Okay. Again, welcome everybody. Um, it is September 30th, 2025. Calling the meeting to order. We have Kevin O'Neal, Bob Kimell, Roger Maram, myself, and town manager Mark Gold. Um, Alan, would
you like to call the meeting? Yes. Good evening everybody. I'd like to call the Tuesday, September 30th meeting of the Go Planning Board to order. We have five members in person. Steve Walsh, Rob Walsh, myself, Tim Griffin, Bridget Carr. Let's stop with the pledge of
allegiance, please. I pledge 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. Okay. So, this meeting is accessible
through Zoom and uh in person. So, Alan, if you would like, our agenda item is uh the joint meeting for discussion of your articles you're presenting on the warrant for town meeting uh this upcoming October
20th. If you want to uh kick it off, please sir. Thank you, sir. Our goal for tonight and the way we wanted to approach this was kind of like a dry run how we would present this at town meeting. Um give us a chance to work out any bugs, anything we want to change and also give more
members or more people um chance to give us some input since we've had very little input from anyone in the town that maybe two or three people at most of our meetings total uh maybe one on Zoom. Very little comments come from the
public. So, for us being able to hear the public's opinion, um, helps us. Seven of us, well, we're down to six members right now. Um, talking over the same material for a couple years in a row without other people's inputs gets a little monotonous. The more people we
hear from the public, the more information we have to digest. It helps us a lot to know what direction we want to go. Uh, that being said, I just want to touch about town meeting. We're going to do things. Our goal is to do things slightly different as far as the format for a town meeting. Uh what we'd like to
do for our board since this is a fairly lengthy and hard article to get through is we're going to ideally have our whole planning board on stage set up. We're going to try to handle it exactly like we would our typical public meetings. Have our board on stage. We'll be able
to have our computers, all of our information in front of us so we can more easily react and talk through questions, comments, concerns, and if one of our board members is say just sitting in the audience and has a point to make, it's very hard to wait in line
um and make comments that way. So, I've worked this out with the moderator. He's pretty um on board with it. He thinks it's a good idea. Um and that's what we're going to at town meeting. We're going to have the hopefully the old bylaw on one side of the screen and then the new bylaw next to it so we can
easily hopefully reference back and forth figuring out um what's changed, what hasn't changed. What we do have tonight, we have a few summaries that Paul has prepared. We have an executive summary um a two-pager that boils down
most of the changes and we have another summary that is just residential changes. Uh there's also a document that's a comparison of the two bylaws. It's a short two-page document. It shows a highle overview um without having to
go through the whole. It'll show the actual substantive changes to each section that we're going through. Paul, did you want to pull up either the executive summary or the presidential summary? Sure.
the uh the overall sounds good. So, this is the two-page executive summary that's available on our website. All this information is available on the planning board website. There is a link to all the different redline versions
that we've gone through. There is a link to these two three documents that we have. We also have a short 10-minute PowerPoint presentation. And also Paul has been keeping up on our website with um the Zoom links to the meetings where
we've talked about all this with timestamps so you can easily fast forward through the rest of our agenda items and get right to where we've talked about all these. Other than that, we haven't figured out any other way to make this more digestible for the public.
So if you're going through this first document at a high level, it's basically what stayed the same. The districts, all the zoning districts remain unchanged in their boundaries. We're not changing any of the zoning. The dimensional standards, lot size,
setbacks, height, coverage requirements are carried forward without change administration. The roles of the planning board and zoning board of appeals and building inspector are consistent. most permanent special permanent pre prohibited uses remain the same.
What we did was reorganize the entire bylaw. As you can see, it's separated now into sections and it goes through in an order that makes more sense than we had before. It has a generally better flow to it as you're looking as a
developer, as a town employee. Um, however you're looking at this pilot, it gives a better flow to how you're looking through the information. And the very last section, which is arguably one of the most important sections, is the definitions at the very end. Right now,
scattered through our entire bylaw are definitions of different things. Having this definition section at the end allows people to easily understand what word or what a phrase means that we're talking about or that the bylaw is
referring to. what was substantly changed in this bylaw under uses. We have new uses added to address gaps where we haven't had specific uses before. There's there many times I was on the zoning board for a period of time before I was on the
planning board where we'd have to creatively find places to put businesses and we didn't actually have uses and didn't have places where a person could apply for a business. we have to add these as new businesses and as different businesses come to town. We actually
need these uses in our bylaw. Um and we've addressed this by adding several different uses. Um some of them are example is senior housing, recreational vehicle temporary. Uh we've restricted multif family residential to no more
than four units in R40. Um that's a slightly big change. Currently there is no density restriction for the R40 zone. We revised loational standards to meet case law and added site development standards for adult uses. There's a
couple changes to the adult use section which was required um by state law andor advised on us by council that we should change to become more um compatible with state law.
This bylaw will create a review process for do amendment uses with re and reasonable accommodations. Do amendment uses are basically as of right uses. If a church or school etc applies to us, we have very limited leeway of what we can
ask for these applicants and uses. They basically granted as of right use. This new bylaw will also allow for multiple buildings for top of the shop and mixeduse developments within the commercial zoning districts.
For the residential uses, 10,000 ft lots with 75 ft frontage under common ownership to have up to an additional 1,850 single family houses, 1850 ft for single family houses. And this is a master law requirement.
It expands the ability to build accessory dwelling units was which is also a Massachusetts state law requirement. It increases the expansion of a nonconformity for single family and two family houses from 25% to 50%.
Uh this is something that the zoning board sees multiple times every one of their meetings. It eliminates the pro provision for six or more created lots that triggers a 10% affordable units which removes R60 and
R80 zoning R60 and R80 zoning districts from the density bars. Um some performance standards and special permit conditions. Um we've added noise standards and fiscal development standards which we currently don't have
currently. If you have, we have no zoning bylaw currently for noise violations and noise problems. Currently, if you have a noise complaint or concern, you have to go to the state D. Um, what this bylaw allow you to do is file with the um Department of Health
and they will be able to address a noise complaint. Um, also we have special permit criteria. There's several criteria um that this board is allowed to judge a project on and we can consider a project. We cannot just turn down a project and vote no on a project
just because we don't like it. We have to satisfy certain criteria and reference cert certain criteria in our decisions. What this does give us is an added a phys fiscal um condition. We can consider fiscal impacts to the town and
neighbors. We do not have that option right now. We also revised design guidelines into enforceable standards in the village commercial zone. We've established special permit criteria including fiscal and traffic impacts and added conditions
to be placed on development. Some of the benefits of this biler update gives us a little bit more autonomy, a lot more clarity, some consistency, and brings us up to current state and federal guidelines. Scroll down a little. Thank you.
And then that's the end of this highlevel um summary. Paul, do you want to just go to the residential one quickly? Sure. Our idea was to have if someone is just purely concerned about residential, purely
concerned how this bylaw is going to affect your house um and your property you own as a resident. Um, so there's a quick two-page description of what has changed in the residential sections. So overall, what stayed the same? All
zoning districts remain unchanged in the boundaries and general purposes. Conventional standards, the lot sizes, setbacks, height, coverage requirements are carried forward to no change. Most permitted special permits prohibited uses remain the same included
including those in the residential districts. However, residential zones proposed to be changed. This expands our ability to build accessory accessory dwelling units by right, which is a mass general law uh
requirement. We'll dive into that a little bit more when we get to that in the bylaw. Um we went over the 10,000 lot increases the expansion of non-conformity single family two family house 25 to 50% talked about that restricted multif family
residential to more than four units in our 40 that's in a high level eliminated the provision of six or more lots trigger for attempt to set affordable units we have added some new units new uses added vocational and site development
standards for senior housing and created a review process for domen uses. So as you can see this document a lot of similar highlights high level summary. Um unless anyone has any questions right
now our attention our intention of how we're going to do this at town meeting and how we'll do it tonight is start with page one of the bylaw and start scrolling through slowly. I'm not going to read the whole thing. That would take forever. Um, as we're going through, anyone has any questions, comments,
concerns, anyone in the public or in the board, how we're going to do it at town meeting is take section one, go through section one, and then whoever has questions about section one, let's talk about it one section at a time, try to limit discussion to one section at a
time so we don't get too all over the place. Maybe we can follow what we're talking about. Excuse me, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. I think you might have had a question from the audience. If you want to come up to the podium, student name and number, name and address for the record.
Number telephone number, first born, whatever you would like to give us. Hello, my name is Francis Karns. I'm at 42 Maple Street. How are you? Can I just add something about the frontage? What is the current frontage? It's 75 ft frontage water under the
common ownership. What is it currently now? I don't believe we've changed any frontage requirements. It depends. Every frontage is different depending on every zone. Every zone. Okay. I live on maple. What is that? R1.
What is R1? R40, R60 or R80 is our res. All residential zones are 150. Everything 150. They're 150. Yeah. Okay. Right. So, that doesn't change. But what the state law said was if you had a a lot that's 10,000 square feet and 75 ft
of frontage and it was under common ownership, that lot is now eligible to be built on from the common common ownership. Can you define that please? Um well I guess an example would be if you had a series of lots that say
combined to to 10,000. Okay. You could No. So, if you had two smaller lots, if you had two smaller lots that were not uh let's say there was a house on one and there was 10,000 square ft
next door to you, okay, you also own it. That lot is unbuildable and would have merged together with your with your home to make one viable lot. With this new law that has come out, you can now unmerge that lot. As long as it
has the 10,000 square ft, the 75 ft of frontage, and had previously been merged, you can unmerge it and then build up to an 18,850 square ft three-bedroom home. Okay? Cuz I I have an easement between me and my neighbor, and there is there's
a road, but there isn't, we'll call it. It's on the map, but there's land sorry, there's land behind me. So, that's that's my question. Can they use that this law to because they don't have the the current amount of width now with
this change they could I mean to speak in specifics I I would have to see a map and see everything in front of us but okay um it it is possible like I said without without knowing exactly what it is right now I I don't want to you know
speak on scroll here I could be wrong but isn't state law making this change anyways regardless this if we put it in or not. Yes, this this has already been made. We're just adding it to our bylaw. So, a mirror statement whether whether we do this or not. This already exists.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sure. One second, Paul. I I should be I was wrong. I didn't introduce. We do have our building inspector, Mr. Bailey, with us right to my left and also our town planner, Mr. Digi. And this first question is exactly why I want to set this up just like this at town meeting
instantly, very easily. Mr. Bailey can chime in. It's his job to interpret and he's in the zoning bylaw every day. He's our zoning enforcement officer. He has ultimately the control of what can and can't be built in town. Every question, every project, everything goes through
him. And consequently, every other every commercial project is going through the planning economic development office. Um, so this just proves this first question why I think it's going to be best to set up going forward a town meeting like this having a more easier
discussion, answering questions quicker, and hopefully getting out of there quick. Sorry, it's okay if I spit that out. I have to go. No, I totally understand how that works. The Mr. bear with the um
let's say I own two 4,000 square foot lots in the grove and they're adjacent to each other. I know prior to zoning these are pre-existing lots. So I'm just throwing this out just just to get clarity on this because I can tell you the town
owners a number of parcels in the grove that have been taken 100 years ago for tax locals. So, if I say to the town, we're going to we're going to take two 3,000 foot lots and two 4,000 foot lots. We're going to combine them as one, and that become a buildable house where it
has the furnace and become buildable. To my knowledge, you wouldn't be able to unless they had already been merged. You can't take these lots and create a 10,000 square foot. They would have had to have been merged at the time the zoning
uh essentially invalidated them. Okay. Thank you. So Paul, if you want to just slowly scroll through the bylaw and feel free, everyone, planning board, select board audience members, if you have any questions, jump right up to the microphone and we'll
stop scrolling. Brian has a question. Someone we have a question. Generally, we don't take questions in the chat. We're not allowed to. But if I'm not sure how Alec, your board handles it. If you want to look at chat questions, I I would think if if we get through
what we need to get through and we can open up at the end of what we need to get through and maybe give people that have some questions a, you know, a chance to ask a question. It Am I interpreting what you mean by
chat the right way? Yes, we do have in our meetings, we do have people that put in long questions in our chat and it's our policy read questions into the record and answer questions on the chat and you want someone on Zoom talking to us.
I default to your recommendation. Paul, if you want to keep scrolling, we can. And Paul, please any any hut button change probably stop at the use table when we get to it. So, Mr. Chair, the red line um could you
just slow down on those just so we can see what's being removed? Is this the final document being proposed to town meeting right now? This is the final document. Something to change. Most likely our plan. It is our plan. We We're on a time limit. So, uh, plane
board needs to vote on this and you can give a little executive summary of these paragraphs. And just to kind not everything red line is totally gone. A lot of this is reorganization and moving especially with definitions
out of go through the presentation as well before we do this or your meeting. But we can't make that get ready for this. That would be the quickest and best use for that time to know.
Mr. Chair, maybe you just mention that either it's being moved, relocated, or being struggling for what the reason is without reading whole paragraph if that makes sense. Paul, I'm going to have to tag you in as we go in. One thing I I
this is um in talking with town council, this is going to be a strike in my place. um we have to you know try to show what has been changing. Um this is not a one for one change. You can see as we went through the
presentation entire chapters moved and so we're going to pass a strike and replace the current bylaw replacement with this. It's not like usually we just go in and have, you know, a section we look at
amendments to. This is a a much bigger, you know, it's broader changes than that. So, this section has been strike. This is move to a different section. And I would just say maybe as an
alternative to what Mr. is asking. We do have the spreadsheet. My concern is with all this changes, we might be able to use the spreadsheet for each section of the spreadsheet before we
again. This is why we're doing this tonight. We're working it out here in town meeting. Mr. Jerry, as a general resident, I'm guessing that there are going to be some people at the time they're going to be suspected looking for things that are stricken that potentially protected them
in the past that are being removed in their in their mind. Um, so that's why I asked that question. Any any other, you know, stricken? Why are they being stricken? You know, should they never belong there? Is it something that the town is trying to
pull over on them by removing it? It was, you know, was in the bylaws before. So just trying to build on the trust is why I asked that. Thank you. So this is our comparison um chart for the changes. Can we get
that any bigger or is it Somebody in the audience have a question. Yeah. Just wondering is this the final proposal as you see right here? Is this going to be available the night of the vote the town meeting? It's available right now.
So what what it was and what is voted on tonight that's going to be available at town meeting. Correct. I'm just it's available right now. Okay. It's all on our website right now. Yes, it will be available on at town meeting and there'll be handouts for everyone like we usually do be finalized with
once it's finalized that's the whole bylaw isn't going to be handed out. It's 100 just the changes and something pages. Yeah, just the changes. That's all. Correct. The first two documents that we went through and then this uh the comparison. Okay. Two page comparison.
Just asking. Thank you. So the section one the two biggest changes group article one purpose and scope uh and article 12 zoning amendments and minor changes for compliance with national law and clarity
I should bring up too um it is I hold and I don't think we have a exact answer if we're going to have Mr. Braowski, the author of this new bylaw um at town meeting with us. We're working on it. Um he's a much better presenter of bylaw than I am uh since he has done it many
many times at town meetings. So for article one, you can see section one changes. Um Paul, do you want to finish scrolling? Jump back and finish scrolling through the red line or Sure. This was right at the end of section
one. And this is all administrative components dealing with map amendments and issues like that. Mr. Chairman, first question. Yes. The section that are underlined. Does
that mean anything? Underline. Paul is added. Added. Yes. section two districts. These are our districts that we have in town. R80, R60, R40 is our residential, uh, village, commercial, village center
core, commercial, industrial, and we're adding in what we passed at the last town meeting, our multif family mixeduse overlay district. This is section three of the use regulations is where you probably where
you see the big chunk of those changes and this is where we've had a lot of debate on the use table but a A lot of it still remain the same. This is um
primarily added uses. This is important because where we have uses we can regulate them. But legally if there's a proposal comes to us and that's not a use that's in use, we are
not allowed to let it go. Unless you know make connection to an existing use, but this greatly expands these uses. I just want to comment for the the change to the multif family there. Um
what this has done is I think is put additional restrictions on multifamily in residential zones. The feeling of the board was we just created an an overlay district
with multif family allowed by right. So it made sense to turn the dial down in other parts of town. So that is a specific change that the board put
Mr. Chair. So so what Mr. Griffin just uh explained is perfect. If if somebody can narrate as you scroll through this atom just like we just did on every red line removal or underlined addition just
like when you're buying a car then find this guy and says this won't this isn't this similar you know there will be too many red lines to do all of this okay a lot of people won't be able to see this either from the
even that That's the big one. And I think some of the other ones are, like Paul said, are adding uses that we didn't have before. Number 10. Mr. Bailey, you want to go through that one? It's something you've seen a couple times. That was specifically your recommendation,
correct? Yes. So, we've added the the use for a recreational vehicle. Your you know, your kids, neighbors, friends, etc. driving around seeing the country, they want to come visit.
Everyone seems to park an RV in their yard. People live there. There is no actual allowance to to allow this. Uh there are septic issues, health issues, etc. that go along with this. So, what we did is
we opened this up so that you could have someone come and stay with you for the the summer by the lake. you could have someone come and and stay for a period of time set by the planning board as the special permit allows. Uh technically right now we see an RV park that
someone's living in. Our island does not speak to it. We're supposed to have it removed and that's the end of it. So, this allows a little bit of a little bit more freedom with some regulation behind it to make sure we know where and what it is and more importantly how it's
being uh waste being disposed of. And for presentation wise, something like this, it' be better for us to click right to the definition. Um, but I'm not sure how easy that's going to be a town meeting to do and how many times we can
you can see how long it takes to click back and forth in between documents. We're going to be spending a ton of time clicking between the documents. So, there will be when we get to the definition section, we'll go through you will see a definition of recreational
vehicle. You'll see a definition of everything in there. Mobile home, mobile home park. The goal is if it's mentioned in the Bible, it has to be defined somehow. That was not the case before. Correct. Paul, do you want to speak to us adding
the senior housing facility? Sure. So, as uh Mark Prowski when he was working with us um pointed out that we actually didn't have a use called senior housing facility. We had it as housing for the elderly. So, um, in addition to
the use table, uh, Mark helped draft up, uh, a section 8.3 that identifies vocational requirements and other criteria to help us identify when a project comes along for housing for the uh, for senior housing, which we define
as 55 and over independent living. um and helped um separate uh the 55 and over people who live in independent housing from senior housing facility which are seniors but that need some
level of medical care. So um that the senior housing facility is actually the the section in which we um have the provisions that help regulate the site of those facilities. But we didn't have it spelled out. We just had housing for the elderly in the
use table, but no other conditions, provisions at all. So, this is good. This helps us determine um appropriate locations and criteria that we should be looking for when we get a proposal. Mr. Chair, yes, sir.
I have a question on the last strike out there on mobile home temporary. So, my house burns down and I want to put a temporary unit on my property while we rebuild. Is that now not allow me to do so? There there's another line number seven
which replaces temporary with mobile home. So now we can permit it temporary or or longer. And now we hit another big change overall was we went from a very small number of groupings of uses to larger
groupings to try to get similar uses together. We had for example under residential currently that also includes hotels and bed and breakfast and so that's been better categorized better groupings and um we now have a new
grouping called community facilities. You can see the list of some of these are those do amenities. Many of these are any questions on B? Oh, I wanted to bring up with the group
the removal of serving residents of Norton Lodge. see how the rest of the committee feels about number 10. Number 10 for project lodge or fraternity or nonprofit civic use. In
our document currently, it says serving residents of Norton. I don't know why we're striking through necessarily from from my side of things. It would it's essentially uninforceable. You know, if they've got the Elks Club, somebody going to stand there and check
IDs to make sure it's only residents of Northern coming through. Yeah. Then I nominate you. Anything else on B? Um just one more issue on that. the certain residents of North. There are
some of these fraternal lodges and fraternal organizations who have members who are from out of town, but they also are taking part of activities in town. Move into item C. I do need to point out a mistake I made. I have a handout that
I given to everybody. It was a glitch on number six and seven dealing with farms, livestock. Um what I did was I accidentally put the uh I associated the uses with the wrong category. So the
change corrects that. And then we've also um Steve helped out on this. Um we've organized it. Um you see on that page it's the order of this is a bit more logical than what we had uh on the version that was printed out. So
but these are dealing with agricultural uses and open space but it's this is primarily agricultural uses. question to your regarding six and seven on your handout you noted in the comments um delete six and seven and
replace with eight is that the is that what's going to be presented to to the town that has to be discussed at this moment I I I think we're going forward without changing anything but as it's written right now farms livestock number
seven five farms livestock excluding swine on five or more acres if you five acres you're permitted by mass law for by is by right use. You don't have a special permit. We can't say no in any zone. So we at least have to change that no or we could just
replace six and seven with number eight and then that follows the whole the whole thing. Technically through mass law if you have two acres you can have a farm. Sure. That's what that that there's eco requirements for the two acres.
Five qual five five acres or two qualified acres and it's so much in revenue. I think Steve like a thousand bucks per year. Yeah, I like the over five acres. I know that's a different topic, but I do like
the way it's managed on the handout and I like as far as under five acres goes and uh under two acres of qualified uh space. I like leaving six and seven and replacing with eight, but I understand that maybe you just can't delete six and seven because
you still have to address problems five more if it's covered by mass law. And there's a little um I don't know what you call a blur, a comment at the bottom that describes that exact agricultural uses, meeting requirements, etc.
I think Paulie, you could correct me if I'm wrong. The difference if we went with number eight versus the spelling out and the other ones is that we're basically taking whatever mass general law allows under this type of use. So
any kind of exclusions that we had before called fine nothing against pigs. Um we had excluded them on those areas. If we're just taking the mass definition mass will allow
a whole bunch of stuff. I think NAS law also um better describes what a a farm is has to be managed by an actual farmer selling rather than just a homeowner who wants to have sushi
over five acres. They don't have a lot of regulations. They assume that if you're over five, you're you're not a gentleman's farm. You're pretty serious about it. The two acre farm is the one where they have more regulations and kind of prove it that you're not just on the law.
And that's what I'm sensitive to. Yeah. If you have five acres or more, yeah, go at it. If you look at the zoning here, we have the zoning map. Um, what we have in the town of Newton this summer. I don't know if it's atypical, but it's it's
problematic. I know we're not addressing it with this uh change. Um, but we most of the homes that are in R80 are far less than two acres. So that's what I'm concerned about for the general
public is if you if you're an R80, this chart really doesn't mean a whole lot. It's really the acres that you have. So we can't resolve the zoning um in one swoop. That's impossible. But the entire eastern part of 495 plus a lot spillover
around the LG North School and of course when you go down south uh south south of uh east and west probably half of our town is zoned re and the vast majority of that are homes that are probably certainly less than two acres and many
of them less than they're about half an acre. Think about uh Newand and New Street and all of the Kay Street neighborhoods and all of the other you know James Street you look over area all those homes around the lake those are all R80
but they're a fraction of of an acre. So that's what I'm hoping that the board will resolve in this proposal on these changes uh this time around with the town meeting. Would would to resolve that do you would you want a greater restriction because
right now R80 no matter the size of your lot you have an agricultural by right you can just do that. Yeah. And so I like that's why I like eight. I like the two less than two qualified acres. The problem with it
right now is eight and six contradict each other because six says you can have farms, livestock, horses. I'm fine with graphics by the way. I'm fine with with uh you know chickens. It's when you
get into the other livestock you can have horses, goats, sheep on less than five acres according to number six, right? Number number eight number eight is more restrictive because you have it says less than two qualified
acres which I assume I don't know what qualified acres is maybe it's ups qualified it's based on how much money they make yep right based on that that would be proving that
they are an exempted farm under mass law so that there there's selling more than $1,000 worth of produce or um items from the farm. So again, general residents like everybody who lives on the case streets,
you know what I'm talking about. They're all halfacre lots or smaller. Um they all have a bunch of horses and cows and that's my problem. They still would under this under our current and and going forward.
So, have you talked about resolving that, fixing that that issue? That I would assume there are probably 2,000 homes that I'm talking about that are RV that are less than about half a year. That would take a
change to our permitted. You could like you could replace it with a special permit instead of by right use. But now you're arguing to take away people's right to to farm and actually that's where most of our horses are located
right now less than two acres on any property there. I'm only a farm in history. I'd like to hear what the rest of So this is a prime example of something we've been talking about of an issue that we've talked about but we have
Steve has brought it up. We've talked about it at how many meetings Steve have we had this exact conversation? Quite a few. many. Um, this is where we've ended up and it's our intention. This is on one of the items on our list. If this goes through at this town meeting, we're already starting the list for the next
town meeting. There's multiple uses, multiple things in this that we think need more time, need more talk, need more study, need maybe a subcommittee, need more hearings. We could spend the next hour or two just talking about that
one item. I listen I listened to your meeting was about 20 minutes 30 minutes and you didn't but I like what Paul has proposed on she like was there did you guys take a vote on that that's what I suggested the farming agriculture
I'm not sure deleting six and seven replace then you defer to the state law and you define two qualified acres so if it's not two qualified acres then it's not by right for our regardless
No, it says for properties that are under 5 acres or less than qualified acres in the R80, any property would still qualify. Even if it was less than two qualified, yes, it's just following what is currently allowed.
In a lot of these cases, our default answer as we've gone through this, if we reach that point where we need to talk about this more, is leave it as it was. That's why. Yeah. Leave it as it is. That's why. So, we don't have an
argument. We can we can address just the agricultural section alone in the future. Take a vote on it where we don't have to convince the town with the rest of the bylaw. we should just attack the changes that we might want to make separate in separate articles going forward.
Yeah, I think this is this is the one that one of the specific ones that affects a lot of residents in town. This we thought was a could be really a more of a hot button issue. So, it was best I don't want to use the term kick it down the road, but um I think that's
kick it down the road. We need more time on it. There's a few other things we need more time on. um we might need more mass state law incorporation into it. Um that being said, this we should be changing this this document more often
than we are. Um there's there's a lot of things that we could change right now and not like the with this discussion and then after town meeting realize it's a it's a mistake. Um that's where we were on several
things the last couple meetings. We kind of took the hot well how much should we be changing here? We already are changing a lot of things. Several substantive changes. Um we did feel leaving these sections as they were is
where we ended up for now. I understand. I certainly don't want any we could spend the next hour on roosters. Yeah. Is there is there any discussion to changing roosters to chickens or changing poultry just to chickens as
No, there's a separate one where it says no roosters in that was it's contradicted three times afterwards. You know, I I don't know that horses seem to be the problem, but can that point can that item be resolved or there's no I know in your your
leading slide there, you wanted to resolve contradictions that this is clearly a contradiction the way it's in the chart right now. Is that something you can address between now and the town meeting is? We'd have to address it right now. Vote on the change right now. Come up with the language right now. They're not yet.
No, we have Well, the language correctly if I'm wrong, the language is due like tomorrow, the next day. We have to turn this. We're very tight on the language. Although I should point out town council's still there with you.
It's best at this point to move on from that. Leave it as is. Best to move on. We're not sure if that was the right thing to do. We should do nothing. That's right. Mr. Jim and I really add to that that many many years of going to town meeting people don't like changes right if what you put up on the board is
different than what you're saying then automatically there's a lot of questions there some suspicions and questions the way you have the document now is out in the public and we leave it alone make your changes like you're suggesting later along but don't kind of leave it the way it is especially people have
already gone on the website already downloaded looking at it and then some of them will start making some changes and we become suspicious of us. I mean, just at the last minute, you're saying exactly. Yes. Leave it alone. And and we've already had talked about
it. We we fully intend we have several things on the list. Um most likely for spring we want to bring back up, but it'll give us more of a chance. This takes a lot of time out of our meetings. We have it on an agenda item every meeting. We're talking about it every
meeting. If we only have five or six little issues we have to hash through, that's not really a heavy lift and it's much easier and a discussion. Maybe it maybe just talking about roosters and livestock will bring out more people that it affects.
I I I I agree. I agree with our chair as well. We don't want to do anything that's going to affect this these edits. And and I'm fine with if there's something that we come through that is really, oh, this is we messed up on this and we vote to change it right now, we're absolutely going to do that. The the fact that it you that it takes that
you spent a lot of time talking about a particular issue tells me that it's an issue. It's an issue. So at some point you guys have to address it 100% of the time into it. Do it right. If that's the next Mtown meeting, that's that's good. Our new building commissioner probably
spends much more time than you do in meetings with the general public responding to the conflicts with fire. Correct. As you can see, he's a big help answering questions and he's got a very firm grasp on the HUD button issues. He's a big help.
Mr. Chairman, I think that's more in keeping with what you said earlier. Yes. Because that's how we got in this situation. We've got to do so much at once. So, just just to clarify, Paul, number eight is going to be removed. the farming act number eight
that's I guess as a group the position is to leave it as it was I do like the noise uh additional language though the noise by that might I'll just make this notes and then we'll
start this also from the version. And this is where it's not an easy task to keep up with all the different versions and documents. We've had a few times. Steve's caught a few. Paul's caught a few. and we're making changes
during the meeting. We're talking what we're working on. Um, none of us are perfect. We're very far from perfect. Um, I guarantee there's a mistake or two in here that none of us are going to catch and we're going to catch it after time, but you can go back and fix it.
So much recreational uses. Oh, I I got two things in this section just to bring up uh number two where we're adding uh whether a fee is charged or not as an
addition. We could also just do as a strike through for non-commercial instead of adding the whether a fee is charged. If a fee is charged, it becomes commercial, right? Makes sense. Maybe you get into is the DCR commercial
and then they put a parking machine in the I kind of Well, we have public parks and stuff like that. So like as opposed if it's municipal or or something like that, it's a public park. But but that's if I wanted to open up a private park. So it's like my own border land. How
would you do that by law? It's a municipal public recreation facility. There's another section municipal uses above. We can adjust that with another article at the next town meeting when someone applies for that.
I mean, we're making an easy fix. Yeah, we're making an edit there. So, I it just depends on what type of edit we want to make. That's that's number two. I don't know anybody else has any input on that, but I mean, it's really just cleaning up. There's no it's not doing any
substantial change to it. No, it's just changing the You just save an ink at that point. Whether a fees charged or not is what's added, but that's since the published.
Yeah. Yes. Either way, however anybody feels, it's all good. If there's how many people have downloaded these bylaws, we can get the web analytics on it. I guess the the idea, Mr. Chair,
the idea is my question is if if it doesn't make a difference if it's in there or not, why are we trying to change it? Now, we're moving on. Thank you. Uh the other one is smallcale indoor recreation. We have a definition for indoor recreation and then we have
another definition for smallcale indoor recreation that defers to indoor recreation but scaled at 5,000 ft or under. We don't have a setting for indoor recreation as described but larger than 5,000 square ft.
So my suggestion would be to remove the word small scale and rely on our 10,000 foot special permitting to control the scale. What's the definition of small scale that we have? It refers to just indoor recreation.
Well, it would, but we don't have that on our table. My suggestion is just to scratch off small scale so that it's any size in recreation. We also have another special permit for anything that's over 10,000 ft that
exists already. Excuse me, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Um, please don't take this the wrong way. Um we are on page 10 of a 174 page document.
Welcome to our life. Um yes we should my suggestion would be that we try to um hit the high points and the important changes that are being made to this that you feel that are going to be
substantive and if there are changes in the wording of a particular um point in here that um I think that we maybe want to take that up at a different time. I am fine with that and I struggle with moving on in that and
hearing everyone out. So Steve could be speaking as a board member now or a resident. Um I struggle with that line where to move on, what to take right now, what not to take right now. I'm fine with leaving it as it is
and then add it to the list that we can do on our clean our cleanup draft. And Mr. chair. Um I just I I I don't want to be disrespectful because I'm sure the points that are being brought up are important. Um I'm not sure that this is the meeting that those should be brought
up at um with a a a joint board here to uh try to get to an article to tell me. I agree. All if you're good, you want to keep scrolling. Mr. Chair, yes. There's a hand raised in the Zoom.
We can uh I just don't know when you want to address that. We'll we'll go to the Zoom and see if there's anything specific to this section of the bylar after we get through the rest of this session. So other use grouping is our office uses. So you
can see the the changes that we've that we're proposing there. Again, much more clarification of uses, adding uses commercial, retail, and service uses. You can see here we've uh the uses that
we've added including this is where we added you know a number of uses that were not in are not in the current bylaw like trade services or brewery or winery and number six is in a new section in G
below just right we've created a new a new section for uh vehicle related uses. So, anything auto related, gas stations, auto repair, that's not here,
driveways. Section H is marijuana. We didn't make any changes here. Uh you can see with industrial uses there were some additions clarification. Section J is what we call general
infrastructure utilities. Um well things like uh digital uh electronic billboards, electronic message centers, wireless communications. Uh we did not touch
did not make any changes to these provisions and accessory uses. This deals a lot with home occupations. largely stayed the same except where we added all child care, family child care. These are new uses
if there's any questions. I don't know who has control over the zoom. If you have any questions related to the use table, just like town meeting, it probably be best to take those questions now before we move on. What do you think? This is a good idea. Paul is that
uh I I don't I can't access it shared screen. My my thought, Mr. Chair, is address what we just talked about now instead of at the very end jumping back. Can we go back to the east table? Yep. It's fair enough. All right, we have a J.
Cogliano. Could you please state your name and address for the record? You have to unmute. I think ask you ask Joe, you should have the ability to
speak now if you'd like. If you could unmute. repeatedly clicked ask to unmute and I think it's he still needs to press the curious. We've got something. Can you hear me now? A little bit.
Go ahead. Can you hear me now? We can hear you faintly, Joe. Joe, can you uh can you speak again real quick? Okay, I'm gonna put a microphone here. All right, let me up.
Try again, Joe. Hello. Yes, Joe. We can hear you, but just through the computer right now, Joe. So, hold on. Yeah, Joe, we're trying to get your volume up.
Keep Can you keep talking, Joe? [Music] Is there a question on table three? That's better. Speak up as loud as you can do this. Try it now. Expand this.
There we go. That's better. We can hear you. Is it up there? We can hear you. What you got? Hello. We can hear you. It's not you, Joe. It's something she's saying. Let me try calling in. We can hear you.
We can hear you. Let me say in the chat, we can hear you. Go ahead. Can you hear us? I don't think you can hear me. Yeah, they were probably thinking
volume. Well, do you have his number by any chance? Phone to Zoom. Enter your meeting ID followed by count. Enter your participant ID followed by pound. Otherwise, just press pound to
continue. You have joined the meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting. Hello. Here we go. Hi, Joe. Turn your volume down. We can hear you. Hello.
Hello. You need to turn your volume down. We can hear you. I don't know what to do here. Let's see. Mute yourself again. We can hear you. We're going to have to another couple
this problem. We can hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. You can hear me now? Yes. Okay. Uh, first of all, um, I have a question and I apologize for interrupting the
board's presentation. Joe, could you just do your name and full address for the record, please, sir? I'm sorry. What did you say? Could you please just state your name and full address for the record, please? Yeah. Joe Cogliano, 202.
Um, I as I said, I'm sorry uh for interrupting the presentation. I I I I generally don't like that. I don't like doing that. But I've got a problem. I can't stay for this meeting. And I was wondering if I could just make some statements uh for a few minutes about
what's concerning me about all this. Uh, is that something that would be possible? Keep it to 3 minutes and we'll be good, sir. You say three minutes. Sounds good. Okay. Well, I'll do the best I can. You said a few minutes. I said three
minutes. I'm sorry. Who's this? Alan Boule, chairman of plan board. I'm going to need more than three minutes. Alan, how many minutes do you need? I'm going to need more than three minutes. I'd appreciate it. Let's go.
Okay. Well, first of all, let me say that uh there may be, you know, many good things in in what's being proposed here. Um the the key problem that I see is improper notice and there are some specific issues that need to be addressed which I'm going to mention a
couple of them. Um none of this is personal to anybody. Uh, you know, as I've said before, I think the planning board mean well means well in what they're doing, but I think the way that they've gone about it uh is just improper and it's not in the best
interest of the town, the way this is being handled. So, you know, the planning board is attempting a major modification of the zoning bylaw which significantly impacts the property rights of the people. Unfortunately, the board mis mischaracterized the purpose
of these changes to the town before the last town meeting and after that meeting until there was an open meeting law violation filed in August. The bottom line is that this is not just a recarification but a major rewrite of
the entire fil. Now, this matters because it's a clear example of improper notice. Now, the board knew in 2023 when there was an application made from a grant from the EOHLC, Executive Office of Housing Livable
Communities, which deals with things like in affordable housing and NBTA MBTA communities. They knew what this was about. Specifically on the application, it states, "Norton will do a comprehensive zoning update." This was
for the $60,000 grant to ensure that all bylaws are consistent with the state's laws and policy goals and ensure that the town is aligned for a variety of housing options and economic development opportunities which incentivize mixed uses.
Now, in the letter to the attorney general after the uh the complaint was filed, uh the letter states, this is from KP Law, the board acknowledges that some of the discussions on these sections concern potential proposed substantive amendments to the bylaw and
not just recation, which is commonly understood to be a reorganization of text as opposed to revisions to it. Further, it states the board submits it has been discussing both the recification of and substantive amendments to the zoning by numerous
meetings over the last months. Now the problem is that again nothing personal meant here but this was an error by the board. This should have been explained to the town before the town meeting and certainly after the town meeting during the three I think it was there three
hearings prior to this issue being raised by a complaint. It's clear that this was not simply a reclification but a major revision we're at 3 minutes chair Joe you have another minute. Look, look,
I I I think the point here is that I'm a resident and I should be able to speak for a period of time to address some of these issues cuz this isn't going to go away and you know, I tried to address this with the board the other night and I I I didn't, you know, really hear that
you were listening. So, I'm trying again now with the finance committee and the select board. So, please just listen. I'm trying to be respectful to you. I don't have anything against any of you and I do believe you are trying to do a good job and this is a very difficult thing but you've made a mistake and you
just need to try to correct that. We can work together to do that. Doesn't have to be something that you have to feel bad about. It's just something that we need to do to help the people in the town. Now the question is has it if I may have the notice issue been resolved? Could we could we stick to the
topic of the of the actual red lines of the agenda rather than bringing up old uh we we all have your letter. We've all read your letter. Your letters in the in the packet. Everyone has access to it. Well, I think
we know you think we did it wrong. We know we're completely updating the zoning. We've always said that. We've had 20 meetings. If anyone's listened to any of the meetings, you can tell Well, no. It was presented as a recification or reorganization. We're way past that joke. This is a
completely new town meeting. The import hold on a sec. The important point here is dealing with people's property rights. And because you're dealing with people's property rights, you have to take care in how that information is presented to them so that
they're aware of the impact that this is going to have on them. Which which means that you have to do mailed notice. Mr. Koganiano, we have taken you off Zoom right now, please. Thank you. I'll just for the room, I'll summarize
Mr. Coliano's point briefly from his letter in that his position is that with this level of a change, he would like the town to physically mail a copy of the new bylaw and all proposed changes to all residents in town.
That's his proposal. That's not an option at the moment. We understand there's concerns, but it's not an option. Moving on to section three, excessive uses. So, we're adding I'll just scroll
through this. Paul, we still have a box in front of the screen there. I'm not sure. No, just the the audio comments box in the middle. Is that Yeah, just ex out the computer froze. To do that, I'd have to
restart the meeting. Okay. Paul, are you able to take over the I'm u let me let me stop share for a second and u
screen sharing I'm just a panelist I guess you could you could u shift over is it on the conference thing, the panel that you have in front of you. Is there like a anything on that? Nothing on that.
Okay. So, so people can see this. Now, moving on. We're still in section three, but now we have provisions here for accessory uses solid waste facility. We did not propose any changes to that. Just a note, we do have another hand
raised to make when we get through the end of section three. We can ask if they have comments on the section. That's section three. Let's go to the next section, Paul. Okay, let's let me just
pull up section four on the chart first. So section four are dimensional regulations. So that tells us how big what are the setbacks. So we we just literally moved um the dimensional regulations section into this. But then
we did make a couple of substantive changes in this section that we'll we'll go over. But um one is to allow um multiple buildings for top of the shop and mixeduse development within only within the commercial zoning districts where those uses are allowed. And also
that provision we talked about earlier about if you're a 10,000 foot lot with 75 ft of frontage. Um that's in this section as well. Those were the major changes here, but I'll pull that back up.
So you can see this is the table and it's the table of dimensional regulations and it is staying the same. um the yards. This is just a from the definitions. We moved it out of definitions to here because this talks
about various types of standards like setbacks and front yards. So, front yard setbacks. We did not touch lot shape calculating lot shape factor. Kept the image from whenever that was drawn. Here's that provision about
multiple buildings uh for top of the shop and mixed use development in village commercial and commercial districts. Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. If I may, could I offer a suggestion? That's why we're here. Please,
would we be able to ask everybody or would you ask everybody here that's in the audience? um any anything that they have any any concern that they have written down that they want to ask that's specific to
bring those up if if maybe modify how we're doing this because it seems like we're not advancing any% this like I said this takes forever to go through and and just a suggestion I I happen to have had the luxury to read it
correct front to back like you guys. So I don't know any other way of town meeting that if we got to do this at town meeting. This is what we talked about every town meeting which is I think I'm just I see Mark's face and he's about to cry. If there's a way if everybody
my wife would like that if there's a way anybody that has whatever their concerns are we bring those you know forth them to go over instead of going word for word all of it. um or not where we're doing it maybe
just to sorry to interrupt like I've seen it done like section one any any questions okay section two any questions that's already done too we only have three people in the audience very few on can't see the exact
number on so and this is what I'm saying at town meeting we can't let you know two people hijack the whole thing right bring your problems not as far as process but what what the content is with the ZVI. What are your issues with the ZVI?
as opposed to go through a couple two pages, go through our executive summary, go through the our quick summary and then just go straight to I think any anybody that has a particular issue, I jotted down a couple
things that I've wanted to ask and get some clarity from, you know, your board uh having gone over this, you know, and our struggle and our and our thought was how do we at town meeting someone that's coming in cold And we're not giving them the whole
bylaw. How else do they know? I've seen bylaws pass at town meeting where nobody had to copy or we pass every budget with no town. You pass the budget with no questions. I would just do like Mark said just say section one question specifically questions about the section, not like
That's right. Yeah. I'm I'm more concerned with, you know, people wanting to hijack a meeting to hijack a meeting over something that isn't even on We're not We're not discussing process. We're not discussing any procedure. We're not discussing even on it. It's
and I struggle letting members of the public share their piece like they should be able to at all forum and where that line is. I don't necessarily know where to so we this agenda is to go over the content of this not process how we got to where we're at. This is this is about
the the the brass tax of this bring the issues and I think it's going to save us a lot of time. We're going to get right to what's concerning the people and then we can move forward. We have many more sections to go through. You want to stop this process now and go right to
it's up to everybody. That's my everyone's level level of comfort. Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Um, I would just make a suggestion that if you want to go section by section, because I personally and anybody who wanted to has the
opportunity to to look at every one of these online and I've taken the time to do it and I have a few questions myself, but I would be able to do it section by section. So when you get to that section, I would be able to say, "Excuse me, I have a se a
question about this particular thing in this section. I don't need somebody to read it to me so that I know what it is. I'd spent the time to read it myself. So, same thing that we're doing. Just forget scrolling through the text. Let's go section one.
Make the line for section one. Talk about questions. Section one. Move on. Section two. Reline up to section two. And I can't control what and I'm not trying to take anybody's rights or uh their ability to ask questions
away. I'm just saying that those um in the uh population who want to know what's in it are going to read it. And those who are just going to casually say, "Okay, we trust these people." They spent all these hours and years and
weeks on these things. So they know what they're what we're doing. And most of the things that you're talking about are just to get in line with what the state is calling for. It's not like we're we're trying to reinvent the wheel. So, forgive the term of us being gunshy, but
we thought we were we were trying to think what is the most open, what is the most thorough, how can we and that's commendable. We were trying we're really trying we've a lot of the feedback's pretty consistent. We don't know what you're doing.
How do we tell everyone what we're doing? You're trying to do the right thing. And in all fairness to everybody, um if we do like Mr. Moss and Mr. the rule that said that I'm perfectly amendable to that section one. This is the title of the section of mean section by section. This is the title of the section.
Anybody have any questions? No. Next section. Anybody have any questions there? We're not we're not the agenda item tonight is to go over the content of this document, not the process, not procedure or any of that. And I would I would add to that that any any
discussion that we're holding on any section section 4 4.3 4 4.3 4 4.3-1 that should be on the screen so people can see it. So when a question is asked it should be on the screen it should be
that's absolutely people understand but you don't have to go through the whole thing to be one such all you're doing is making it easier for us. So I'm not arguing. It's what we're trying to do. No. And I'm not I'm not trying to make it an easy process. You people have already done the hard work. Yeah.
And understand what has been done. Understand for us, we'll sit here for the next 3 hours and go through this line by line because that's what you're used to doing. That's what we've done many times. We appreciate that. But we also understand that when we get to town meeting, we won't be able to do this. So we shouldn't come up with a process that
we can go through town meeting at where people feel like they have a voice and their questions have been answered. if they have a particular question. I am perfectly fine with it. If any members of PL board have any other opinions, I'd gladly take them right now. If not, my suggestion would be to
move on, pull up Paul's chart of the comparison zone with bylaw changes which lists all the changes without going through Tim one additional thing. Sorry. Um I know you mentioned the handouts you're going to have available to me which I think are great. I don't think it excepts to
print a boatload of 107 pages, whatever. or maybe a QR code people can click on if they want to scroll through it while at the meeting, right? So they can look at it on their handheld. That's beyond me, but I'm being told
it's easy. That's easy. Great. Do we have a QR code to pop? I can do that in about 5 seconds. Mr. Chair, Mr. chairs, both in your future. Which one? I I wanted to point out um and we
haven't seen this yet, but it was in our packets for our last meeting. Um the planning director put together a really nice summary of all of the changes. We do have a PowerPoint summary and this covers it all. Instead of going through the 170 page detail, it's all
covered in this deck of slides. So, I don't know what your plans were whether I mean, one thing you can do is present the slides. I think a motion is And you can always ask the town meeting after this does is it that is inclusive. Yeah. Does the town want to go through the
detail zone bylaws and have the town decide and then to say no we're good. It's all right here. It's like it's perfectly well done. Yeah. Let me ask. Um just one more thing. I just want you folks have
people have no idea the work that you people have put into this document trying to get this right. And um and I understand there'll be questions and I understand there'll be things that might be missed, but those are all things that can be changed at another meeting. It
doesn't mean that we should just throw out everything because oh wait a minute, there's a period missing here. So, you know, we we don't need to get into all of the minutia of what this is about.
you've spent at least a year and a half that I know of working on this. Feels like longer, but um I just want to say that I appreciate what you're doing and I'm and I think that if we are able to get this through town meeting and give people a synopsis
of what you're trying to do instead of trying to, you know, question every little detail of every line of we'll never get through. Tell me. I didn't want to hear comment after comment and tell me e neither of well why aren't we going through everything that you're
well I can I can get up and speak to that if they ask that this is this is what the process is this is how we're doing it this is how it's working we do have to be upside down we do have to be respectful of time obviously absolutely I would ask the board here was there a
reason why you just didn't lead with this deck of slides I I thought it probably on me, but having you guys here, but having the whole text, going through the whole text, it's kind of common for us. We scroll through the whole thing. It takes a little time. We talk about each
section. Um, I thought that was the most judicious thing to do, the best thing for public appearance, public comment, for your guysification. If going through the whole thing, if it's not needed, trust me, I'm fine with it. So, I can tell you when we I knew that this
meeting was coming, I spent the time and I went through all of the text and I came up with some questions in some uh articles that I was going to ask about, but I I didn't need somebody to read it to me again because I spent all weekend going through it. Well, you're one of two people maybe
two, three people, you know, five people. You can tell you've been charged. Everybody has everybody in town has the opportunity to look at whatever they think is going to affect them personally. And if they find something in there that they think is going to
affect them, I would understand them wanting to stand up and talk about it, but I don't think they're going to talk about whether should we include hens with chickens, uh should we make roosters and with poultry? Uh I don't think Congress meeting next spring.
Sometime sometime this winter spring will happen. Rob, Rob, you have a question and then what is the see the public and this is the catch 22 that we're against and um I agree completely with what you guys are saying. This is the way we should do it.
The summarized version we do have a contingent out there though that seems to feel that well until I've had been gone through with the whole thing. you guys have haven't given me transparency and yet to go through the whole thing including we put out say you're free to read it. Well, they'll say that is too
much trouble too because it takes them too long to absorb all the information but they feel like we haven't been transparent until they absorb all the information. But we actually have given I I think it would be very unfair if anyone characterized you guys as not being transparent. We've been talking about this for very long. I will give you a list later.
You guys have had many meetings. Yes. probably hardly any attendance. It's been posted on the website for a very long time. I I think it'd be hard for me to see the justification to say that there was no no notice. So, if I could be allowed to finish my
point, um I do not agree with these people. I agree with what you're saying with all you guys just said. The problem is they sit there and they go, "Well, until I've had a chance to observe the whole thing, I'm voting that stuck. personal initiative there too that needs to come into play and if they're not
going to take the personal initiative when I was brought up if you want to learn something about you a topic take the initiative and learn you don't have to be affected they are wrong when they're doing that but I am telling that is what we're up against the fact was it really was
available last time we yet we got got beat up for being you know not being transparent it really it was out there for those that wanted I think we can focus on the goodness. We're going to lose the town meeting if we don't condense it. People are going
to after an hour or two going to say, "Okay, I've had enough of this and they're going to get gone." So, and that's the game plan that some people are going to play. They're going to play that card and say, "If I stagger this long enough, people are going to get frustrated, going to go home." And
that's not what we want. We want this thing to go through as as Kevin indicated about handle. I read that and that was perfectly clear to me. I did use some reading. I do have a couple questions, but I mean this is the document. This is the way it is and if
there's changes to be made on take away and I'm in agreement with you. I've raised this as a catch 22. I do not agree with folks that are doing this, but this is where we're stuck. They want us to do something that they actually don't want us to do where they won't vote for. Excuse me, Mr. Chair.
Tim Tim's been trying to ch I was going to say I'm in favor of moving forward with this and then we can talk it over with the moderator as our plan of attack. I will also quote the axiom, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. We will see. That's
kind of what I'm trying to say. Uh, are we planning to do a Norton alert for town meeting the email or put put the link to it and say among the items on the warrant is the bylaw update.
Please take the time to read this. This is 150 pages. If you want to read it, here's your chance in nicer language than that. But I think we should all of that all of that materials available.
Yes. But the town meeting next week and I think we should do that. I'm just saying, Mr. Chair's question, Mr. M. Thank you. Well, I suggest we don't change the protocol. I think that uh the idea that
uh you have to have uh the uh planning board on stage so that they don't have to wait in line to answer questions is a great idea. And I think if you if I have a suggestion for you at all, I would suggest that each of you maybe take a section that you're really comfortable
with and you be the answer person for that section so that you we don't have the same person all the time. If we if people see that the whole planning board is on board with this and then if there are some issues that come up, I believe that the select board, I'm speaking for
myself, but would be willing to stand up and and speak to some of these issues as well. And I'm fine with that moving forward. We kind of work like we did tonight. We we take the question and we address it. Who's ever got it right on their mind real quick? I might be looking at something else, the last question, the
next one, and Steve's got this right in front of them. Right. That's why we want I wanted all of us just like this and the building commissioner involved. It is going to make it quicker. So and I believe uh your consultant Mark Broski as well that crafted most of this
is going to be there. Correct. He's going to hopefully if he's there just like last town meeting I would have him do that presentation and take us through one by one. He's going to give the behind the scenes of the state law. Yeah. And that pertinent to me over the summer.
Yes, that that was our I think I think you guys have been on the shell shock side of all of this. If we went to town meeting and we discussed every single item in the budget, we have a line item. That's all we see. We're not seeing the breakdown. Imagine going
to town meeting and having to go with the line item and then spending the next 10 minutes saying, "Well, the dog officer gets this payroll and this is for supplies and this is for blah blah blah." We'd be there for three days. You don't have to do it this way. I think
the summary will cover it. I think most could be in there. It's going to be a big factor. And I think we just throw it out there and say, "Here it is." And I don't think you're going to have as big a problem because you're trying to get the information out through QR codes, through websites, through everything
else. The best way to do it free while you're standing there, you've heard us, Mr. Brisco. Can I just state your name and address Brisco 3. I've listened to all you people and I I I
have to agree that you guys have done a great job and uh put a lot of effort and work into this. I wouldn't recommend putting on an alert on this. The people that have questions are going to ask the questions and by by putting an alert on
it, you're you're really telling, gee, you better go over and look at this, right? So, I'm just I'm just saying, hey, do your presentation, address what it comes in, just like you guys talked about, and work through it. And I think
it'll work that I think it'll work out well. Thank you, sir. Good job. My my my opinion right now going forward the rest of this meeting, if you want to get out of here before 11:00 tonight, we start right now where we left off. Section 4, dimensional regulations. We
can use the document we have screen on the screen. It shows the changes. We can go through those changes quick. Who's ever has just as you were saying, whoever has comments, we take them right now and try to get through this quicker. Let's go.
Everybody good? Good. So, section four, dimensional regulations. That's where we left off, Paul. Yeah. And I I just went over um the the the two major changes being allowing multiple buildings top of the shop
within the commercial districts and then the uh the 10,000 ft with 75 ft of frontage. So section four, any questions, comments, concerns, discussion, changes? If not, we're moving on to section five,
non-conforming uses and structures. Yeah, in this section, this is largely uh zoning board and appeals territory, but uh what we did was we moved a couple of sections together and merged them here. Uh one of the substantive changes was the one that we increased the uh
expansion of non-conforming single family or two family uh homes from 25 to 50%. And then uh it also allows the ZBA to reestablish a non-conforming us or structure that's been abandoned if it's determined it's not detrimental to the
neighborhood. Section five questions, comments, concerns. Mr. Chair, one question on section five real quickly. Could you just explain why we gave more power to the historic district commission? I can
I don't I don't think we really gave them more power. We really just clarified for applicants that if you were applying for do a project in the historic district, we need to make sure you're filing with them and that the filings can be concurrent with the
planning board so that we can have a joint session if we need to. Um, it's basically giving them a little bit more direction of if you're applying here, make sure you cover your bases here because we had some discussions about
applicants who didn't know they needed to deal with historic district emission and that caused some challenges for them in their process. And this is town charter. I mean, it's it's called down in the town charter, right? Yeah. But it's firm the it's not giving
them any more power than they already have. It's just making sure the applicants know that they have it. Thank you. If we're good with section five, section six, general regulations. Um, so this is a section where we actually merged a lot of other current
sections into this like uh uh signs and parking and loading requirements. So that was that's a pretty significant grouping. Um but uh you made a couple of substantive changes here like adding the noise standards which follow Mass
General law and also site development um standards and then uh it's also uh allows the planning board to grant a special permit to vary the the different standards in this section. So that's important too because um if the board doesn't have the
ability to grant those waiverss then it has to go to the ZBA. So this is now giving an applicant a a clearer process uh than what we currently have. And there are some circumstances where the ZBA doesn't even have the rights. So and then the board doesn't have the ability
to grant a waiver. So this is granting some flexibility. Thank you. Section six. Anybody moving on section seven? Yeah, this is special regulations. And so, uh, this also merged a number of of
existing articles such as earth materials and large scale ground mountain solar. Um, putting them again in an organized fashion. Um, one of the substantive changes was adding uh standards for sighting of adult entertainment establishes and reducing
the locationational requirements for adult uses from 1,000 ft to 500 ft from all non-industrial zoning to comply with case law. Mark Proski told us that this could be a violation of federal law. Our provision was so
restrictive. I think only one or two parcels. One parcel and Steve, I think it was only one complete parcel. Yeah, one parcel under our current by uh provisions would allow for an adult entertainment use. But even if we go to 500 ft, I think it
it's about a dozen. Yeah. And they're all mostly once, right? Right. It's all has to be an industrial anyway. So, um, but it did open it up. The framing on that was the adult the
ability to have an adult use is a free speech issue. So, if you have a bylaw that basically prohibits that use, then you're prohibiting that speech. Correct. I know we had Yeah. And as we go through this start, do you have the other
sections after or should any comments on special regulations be now? Um, I have a question, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Um 7.1.1. Who decides if a uh something adversely impacts adjacent properties?
Who makes that determination? It's a good question. Is that under a special purpose or is that that's 7.1.1 to purpose earth materials under special regulations? So, here's one that would be beneficial
to bring it up. a special. So we have a Oh, there's a special permit tied to earth removal. Correct. Right. That's correct. So the planning board under our permit conditions for earth removal permits. Correct.
Right. So this is for the special permit. The special permit granting authority in this case is the planning board. So that is a factor criteria that a criterion that the planning board would have to use to determine when there's a proposal for earth removal.
But I'm just saying that that sounds very arbitrary that adversely impacts somebody. I think the idea would be if you take a bunch of land away and you're train changing the drainage or you're changing something else, that's what we would look at in some cases. Would you have to be able to specify
what the impact is? Yeah, like you can't just say like and the special permit conditions, are those the same for Earth special permit, Paul? Are they different? Are they further down in the page? Um,
it's not up on the screen. Yeah, let me uh let me get to that. Paul was trying to pull it up. All he does Oh, I'm not sharing. Okay, Mr. Chair. Yes. Would that would civil engineer you know the consulting engineer and the presenting engineer have
a a weighted say in that I would presume. I mean they would be presenting us with the special permit they would be applying for the special permit. It's ultimately the Mr. Bailey correct me if I'm wrong. You would be directing them if they would need to apply for an earth
special permit if they were excavating removing so much square foot of material. Mike that that's how this reads. Yes. Thank you. I I believe at the the Midtown meeting this was one of the
areas of contention even Mr. Pugliano but it was birth renewal storage of birth um on adjacent property and I don't recall the details. Does anybody else remember that being brought up? I don't know why I don't have a lot of notebook.
We did collect all of the comments from town meeting and included them I think in our first discussion about this bylaw update following town meeting. That was Rob taking all remember that
I did the back like six minutes ago. So there 7.1.6 Six does identify a number of standards that have to be met in order for um the board to approve, you know, approve a special permit for
that. Mr. If you have something specific to earth removal, if not, let's wait till after section 7. just just going to bring something up that pertains I think to some asking questions about this and
on New Street they were taking uh storing uh material bringing material in mixing material taking material out back and back and forth back and forth I think there was a lot of concern about that I think last
time meeting that's brought up. So any project with over a certain amount of material that's leaving or being affected, that's what would trigger a special permit. That's what the building inspector would direct to us. That would give us uh the opportunity to either approve or deny. But listing as it's on
the screen now, we can do hours, routes, roads used. It gives us a whole some of its existing. I'm not I'm not questioning what you guys are doing. I'm just questioning that that came up and it's true. I mean most of you folks know about it. So that
I think they brought I think one of the things we discussed also is that earth removal or soils or materials being brought into a construction site does not qualify as earth removal project. An earth removal
project would be like a mining operation or something like that. Is that correct? or if there was a large large project that required lots of material to be removed from the site. It's not going to be replaced. It's not being used at the site. They
have to move it off site. What's it what's the trigger now? 500 yet. I think the number that in eight and a half years of the planning board, I can count them on one hand. We had one not too. We had one this year. Yeah. Thank you for your answer.
In the particular case of new happening there is product is being brought in recycled and brought out. So there's a different version of what you're talking about where stuff is coming in and going out too. It's an industrial process
and town had no say in it for the EPA. So something we'll add in the future. Sheriff back to Mr. Morrison's question too. Uh I think another answer to your question about about that provision in
um section 10.5.2 um it identifies all the criteria that any of the special permit granting authorities must consider when issuing a special permit. So again most cases it's pretty much all the cases it's the planning board but they need to look at
the social economic and community needs traffic flow neighborhood character impacts on environment impacts on adjacent property. So these are the standard factors that we look at for any project that comes in for special permit
and so the applicant will know this and they need to address this in order to you know ensure approval. Thank you. Any other questions? Section seven, special regulations.
I think just something I'll point out if um for special regulations is now includes our affordable housing by law along with the number of other ones. That's section 8, the special residential, rights,
special residential. So, I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh, wait. Never mind. Section seven. Everyone good? Questions, comments, concerns? This is just a comment. So, as as I read through this, I did initially have a concern about the the acreage threshold
for installing solar, but as I looked at it more closely, and correct me if I'm wrong, residents are never barred from installing solar on their own homes to satisfy their own electric needs. Correct. Solar is one of those state um
use one of these uses that the state says basically it's hands off and we have to it's almost like a do use at this point. We actively made zero changes to anything solar related stupid but I'm not that stupid.
Excellent. Just to clarify that. Thank you. Section 8 special residential regulations. Yes, we grouped a number of uh articles like afford our affordable h housing and our some of our dimensional regulations
for cluster development. So the major changes included adding that section for se senior housing facility which again I want to make sure because I misstated it earlier senior housing facility are those housing for seniors but they need
medical care. Um, so that section is in under section 8. We're also adding, this is where we're adding the accessory dwelling units. Um, we already allow ADUs by right, by the way, but we currently allow only attached units, but
the state says you needed to make them detached. Um, and there's a few other changes that we needed to uh to do, uh, such as ownership requirements. We currently say that an owner needs to occupy one of the two units. The state
says we can't do that. Um there's some parking changes that that were also added. Um the state of course was just trying to promote the uses of residential uses. So they're making the standards more permissive.
And then um we've made some changes again to this provision that says currently if you have six or more lots you trigger the need to do affordable units. And I Markski told us there were pro legal problems with that. One of the
benefits though of us not having that in there is under the affordable housing bylaw, it does say that you could get a density bonus of three times if you provide 30% of the affordable units. But by taking out this provision for six or
more lots that knocked out a couple of our residential knocked out R 60 and R. So they're not going to be that they won't be eligible properties under R60 and R80 won't be eligible for a density
which I think and Norton again that's a that's a protection Mr. Chairman just b the issue I have with that is few years ago we adopted this bylaw because we wanted to stay even with the affordable housing issue. So we we
required a developer was going to build six units one had to be affordable. The reason behind that would point 10% of it would be considered affordable. It would maintain our affordable level. If we dissolve this and make it go away, we're
right around 10% now, above 10%. Uh it's not going to take long for us to drop down to 9.9%. And then we're going to be inundated again with what BL and affordable housing. So, how do we protect ourselves from that happening? If we're taking that
requirement away and I'm not sure I guess it's not legal, but that's what said it's just not legal. So, how would it make something like that legal where we require that so we don't have to worry about large development? I was thinking the other day, I live on Pine Street.
Those million dollar homes that are going up down the street from me. I can't imagine what affordable house would look like if they had to put one of those on that million dollar neighbor. And I kind of get that, but I'm concerned about and I I think it's
something we need to address after this meeting. We need to go back and take another look at this and figure there's a way that we can continue to keep our stock level without having an impact on that because it isn't going to take long for this thing to go south, right? uh we will be losing our safe
harbor in no time if we uh start letting in all the building going in without having any uh affordable and it's that's only for the division of land. This is only for subdivisions. It would still apply to apartments.
Any apartment with six or more units triggers the 10%. And then the MBTA zoning uh we if it's 10 or more units that triggers 10%. We do have we still have some safeguards in there for it as far as your concerns
going forward and just be careful with the cluster developments. I would suggest the same to you. Can I make I make a point on this item um section
you should really promote the ADU by right for detached um buildings. I I really think throughout the the state this is going to be part of the solution as to our affordable housing uh issue. So I believe
looking for things to promote and sell with with these changes and I know it's a state law but we have to adopt it. It's a state law that we're adopting but we've also added to it and I believe that is covered in the PowerPoint. You have a slide in there Paul on the PowerPoint. It's definitely a hot
and I'll just say I think we will probably get at least one comment at town meeting that these bylaws have been created over 50 years. Why are we trying to change them? Paul, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you to switch screens and pull up
the original version of 17519.3, which is the applicability of affordable housing, which we were just talking about. Um section B under that. Um this was an item that was part of a recent appeal
that we dealt with and town council weigh in on the wording. Um, I challenge anybody to read 1751 193B and uh,
tell me exactly what it's referring to and whether it applies to a new development today. This by apply to the construction of level blood dwelling units whether one or more contiguous parcels in existence as of this date and require a special
permit. Does that mean that the parcel needed to exist in 2003? This is our bylaws are not the Mona Lisa. This is a clear point of This needs to This is why we've changed
this problems like this throughout the bylaw. It's my whipping boy. Been waiting all night for that. Yes. Because it's the clearest example where anybody could look at this and go, I don't know what that means. Yeah.
And they do argue it. And they do argue it. Yes. And we have been called on it legally. and we have to bring in town council to say no, it actually means it doesn't mean that specific date and that's it.
Yeah. So that's my one uh comment on that one. I think that brings us to the end of section 8. Any other questions, comments, concerns? Section 8, special residential regulations. non section 9 special and overlay
districts. Again, this one merged a lot of of districts, you know, uh their overlay districts um special districts such as uh wetland protection, flood plane. Um also the
multif family mixeduse overlay district is now they're all in section 9. Um I think the only major substantive change in this section is uh turning the design guidelines into enforcable standards in the village commercial zoning district.
It mirrored what we did a few years ago with village center core and we think this is a really positive change that these are not ownorous standards but this will result in better development in in village commercial. it'll and if there are provision a situation
where something can't be met the board has the ability to grant the waiver but again ultimately one of the things I think the benefits of this bylaw change was we can now we can now get better development projects out of it so in this case the village commercial for
example we can now say no the parking needs to go to the back we don't want it in the front of the building mortif it it's teeth because guidelines are not enforcable. So support
um just a question 9.5.1 buildings. Why did you change everything from shell I mean from should to shell? Well that was about an hour conversation. I mean it just it just seems like you're boxing yourself in. You're not giving yourself any room to maneuver.
Should shall we we went over this I don't even know how many times. So, we have the ability to grant the waiver. I understand. But it if it if if you left it, it should I just my my only thought would be it
gives you some room to maneuver so that if you wanted to change your change something, you could, but otherwise you it's very strict saying you shall do this. So, you don't have any options but to do that. I think that was our point. That's what we wanted with the caveat that we can
grant right board gets retains leverage on it whereas if it's a should it's not something that the board could enforce but again you have the tool to they have the tool to wave the standard.
That's my own question on should arbitrary decision for shall something specific word shall is not negotiable. Correct. I think we have multiple dictionaries out there.
I'm sorry. Like you said by changing all of those to shall you also have the ability to grant a waiver for any one of those items, right? should admit that they could say we don't care if you get or not. You pulling it up, Paul?
Sorry. I'm sorry. Were you pulling that up? No, you don't have to. You don't have to pull anything up. I have a definition is please number 10. Someone's bet on that. That number section 10 is administration
and enforcement. That is this gentleman's role here. Um so again we merged a couple of different sections uh for the board of appeals and then uh administration and enforcement. Um this is the section where we identify the process for the Dober amendment uses.
And just to clarify this, for uses such as churches and schools, the state says that you cannot require a special permit. Historically in this town we have just said okay to just issue a building permit but this process
um thanks to the help of Mark Babski we can at least we're now going to require a site plan which is a site plan is pretty much an approval but at least it gives the board the ability to negotiate on on these on a use that they would not
have that they haven't currently been able to see. Um, we've had some do uses come before us just like this have come and given us like for your information presentations and we've given some suggestions and they can take them or not. But
um, Mr. Chair, yes, this is just a quick question. This is not a change in here at all. I'm just a curiosity question. Special permit granting authority. Um, who decides what the authority is in the charter? It's called in the bylaw
it's called out some very few uses are ZBA now correct or the ZBA one or two things they have there the special permit granting authority is currently the planning board has designated that as the only special permit granting authority
thank you I'll also point out before we go any further on this this is one of the really in my opinion one of the good things for homeowners it says a minor change to increase from 100 to 200 square foot size threshold. If you want to build a shed right now, you have to
pull a permit. If it's over 100 square feet, we're bumping that to 200. Small, but something substantial. I can tell you that. I'm happy to hear that. And the 200 feet is the 100 ft is actually at odds with the building code
because the minimum is 200. So, it's more a zoning checkup. And um also, Mr. chair the uh the two changes that you made in here about the uh historic district commission and and that's uh by state law as well. Right.
Correct. We just tried to be consistent after we called them out in the previous section as we discussed. We tried to carry it through everywhere where it could be had to carry through everywhere they would be affected so it had to go in the enforcement section. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Yes. Just a question. Has any
consideration been given to the possibility of a pre-review before a business invests significant funds to apply for an actual permit? Maybe to get a we we do an administrative review. It helps conver
you want to discuss with that since you do it. Well, right. We always that's something we really encourage any applicant to do is to meet with staff um to to go through it before before the planning board sees it to address any
issues that the fire department or building has or planning. Um there's also have been times in the past, it's not codified, but uh projects will come into the board and present informally to try to get a sense of a project coming
in to see, you know, it's not in the bylaw. Uh it's not something we put in here. I can remember a few instances where we've had a temperature taken at the board. You wouldn't turn someone away if they wanted to come to you.
No, I think Paul's usually their first stop and then if Paul feels like maybe you just take a temperature check before they show up for an agenda item. Yeah, I would add past experience has been that some a lot of times the um applicant will go up to the plane board
and the building inspector commissioner, you know, perhaps board of health and they come out with a sense that, oh yeah, we're all set. And I've had people come up to me and say, well, they certainly can do it. Well, no, that's not you. You were feeling well. So, I think that's important to stress that
anytime that happens, we should be making it clear that there is a process. I'm not the final say, you know, and you have to you have to go through the process. Don't let them walk away thinking that they're going. I think what you're definitely referring to is more residential and very small
commercial. any bigger project, anything with an engineer with a lawyer involved is going to take it through. Every water and sewer commission, building commission, fire, police, they're going to already have at least show them the plans and taken feedback if they have
any any brains at all. Yes, they would have come in before they I would just suggest that uh maybe u the historic district commission move up on that list a little bit instead of being the last place that people go to.
That's why we emphasized it so much earlier. Correct. And we've actually updated our online permitting on all all of our applications to say if you're within the historic district, you need to apply for a certificate of appropriateness just to apply for it.
But that we're treating them like we treat other boards, conservation, and so forth. In fact, we always write conditions to say that this doesn't go into effect until all your local, state, and federal approvals have been granted. I just I just feel that there there are some developers who think that uh if
they get all the other boards that the historic district commission is like the last thing, the last hurdle they got to get through and it's sometimes that's the thing that's going to stop them. Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Is there a time of performance that could be added to that for that
commission? Sorry, what? Is could there be a time performance for you know that they have to submit or deny to submit within 30 days? They can't hold them up for there there is a policy they they are required to certified mail to get
notified the applicant. Once the applicant is notified, they have a 14-day period where they can interview the person and come up with a solution. They have to have when a certain amount of days they have to have a public hearing and then they have to have approval. I
think the whole thing is going to like 60 days. So there is a cap on it. But the key here is and we're talking about a particular case in order right now is the application was never made. Now we're backtracking and trying to fix it. And I think that's that's a process
that's working. But there are there are guidelines about time standards that they have to follow once the application is received. Where where is that in their in their guidelines? State law. It's Oh, okay.
Should it should it be? Yes. of the applicant at least the reference to the state something so people know that they should go there possibly first so that they know it's kind of like we have this we have this conversation all the
time chicken or the egg do you apply to us first do you apply a conservation first apply it's really up to the applicant where they go first they could you could have a big project put in front of conservation close that meeting then come to us really the best thing to do is to have all
all the boards open at the same time is what we kind of direct if the conservation commission is hearing the same project um as we're hearing a lot of times they share the same peer reviewer the peer reviewers working for both boards that's generally how we see
projects everything at the same time is generally best in my view that's what we see because we do make changes they have to change the plans if we if we ask them well where's your I mean snow storage snow storage area that's 99% of the time
already covered by conservation requirements. Um so if we were to close a close and approve a special permit and we had no snow storage areas, they would have to come back to us reopen with a modification to a plan. Long and the short of it is I think I
think we're covered in adding it to open gov. Um they have to check that box before it goes too far. Okay. Thank you. Just a couple of things in definitions if we get to there definitions.
I don't think we need to go through all of them, but these highlighted ones are ones we've added obviously. And you want to go straight to questions? I'm fine with that. Um I just have a just a couple of questions on just down to recreational vehicles. I know that we spoke about
recreational vehicles and temporary earlier. Um, so if some if you have a recreational vehicle that's there less than 30 days, you don't have to apply for a permit. It's not there. It's if you're living in it, you can if someone's living in it, right? Right. You don't have to apply for a
permit. If some say you have a visitor come for a month, you don't have to get a a permit from a plan. That's what we agreed on that 30 days would be a good setting. If you're going to stay for more than 30 days, then you have a good permit. If it I would assume it's like if it's occupied continuously. I suppose there could be a loophole
where if you were out of it for 5 days and then re went there for another 30 days, but I think that No, I think that's a great idea. Several issues that you're going to have to deal with if you're living in a recreational vehicle for 30 days in one spot. I think the idea was Andy could listen
for Christmas, but then he's got to go home to drive. But to stress the fact that this does not allow this does allow people to have their recreation on their property. 100% living. We need to make that clear because right it's just living in it.
We discussed that extensively. It is. Um one other question on senior housing facilities. Um are we just moving that from one location to another on on in the definitions? You want to scroll down?
Just discussing the senior housing definition. I think that there is a new definition here. Correct. for this because we were providing differentiation between 55 and over.
Oh, there we go. Yep. So, here's senior housing. Well, I see senior housing housing facility down below is I just crossed out and but up above it's in red. You just moved it up. We moved it. Correct. Okay. We we realized that um senior
housing was separate from senior housing facility because of the health care aspects. So senior housing are you know people like us over 55 but we're living we're living large and living independently but for those folks that need
independent living and memory care that's what falls under I just crossed out and I saw it moved up. I just wanted to make Thank you. I have no more questions about this whole document. Only other thing only other thing I'm going to point out. So now the the
existing bylaw you would still have articles going up to 23. So we have condensed it significantly into 11 sections versus having to go through 23 to figure out what you're doing or need to do. And just uh one more comment, Mr. Chair, just thank you again for the work that
you put into this. And I think that when you make this proposal with town meeting and if you all have this same attitude moving forward, I think that we'll have a lot more success than we had in the spring. With that being said, any questions,
comments, concerns on the entire document, what we're going to do at town meeting, what are we going to go the rest of the night here? Do we all want to go home? Eventually, we have to uh vote on this right now. You guys can let select board could adjourn their meeting. Mr. Chair. Yes sir.
Uh this is for Alec. I I make a motion that we adjourn the select board. Um yeah I would I point I would I would take have the board consider whether we want to support it. We're in session. We can we can take a vote support or not
support. Um was that part of the agenda is my question. It was it was not. I checked that. We should certainly take that vote at our next meeting. I I suggest we take that vote to our next meeting. I just don't think that that was part of our agenda tonight.
I would like to ask, has the pin com. And Mr. Chairman, I I would add one more thing. You have a unified planning board, unified majority on the boards, the important boards, select board, planning board, bendcom. All boards are important.
But in this particular ordeal, we're the ones taking the actual vote on it, the ones that are voting on it. It's always um in everyone's best interest once we go to town meeting and we're unified. That makes it a lot easier. So, just just throwing that out there for a
while. But, yeah, I think uh I think every board should make the appointment. I'm disappointed that we can't take a vote now, but we'll wait until the next meeting and we take the vote. So, there's no more discussion. There's a motion to adjourn. Do I have a second?
Second. All in favor? I I Good luck. Thank you very much everybody. And the planning board will continue here. Just making sure you can turn off the camera. You guys are running my camera. Sorry.
No, we just have to make sure we know the language and we're done. Great job. Thank you for all your hard work. Paul as far as your concern we're ready to vote, right? Just just be mindful against
the one go back the one change you print it out and gave everyone everyone saw that we just had the flipflop we talked about. That's the whole thing, right? And it was just a correction, was it? It was a scribers error. It was user error. User error. A late night change error.
And then we had the one uh agricultural use that's been deleted. I'll note that in the clean version. And then again, town council still they'll be giving comments.
Um so ask Mark. Well, anyway, I think you're you're fine to go ahead and vote on this. Do we need to close public hearing? Chair would entertain a motion to close the public hearing on the
We have a motion to close the public hearing on the town meeting. Second zoning bylaw update and we have a second. All in favor? I opposed. Abstain. Unanimous in person.
Chair is looking for a motion to submit the discussed language to town meeting. Motion to submit the discussed language to town meeting pending minor comments from town council.
Second. We have a motion to second. All in favor? I opposed abstensions. Any other business? Anyone wish to discuss tonight? If not, there's a third motion to change.
Motion to second. We have a motion to second. All in favor? All right, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody.