5 to 10% growth but overall what we're seeing is that if your population is declining you're having fewer people pay for a similar amount of services and you're seeing your taxes per person go up it's pretty pretty simple math there um and
so if you want to keep your services going at the level they are right now you do need to see some kind of growth in order to sustain that moving forward um so I want to move on to school impacts and we can go more into this at the end perhaps so how will this impact school
enrollment um this is the study that I find really surprises people uh but the fact is that multif family development tends to have pretty limited impact on school enrollment wow so MAPC the Metropolitan Area Planning Council did a study of uh all the towns in their
region and um how their housing development compared with school enrollment and they found that there's actually no strong correlation there the graph up there shows um the correlation between school enrollment um on the vertical axis and housing units on the
horizontal axis and you see there's actually no clear trend and that's really surprising um I think for many people but the reason for that is that multif family housing just does not tend to be a very attractive option for families with children um this law says that you can't bar families for children
you can't have your housing be age restricted but um multif family housing you're much often getting onebedroom apartment two-bedroom apartments um that's likely to attract young couples you know first-time homeowners uh maybe kids moving back from from college or
graduating high school older folks who are moving out of their big single family homes and downsizing uh none of these groups are particularly likely to have kids um if you have kids you're more likely to seek a single family home uh and so what drives school enrollment tends to be the turnover in single
family homes rather than building newer condos or apartments um that's the trend we're seeing across the state so I I do want to move on to the next one as well because I think so many towns have this concern that if they allow new housing they're going to see their schools
overcrowded and that one doesn't tend to really square with the data in most towns because almost everywhere in Massachusetts we're seeing declining school enrollment and Nordon you can see that uh school enrollment peaked around the mid 2000s and has had been on a pretty steady decline ever since so uh
these fears about overcrowded schools um just aren't really squaring with the data right now so yeah if if if there's concerns about school overcrowding that's really not one concern I think is is borne out with the data at the
moment and let's move on to the the last one um finally the question I get all the time is how is this going to impact our sewer and water responsibilities folks tend to think if we're allowing uh property owners to build new housing is the town going to be on the hook for uh building sewer and water for that
especially in towns like Nordon that don't have public water and sewer everywhere um and the answer is that the this law does not obligate towns to provide sewer and water for any new development so if a property owner who's not on public water and sewer decides
they want to build multif family housing on that property it's their responsibility to pay for either any sewer connections or for a private septic system on that property um all right that that about wraps up my common concerns presentation and I'll turn it back to uh Paul or Tim
and or we can do questions now whatever's whatever yeah I was going to say that's the end of kind of your slides as well if there are any direct questions on the data presented from members of FINCOM or selective board um please let us know i think one of the questions I had is if if the Mansfield
study is public yeah it's public yeah I can share with you thank you thank you for coming um just a statement first i just I just want to say uh I appreciate that you say you're not from the state but you use
the phrase we a lot when you were talking about this okay i I do not work for the government of Massachusetts so be clear on that i'm just making a observation um and I like the way that you said that the uh
the state wants to let the towns decide where to put it but not whether they want it or not okay and um so when you were looking at the Mansfield um case and Mansfield has their own um
electric company and they have a much higher income uh bracket as well um I'm curious how that relates to the town of Norton as well yeah I mean every town is a little
different obviously right like what's true for Nordon will not be exactly true for Nordon what's true for Mansfield will not be exactly true for for Nordon um that said Mansfield is not the only community that's done this um Milton West Newbury Medfield have all done these similar studies they they've
commissioned private firms to look at the projected economic impact and they've all come to very similar conclusions um I can't say there's no chance Nord would be different but uh I don't see a clear reason why Nordon would see some different data in these other towns i've seen so far
thank you um this is more of a statement than a question too um you know overcrowding of schools is is different than increased uh student population which would cost quite a bit our average is what 17,000 plus per
student somebody give me a thumbs up okay higher than that okay um so that's just something to consider with fixed costs so it's it's a higher number i'm sorry no higher number when it comes to when it comes to insurance and all those items right so that's that was my point
so I mean I mean any increase is going to cost and impact the budget no matter what so I just wanted to put that out there as my statement so just a note for the room if you're not speaking into a microphone I think the people on Zoom will have trouble hearing you so but you'd also be increasing revenue because
you'd be getting more taxes so if we're just going to look at one side of the ledger we can just you know we can make any argument you can we can right because I could say well we're going to get $8 million more in taxes but we're not going to have any more increased costs well it doesn't work that way there's both sides so you get more
revenue and you might even though this says that increasing student numbers and enrollment wouldn't be that impactful from the evidence correct there will be more revenue but I
well we'll leave it for fin to look at the revenue versus uh the expenses that cost i I don't believe that it's going to be a net gain for the town and that's based on what Steve the facts in previous Let's let's not get into a cross discussion here in
terms of how we balance the budget here i think um you had a comment if you want to come up to a microphone and just so the people in the room can hear you just uh yeah I just wanted to point out the bottom of this the slide with the study said net
not revenue said net fiscal impact which includes both sides and it was a positive number for the record thank you okay um additional questions for for Will i know um we have some additional
slides after this talking about the districts and different things like that the planning board's been looking at so So uh Mr will uh your organization is basically trying to drag down housing costs correct right so what is what does
your organization have to say to the hundreds if not thousands of residents of Norton who may have purchased a house in the last 5 10 years have spent a million dollars $800,000 and now let's say this all works and all your data is
correct and it drives down the cost of housing and I'm sitting here with a million dollar mortgage and now my house is worth 600,000 what do you say to those residents that are living in town that are now upside down that kind of money
yeah that that's a good question i think that I can answer that by asking us to manage our expectations here the projection we have is that it would take building 20 220,000 new homes by 2035 to
stabilize housing costs where they currently are and that is a tall order if every home the projections for how many homes will be created through this law is 40,000 homes right so this is a small part of getting us to that number
we need just to stabilize housing costs where they are right now uh so the idea that building new homes can actually cause housing costs to go down it's you know I I think we need houses to be more affordable but the idea that housing prices are actually going to go down is
probably not in our immediate future uh our best case is we're going to see stabilization in housing costs or at least seeing this exponential rise slow down um so that's my answer we're like we're not trying to drive anyone
underwater i mean when I say we this is my opinion right now right but um there's no expectation of housing costs going down a result of this um there's a hope that the rise will slow down and realistically if we can just get to stable that would be a really great
outcome i do see one member of the public trying to come to the podium here if you just want to state your name and address for the record please sir my name is Howard Wley 3 Flint Lane Norton i just want to confirm with Will that the Wii you were talking about was Chapla and not the uh
state administration because I was kind of inferred that you were implying the state wants to do this and the state is uh pushing for this but your comments
today endorsing what is going on was from Chapa not necessarily the state yeah I'll be clear i do not represent the state um Chapa is a is a private nonprofit um we try to support policies that will make housing more affordable
um we do believe this is one of those policies and uh maybe I'm mixing up my we in my eyes uh so sorry about that i have not been using those specific languages but to be clear I in no means represent the state at all thank you the question yes Mr turjan i
saw you were trying to find the react function there so please if you state your name and address for the record please thank you um first of all will thank you too for the presentation um I found it helpful maybe I was one of the last ones to uh be aware of this um issue it it seems like a couple of
people are asking questions about what Chapa is or if it's state according to your 990 your tax form it looks like well all of the grant revenue from CHAP comes from the state so I understand you're a separate not forprofit but in fact you're paid for by the state is
that correct some of our funding is from the state uh I don't know the exact breakdown a lot of it's from private foundations i just want to I can share it it's actually online it's all public records so that's not something that we need to I think Mr ratigan has been very
clear he's from a state from a nonprofit that promotes housing affordability in the state he is certainly not I understood that i just wanted to make the point that it is state funded it is all coming from the state and people can look at the tax returns thank you for your comment sir
okay any additional comments here yep mr sweeney if you want to come to the microphone and just uh state your name and address for the record please even though I've heard before mark Sweeney 14 LA is his name Turjent uh the gentleman's last name is Turjent that's just spoke
as Turjent yes I believe he's from Redmill Village so he's basically telling you that this gentleman is paid by the state he's funded a one a 503C but it's funded per the gentleman Mr
turjan by the state he's so indirectly you can't it's he's working for the state it's funded by the state you have somebody here from the state that's pushing this Mr sweeney so you're I haven't finished yet Tim thank you so you're you're
basically your first person up here for what's chapter stand for it's the Citizens Housing and Planning Association citizens Housing and Planning Association so the first person you have up here i just want to make sure that everyone knows that it's not just somebody over there doing well you
know a dogooder type of thing it's funded by the state you've got your f you've almost got the first person up here speaking for the state for this effort just want to make sure everyone knows where we're coming from or where he's coming from thank you thank you Mr
sweeney i'll just say that I'm under no illusions of the efforts that Mr gratigan is trying to put forward and trap is trying to put forward i also know that the data he's presented is all public record and everybody can look at the data and make their own determinations and determine how they'd
like to view everything that has been said tonight from him or any other speaker thank you i do see one other hand raised in the meeting in the Zoom meeting miss uh Miss Barsky if you could just state your name and address for the record please i'll just give you a second if you're
currently muted if you're speaking so I'm sorry if you have there you go okay yeah tamara Broski 15 Willis Drive in thank you um so my question for the speaker is the way it's
being kind of proposed is how gratuitous this would be for like you know a fireman a teacher a small shop owner they are exactly the demographic target audience of the potential
um properties that could be built in this overlay area if it were to be zoned that way i'm not quite sure how it is that you could determine now what would be built there like maybe I'm missing
something so the zoning overlay allows for you know something other than single family homes maybe duplexes maybe apartment buildings but who is it that's going to determine the cost of those who who who is it that's going to say uh
this is $3,000 a month or this is $1,000 a month or this is for sale you know it's a condo and it's $500,000 or $750,000 i would imagine that whoever develops that land
potentially will be the arbiter of how much it is going to charge for those apartments or you know whatever type of groups they are so you're the way you're phrasing it in your conversation to us makes it sound as though this is you
know someone who makes $80,000 a year and they just can't afford a $700,000 mortgage and and you know this is perfect for them but how how can you say that how do you know what someone will then charge down the road and that
is my question yeah that's a great question um really really important I think thing to understand about this law is that the person who determines how much any housing bill under this law costs is the person who owns it right so
whoever builds it either either going to sell units as condos or they're going to sell homes as apartments or they're going to rent them as apartments um so it's uh it is you know a free market policy it's not subsidizing housing um what's really important though is that
we know that it's much more expensive to build a single family home to acquire that land and build a single family home than it is to acquire land and build multiple homes whether apartments condos triple decker duplex on it and so right now if there's new housing being built
under the current zoning all it can be is single family homes and that is always a new single family home will always be more expensive than a new condo or a new um I shouldn't say always 95% of the time will be more expensive
than a new condo than um a a unit in a triple decker a duplex right um and so again we're trying to create options that are between single family homes and subsidized housing we don't know exactly how much it'll sell or rent for but it should be cheaper
than a single family home um and you'll be able to buy it without having to have an income low enough to qualify for affordable housing and that's trying to target people in the middle we can't say exactly how much it'll cost till it gets built but it it's targeting that middle class population and the other thing to
say is that it's not just about these particular homes being built right we're talking about supply and demand when we have a limited supply of homes uh we see prices go up across the state and so the goal here is by building more homes not only will these missing middle homes
hopefully be more affordable than single family homes but it'll also take some of the pressure off the housing market so that some of the older homes that are getting really high prices right now will have a little pressure taken off of them so hopefully that their prices will continue to rise quite as quickly in the
future now our next slide is going into the districts here if we have any more comments questions i asked all the boards but no specifying okay sorry i said I had a list of my
question but go ahead thank you making a very very good point on a number of issues here the uh the one thing I want to remind everyone in this room is the MBTA another non uh uh
funded program that they're coming up with is just another example of what we already have we have 40B chapter 40B is a comprehensive permitting process that the town has been involved in for over 30 years every city and town the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts 351 communities is required to build 10% or more affordable housing basically the same concept is this MBTA overlay town of Norton has reached a 10% goal so now we're looking at another
unfunded mandate on top of the comprehensive permit process which means now we have to not only comply with the 10% but now we have to do the MBTA overlay um example was made about a school teacher making $48,000 a
year if you get out of Mansfield by the last 40b that we built here in Norton the rentals in that that building are between 21,100 and $3,900 a month a school teacher cannot afford
that two street teachers living together might be able to afford it so it's an example of how the state continues to push this stuff on us unfunded mandates the infrastructure in Mansfield that's
an example that we met that made I'm sad to say is probably in a much better shape than ours is their commercial tax base is much better than ours but on top of that their water issues are non-existent um we have sewer capacity
there's no question about that we have plenty of that but I just want to stress the fact that I looked it up today 351 communities were required to follow comprehensive permitting chapter
40b we got there 177 communities have been uh forced to do this now and of the 177 communities being enforced Norton is one of three dozen that are in compliance for chapter
4B this is to me the same thing as 40B under a different label i looked up the state 351 communities and town cities and towns 57 are in compliance with chapter
40B Norton being one of them were being forced to do additional housing and they can talk about all they want about affordable it's not affordable that school teacher that was just brought up could not afford our new affordable units we have in order it's
just not not possible i just want to bring that up as an example thank you before you come up Warren I was just going to say um Robin mentioned that he had a couple of questions from the planning board problem yeah so if you wanted to just ask those not sure if
they're things that I can answer things that Mr adding could answer sure something that the wonders of technology well the Bendy post is the hard part um
so something you said that jumped out at me you you mentioned that how a lot of people in Norton had owned their houses for a long time and that they were the ones that were going to be hurt more by the increases in the housing cost and everything i was curious how that worked sorry no I meant the opposite right if
you live that you said it would hit the people in the house a long time harder no so what I I Yeah I don't think I meant to say that at least what I mean is that if you've been your home for a while you're probably doing okay right now cuz you're probably able to buy at a much cheaper price but if you're trying to buy a home
right now or rent you're in a very trying to buy now um you were talking about um Oh it's still not picking me up sorry sorry i'm trying to look at my paper at the same time so you were talking about the uh state population and um you said
it decreased yeah so 2022 and 23 it decreased and the year after let me go back to the slide it's been slide it's been decreased and then we had one year where it went up by a little bit again so I have to remember I make sure I'm getting my my stats right oh it's slide
13 there we go yeah so 2023 okay but our net we've had actually a big increase in our population and that's why there's a housing tightness right no that's not correct no we have not then we are fine and we don't need to do this no so this is I think this is a a subject that
trips people up a lot is like if we're population isn't growing that rapidly why do we have a housing crisis and it's really about households right um back in the ' 60s '7s ' 80s we had a lot of large families in Massachusetts we had you know two parents and four kids
living in a lot of homes now those kids have grown up they're all looking for their own homes few of them are getting married for them having kids um so those same home that same home that had six people in it now has two people in it and those six people are now in five different homes and that's kind of how
we're getting a situation where we're not seeing our population rise very quickly but we're seeing demand for housing really go up let me just read to you something and I'm looking this up this is bad fact massachusetts experiences largest population increase
in 60 years between 2023 and 24 that was the only time it increased 69 73 people or just under 1% to a record high of 7 million so I just you might want to check the facts on the internet i'm confident in my facts but
thank you and so is the internet so is my my data is is cited right below the report on the government i'm checking so this is a report from Boston indicators it's cited at the bottom of that chart um it goes over all our population trends over the last decade
or so so I encourage you to look at that okay this just mass populate um I guess they're not reliable um the plan for cost you're applying this does isn't going to cost towns
money and we feel like it is going to burden us with money um you did talk a lot about you know you're trying to imply that we're mistaken that it's going to add increases and things but the data actually does say says it does and there is a reason why all the towns
are looking at this as an unfunded mandate it's going to cost them money too everybody is saying it's going to cost money so I'm curious in your explanation how this isn't going to create an additional financial burden for Nordon yeah the answer is that it'll cost money but it'll bring in revenue as
well right um but not as much that's why it's a net loss well no the the studies that have been done so far show that um multif family housing development tends to bring in more revenue that it imposes costs on towns uh largely because people
living in multif family housing tend to have fewer children and therefore you're seeing people contribute to the tax base and um not have as many costs associated as families with children yes but with that density if you add up the way you plan services and you in fact and then
you figure out what the net is um it's a burden for the town we've done that math ourselves a number of towns have that's why they're calling it an unfunded mandate it costs the money so what all I know is that the the towns that actually have commission economic impact analyses have found to be
positive um that's the data I have to share and I don't have anything okay and then the other towns have another and Paul said that Paul you can send out the man's pale report right now yes rob can I just as an example and I don't have I
have one end of it but not the other but 274 East Main Street 180 units there that's actually one of our top 10 taxpayers over $500,000 last year what I don't know is how much the town has spent in services
but we know that there was what 20 there currently about 20ome students there um you know they they also contribute they're they're on well I don't know if they're on the town sewer line but but over $500,000 is coming in from that one
development which I guess it would be a lot of town services to overcome that 500,000 so yeah we can all go back to the reports and the data and make our own evaluations some of the towns feel it is some of them feel it's an unfunded mandate you don't agree with them got it
um was there a bill passed in Massachusetts to help people buy homes as well there there have been there are a number of um down payment assistance programs i think the first generation home buyers things like that yeah there are a number of those programs okay i used one yeah well in fact last year the
state I think uh pro provided up to almost a billion in housing various types of housing so so in other words the state will give people money to help them buy these houses or build after
um is there any bill to help providing assistance does the state have any interest to help people with expenses yeah so there have been 7.8 $.8 million in grant funds so far given to towns for drawing up these
resoning plans um there's still money on the table so if you want to seek more grant funding um talk to Paul that plans but if this did require financial burden in Norton if we were getting money from the state to offset that
so there's a $15 million grant program that's providing towns with infrastructure upgrade funding um for housing development projects that said that's to incentivize compliance with the law um but the state nor uh you know
nor anyone that has done a economic impact analysis of this expects it to have costs that outweigh the revenues it would bring in and and Rob just so you know there's the state passed what they call a catalyst fund for communities that are compliant and then two years
ago they added a public works develop project or fund called the housing works which is to help offset costs for water and sewer to help fund housing developments for this meeting I'm going to hold that yes the state is going to pro will
provide some money to help well I would say makes us eligible i don't know that we automatically get it we would have to apply for it fair enough um just closer to the micro the you were showing pictures of what it looks like i
got to be honest when we were in here talking about what these units would look like and going through our codificate our zoning language and all that it was nothing like that i'm just saying that the examples you gave were very different from what we've looked at here so those are all examples of what 15
units per acre can look like um you know you could certainly build in other architectural styles but that's roughly the scale that we're looking at um um and then yeah you said this is a positive financial impact do you have
math you can give it was really you kept when he was asking and others you kept saying well I think so but no I have I have all the math yeah so I can share the man's field economic impact study i can share his do you happen on Norton as Roger was pointed out Mansfield's a very
different town than M is so Mansfield hired a consulting firm to do this pretty like indepth analysis of all their all their revenue sources all of their costs and projecting how that would change with new housing so that's a it's a major undertaking that um feel
paid for okay um so I can't just like produce that out of the Okay so we don't have my back pocket but we just don't think so about it mostly um MB Wordy asked for family suitable and yet you keep saying like "Oh there won't be that many kids and all." Family suitable kind
of applies we're looking for kids well good point um so what the law says is you can't have age restrictions on these units which means you can't make them only for people 55 plus right um it has to be that anyone of any age can you have to allow kids yeah of course you have to allow kids right that'd be a violation of the Fair Housing Act to not
allow kids but you didn't think we'd get a lot of kids but Yes the reality is that um families tend to be less attracted to one and two-bedroom apartments than they are to single family homes and so other larger multif family projects tend to have fewer kids
than single family homes laura is saying family suitable though like these you know units built to accommodate families so I feel a mixed messaging what you're saying versus ultimately it's up to the developer what they're going to build yeah that's right so you can't stop someone from building like as many
bedrooms they want to because I'm out of budget time here sure um you say that we're mistaken that this would cost more in our schools you said it was false uh I in terms of your school cost I mean I can't say for sure every town is different the idea that it would
overcrowd your schools you I mean your superintendent's here and perhaps she can weigh in on this but you're seeing declining enrollment so overcrowding seems fairly unlikely we weren't talking about overcrowding we're just talking about increases we're very against the wall on our budgets um we have certain
things that we are against the law and we're not positioned to take on additional strength school budget is certainly one of them we're cutting it ways you know I'm one of the people voted for the override that we didn't yet and we're making cuts now that um we
wouldn't have want to make already and so if we placed more load on the schools of course they're feeling that more and you already gave a version of this presentation to our school committee previously so they already have this information and data as well
it's sewer and water what would be the impact on sewer and water um you said it doesn't require them to build out the capacity for sewer and water but I'll tell you if you do it nor physics is going to make you do it so no um you the town of Nordon are not required to pay
for any sewer and water law i I understand yes okay um so that means if a developer is building in a place without public water and sewer they're responsible for paying for those connections or for that private sep now one of the things that we've gone back and that's been a debate is uh
zones that either do or do not have access to sewer and whether that's more or less attractive to potential redevelopment so that's one of the pieces that we've looked at as part of our site selection process correct but the other half of that is water and our water system is in dire straits already
so it's challenged yes dire straits tim let's be straight understand of the night yeah okay um so that was my last one i just um the um our water system does not have
capacity for us to take on additional load um this is a townwide problem this is not like a developer can patch something in his area or put it in a new bike so it's a townwide thing what would there be if Norton took this on and we did have to upgrade our actual county
water supply system because we really are maxed out what money is there for that yeah so on that one I mean there is again state grant funding available for infrastructure upgrades that you can apply for uh I wouldn't say I'm an expert in public water and sewer policy
though so I can't get too much into that okay so but there's no plan for that that you could specify right now i think that would be a question for you all not not not for me okay i'm going to stop there i'll turn this way additional questions for for
Will do we want to get into I see Ren you're up there is going to get into parcel selection next if you want to you want to go and ask a question please do lauren Seagull 28 Cotting Road um I just wanted to make this conversation a little real i think Paul started to get
there one of the pro properties you identified was East Main Street the reason you identified it because you thought it was a recently built property well built it consists of threetory buildings mostly three-story buildings except the front three buildings are
two-story buildings has 188 units with 29 students what does that represent that's basically [Music] 15.42% so you're not talking about 750 units if you apply that if you apply that to everything you're looking at
it's only 15.42% if you let me finish Rob then I'll get back to you i have a question what you just said okay what you're addressing the real the real estate taxes that they pay you can get closer to the microphone the real estate taxes they pay are 58,000
$589,000 divided by 29 come to $20,310 it's my understanding they even use the the $18,000 we get 5,000 back from the state which makes it $13,000 so if you're looking at the type of project he's been talking about this is really
consistent with it it's showing what how actually how many children are going to be occupying these properties this 188 units and this is basically typical what you could see people putting up there they have need for amenities they have amenities they're welldeveloped and and
and they're well occupied as far as I know okay and they're paying the large taxes in addition basically for tax the schools from 2014 to 2024 declined 223
students from 2004 to 2024 836 students town population from 2019 to 2023 declined to 802 so I'm just trying to what he's saying is we're saying where's this coming from how is it applicable just
looking at our own property and our own our own town and its students and its population they're all consistent with what he's talking about so to dismiss it as well it's they're funded by the state it shouldn't have any bearing is ridiculous It really has some sense and it really makes sense because what you can see in
these properties as they're being developed they're really what's happening they're being attracted by young people without a lot of children and to disregard that and just say well it's made up doesn't face reality we're not going to get fair to him
because I think he was more commenting on comments I've made in a previous meeting than his presentation so I just want to Sorry if that to you you you you you saying his didn't didn't apply to this town and I'm giving you some real facts to show how how they in fact
replicate what this town is actually going through and I think it needs to be understood thank you D did you want to go or Okay yep valar 50 Mansfield Avenue i'm having deja vu here
40b is a state statute that requires towns to approve affordable housing developments under flexible rules if at least 20 to 25% of the units have long-term affordability restrictions the $2,100 starting point for Norton Links which I told you the
last time you said this Bob is for the nonaffordable units when we talk about affordable housing it does not mean that every single unit in the building is affordable frankly I kind of wish it did but everyone seems to hate 40B we need to understand that when we're talking
about 40B and affordability and new properties and what they're going to charge Norton links retail rates for apartments are not what you need to be comparing with if you're thinking about affordability you need to look at the affordable unit prices which are a few hundred less per unit at least which are
still frankly really expensive i don't disagree but correct that's still high they're still higher than $1,200 but when you say 2100 that is not the affordable rate and you are not giving folks facts when they are expecting you
to that's not how 40 works we don't want to get in the cross examination different people talking here understand thank you for your comments um Bridget did you want to speak or did you Okay um just real quick it was kind of off of that cuz there was more Bridget car uh
Bridget car Oak Street sorry um it was off of the 40B comment as well but it was more I guess I was going to phrase this question um 40B is vastly different from MBTA correct because 40B um you pretty much the state comes in and says
we're putting this here here it is yay um with the Listen I I've spoke to my dislike on on this um bill uh and but I've also spoke in favor of compliance as well on the record so continuing with that um at least with this uh we do have choices um it would have to go through a
site plan review through the planning board um if I'm not mistaken um so just to say that 40B and 3A are the same is is I don't think correct if someone can answer that i I would say that they are not they are not the same there are
nuances involved we do have a we would have a site plan review process for any of these projects but it would not be a special permit site plan review processes um generally unless it there's no way unless there's no way to square it with
the zoning we can put conditions on it we can't deny it yeah no so there's definite differences in how the processes go forward um 4 DBs also generally come with a project in hand
this overlay provides the opportunity to build things that would then go through all those processes it doesn't there's nothing proposed until anything is there right um so there could be no net change there could be significant net change we don't know
right okay thank you so anything else before I get to maps roger uh just as a a question for Paul um Paul all of these units um even if they're net units on top of uh the overlay district um all those
units count against our numbers for 40B no no the numbers that we propo I'm Paul you can confirm if I'm not nothing that we put as capacity under MBTA counts against our 40B ratios no only anything that gets built no that's what I'm saying so any all these units that if if
say they get built all those units would count against our 40b number well they would but the language that we have for this also would require an affordability element to up to 10% which is the maximum the state will require for this
overlay okay thank you so basically the goal with the language that we've put in along with this article is to at worst make no net change in our affordability ratio the states that said you can't make it all affordable or 25% or anything like that a juicy ratio but
they'll allow up to 10% okay so Paul I think we're on to Yep there we go um so let's look at Norton let's go away from the state and all the math i'm in marketing i don't like math
um so the MBTA overlay is an overlay district meaning a property owner can choose either the base zoning or meet the requirements of the overlay they get to pick one set of rules or the other they don't get to mix and match which rules they like from each they can pick
one set or the other set so if there's a commercial property they can build under commercial zoning if there's a res if it's a single family underlying zoning they can build under the single family they can build under the overlay they can do either one the approval would be
by site plan and again not special permit um and just to be very very very clear it is not the vacant TPC parcel that's visited at Falltown meeting last year we'll get into what was noticed for this bylaw in the coming slides uh the
planning board is still revising the bylaw text just for the boards to be aware and the parcels to be selected and I'll go through that multifamily according to Norton's vla start is start starts at three attached units so anything above a duplex is multif family
and the zoning text and the parcels from a procedural standpoint will be one warrant article at town meeting which means you won't get point of orders about people speaking about the wrong article again so let's move ahead here Paul and in
terms of the process following town meeting uh the planning board underwent an extensive public comment process which continues uh including having an open house event in this room in December where we encouraged members of the public to place where they felt this
project should should be cited along with comments they wanted to make comments along the lines of I don't want it at all those were received um the board members evaluated those selected properties along with comments from town meeting and the process prior to that
under a number of criteria and I think these kind of are kind of guiding principles of how we looked at that we looked at areas where multif family already exists so it's not impacting as much the character of the neighborhood areas in need of
redevelopment uh areas where development might be challenging uh this included just general reviews of the properties that are there it also included reviews of parcel ownership are all of these parcels owned by one person are they owned by a bunch of different people uh
as well as land versus building value metrics so we looked at a review of what is this piece of land worth what is the building on it worth per our assessment guidelines the guiding thought there is if you have a I'll just say a small
fixer upper on a beautiful piece of land that would be a prime target to be redeveloped because there's no loss in bulldozing the old fixer upper and putting something new on it if you have a valuable property on the land that makes it harder to justify the cost of
purchasing it and building something new and if feasible one of the feedbacks that we got from our last process was if we're going to do have the ability to do so try to split any parcels or zones or portions of this overlay between the two
elementary schools so it's not all hitting JCS or the North School and I'll just ask again if anybody's on Zoom can please mute your lines that would be appreciated he says waiting so please mute your
lines if you're on Zoom everybody can hear you thank you so as part of this process ahead of town meeting the planning board voted to notice five areas of town which are circled here we have the Mansfield Avenue North Norton Glenn 138 Barer
Street also known as the Tweed Mill property Red Mill Village and 274 East Main Street and I'll go into each of those in a little bit of detail here so the Norton Glenn this is tied to the LG North School in terms of
elementary alignment um these are existing affordable rental units all of which are counted in our subsidized housing inventory they have a contract with I believe it's a state agency Paul through 2033 for those to be affordable
units so after 2033 we don't know what that would turn into um the average lot size is about an acre it is under one property owner so it would be potential one plan for redevelopment and here's acreage it's 25.2 2 acres with 150
existing units if you took 25.2 acres and tried to bulldoze everything and build everything to the maximum maximum capacity you could in theory fit 343 units on this as a model on paper that
would be a net of 193 again just on paper which I'll probably say too many times in the next 10 minutes moving on Paul Mansfield A this is one of the properties that was part of our initial discussions last fall but it was removed before a town meeting um this
includes all the properties north of the TPC parcel as well as some of the other properties on the north side which includes some commercial buildings along with all the smaller quad plexes going on down towards the shopping center
um all of these properties are currently zoned commercial even though there's a lot of residential uses so those existing apartments would potentially become conforming under the MBTA zoning overlay um this is made up of a lot of property owners with no unified plan of
development um but it is they are sites that do have sewer on them um so again less net impact on the scale here and the split ownership we feel would make kind of a large scale redevelopment more challenging as people
have to buy them up one by one by one by one not to mention the fact that nobody's going to tear down the new electrical training warehouse that just went up there and looking at this area all of those together are 32.5 units and if you
build that out to the model that would be 481 so these two areas combined would be over the amount that would be required for the Commonwealth requirement um if the planning board moved forward with this I expect we would peel off a few of the lots and get as close to the minimum
as we possibly could another property that has been one of the things that we noticed is the former Tweed Mill building on Barrow Street um this property is in we'll just call it a mild state of disrepair maybe be generous um it's also near a lot of
other duplex or similar multif family properties around it the site is empty so any development on it would be net new um the dam on that property also needs repair it is an existing residential zone um and Paul I think
there is there was discovered that there is an old sewer on the property but nobody knows whether it's useful or not it's an on-site system and it's 25 acres just to everybody's doing the math at home
and again if we combined that with Norton Glenn again that would be over the over the number there same as it would be with Mansfield A and those again are two different elementary schools and there's Mansfield A again
all this math will be featured again in later presentations that you see and then Redmill Village and 274 East Main Street Apartments we have on one slide here um these would feed into the North Elementary School commercial
residential R80 zoning uh Redm Mill Village itself all of those properties combined allow for 51 acres so in theory Redm Mill Village from an acreage standpoint would meet the requirements on its own um again there are existing
units there but that would model an increase of around 670 units 274 East Main Street is a little less than 15 acres as we mentioned there's 188 existing units and the model would only do 237 on that site which would be a
relatively small increase there and you can see how those two would look if they're combined so here are some potential combinations that the board expects to consider um our official notice meeting as I mentioned will be next week on this
some of the combinations here would meet the state requirement um Mansfield A and the Glenn Mansfield A and Tweed you could also do the Glenn and Tweed uh or Red Mill Village um Redm Mill Village which has been discussed um there are a
number of residents for Redville Village there with us in person on the Zoom call um obviously we'll hear from them I think either this evening or at our next meeting about how they feel about their property being discussed like this um the portion of the east main parcels
could be included in different proposals to meet requirements but it's only 15 acres and the other properties that we've noticed are 25 so it doesn't it's kind of an odd fit to fit in with anything that we've noticed right now um but it is part of the parcels that we
could include at town meeting and then highlights of the bylaw text changes there have been a lot of text changes since what you saw at town meeting um we have not voted on the bylaw language at this time um first it meets the minimum requirements before
it's affordable and the potential for mixed use properties uh so the potential for commercial development on the ground floor um that would in theory increase commercial revenue and also reduce the amount of residential units which could
be built on a site um mixeduse development is only proposed on the first floor because otherwise if you go above the first floor then it starts taking away from the model and you need to build in more density to account for that get that correct in the mechanics
there yes um we've also capped everything at a maximum of three stories the density bonuses which were described at previous time meeting have been removed entirely um and again this bylaw is designed generally at promoting smaller
scale buildings some of what you saw on the slides today rather than exclusively large buildings there's nothing that says you can't build a larger multif family building in the bylaws but what it does do is it doesn't mandate a
minimum building size of 90,000 square feet or something like that it allows the developer if they so choose to build smaller properties so that's what the bylaw text changes are text is designed to do here and then just the final one the
summary the state requirements are asking for compliance from July 2025 with significant impacts on existing future grants and discretionary funds i mentioned that they put a rider in a fire safety equipment funding grant
request saying that basically if you're not compliant you're not eligible um again the overly district was cited through a thorough public process i think I'm sick of talking about this at this point um and again going back to the beginning the requirement is only to
allow the opportunity to development it doesn't mandate construction and doesn't prevent development under the existing zoning if the property owner wants so if multif family is developed the requirements they lay out are designed to promote properties which we
think are welld designed and encourage mixed use retail as well as affordable units trying to keep Norton above that 10% threshold for affordability and kind of keep us above the state requirement for 40BS to come in which I think we've
all seen recently is uh not something that's going to go away so I do see a couple of hands raised in the Zoom meeting i'll go to members of the select board finance committee because obviously the planning board's seen a lot of this in the past few weeks so
okay um well first I want to I want to thank the planning board i think you guys have done um quite a bit of work on this it's obvious and um I don't regret not being on the planning board at this um I did so just a couple quick things
um the former tweet building and this is just my opinion i'd love to see a business in there and I don't think uh 400 units is is a good idea for that area um I think the town kind of spoke very loudly that they were against this and if we have to you know rather than
be against it if we have to pass something I think we passed something similar to what Foxboro did that's never going to be built or not going to be built for quite a while um so I I would recommend the Red Village alone um I I've managed condos uh I have a property management company i've done it for 20
years and in my entire career I've seen one condo uh dissolve and that was due to a disaster so I don't think Red Mill is going anywhere i don't think that it'll impact them at all um and that's my opinion um I I did have one question on the
recotification did you use anything the bylaw language you mean yeah the I'm sorry the bylaw language um did you use anything that Mr um who was it mr shabet brought that town meeting a lot of his suggestions were to cut things out that we had prop that we had initially had in
there some of that yes all right i wish I had a copy of it because I I can compare it but some some of that is definitely incorporated one of his proposals that he presented town was to make the minimum building size 90,000 square ft um and that's something that
the board has in our discussion points for the ETH um because that's basically how it was presented at town meeting and I understood his logic if you're going to have a developer come in here you don't want to have them hamstrung by a small building next door
or something with a large setback um but in general I think the way that we was initially designed was to allow the potential for smaller buildings if that's what the developer wanted what made sense for the area okay so all right yeah my final statement is if if
the goal is to get this past the town meeting I think the bare minimum um and and on a on an area that's not going to be developed in the near future or even you know anytime soon so um that's my that's my thoughts anyone else yeah just
really quick i want to say thank you to uh the planning board and the chapter gentlemen who presented uh you guys did a lot of thorough work uh there's a lot of um great information in here i feel well informed on this article now um and
and I know that people are hung up on the issue that the state is requiring it but I think if you put that aside the fact that there's a need for housing in this specific um area is not surprising it shouldn't be surprising to anybody uh I have
people currently right now who are young couples or couples who are have gone from double income to single income who cannot find housing in the area they're having to move outside of Norton so this shouldn't be shocking to anybody that there's a need for this housing and
aside from the fact that the state is requiring it I do think that this is a good proposal thank you i think I think as I said at town meeting B I mean regardless of whether housing is uh desired or wanted from the affordability standpoint would this bylaw be in front
of anybody if it wasn't a state requirement i'm going to say no but here we are one more comment from the member of the finance committee i do see Mr schliker on the Zoom call there well thank you very much you kind of
were in the fire uh so thank you uh quick question i saw on the uh the uh tweet slide you had mentioned there's a mass military support foundation company that's they're pursuing it but that's
been the case for at least a couple of years i think under the existing zoning it would be a challenge for them to do that okay um yeah so it's not Is it an abandoned property that's an eyesore yes is it a
fire hazard yes um Brandon Noble yeah is there somebody interested in it yes but there's nothing firm on that at all okay and that would be potentially a nonprofit which would not be a tax revenue increase necessarily to the town
so Okay uh second question is and I've heard different things for the Redm Mill um area is it true that each building is uh occupant owned
so yes I think I'm going to just say that from the there's a there's governing documents around the property yeah um the official notice meeting that all of the residents received notice for for Red Mill Village is for this for our
next meeting on the 8th it was originally supposed to be last week but the Sun Chronicle failed to publish the notice uh which is why we're having to do this in the sequence we didn't want to um so I do want to be cognizant of the fact that they may or may not kind
of that we haven't gone through all of that with them in a in a forum but there's individual ownership but there's also restrictions and different things about how their board can go about the thing go about it i think that um the
initial feedback that we've gotten is that they're concerned that it could potentially detract from their property values if somebody sold and did something else that happened next door to them or something like that which is
similar to any other resident in town but okay I just let me if I if I can sure if only there was somebody who managed condos here um it's it's a they're individually owned units but it's all percentages of of a whole so each unit is worth you
know such and such percent of that so they so one person couldn't just you couldn't have 10 units sell off and then have a building be built for that right okay if that's what you're getting at yeah so I mean I think it was the the Nor Glenn you had said it's one owner so that person decides hey I'm going to
sell everyone's out of luck i was just trying to understand with Red Mill i like I said I had heard so it's not like one person can sell and then build it so it sounds like it would be a lot of the whole association would have to be dissolved and that's why I made that
comment that I've not seen that in 20 years of managing condos okay just thank you just getting a clarification understood thanks um yeah I do have Bob I'm going ask you to hold on one second um Mr schleer if you wanted just to
speak from the Zoom meeting i see your hand up there thanks Jim uh obviously thank you to Paul and the planning board you know for laying out some potential new areas for the overlay um I just want to make a quick point actually I should start sorry nick Schliker 40 Northwest Street Norton um I just want to make a quick
point although the areas districts with the elementary schools is correct the way it was presented um I do believe it's kind of very important to note that the you know making sure the residents of Norton understand that if these areas weren't ever to be developed there's definitely a potential chance for Norton
public schools administration and the school committee for um potentially redrawing some district lines for our elementary school that way we can keep a balance of uh our students within JCS and LGN um just I think it's important to note moving forward for a public record um that is all thank you yep no
thank you and that's uh good for everybody to keep in mind in terms of how we look at these properties but obviously if we put them all in one spot that doesn't give you a whole lot of flexibility to do much so okay Mr kimble I should say Bob Kimble
51 Pine Street um just a point of just some information on the twe prop property that was uh researched about 15 20 years ago just so Paul knows he can he can get this information from the water sewer department uh we we
did a extensive uh survey of that plant down there that is an industrial plant is not designed for residential surge it's a whole different technique so we abandoned the idea and the other thing that they have the water department has
there's a uh 21E survey on the property that should be interesting if you want to grab a hold of that too that just I know you mentioned that the treatment plant and I think it's not we can't use it for what we'd like to use it for yeah no I think the the understanding is there's
something on the property whether or not it's usable or not that would be up to any developer who wanted to touch it um as we mentioned the town isn't responsible for creating water and sewer access on any of these properties so um
yeah it was 21 i just want to confirm i see Miss Broaddsky your hand is still raised i want to make sure that if you're looking to speak that's great if it's just up from before I'll just ask if you lower it to save the ADD part of my brain here so I I did have a quick question i was
just wondering in light of like the recent conversation around the rodeo land um I don't think it's for sale yet i think there's a developer looking at it but does that footprint fit the
the criteria sure uh that was not a property that was highlighted as one of the properties that we should look at as part of our process um and at this point it wasn't noticed to be part of a warrant article for town meeting so it's
not something that we would consider as part of this bylaw at this time it would probably absolutely get built if we zone this on the rodeo just something to consider um someone already wants to build there so you can guess
that that would be a yes and a no so additional comments from uh anybody in the meeting here again if you're looking to speak in the zoom call I'll ask you use your react function to raise your hand and then uh introduce yourself but please Bonnie ask uh Fincom
117 North Street so as a member there's a lot of things I could say as a resident but as a member of FINCOM what I will say is that I'm sitting here thinking about what the cost of compliance is that is intentional in terms of site
selection versus what the cost of non-compliance in terms of legal ramifications as well as a loss of state grant funding to me that's an obvious choice and so that will inform my voting if for the the first thing on our um on our
business tonight so thank you and just to clarify the planning board has not had it notice meeting on this article so I don't think that we're really looking for a vote on this one at this time that's not how it was noticed for us so
there is discussing this no just make sure so additional I do see a couple of hands raised in the Zoom meeting here i'm just going to go with first come first served here so the name on the Zoom call is
Hans if you want to just unmute and just state your name and address for the record please and I'll ramble for a second while there there you go [Music] sir are you looking to make a comment
hans Heiden are you able to speak okay if you've I see you gone back on mute if you uh decide you want to speak again I'll just ramble for a second if you uh if you want I can come back to you uh Mr kates I also see you in the
Zoom meeting if you'd like to unmute and just state your name and address for the record please sir hi thanks for this meeting and I emphasize or I empathize with what you're trying to do and this is the first time I've ever attended such a
meeting um so but for Norton so what you're trying to do for Norton to become compliant with the state MBTA requirements I understand what you're trying to do but it's baffling to me and
if I may speak for some of my R&B neighbors at why you would choose RMV which is a currently settled and vibrant 55 and older community why would you
choose to put RMD as an overlay business why i'm offended that R&D would be used as a placeholder state it sounds shame to me thank you for your comments Sarah i
think that the reason that that area was chosen as a potential overlay site is that there's there are people who feel that it would be challenging for things to be built there on top of what you've already developed which is very lovely
um which means that it would have no net impact on the town uh a similar example would be in Foxboro where a portion of the overlay is over Patriot Place and uh if somebody's going to put apartments over the stadium at midfield I have uh
some waterfront property sell in Nebraska so I believe that's the logic behind why Redmill Village was selected as one of the properties that we're looking at as part of this overlay in
that it the current state of the property and the fact that it's newly developed and well built would make it unpalatable for any developer who wanted to take advantage of the MBTA bylaw and they would simply move on and look to
other towns tim can I add something so it still sounds shady to me so since I was the one that was kind of pushing this earlier the reason I'm behind that using that area is that right now it is a beautiful place and I
don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon and using that overlay will satisfy the state and allow us to receive those grants without having anything built so it's just it's literally just an overlay over that area and we're not expecting any impact of the temp from that
so it sounds like a wink and a nod oh yeah we put something aside but we realize it's never going to happen and therefore we can be compliant and with a wink we say hey you know we did what we were supposed to do absolutely correct
that's the exact that's exactly what we are trying to do sir you are correct it has nothing against Red Mill Village i love Redno Village i think it's gorgeous keep keep in mind no change that is what we are trying to bring about so all the concerns about traffic and all this
other things I know you've got some speeches on that um a lot of things that it would impact us if they did get built those don't happen so they they would be red herrings to bring up as a concern with this this is the idea is to get it not built um the point that was raised a
minute ago was to firm that up because the the way you guys are all individually owned and all you would be the hardest as heck thing in the world for someone to buy up and and drop you know replace your place so um I do want to give I see Hansen's come off mute
again if you want a chance to speak I'm just going to go to you directly um if we lose our grants like say we just decide and I know there's a large movement in this town that wants to just say flat no to anything we come forward with and that we could be wasting our
time in this room right now even trying to come up with an idea um if we go if we don't comply we lose our grants that puts a financial burden on the town as we have previously discussed a lot um going forward and having something built also puts a financial burden on the town
infrastructure all those things so what we're trying to do is not burden the town and that is why we see that as a very good selection because if you put it there nothing happens and that's what we want we don't lose our grants we don't take a hit that way and we don't
have this happening and as far as all the towns that are legally fighting this and all these arguments I would like to render that something by complying and all that renders that into something we're just watching on the news the other towns can have that fight with the state spend money on the lawyers and all that and that's another point folks
fighting would cost Norton money too we We're trying not to have something cost Norton money in the end and making it so we comply but not getting built is just it's our only way to do that so um Mr cro I saw you at the podium
before did you want to make an additional comment porren Seagull 28 Kadiro I'd like to like the board to take a little bit of a different approach to looking at this situation what are the impacts on each of these parcels on the consideration
aside from what what happens if it's it's apply if it's it's developed or not developed just the existence of this overlay district applied to their properties now in four of these locations they're all individually owned
so a buyer coming to this property will not care whether there's an overlay district or not because as a single owner they have the option of opting to use it or don't use it in Redmill Village that's not the same situation so
you have in in Mansfield you have 32 different union orders but each of which has control of whether that it's going to apply so a buyer has no concern over what that will what what that implies now let's take Redm Mill
Village i don't know about you guys but I've been I I haven't been doing this for a year like you have i've been doing it for about maybe a month and a half i've seen several meetings i've reviewed the the regulations and I'm a former commercial
real estate attorney practicing for 15 years and those are the most confusing regulations I've ever worked with in addition to that I sat with the planning board for over an hour and planning board director for over an hour and I had to call the state myself and get two clarifications of things that
were really inconsistent with what was in the regulations now take it to the next step try try explaining that to a community of 55 and over um I've I worked with our dire our
trustee to send out two blasts describing what was happening uh we had a zoom call in which we had about 50 residents 50 people on the call with basically was probably like two like a 100 people because there's two people in our residence for most of them and I
can't I can't tell you today that everybody understands what that means and that's a problem for us because we we're we're in a community and forget about Yeah it can never be built we'll get to that in a minute but we're in a community that which survives on our being able to to to move those
properties and sell them and if there's a question about that people will move on to another location one of the other impacts is a question I had uh this board proudly announced "Let's do Redmill Village." Terrific that is what your vote was
right absolutely do you realize that Redmill Crossing is not part of Redmill Village i guess not because it's in it's your plan it's in your plan yes it is it's identified as part of the plan this was why I included these name yeah let's
Okay it's right now right now the notice that was sent out includes Redmill Crossing redmill Crossing is basically Kelly's restaurants and um now it's it changes every week the the pizza place
thank you it it changes weekly um with this with this overlay they're independent they're not part of a mill village they're a single single owner they have over one acre of land and they have the ability to add two stories of
housing on top of what they have now that's really interesting because basically the parking situation there is horrible to begin with and one of the concerns I have is if this board is planning to use what's called 7205C2 which is a provision in the
regulations that allows them to mitigate the amount of units they have um non-residential units against the housing requirements which I believe they were trying to use i'm not sure but under that provision under one of those
provisions it states there could be no minimum parking requirements for non-residential uses as a right so basically they could put two stories of residential housing and ignore the parking requirements of the existing
parking of the existing retail lovely right now I don't know if you go there but on the weekends and holidays it's a mess originally Redmond Village has uh a deer right had a deed right to five parking spaces they gave up two to accommodate Kelly's they also allowed
Kelly's to to park along the street on the weekends as an accommodation we have no I have no no concern that Carol is going to do it today but eventually she could sell her property and if she does there's a very good likelihood that someone looking to maximize their their
their return could add to that which would really be a mess for Red Mill Village and and thirdly uh well I believe you uh you all believe that could happen um they're not going to tear down every one of their buildings and build a new one they're
not going to terminate the condominium complex but I I just I hate to bust your bubble but you may be misguided in a little bit of that for one the requirements for 55 and over and
requirements of a of age 18 and above are part of our master deed which can be amended hello a percentage of Redmill Village residents not 100% not every single one of them can be amended 67%
what 67% i read your documents i'll work on this you're wrong it's 75% that's okay you're a manager that's okay manage property 75% but anyway if this was happening last year I said you're right it would never happen
but who's going to guarantee me today that social Security Medicare and Medicaid are going to be in existence or surviving it in the way it is now within the next 10 years and what would how is that going to affect this property and would that maybe necessitate them a
reducing age limit which they could do or eliminating the 55 and over community in which case you have a 152 units which comprise of what is it 73-bedroom apartments and 82-bedroom
apartments that could go on the market immediately without putting a shovel in the ground duty to this court looking at those three things what can the buyer ask of us what concerned us what duty we have to
disclose that information i would make these boards aware of a chapter 93A unfair and deceptive acts of practices one of the regulations states "It's unlawful unfair or deceptive to
fail to disclose to a buyer a fact that they may have influenced the decision not to enter into the transaction." Hello so I I can't tell you sitting here whether there are
normal defenses to that and I'd call upon town council to give us an opinion that says it could never happen but I I I don't want to own a property where I stand to be exposed to that kind of problem none of the other properties have that problem none of
them and in fact what's what what boggles my mind is you're looking at Morton Glenn you were talking about having something happening immediately that's 50 those those properties are are 50 years old they're
53 years old and they have a section 8 requirement that goes out to 2033 so nothing could happen till then what happens in 2033 we lose all those section 8 housing could it be 40B at that point 40B may be
a problem again if you lose those properties and they could be building a 40B project and they could be outside the scope of anything that we're looking at uh then look at look at uh Mansfield Avenue you have Mansfield Avenue
has 32 lots okay 14 of which are.5 acres so if all of the 14 developed it you'd maybe get two two units three units how many students would that be
three students on 14 of them it's less than 50 students and and again this is 30 this um math that's 32.5 acres so you could pick and choose some of the what developed lots and leave open the smaller lots and those are
non-conforming lots the residents that are non-conforming the same thing with Morton Glenn it's non-conforming so you have the opportunity over time with little impact in anything to put those two together to make something happen that that's real and doesn't impact the
existing residents you also have what my understanding from the town council is from assessor's office according to making a non-conforming lot into conforming increases the assessed value i I just see it more of a win you
got the grants as you're talking about and and I can't well this town is trying to pass up $3 and a half million dollars worth of grants so I don't know what do uh it doesn't make any sense at all but I know going forward there's still
projects that I understand that they're going to need grants for we're looking at 140 main uh route 140 and 123 that intersection that's going to require something i I can tell you now that that's got to involve something with the state if we want to turn our backs to
that good luck but if as a town you decide that you want to preserve that but you're going to pick on Redmill Village who has I think has some exposure and whether you believe it or not that's a fear we all have you can scrap your head Steve but but that's your that's your opinion that's your
opinion okay uh there are a lot of people on this call a lot of people in my village that don't agree with that but understand as much as we like this town and we want to preserve those grants it right now those grants don't really impact us on our side of the we
have brand new water lines we're protected by sewer the the traffic lights have been introduced unfortunately we have to make a excuse me fin have been introduced into Lenn Street and 495 and basically I'm not I'd love to I'd
like to see this town develop i worked hard for this town and I want I'd like to see it develop but if it comes to the choice of you're saying well we're going to do this because we don't want to we don't want to do anything that it seems reasonable and you want to put that all on a burden on us i would tell you that
for my for my position I'm not speaking for anybody else i think the town loses more by giving up the grants that they're going to benefit by than I would and I would really urge this board to I would if I were me on the board I would
select Glenville Avenue and and and Mansfield i I see it has the least impact on the town and the most benefit i mean you got 60-y old properties that you want to just sit there and they'll probably be 40 properties
anyway they're going to get developed so why not go with it instead of opposing it thank you and Orin before you step away from the podium I just want to say point make one point that um we do have specific parking requirements per residential unit in the bylaw language
that we've looked at yeah but if you're are Let me ask you a question is the town seeking to qualify under 7205C2 i don't believe so you don't believe so and I would ask why not because under
that requirement if you have non-residential units that qualify you can reduce the number of housing units that are required so if you didn't you should thank you thank you steve did you want to make a comment
just a couple quick comments um there's no burden whatsoever it's it's an overlay this isn't changing your zoning for Redmond Village it's an overlay uh I'm very familiar with chapter 93A it's it's a condo law in Massachusetts um I don't you're an attorney so I'm baffled why you would you would even
question that you don't you're not going to need to present an overlay to a condo buyer um and if you need 75% of owners to to change the documents you're you're talking overund 110 114 units that are going to um dissolve the condominium association
which again I've never seen in 20 years i haven't even heard of uh in 30 plus years um yeah i mean there's there's literally no burden to Red No Village discussing it and and and sharing it with your
members and your owners should be very simple there is no burden to Red No Village there's no chance of it being developed so that there's no again there's no burden i'm not really sure why that's not uh capable and you know I got to say something about that comment um just
because it doesn't impact one person or one area doesn't mean it's not good for the town we up here have to make decisions that are best for the town not ourselves so I I I would also point out the arguments that have been made from certain members up here have been
disregarding what was presented earlier which is basically that the statistics show that moderate increases in in these the sites I've referenced will have no impact net positive impact between taxes
and the like so continuing to say the sky is falling because of these taxes and and school people is just not is not that it's not validated by by the data and I don't know that you come up with the data to show otherwise thank you and Rob if you want to make just
comments we don't I don't crossexamination but question we'll definitely have opportunities at our next session orin Orin I actually wanted to ask you a question would you be will come back to the podium please should have
stop anyhow okay um most of your comments and you're talking about a lot of impacted things there's impact that would occur if this got built and they started acting on this am I to assume then that basically your position is we are mistaken if we put on Red Mill Village
it's going to get built no okay i'm I'm just telling you I've got to I've got to convince a buyer that this has no impact on them i've got I may have to I may have to convince a buyer who sees this and wants me to explain it and good luck i'll send them to your house please do
okay good absolutely because I'll tell them all the other things that benefited the town that came from it to Steve's point we are trying to evaluate what's good for Norton um I personally do not believe this hurts you to the degree that you're raising and I felt like that
went a bit far um but the idea here is to not get it built because there's other impact to Norton here that we're going to incur if it does get built but also um I am very concerned that if we don't come to town meeting with a plan that
simply isn't going to get built um those people that just want to say no and and block it completely I'm hoping to win some of them to say "Okay we'll do that instead." because otherwise there's a huge group of people out there that just want to say no to anything we come forward with i don't support that i'm
just telling you the reality is they're still out there and that is how they think that they're planning on they're just going to wait for town meeting to say no to anything we come with i am trying to put together something that would be a yes this is why and I'm the author of the red mill village thing certain people i'll take that
um I looked around town for a place where we could come into compliance and meet this law but it would not get developed my first try as we all know was the Wheaten Common Area right there with the pond and everything there i wasn't picturing Wheaten was going to sell that off a lot of build apartments
you you also came with a but but my point was and bring up Red Mill is to benefit Morton by keeping us in compliance without um and not sacrificing the grants i know you don't care about them but other people do i care about them okay i care
okay and um if I believed that this impact was real I would tell you I would have concerns i would then be worried about dropping it on Norton Glenn and the others because if you're saying that oh
no it's just gonna happen and it's terrible for the people there then that's true of anybody we drop it on so if you're saying someone else's backyard what about the someone else that's not That's not what I said okay but not yours no I No I didn't say that the the the existence of the Olay district has
no be the existing loan has no bearing on those other properties the buyer of those properties are getting an option they're selling an option they don't care they're getting an option they do it or they don't do it in Redill Village there is no option basically my buyer is
concerned he sees an overlay district what does it mean and I'm telling you that I I don't know i sitting here I don't know that I could explain that to a buyer and make them comfort make them comfortable one other thing that you mentioned at your meeting was aside from having a a zero possibility you were
open to having limited expansion and basically you're backing away from that you mentioned limited expansion and basically between Ventville Avenue and Mansfield Avenue there's very limited expansions that that that work that work for the town i do believe in those places it would actually happen though
whereas Rednill Village I genuinely believe in my heart it will not get built if we put it on Rednill Village uh my own plan also included East Main Apartments because my own math said that the Redm Mill Village area and maybe it's that Redm Mill Landing is where because somebody else said Red Mill
Village covers it by itself my own math said Red Mill Village did not give us enough and that was why my plan did include these main apartments as well if that's mistaken we can use just one but yeah we'll continue to do this at our next session i just want to I'm not pulling out the presentation don't worry
yeah uh I do want to give everybody a time check that it is 9:20 and we're on our first agenda item here so I do see three other people potentially before who are looking to speak sarah if you'd like to go next okay my name is still Howard Wley and I still I think live through Flint Lane Village um what I saw
on Excuse my voice but I saw on the screen the purpose of the zoning was to promote affordable housing that's not what I'm seeing you proposing you're not proposing affordable housing you're proposing no affordable housing correct
okay so why on your zoning you say this is to provide uh promote affordable housing it doesn't it doesn't connect the goal of the bylaw is the goal of the state's requirement is to promote housing the goal of our bylaw is to meet
with the state requirements how we how we go about that is yet to be voted but but you're not doing that and you're not intending to do that you're intending to thwart that the board has not voted on properties yet well Mr chair can I just make a comment on this um you're making
a very good point that there the the law the law is um in insufficient in the sense that it gives people towns the option to basically come into what's
called paper compliance with the law and so that's what some people because I want to make sure that we're clear that not everyone on these boards has this opinion because it has seemed a few times as though people are speaking for everyone on the boards when they should
not be doing that um but the point is is that is that the the law the the the law is written in a way that allows for paper compliance and it's one of the reasons I think the law is
insufficient because to me if you really care about increasing affordable housing and if you really care about lowering the prices I mean to me it's a little crazy to say
you know we have had a housing building shortage in this state for 50 years or 40 years we haven't been building enough housing and the solution to that is to not build any more housing that that's what we've heard tonight from some folks
okay so the solution to our supply problem is to not increase supply that's what we're hearing head in the sand okay head in the sand let's not be a community that is in favor of affordable housing or supports affordable housing
let's instead be a community that doesn't want to be part of solving a serious problem let's instead be a community that just engages in paper compliance and then doesn't ever help the situation and doesn't ever um affect
affordable housing in the state and then you know what we'll just let other towns do it because why should Norton have to do it okay so as far as I know no one has made this point at any meetings on this topic yet
but the fact of the matter is is that what this what our boards have been talking about doing is voting for something that will never happen and to me it's crazy that the law even allows that that people could come
out and say "You know what we're going to do we're going to approve it with the intent of it never getting done but because it's a law that's what it allows so you're making a very good point but the fact of the matter is is that the
law allows it so yes we can have free and open conversations up here saying you know what we're never going to do we're never going to we're never going to we're going to pick a place that this we're going to put it in a pond that this place would never get built we could and that's do that and that's what
these boards are discussing right now okay and I have a very real problem with that um also I want to put it back uh in front of the group that the water and sewer concerns are off the table this developer or the town needs to make no
concessions whatsoever for water or sewer so uh that's not an issue whether we have enough water don't have enough water we don't have a distribution system our sewage system can't take it makes that's not part of this the development cell will either have to put
an on-site system a private well or do whatever is necessary to put in the distribution system um another question did you deduct the conservation acreage from uh Redm Mill
because that 51 acres of Redmill encompasses some significant conservation area all so so what so what is the actual acreage all of the parcels have gone through a secondary review with Serpent who's our regional planning agency as part of a compliance modeling
process so you haven't done that yet that has been done yes so what what what what is the deduction from those 51 acres uh Paul do you have that available or is it Well if you think these other things of the laws are wonky here's another one
we can't we can count it toward the develment but think of it this way it you can never develop it you have 14 acres right in conservation restriction you can take those units and move them to a developable area so it is we are uh
we are aware of the 15 14 or 15 acre but it according to our consultant we still can use it as part of uh of the overall I don't think that's what I saw on the screen though it sha said you have to exclude
conservation restricted areas you do right and it it it's again that wouldn't be something you could ever develop but you can transfer the units off of that area somewhere else again it's a mathematical formula so you're
telling me of that 51 acres you've determined that 15 acres are in conservation restrictions well as you know they are so that nothing changes that conservation restriction i'm asking what does the town see that uh in that parcel of
conservation it it would remain conservation but what is the acreage it was I believe it was 14 acres in the conservation restriction 14 or 15 okay um 18.5
18.5 okay okay so that's again the slides that are shown big chunk of that 51 acres the slides that are shown are a high level view all of them have gone through our regional planning agency for compliance modeling okay also it is my
understanding that Redmill Crossing i.e kelly's is on the map and that could easily be converted uh to uh this uh this uh use and
uh given the fact that for the right price I would guess the Kelly's would be out of here in a minute and you would be seeing development on that property um also you noted that you didn't look at the rodeo property but uh what is the
acreage do you know what the acreage could be if you chose that property it's not something we can consider as part of this article so I'm not even going to dive into that tonight we haven't noticed it for town meeting so there's no way we could bring it to town meeting even i'm not asking you to
bring it to town meeting i'm just asking you haven't even looked was it reviewed and what was the acreage it was not reviewed and I did can't speak to the acreage um just another update on chapa funding was noted by one of the speakers from
Redmill i took a look at the chaper annual uh report and chaper is funded by 121 sponsors in the amount of 100,000 plus down to a,000 plus uh overall budget I think of
a million2 is what I saw and the state agency that involved in funding which recently changed their name to executive offices of housing and livable communities I believe it is uh to try to uh confuse the public uh was in there
for an amount of $2,000 to $5,000 so that is what the contribution from the state is contribution from other uh other involved parties is a $100,000 I'm sorry $10,000
up uh down through $1,000 in the state uh funding for that is minuscule in regards to what other agencies given and just as a disclosure uh the last 20 years of my life I retired a year and a half ago i was in
the area of affordable housing and I work for Metro Housing Boston uh which is an agency that provides and supports affordable housing um primarily through subsidies section 8
and mass MRVPs which my guess given what's going on in that place called Washington right now uh I'm not confident that a lot of the section 8 vouchers in and the funding for that is going to be around much longer so situation is going to get
worse a hell of a lot worse and we can't see what they had in the ground saying go someplace else thank you thank you sir my name is also still Valk and I also still live at 50 Mansfield Avenue um I
have a couple of small comments one is it would be really cool i know that the law lets us do it but could we stop maybe saying that we just want to not follow the law on recorded lines when we know that the attorney general is looking at everything related to all of
this and talking about suing municipalities it probably would violate open meeting law if you just went around telling everyone I hate this law i don't want us to comply with it but it's a little bit disheartening to me that folks who are elected in this town are standing in front of us saying hey I
don't like this law i don't think we should do anything that will actually make it be able to be complied by in the spirit that it was written obviously there are issues with it as Kevin Snder noted but I'm just getting a little tired of hearing that we as a town are
deliberately looking to circumvent the law of the state of Massachusetts to thinking about the whole town since folks are trying to suggest that Redm Mill Village is not a big enough constituent how many people showed up to
a fall town meeting like 150 maybe 200 so if there are 153 units at Redmill Village and all of them turn out to the next town meeting because they agree with Warren and the other folks who have spoken about their
concerns you guys don't think that they could tank this vote on their own y'all are confident well we'll just put it over 274 East Main Street it'll never get built and the town will pass it at town meeting this town voted 1775 people voted four years ago
to keep a town meeting form of government and a couple hundred show up every single time if that does not already include Redm Mill Village and it does at the next town meeting you are setting yourselves up for failure by saying "Well we're just going to put it over
Redm Mill if Redmill doesn't want that." If all of them agree with you if that's your gamble I get that but if they don't you're putting yourself in some real hot water thank you that that is certainly a consideration
rob I think you wanted just to make Go ahead Rob okay excuse me go ahead you You were saying that we were trying to not follow the law with this but then what part of doing that is
against the law i'm not saying I said that Kevin made the point that it's not against the law technically it's against the spirit of the law which is why I said the spirit of the law specifically and would the town just saying screw the law and voting at down at town meeting
that would be against the law now wouldn't it we would in fact be in the position that I felt we were after a fall town meeting where we said "Hey screw you Massachusetts we don't want your grand money." And I'm against doing that yeah I I agree but I think you're in the same position with Red Mill i
think if these boards and folks would instead say "Do not calm down me Rob Bush." Okay don't calm down if these boards were saying instead you know none of us like this law that much i don't think it was written well bridget for
example has talked about her concerns with it in the past i've heard all of that if we said "We don't really love this law but here are a couple of options that aren't actually that offensive we're not talking about TPC Boston we're not talking about using a ton of commercial land instead of it having being conduct commercial or
industrial development if we instead put a good faith effort in here and said "Here are a couple of parcels that this could potentially work on." And we're not trying to say "Let's put it somewhere it can never be built." I have to hope I have to hope that especially
if more than a couple hundred people turned out to sound meeting we would actually get this passed in a way that would satisfy the state and that would not cause folks like Redmill Village to feel like they're going to have trouble if they're selling their properties or doing anything like that in the [Applause]
future thank um I see a couple people waiting over there on the wall i do see another hand raised in the Zoom meeting rob if you wanted to lower your hand just to You still wanted um if you wanted to That's okay why don't you let um Gerard go next or
Mark mr case did you want to say something further sir yes i I wanted to say that the woman that just spoke and the board member that spoke saying that basically you're
skirting your responsibilities and you're in my opin you know what Bill Pelich used to say do your job and I don't think you're making a good faith attempt at this you're skirting the issues and you really and
in my opinion you're part of the problem and not the solution thank you for your comments sir i think I'll just say every member of the board is speaking for it on their own behalf not as a not speaking for the board position in general so I'm part of the
problem not Tim just to be clear Rob that was not my intention just clarify i'm the one that's part of the problem i will take that by myself there was a majority vote from every member on this board from this board for each of these parcels that are showed on
the screen it was a different major it was a different majority for each one but there was a majority for each of these parcels and they each had their own pluses and minuses so did you have anything else Rob that you wanted to say or did you want was just willing to go next okay mark Sweet
Laura so we all agree it's going to go in one of these four parcels we had a meeting back in December we decided which ones we want we settled on these you've noticed notified the neighbors it's going to go you're going to offer
one of these are you going to offer more than one do you think slide number here no I'm not thinking you might have some uh uh slide 42 Paul i think this is probably
there may be some movement in here but I think those are probably the four combinations maybe something a variation of one of these is probably what would be put forward you go with more than one like we had an override of 4 million and
6 million yeah we're putting one article at town meeting one article one location that's what this board so the idea here is to keep everybody happy and I know it's if we go to Mansfield A that means there's
a good in Norton Glenn we could get 175 units Mansfield A and Tweed we could get 175 Redm Mill no it's not going to happen Norton Glenn in Twe it's not going to happen I'm sorry could happen Red Mill would be the one in my opinion
it could happen so yes we are trying to not bring in uh we're trying to stop yes the idea is to stop us from bringing in 175 units that we cannot support water-wise traffic-wise
and especially schoolwise you're going to have a problem with the school we're just talking to the I'm not going to speak for the superintendent but she she was worrying about it it's where it's going to go she's going to have to reszone things as Nick said so we basically want to do the idea of bringing it over to Redmill getting the
grants that was spoken about over here still get the grants and not bringing all the kids and the problem so yes it's got to go somewhere it's got to go one of those four and right now the idea is to go with Redm Mill in my opinion thank you for your opinion
rob did you want to Well before I go she's been waiting over at that window for a very long time to be honest well I think you're going for I know i've been watching that i'd like to let you get your turn it's more important than my Okay thank you uh Bridget Car Oak Street um I kind of lost what I originally came
up here for but I guess I'll just speak personally for as mentioned i'll speak personally for a minute um uh Will forget your last name um thank you for your presentation uh I know this is the second time you come come to one of these at least that I was at um it's
very solid and I appreciate all the information and the effort um I would like to say a lot of what he spoke about he said he was 27 i'm 25 i turned 26 this year i still live in Nor i still live at home so I am pretty much the demographic of what was trying to be
solved with this bill um now I as Val mentioned I have spoke to my dislike of it and and Kevin spoke to a lot of what I I think um was it's a it's a rock and a hard place it's not new it's been around since 2021 um but it would be
great um outside of this bill uh housing is still a problem it's not going away and it would be great if even maybe 10 years down the line something were to happen to come from this um Redmill was a bit of a last throwin I think for the
past few planning board meetings it came up kind of later so I I don't really have a well-formed opinion yet based on not hearing the public hearing um but personally speaking I think I would like it to maybe at this time right now with this information be um Mansfield Aendor
and Glenn potentially um I don't know twe seems like it has a lot of issues and yeah I don't really know if that how follows any sort of thought process at all but um that's all I can say right now thanks Mr chair thank you i was going to say I think the challenge for this that the planning board has had is
trying to find the balance with what makes sense what follows the law and what we feel can be approved at town meeting and those are the competing priorities that we've had to deal with which are challenging i'm not blind to the fact that if this doesn't work long
term in the state there's nothing that stops the state with coming down with the new regulation of the day in 5 years that doesn't have as much flexibility because uh the state will do what it wants to do and we just have to ask them how high we're supposed to jump this time so
I was say Rob did you want to did you want to make comments here um yeah I'm going to be able to say um there first of all if we want to label it part of the problem fine but that is me i was the author of
the red mill um it was actually present to those that are saying it was sprung on lately uh that's actually not true i presented it last fall um at the time though I think you all know I did a lot of research around town in different areas and presented I think by the time
I was done 15 different places and spoke to the pros and cons so you know some of them obviously what you're looking at weren't good ideas red Mill was part of that um at the time we liked Wheaten Center better and so we didn't talk about as much um my goal is unashamedly
unabashedly to put it somewhere where it won't happen um I don't think this I don't want Norton to take this on now as far as the bell check and our responsibilities and do our job honestly I don't think that is our job i don't feel a responsibility for Norton to help
bail out the state and I was elected to this board by Norton i'm working for Norton and what's best for Norton um I am admittedly disinterested in helping the state um it's all about Norton for me and so that's why I come in
that way um and then I Yeah we talked about it a lot i covered my other point but that that's what I say if you guys want to blame someone blame me i was the author of it um I it's kind of sorry I'm going to sit here majority of the members voted to put it on the notice so it's
not just they they did but I'm going to feel you know you know my style if there's a beating I'll just take it myself so blame me um but that is my thinking i unashamedly say I'm not interested in helping the state i'm here
to help Norton and do whatever I think is best for Norton nothing else so all those accusations are true i am very val and the individual in here um are you still making a comment i mean I feel like we're really at a disadvantage here and you're talking in
circles around i apologize i've been standing up here for a while okay go ahead sir yeah so I'm Gavin Cavage i'm from the Fan Con i'm going to start off with a real softball question um Barrows Court I know there's some flooding at Barrows Court that's across
Barrow Street so the Barrows properties totally unrelated okay so less softball comments than that um I believe that if you're going to do something you should do it right i think that the chance for this town to do this to comply with this doing it right was last fall with the
good faith presentation or proposal that the that the uh planning board brought before us that was the actual proposal that would actually move the needle on the housing crisis in this uh in this state i will vote yes on whatever this board votes on because ultimately all of these are equally problematic and
imperfect to me and I just want the town to be in compliance so we can all move on i don't think any of them really move the needle significantly um so that's where I stand i do want to answer a question that Zach brought uh at the beginning of this 3 hours ago at this point it seems like uh
he asked what happened what was that question again yeah exactly he asked "What would you say to the people who bought their house 5 or 10 years ago who are now underwater cuz he lowered housing costs i bought my house in Norton 3 years ago i have no no concerns at all that I will ever be underwater
based on what I've seen in this state that's honestly a strange I am surprised by that by that idea because it's I've gained 50 grand on I think since I've moved and that's mitigated by the interest rates that have gone up it's it's it's not going to happen i'm not
concerned and honestly if it did happen as long as I didn't lose my house I'd be elated cuz some of my friends would actually be able to afford a house cuz I'm the only one from my college class that I know good friends who own a house and that's because I'm a software engineer stealing getting the money from big old California the rest of my my
graduating class are actually doing things like this fellow here actually helping the world they're getting paid frankly and they can't afford houses in the states and I just want to go live that we cannot edit and post oh I
apologize that's fair um and I will close by saying and echoing the disappointment in the folks who want to skirt this law i think you're really doing us all a disservice i understand you want to keep Norton the same norton is part of the state when
you when you put your return address on an envelope you write Norton Massachusetts and I think you forget that sometimes so thank you so I want to ask myself I'm not going to go off examining i do see you at the
microphone there's somebody in the Zoom meeting who hasn't been able to raise their hand so I just want to get to Mr turjan if you wanted to just unmute and speak please yeah and thank you and I and I'll be quick and and uh I guess I just want to voice a
concern and it's simply um you know look I I follow the news like I know a lot of folks do here and I think Governor Eric Healey's um plans and tensions are pretty well publicized and I do have a concern about this being I don't know if
you want to call it a Trojan horse if you will but the idea being they're looking to house illegal immigrants or immigrants however you want to call them and this is their way of trying to get a supply of housing as quickly as they can
and so I have a real concern about that thank you for your comment i think we there's no way for us to control what happens to these properties if and when they are ever developed my expectation is that uh the state is
probably not going to would probably not pay top dollar for developing any of these properties so um that's my that's my opinion um you can take that for what it's worth um I don't think that that's
something that I would consider these properties i I want to add and just this is just be truthful this doesn't work i looked for that sir for whether that this was a Trojan horse and all um looked hard i think someone yelled "No I
was thinking that." Um did not find it i could not find proof i did find I won't say I didn't find things were hints that she's thinking that way but I was not able to establish that as a fact and I did try hard if I'm honest I'll say I I could not I would be presenting it in
here if I had that that was why I was looking for it hello Paula Daniels Fencom 54 Power Street um this is a joint meeting i just wanted to kind of come back to the process here i know that um your deadline is April 10th that you want to
have something complete to present to our town meeting on May 19th um I just want to bring it back to our joint meeting i think that the boards need to be able to share their opinions i think we've only been able to hear from a few people um so I think if you're looking
for opinions from other members of the boards I'm just here to do that um so I think the Mansfield AB and Norton Glenn one is one that I would support um I am also in favor of the spirit of this law to hopefully create some more affordable
housing from a personal perspective I work in the nonprofit world and I've been seeing nightmares of families being evicted not being able to find affordable housing once they are evicted it's just a nightmare out there um heartbreaking stories I see every day at
work so that's just my opinion okay thank you very much for all of your hard work on this thank you and appreciate the redirection here i do want to make sure that if there are other members of the select board of income or planning board who wanted to add their comments i think planning
board probably made a lot of our comments over the past several months but Tim have a question is Mike units on uh I know he was at one point i'm not sure if he still is well it's it's we're on like what hour five now um my my
question is do we need to vote this tonight by either Finn Kamar the board okay you do not so I'm looking for Oh um uh Mr chair so I think typically we would we would the board would wait for a recommendation from the planning board yes and get that after our next meeting
yeah yeah my concern was the 10th date so that's perfect yeah okay additional comments questions concerns at this point otherwise we move on to the second bylaw discussion of our joint meeting
and that's before we get to the regular plating board agenda everybody okay yes i'm sorry i understood thank you i'm going to Okay Paul did you want to just give a quick overview of the recodification
here and as Paul pulls this up I'll just do this is another bylaw that the town has been planning has been working on for probably a year this is a recodification of the zoning bylaw basically means everybody just to try
and keep your conversations in the hallway or to a minimum please takes our existing bylaw takes it apart and puts it back together in a way that makes sense while also updating it for errors inconsistencies new things that have been added to state law things that case
law has found that we put in in the 70s and it's now illegal all sorts of fun stuff like that um as you can see here proved usability consistency legal defensibility um we want to make it make sense make it easy to use and make it so
we don't get sued those are pretty much three good principles of this um Mr chair Mr chair I apologize i I have to they have to leave as well so we're we're going to have to close our meeting out okay right because we won't have a quorum so we'll just we're just going to adjourn in the select board
meeting but since we're not voting on anything Denise and I will stay as observers um but we will not we will be closing our meeting now so I didn't want to interrupt you but I also didn't want you to get too yeah so I'm going to make a motion for the select board to adjurnn second all in favor i opposed all right
thank you thank you all thanks Tim sorry about that understood no not not unusual so uh but yes so um as we get into the bylaw here that we have done um the previous bylaw has
definitions scattered everywhere in this bylaw wow what the consultant that has we've been working with who has probably done half or more of the zoning bylaws in the state took all of them out and put them in one section in the back so
if you want to know what something is turn to section turn to section 11 all the definitions are there they no longer conflict with each other so you don't have one one definition in section five that says one thing and wait it says something similar in section seven which
one do I use all of it's there so um some of the big changes that we're highlighting um new new language that complies with the state's new accessory dwelling regulations these came out I want to say
last fall um the state's regulations conflicted with our existing bylaw um and basically the state said you have until a certain deadline or your next town meeting to put these in so we are putting them in big changes include that
ADUs are allowed by right there's size requirements they no longer the state says you can no longer require that the owner has to be there um and there's no there also is no allowance for
requirements that they have to be attached so you can have a detached accessory dwelling unit or like a detached in apartment so to speak um so we're just putting in what the state told us to put in for that
one um other revisions um to comply with case law removing a provision stating the creation of six laws triggers 10% of the lots to be affordable uh that is something that our consultant flagged as uh not cons consistent with current case law uh we also reduced sighting
requirements for adult entertainment uses they were previously 1,000 ft from all non-industrial zoning districts or other establishments we've adjusted that to 500 um that is a free speech requirement the ability to have an adult
establishment is a provision of free speech um our existing bylaw basically made it so you could have put it one location in town which is generally what our consultant felt is below the percentage of zonable land that uh makes
you an easy target for somebody to sue you um so by decreasing that we've now increased it from anything I think maybe one lot to six lots a dozen lots contain industrial all within the industrial zone mostly within
Norton Commerce Center and maybe the very very back of the Valentine Tool property in the wetlands is that what you there's a section that technically is in the Valentine Tool property but it's all wetlands small so
um And the other adjustment that we've made to improve the quality of development we've changed the design guidelines to standards within village commercial zoning that gives them more teeth rather than this is a guideline please follow it we'd like you to it is
a standard so it's a little bit stronger there the other thing that we adjusted is the standards for approving special permits um these are the conditions of approval the planning board looks at for every special permit you can see the before and after um we think that this
gives us a lot of additional teeth um and we also added one that's um yeah do you think that and yeah expands the tables the general uses um we're trying to group similar uses
together right now the end of the zoning use table has a miscellaneous we couldn't fit it anywhere else section um we've removed that and tried to align everything grouping to similar uses uh and then we're adding to the use table and definitions so you can see the before
and after if it didn't fit in residential open space commercial industrial it went in miscellaneous we've now built up a lot more structure around that most of the what is allowed in each zone has generally not changed i think there've been a couple of nips and
nips and tucks around the edges um but in most cases is just a reorganization for clarity and simplicity and then again the timeline we're here uh we're here this evening we have our planning board meeting on the 8th and the final warrant is due on the
10th um so this article was properly noticed by the Sun Chronicle so with the finance committee would you like to vote on it you do have the ability to so I'll leave that to you and if there any additional questions um from members of the finance committee or anything else this one's much more boring than
the other one we're all tired amen creative controversy try to avoid controversy where I can i'm in the wrong line of volunteer work we tried with the adult they'll entertain them so additional comments questions
concerns about any of the adjustments here um we can pull up any section if you'd like to look at it at town meeting we would be proposing a similar presentation overview there would also be a clean version and kind of a
highlights document of what was changed by section and it's online uh you all all the boards did receive the latest version of it so um it's out there for everybody to see
yes and we understand that when we bring this to town meeting we're going to get people going how am I supposed to read this tonight it's 140 pages um this is why we're giving all the summary documents and why we're giving this overview presentation there is nothing we can do to stop that comment
at town meeting we know it's coming uh all we can do is prepare accordingly but obviously with everybody's support and being on board and understanding yes I've looked at this yes this all makes sense if I had any questions the planning board
answered them madam Chair question um are there any properties that are in compliance with the existing laws that will be out of compliance does that make sense that question make sense Dave hopefully I understand how zing works so the question was if there
are any properties that are nonconforming which would be kind of conforming that we can now out of conform i don't believe that any of the changes we've done would create any new additional non-conforming uses and I guess and I I'll caveat with
I don't believe in that I there's so many properties in town i don't believe that we have and the changes that we've done if anything I think our goal has been to um go in the opposite direction where it made sense um but most of the
adjustments that we've made have been organization and structure uh we had a lot of discussions about what about this does this make sense should we change it um we made a couple of those changes and other ones
we had discussions we talked them through and went is this recotification or is this a zoning bylaw change um I know Steve you have a lot of ideas that we kind of put in that second category and said we'll come at these maybe another day
um but also had a lot of ideas that also made sense um so that's the process that we've gone through over the past year going through the bylaw section by section repeatedly so restate nobody who's doing something should have to change and having chickens whatever we
wouldn't expect anybody to have to change that like I for example have chicken i checked that part of the use table for myself it looks good if you go back 10 years that actually changed about seven years ago okay we changed it because before to have any chickens you needed a special permit from the
planning board and we changed it so if you had I forget the number now 12 we went a certain number of chickens but no roosters we don't care just go through the board of health um as a matter of fact for that in particular it actually got changed from chickens to poultry so
you can have quail now okay 2012 though unless I get it from uh that's that's good um and I I appreciate that too there were a lot of ideas but it definitely agreed should be separate articles so they can be considered and discussed individually i appreciate you
just tried to reorganize there yeah no we we didn't want to as many of the ideas went this makes sense we should do it if it was more than a nip and a tug we didn't want people to come in and go "Well you told this was a recotification but I looked at this and this is wildly different
than the existing." Um some things are different one thing that's going to may jump off the page somebody is like section one which is like the purpose of the bylaw but as a consultant throughout the last meeting that doesn't have any legal standing in anything when anybody
tries to file an appeal on a decision that we made um so it's just fancy fluffy words so yeah okay not seeing any hands raised in the Zoom uh Mr seagull I do see you over at
the window there if you wanted to just make a comment here orange Seagull 28 C Road uh first I' I'd like to compliment the board um they did a real herkling job the bylaws needed to be updated they needed to be made clearer and I think they really did a
good job in doing that um however part of the the new table of uses added some things that are head scratchers and I don't understand why they're being proposed and I just want to call them out um the first one is we had under
mobile homes temporary uh as requiring a a building permit they've taken away the word temporary which means in a in a an 80 in the zone residential 80 60 or 40 you could have a mobile home as a
permanent residence as his primary use i don't know uh if I'm living in in an 80,000 square foot uh lot but I built a home I really wouldn't be happy with a permanent mobile home next to me i also
question for the town itself what's the taxes on a mobile home why would we want to encourage someone to put a mobile home on a on an 80 acre an 80 square foot lot and lose the value of a I don't even know if is the real estate tax
applied to a mobile home i don't know but certainly that's a valid question for me in addition to its impact on its neighbors um certainly temporary there I I understand that people bring it up for the season they want to park it behind their house then it's a then it's a
question the planning board can decide but under this it becomes a primary residence and I didn't understand it the other thing is just a technical one and they change senior housing to a senior housing facility I know why they did it there's a definition of senior housing
facility but if you look at that definition clearly for some reason it it doesn't include senior housing it's just a workaround and I just asked the board to take a really close look at it because 8.3 goes through it says for
purposes of evaluating 8.3 sen in 8.3 senior housing is defined as and if you look at 8.3 it doesn't mention the word senior housing so I just think that's some clarification the book may want to take another look at um the other one
is ah recreational smallcale indoor um that used to be smallcale indoor and it was not allowed in any of the residential districts they now added this recreational smallcale indoor if you give me a minute the definition of
it includes establishments that provide amusement entertainment physical fitness indoor foreign membership they also include food and beverages juices are not limited to arcades art dance exercise studios
um martial arts indoor swimming pools tennis handball picket ball um bad mitten raet ball and golf simulations um I've gone to a I have four grandchildren i've gone to a lot of their facilities those facilities are huge there's no
limitation on size even though it says small there's no limitation on size and those you those those facilities on a weekend or even during the week they they turn over I'd say 120 people on an on an hour or every or two hour basis
they're huge and they're massive and I don't know why we want to start introducing a really legitimate commercial use into these residential areas even in a special permit and that that's something new and I don't know what triggered that it's certainly not in line with the updating
of of our bylaws and and the last two are both new one is brewery or winery and then a retail neighborhood while there certainly as farming a vineyard would be appropriate
and if they had a a brewery as an accessory use I understand it but a brewery or a winery as a primary use is a commercial use why we're starting to introduce commercial uses into residential areas i just don't understand yeah there's a there's a
planning board approval but um with all due difference this town has been reluctant to stand behind the planning board even when it opposes certain uses and basically it goes to court and they they end up coming back and getting what they need and so the fact that you're
putting a a a planning board permitting approval on those types of uses makes no sense to me they're commercial and they shouldn't be next door to a residential i understand there's a need to find more commercial space in this property but you got to
really recognize the rights of the residential owners that have invested in the properties around them and to put those properties in the middle in the middle of a residential community just seems the opposite of what zoning should be doing and the same thing is now with
the retail neighborhood and again that's trying to get to a smaller use and it's the definition under this is um u retail or service no greater than 100,000 ft such as news stands
boutiques barber shops salons such that the owner can operate no more than three employee it's a business and so yeah it's nice to have them in a in a in a the VC you know the the village commercial areas or some of those that's
what those are for but that's why introducing them as part of the residential communities of our town just seems to be inappropriate at this stage if we're really just looking to codify and update these bylaws thank you thank you
Lori you mind addressing a couple sure Stephen uh yeah okay so as far as the mobile home uh one I think it's just a I guess it's it's a difference of concern between my opinion and Orange's opinion
um mobile home is a home like any other it's often the only thing that's affordable to anybody at this point most people can't afford to build a 500 or $800,000 home right now and mobile home might be the only option the uh the idea that somebody doesn't
want to live next to it assumes that anybody that's in a mobile home is going to make it look like trash and that somebody that's in a home is going to automatically take care of it it's not always the case uh and uh you know with all due respect to Orin
you have a lot of great opinions but you also don't seem to want a lot of things built near you and this you live in a a community that has rules a mobile home's not going to go near you so um but to go with your other
concerns which are in my opinion more valid uh smallcale indoor recreation I offered a small change to the definition of that i also recognize that there is not a scale applied to it and I would be
perfectly fine not putting that in the residential zone it's not not a battle I need to fight right now um the brewery and winery also something we mentioned at the last meeting not sure why it's still zoned for residential it doesn't have to be another battle I don't need
uh so yeah you're fine to correct those ones don't have no problem with that and this is our next our next meeting after we discussed this at our last session so additional comments from planning board fincom anybody
else okay uh wait there is one more uh he mentioned about the senior housing and that is something that I noticed i sent an email to Paul about where the definitions that Mark provided and the use of stable wording are inconsistent with each other where we lost the
ability to zone only a 55 and over community we attached senior housing facility to it which includes like senior housing care or senior care but then we also removed our or divided up our category that was hospitals nursing
homes convolescent homes and we instead of adding long-term care facility to hospitals and nursing or infirmaries uh we just tucked it into senior care facility and that's that's an error we should fix that i've recommended the the
fix already okay additional comments from anybody here oh one no there's one more he didn't bring it up this is my This is my time now so um self- ser facility
that's still on the list discussion about whether that needs to be carved out from warehouse or not I think is the the open item there yeah and still as a as a buy right and village commercial and that's a new addition that we don't need in my opinion additional comments otherwise
from the joint meeting perspective um this is the last item for the fincom here um there's other questions comments you wanted to raise actions you wanted to take or whether you'd like to vote and or adjourn anything further
So I'm assuming that you guys were meeting on the 8th things will be prepared by the 10th so the 14th our meeting on the 14th will be when we can discuss this potentially maybe for our agenda purposes paul does that make sense to
you yeah yeah we'll have it we'll have it done before the I just like to have a plan right yeah so it was just the question was just in terms of timing for final language to come so Yes yeah we'll we've done a couple days
okay great thank you time in the world any further one quick one is there any uh you mentioned this these changes will make us less likely to get sued which is a significant financial cost for the town because lawyers are expensive um
are is there anything concrete there like was there anything like is it just like the general being not disagreeing with itself should help with that i would say that the one that I highlighted about the affordability in six lots is one that is very clearly
against current case law and it is something that we would look at in any new subdivision so if it wasn't changed that would be a problem if we tried to enforce it and we got called on it great we have tried to enforce it we
have not gotten called on it to this point definitely doesn't know she's 20 there is I don't believe there's a way to turn off anybody's camera now so if there's nothing further I don't know if you want to take any action here
um I don't think I think we want to The action will be then to adjurnn probably then unless you wanted to say something more i move that we adjourn at 10:14 p.m okay we're still here so don't be too jealous don't be too happy leaving