July 22, 2026 – Planning Board – Video & Transcript
July 22, 2026 - Planning Board
Good evening. It's July the 22nd, 2026 at 7.02 PM. And this is a meeting of the Wayland Planning Board.
I'll take attendance via roll call. Robin Borgestedt. Here. Ira Montague. Here. Annette Lewis. Here.
Currently, Jesse Newberry and Bill Sterling are not here, but we do have a quorum.
The agenda for this evening is a public comment review and approve draft minutes of 7-8-26
then review draft site plan regulations for after seating at restaurants.
Then updates from the town planner and chair we have an application for site plan review
the DPW Happy Hollow Water Treatment Facility in Castle Road Pump Station and the town planner
wants authority to retain a peer reviewer. We won't be talking about the merits of that matter
however tonight. The town planner is going to talk to us about the housing production plan
and request for proposal process and then the recent amendments to chapter 40a the zoning act
dealing with a whole bunch of strange changes that have been made by the legislature and then
board comments and concerns I'm not aware of anything that we didn't know about 48 hours in
advance so let's get started is there any public comment i see no one else online thank you robbie
robert can you put up the draft minutes
sorry all that smoke yeah right it poured here today so I don't think there is anything ah is Bill Sterling in attendance sorry I'm late that's okay yes he is so now we have four members present so we're at the point now where we are going to review the draft minutes of September the 8th excuse me July the 8th 2026 Are there any, has everyone had a chance to review them? Yes. Are there any comments, changes? My only thought was when we approved the fee schedule, were we just approving it? I thought I remembered that we were approving it, but Robert was going to check something. something? We were approving it and Robert was to review it again. Because that's not in the motion and I'm here so I didn't have my notes when I looked at that today. Okay. I thought it wasn't just a straight motion. It says in the notes that Robert's going to review it but the motion is just to approve the fee schedule. Well we did approve the fee schedule and then we asked him to go and check some stuff and then come back if you wanted to change it so that at least we would have something on record right so i just i however you want to change it is fine yeah no i i think that in the end the motion was just straight approval and that robert will come back with us but i just wasn't sure so i didn't know if anybody else remembered it differently i assume the the the electronic minute taker got it right. Yeah. This is how I remember it as well. Yeah. Okay. Are there any other comments? Yeah, I think just to wrap that up, I think we had suggested that draw comparison with other communities to just make sure our rates are sort of on par with the rest of them. Right. and I think Robert said that he had done that. Yeah, I did. I did do that. Okay.
Anything else? No. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes of July 8th, 2026? I move that we approve the minutes from July 8th, 2026. All in favor, or is there second? I'll second him. Or Bill? Which one of you is seconding? We have to claim that. We'll be watching odds or evens with you. I want to get in the minutes myself, but that's okay. Seriously, which one of you is seconding? I'll hang back. Bill, you're new. Go ahead. Okay, Bill is seconding. All in favor, Robin Borgestedt? Yes. Ira Montague? Yes. Bill Sterling? Yes. Annette Lewis? Yes. Thank you everybody, that's 4-0. The outdoor seating. Has everybody had a chance to look at these and compare them with the rest of our regulations? I did it very quickly, not too in depth though, sorry. I as well, I skimmed it and didn't find anything that I thought should be further searched into. These regulations are part of the site plan regulations and the site plan regulations are just going to go look at them for a minute to find out what number they are. Come on. The site plan regulations are chapter 302 and I was wondering if since this is all part of site plan whether this should just be one section in the site plan regulations and that most of the stuff in the beginning for the first four pages is already in the 302 regulations so that we wouldn't have to make them so long. Yeah, that's a good point. Who wrote this up? I did.
And this has the blessing of the select people? No, no. This is the planning board regulations. not the SLEC board rules and regulations. But yeah, but your point is noted that you probably could take the site plan piece for the outdoor dining and put that into the site plan regulations itself so you're not creating a whole six pages of document. Yeah, I think that makes sense with them. I agree with them. So if you'd like, I can go back and revise that and not waste everybody's time right now. And I think that would be helpful. I would rather have a better project to discuss than to sit there and like discuss it from here. Yeah. Okay. I just want to point out a few things so that when you go back. In your 3042A, it allows it for food and beverages on the premises outside a building. If it is brand new, if it's in the town center, it has to come to us. But we have separate town center regulations and site plan regulations. So somehow we don't want to make it all get confused. And if it is something new.
Well if you go to 3 or 4 it some of Article 6 site plan 8 is business No, 11 is business, I think. If you actually go for the Articles of 6, 8, and 11, then it's clear that we're not talking about the mixed-use overlay. But if I put a sentence in there that says that this is not applying to mixed use of a play that would make it be made present to read it out loud yes and i see that that sort of starts on page four i think so maybe when you make those changes it'll be clearer yeah okay um and do we need to have a public hearing for site plan or is it just a hearing It's just a waiver hearing. The only one that requires a public hearing to advertise and to do all that, to all the required stuff is subdivision rules and regs. Okay. Which I usually will only amend the subdivision rules and regs when I'm going to have a zoning public hearing so they're not paying twice and doing the whole advertisement. I always, do it all at the same time doing zoning articles so they're not, you know, spending your weekends. Right. So again, this might already be handled in the site plan regulations, but we need to have a hearing first before the regulations can be adopted. So, and the hearing only has to be noticed in the agenda. Okay. Okay. Okay. If you look at 304.13, again I think it'll work its way out when you get it into site plan, but we only have a limited time for the site plan review and in four, I think it's 304.13 or somewhere in there, it talks about that we can hold, somewhere it talks about we can hold off approving stuff if X, Y, Z, and I don't know that we can do that. I think we have to meet the timeframe. Well, if I pointed back in the site plan with our regulations, then the clause about the three-day will kick in about application being completed, because that's what we did for all, we do for all site plans, I have three days or, you know, Anita, if she's my place, has three days to review an application and to certify that it's complete, it's not complete, then the clock does not start. Okay. Yeah. So, if you put that in there, then that would make more. Okay. And in this, when you do the additional specifications and stuff, currently it's it you have a 301 and it should have if it was in this sequence it would have been a 304 yeah that's a clear mistake I see okay great so does anybody else have any other comments I did not. Okay. So, Robert, that's a good job. And if you get it back to us for the next meeting. Yeah, sure. Okay, great. Good to finally have something going on. I have a few more that are going on. I have ADU that we would like to get done. I'm on slightly on a roll and trying to get these out of the way. And not ours, but I also have started drafting up the one for, we've not seen it yet, but the pickup window. And I've handed that off to Anita and to the building department. And they are looking into getting that approved or instead of approving that. So what's that second one? I didn't. Drag up windows, which is I believe is ZBA. But I started drafting that on behalf of that because they're not going to draft that or you know, take the initiative to draft it. And someone's going to do it. So I just took a handle in and then pretty much handed it off to them and let them deal over it after the fact. They can choose to approve it, they can approve not to use it or not, it doesn't matter to me. Moving on, updates, hopefully not a lot of meaning. I received an application from the Kleinfeldtel on behalf of the town of the DPLE for a site plan for the Happy Hollow Water Training Facility and Castle Road Pump Station. And they're going to upgrade the treatments facility and they're going to create a pump station. And this is for the DWR, the water resource area. MWRA. Water resources. I am working on trying to get a peer review request. And my request is to get authorization to retain a peer review, because then to review the stormwater material and also chapter 193 for the Conservation Commission. And who pays for that then? That would be the town. The town. It doesn't come out of our budget. Doesn't come out of our budget, no. Okay. And the same thing for the COA when we had, I believe it was, I want to say it was DGT that did it for the review to COA project too.
Not saying we can't trust the town, but it is probably helpful to peer view to make sure that we are in compliance. I don't want to find out years later that the town didn't do a peer review, and now all these major issues and expecting some of the buildings around it, it'll look really bad. So. Yeah, definitely. So pretty common practice to do this. So, yeah. Do you have specific concerns? I do not. I think it's just making sure that all of the requirements met for conservation commission um the applicant i have reached out to tom holder the applicant has not the kind of on behalf of town has not submitted anything to come the conservation commission and as far as i know from when i talked to linda yesterday they've not submitted anything yet so and are they listed as conservation listed as one of the required under site plan to have a listing of all the permits that they're seeking i would have to go back to look at it okay but But I mean, at this stage, we can, I'm moving forward just in case I need to do so. Moving forward with this, but you haven't said that the application is complete yet. I did. Yes. You did say it was complete? Monday. Monday, yeah. Just make sure that they have all of the permits listed. If they don't, it's not complete. Yeah, they have a giant list of them. I can look at them. but they have a humongous list of the permits. Okay, is there anybody else in the town who is gonna be reviewing it so that the peer review would need to cover them as well? I don't think so. I think that's just kind of the Caliph needs to see it. So.
So you would like from us the authorization to proceed with hiring a peer review consultant Correct So is that okay with everyone? Yes. Can I have a motion to authorize the town planner to proceed with the RFP? So moved.
Hire a speaker. Oh, am I the second guy today? Second. Sorry, I didn't realize my position. All right. Give me an opening now. Second. Okay. And this is for the DPW Happy Hello Water Treatment Facility in Castle Road Pump Station
for peer review with conservation and planning. They do list, they know, Madam Chair, they do list stormwater and land disturbance chapter 193 chapter 194 town of whaling constant commission so they just have not they listed it just haven't filed which is an issue but it doesn't it's not an issue to the plan board application it just issues the process that we need to include them so okay um we have a second all in favor robin borgstead yes ira montague yes bill sterling yes Annette Lewis, yes. Four zero. Okay. Housing production plan. The town has received two, has put out a housing production plan RFQP and a request proposal and has received two applications. Right now, a few employees and one committee commission member of the housing partnership is reviewing the two applications the two requests and who hopefully in the next few weeks be able to determine which one to go forward with. Right now we're in the process of trying to form a a working group that's going to be steering the work along so it's not just staff that is just I don't approving everything that the steering committee will just help to kind of see the process. So Robert, when was the last time we had a review? 2022, maybe 2022 was the last five years. And it's five years.
We have run out over 10%, so there is no incentive to do so. However, this will last into 2031, and after 2030 census comes out, we could potentially be below 10%. But it's also good practice to do so and there's we we got i use the funding at the funding that we got was from the cpc so uh it's not nothing comes on the operation funds okay so just again yep we have to do one every how many years every five years the town can do one can do one there's no benefit of doing below five years five years safe will give us safe harbor if a project comes in and we're under 10 percent and we can we can claim safe harbor if we produce uh half percent of the to increase the subsidized housing inventory by half percent or by one year uh by one percent half a year will give us one year safe harbor extra and one percent will give us two years so we we did that for when we i've done we've done in the past nine wayland but other times i've done that for what is our percent right now point six four we're about 39 units 45 units above with san and's san and is so it's still on the list
so it's a good measure we have them we have the funding for cpc i got secured it um and they'll give us another five years and it will also pretty hopefully produce some um some some some some marching orders for different committees and departments to work on for the next five years and you know we'll see we'll go okay so i'm in the process right now trying to form a steering committee um working on trying to figure out and finalize that so but there will be someone from the planning board on that committee um hopefully someone on here who has been familiar with housing then that would be beneficial. Robin's on the housing partnership now so that would make for her I would think. We're only looking at about maybe five or six meetings for next spring. What happened the last time is the whole planning board wound up reviewing it as well. They would do the end yes but this is this member would be a part of it to give updates when we need when they need to. But it's really just a steady the progress and not sure make sure it doesn't go off go off the ramp and make sure we meet the deadlines and stuff for staff. So, yep. That's what I have in that one. Any questions?
Okay. Whoa, 48 recent amendments. Yeah, there's some some changes happen since we last spoke or over in the last like month. We've had some in the House Bill 555, we've had some law changes to 48. Some include allowing notifications to be sent electronically and not by paper mail. That will be interesting. That would mean that for embudders that we need, we need emails to send emails out to the neighbors, which at this time I'm probably not likely to do that because we would need a database from the assessment with different emails. Robert, don't the emails have to come from the assessor's office? Yeah, but... Right, no, so it wouldn't even be up to us. The assessors wouldn't have them anyway. That's a change that would need to be done with the assessors, with the town clerk. It's, that's a would be probably, I want to say, years away to make that work. So I'm not walking in there right now. There were some changes to section six about non-conforming structures.
I'm just looking at notes, which I did include you guys. Major changes to section 10 about variances and the criteria when we do variances for the ZBA. Yeah, will you just say what they are so that we get it in our heads too? Sure. They talk about determination that the special permit granted you shall weigh the benefits to petitioners in the public interest, including interest supporting the production of housing against the dimension to the public health, safety, welfare of the neighborhood, and also consider if it's practically difficult related to soil conditions, shape, torographic and shape and the obsession land of structures i i thought that the way that it was worded was basically that it said you don't have to you can't it's not just the three criteria that you normally have for them topography soil what's the other one shape it a lot shape soil shape okay And I thought that the change was you don't need to have those things at all. Yeah. Any longer. Yeah, it's very loosened up. And it's very vague. Anybody can... Yes, it's weird. It changed the year. Now you don't get the exercise within two years, not one year. And I mean, all the changes were done without really, I think, discussing it with, with, honestly, the M&A, with APA, I've not heard anything that come out, any of those two organizations about these changes. They just kind of, someone put them in the bill and they became law. One of the things that bothers me about the zoning change with variances is what does that do to existing variances That a good question We did get I mean I got something from KP Law already but since then I not got anything else
I think the answer to that is that even now, those fall in a category of existing non-conforming conditions and you can't bring them up and re-argue them. So I think they just stay put.
However, I mean, it could get more complicated. Yes. You have a non-conforming condition, and now you want to add and make it more non-conforming. Right. So, you know, it will be a more difficult hurdle, I think, for a case like that. Yeah, I mean, if the reason it was non-conforming before had to do with, let's say, soil, and they're not really considering that anymore, then sure, add more on. Yeah. So, I'm going to try to gather more information about this in the coming months to figure out exactly where to go from there. Robert, in all of these, when I look through them, the only one that I thought we might need to consider is the pre-existing non-conforming. I can't remember what we have in our bylaw. I think we have the two. Yeah, yeah. And you can go to four years if you wanted to. And I think that the board needs to discuss whether it wants to increase the... That means if you haven't used a property for two years or it's set vacant,
and you want to do something with it after the two years of vacancy, I think currently, isn't that what we have two years? You have to start over again. It's not a pre-existing non-conforming use. But under this statute, we can extend it so that people can have four years of not using the structure. And then after that, and during that period, it would be a pre-existing non-conforming use. So we have a choice of whether we want to increase that. Yeah. That seemed to me the only one that was ripe for actual bylaw changes. Yeah. Is that what you thought too, Robert? Yeah, I mean, no changes unlike what we can can do so many stuff, but try and clean stuff, but we there's no need. And you use lots of like, when you tell them all, uh, variances, you would just be saying C-LAR, which now has been changed so so but i am have reached out to michael mccall about doing some kind of variance i've been string um and we'll save where yeah i think training for all of this actually would be really good for us and this i mean kp lives and probably building commissioner yeah i agree so um the note from kp law explained that the house budget bill which is still pending will make if it if everything passes and it stays the way it is it'll make more changes to the zoning law it's going to be very difficult i think for the zoning board to keep up with this stuff yeah definitely You're right. I can't keep track of all this stuff. So we might be seeing some of those changes too. You'll recall that we talked about this before. The budget bill had a provision whereby land that is church land would have residential dwellings on them as of right. And that also isn't fleshed out so that but we don't know exactly what that means.
Okay. It's like every year about this time, they decide that they're gonna adopt something brand new and we don't have time to get our bylaws. Oh, job security for me. They keep chilling. Job security, great. Yeah. Security and plan will keep it relevant. But yeah, it's a long run we don't get feedback or heads up and this is coming. some of the stuff we do the heads up, but this stuff, it's like, we have to react to it now. All the planners are running around going, what do we do? Here's what my loss from says in this one. They're saying that we should do this, and it's like, it's complete chaos. Great. Well, the problem is it's already chaos, and they're just adding to the chaos. Right. Yeah, it's really, it's very confusing. I mean, the common man can't possibly follow this stuff. No. Okay. Is there anything else that we need to discuss? And next meeting will have will be the, what's that, August? The 12th. 12th. Hopefully regulations for outdoor dining. Yep. And then for that. I just have a question about the property near the local school. Did they ever revise their plan or are they stalling on them? A site plan or what their plan was? All their drawings, they were going to update them. I'm not going to revise plans, but they also working behind the scenes to figure out the nonprofit. Right. They never got to do it. Yeah, there's some staff, some strategy that they're working on. I'm just curious. I don't think we need to know. I have no update plans. I would send you guys a plan if I had them.
Okay. And they haven't gotten back to us with where they are on that anyway, right? They're working on crazy nonprofit entity, something to try to sacrifice it. or whether they somehow try to go without doing Dover. They're trying to be, they're working with the council to try to figure out what to do. I mean, I got small information from them, but. Okay. And we've still been getting the extensions of time written? Yeah, I have it. I have the last one. Okay. Well, this is a short one. You ready for an adjournment? You know, with any of you, if we usually do the agendas on Wednesday before the next planning board meeting, Robert sends me something I add to it. So if anybody has things that they want to be on the agenda, you can either let us know now or then, and we can add them in. Just share me an email if you need to discuss something, put it on the draft agenda, and then the MAMShare will review it if it's applicable. Okay. Okay. Go for it, Robin. We have to adjourn. Isn't it time for room service? If you buy a whole bunch of crap, and we'll pretend to eat it. There you go.
I move to adjourn. Wow. Who's gonna second? Second, please. Okay. All in favor, Robin Borgestedt. Yes. Ira Montague. Yes. Bill Sterling. Yes. Annette Lewis. Yes. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.
robert can you put up the draft minutes
sorry all that smoke yeah right it poured here today so I don't think there is anything ah is Bill Sterling in attendance sorry I'm late that's okay yes he is so now we have four members present so we're at the point now where we are going to review the draft minutes of September the 8th excuse me July the 8th 2026 Are there any, has everyone had a chance to review them? Yes. Are there any comments, changes? My only thought was when we approved the fee schedule, were we just approving it? I thought I remembered that we were approving it, but Robert was going to check something. something? We were approving it and Robert was to review it again. Because that's not in the motion and I'm here so I didn't have my notes when I looked at that today. Okay. I thought it wasn't just a straight motion. It says in the notes that Robert's going to review it but the motion is just to approve the fee schedule. Well we did approve the fee schedule and then we asked him to go and check some stuff and then come back if you wanted to change it so that at least we would have something on record right so i just i however you want to change it is fine yeah no i i think that in the end the motion was just straight approval and that robert will come back with us but i just wasn't sure so i didn't know if anybody else remembered it differently i assume the the the electronic minute taker got it right. Yeah. This is how I remember it as well. Yeah. Okay. Are there any other comments? Yeah, I think just to wrap that up, I think we had suggested that draw comparison with other communities to just make sure our rates are sort of on par with the rest of them. Right. and I think Robert said that he had done that. Yeah, I did. I did do that. Okay.
Anything else? No. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes of July 8th, 2026? I move that we approve the minutes from July 8th, 2026. All in favor, or is there second? I'll second him. Or Bill? Which one of you is seconding? We have to claim that. We'll be watching odds or evens with you. I want to get in the minutes myself, but that's okay. Seriously, which one of you is seconding? I'll hang back. Bill, you're new. Go ahead. Okay, Bill is seconding. All in favor, Robin Borgestedt? Yes. Ira Montague? Yes. Bill Sterling? Yes. Annette Lewis? Yes. Thank you everybody, that's 4-0. The outdoor seating. Has everybody had a chance to look at these and compare them with the rest of our regulations? I did it very quickly, not too in depth though, sorry. I as well, I skimmed it and didn't find anything that I thought should be further searched into. These regulations are part of the site plan regulations and the site plan regulations are just going to go look at them for a minute to find out what number they are. Come on. The site plan regulations are chapter 302 and I was wondering if since this is all part of site plan whether this should just be one section in the site plan regulations and that most of the stuff in the beginning for the first four pages is already in the 302 regulations so that we wouldn't have to make them so long. Yeah, that's a good point. Who wrote this up? I did.
And this has the blessing of the select people? No, no. This is the planning board regulations. not the SLEC board rules and regulations. But yeah, but your point is noted that you probably could take the site plan piece for the outdoor dining and put that into the site plan regulations itself so you're not creating a whole six pages of document. Yeah, I think that makes sense with them. I agree with them. So if you'd like, I can go back and revise that and not waste everybody's time right now. And I think that would be helpful. I would rather have a better project to discuss than to sit there and like discuss it from here. Yeah. Okay. I just want to point out a few things so that when you go back. In your 3042A, it allows it for food and beverages on the premises outside a building. If it is brand new, if it's in the town center, it has to come to us. But we have separate town center regulations and site plan regulations. So somehow we don't want to make it all get confused. And if it is something new.
Well if you go to 3 or 4 it some of Article 6 site plan 8 is business No, 11 is business, I think. If you actually go for the Articles of 6, 8, and 11, then it's clear that we're not talking about the mixed-use overlay. But if I put a sentence in there that says that this is not applying to mixed use of a play that would make it be made present to read it out loud yes and i see that that sort of starts on page four i think so maybe when you make those changes it'll be clearer yeah okay um and do we need to have a public hearing for site plan or is it just a hearing It's just a waiver hearing. The only one that requires a public hearing to advertise and to do all that, to all the required stuff is subdivision rules and regs. Okay. Which I usually will only amend the subdivision rules and regs when I'm going to have a zoning public hearing so they're not paying twice and doing the whole advertisement. I always, do it all at the same time doing zoning articles so they're not, you know, spending your weekends. Right. So again, this might already be handled in the site plan regulations, but we need to have a hearing first before the regulations can be adopted. So, and the hearing only has to be noticed in the agenda. Okay. Okay. Okay. If you look at 304.13, again I think it'll work its way out when you get it into site plan, but we only have a limited time for the site plan review and in four, I think it's 304.13 or somewhere in there, it talks about that we can hold, somewhere it talks about we can hold off approving stuff if X, Y, Z, and I don't know that we can do that. I think we have to meet the timeframe. Well, if I pointed back in the site plan with our regulations, then the clause about the three-day will kick in about application being completed, because that's what we did for all, we do for all site plans, I have three days or, you know, Anita, if she's my place, has three days to review an application and to certify that it's complete, it's not complete, then the clock does not start. Okay. Yeah. So, if you put that in there, then that would make more. Okay. And in this, when you do the additional specifications and stuff, currently it's it you have a 301 and it should have if it was in this sequence it would have been a 304 yeah that's a clear mistake I see okay great so does anybody else have any other comments I did not. Okay. So, Robert, that's a good job. And if you get it back to us for the next meeting. Yeah, sure. Okay, great. Good to finally have something going on. I have a few more that are going on. I have ADU that we would like to get done. I'm on slightly on a roll and trying to get these out of the way. And not ours, but I also have started drafting up the one for, we've not seen it yet, but the pickup window. And I've handed that off to Anita and to the building department. And they are looking into getting that approved or instead of approving that. So what's that second one? I didn't. Drag up windows, which is I believe is ZBA. But I started drafting that on behalf of that because they're not going to draft that or you know, take the initiative to draft it. And someone's going to do it. So I just took a handle in and then pretty much handed it off to them and let them deal over it after the fact. They can choose to approve it, they can approve not to use it or not, it doesn't matter to me. Moving on, updates, hopefully not a lot of meaning. I received an application from the Kleinfeldtel on behalf of the town of the DPLE for a site plan for the Happy Hollow Water Training Facility and Castle Road Pump Station. And they're going to upgrade the treatments facility and they're going to create a pump station. And this is for the DWR, the water resource area. MWRA. Water resources. I am working on trying to get a peer review request. And my request is to get authorization to retain a peer review, because then to review the stormwater material and also chapter 193 for the Conservation Commission. And who pays for that then? That would be the town. The town. It doesn't come out of our budget. Doesn't come out of our budget, no. Okay. And the same thing for the COA when we had, I believe it was, I want to say it was DGT that did it for the review to COA project too.
Not saying we can't trust the town, but it is probably helpful to peer view to make sure that we are in compliance. I don't want to find out years later that the town didn't do a peer review, and now all these major issues and expecting some of the buildings around it, it'll look really bad. So. Yeah, definitely. So pretty common practice to do this. So, yeah. Do you have specific concerns? I do not. I think it's just making sure that all of the requirements met for conservation commission um the applicant i have reached out to tom holder the applicant has not the kind of on behalf of town has not submitted anything to come the conservation commission and as far as i know from when i talked to linda yesterday they've not submitted anything yet so and are they listed as conservation listed as one of the required under site plan to have a listing of all the permits that they're seeking i would have to go back to look at it okay but But I mean, at this stage, we can, I'm moving forward just in case I need to do so. Moving forward with this, but you haven't said that the application is complete yet. I did. Yes. You did say it was complete? Monday. Monday, yeah. Just make sure that they have all of the permits listed. If they don't, it's not complete. Yeah, they have a giant list of them. I can look at them. but they have a humongous list of the permits. Okay, is there anybody else in the town who is gonna be reviewing it so that the peer review would need to cover them as well? I don't think so. I think that's just kind of the Caliph needs to see it. So.
So you would like from us the authorization to proceed with hiring a peer review consultant Correct So is that okay with everyone? Yes. Can I have a motion to authorize the town planner to proceed with the RFP? So moved.
Hire a speaker. Oh, am I the second guy today? Second. Sorry, I didn't realize my position. All right. Give me an opening now. Second. Okay. And this is for the DPW Happy Hello Water Treatment Facility in Castle Road Pump Station
for peer review with conservation and planning. They do list, they know, Madam Chair, they do list stormwater and land disturbance chapter 193 chapter 194 town of whaling constant commission so they just have not they listed it just haven't filed which is an issue but it doesn't it's not an issue to the plan board application it just issues the process that we need to include them so okay um we have a second all in favor robin borgstead yes ira montague yes bill sterling yes Annette Lewis, yes. Four zero. Okay. Housing production plan. The town has received two, has put out a housing production plan RFQP and a request proposal and has received two applications. Right now, a few employees and one committee commission member of the housing partnership is reviewing the two applications the two requests and who hopefully in the next few weeks be able to determine which one to go forward with. Right now we're in the process of trying to form a a working group that's going to be steering the work along so it's not just staff that is just I don't approving everything that the steering committee will just help to kind of see the process. So Robert, when was the last time we had a review? 2022, maybe 2022 was the last five years. And it's five years.
We have run out over 10%, so there is no incentive to do so. However, this will last into 2031, and after 2030 census comes out, we could potentially be below 10%. But it's also good practice to do so and there's we we got i use the funding at the funding that we got was from the cpc so uh it's not nothing comes on the operation funds okay so just again yep we have to do one every how many years every five years the town can do one can do one there's no benefit of doing below five years five years safe will give us safe harbor if a project comes in and we're under 10 percent and we can we can claim safe harbor if we produce uh half percent of the to increase the subsidized housing inventory by half percent or by one year uh by one percent half a year will give us one year safe harbor extra and one percent will give us two years so we we did that for when we i've done we've done in the past nine wayland but other times i've done that for what is our percent right now point six four we're about 39 units 45 units above with san and's san and is so it's still on the list
so it's a good measure we have them we have the funding for cpc i got secured it um and they'll give us another five years and it will also pretty hopefully produce some um some some some some marching orders for different committees and departments to work on for the next five years and you know we'll see we'll go okay so i'm in the process right now trying to form a steering committee um working on trying to figure out and finalize that so but there will be someone from the planning board on that committee um hopefully someone on here who has been familiar with housing then that would be beneficial. Robin's on the housing partnership now so that would make for her I would think. We're only looking at about maybe five or six meetings for next spring. What happened the last time is the whole planning board wound up reviewing it as well. They would do the end yes but this is this member would be a part of it to give updates when we need when they need to. But it's really just a steady the progress and not sure make sure it doesn't go off go off the ramp and make sure we meet the deadlines and stuff for staff. So, yep. That's what I have in that one. Any questions?
Okay. Whoa, 48 recent amendments. Yeah, there's some some changes happen since we last spoke or over in the last like month. We've had some in the House Bill 555, we've had some law changes to 48. Some include allowing notifications to be sent electronically and not by paper mail. That will be interesting. That would mean that for embudders that we need, we need emails to send emails out to the neighbors, which at this time I'm probably not likely to do that because we would need a database from the assessment with different emails. Robert, don't the emails have to come from the assessor's office? Yeah, but... Right, no, so it wouldn't even be up to us. The assessors wouldn't have them anyway. That's a change that would need to be done with the assessors, with the town clerk. It's, that's a would be probably, I want to say, years away to make that work. So I'm not walking in there right now. There were some changes to section six about non-conforming structures.
I'm just looking at notes, which I did include you guys. Major changes to section 10 about variances and the criteria when we do variances for the ZBA. Yeah, will you just say what they are so that we get it in our heads too? Sure. They talk about determination that the special permit granted you shall weigh the benefits to petitioners in the public interest, including interest supporting the production of housing against the dimension to the public health, safety, welfare of the neighborhood, and also consider if it's practically difficult related to soil conditions, shape, torographic and shape and the obsession land of structures i i thought that the way that it was worded was basically that it said you don't have to you can't it's not just the three criteria that you normally have for them topography soil what's the other one shape it a lot shape soil shape okay And I thought that the change was you don't need to have those things at all. Yeah. Any longer. Yeah, it's very loosened up. And it's very vague. Anybody can... Yes, it's weird. It changed the year. Now you don't get the exercise within two years, not one year. And I mean, all the changes were done without really, I think, discussing it with, with, honestly, the M&A, with APA, I've not heard anything that come out, any of those two organizations about these changes. They just kind of, someone put them in the bill and they became law. One of the things that bothers me about the zoning change with variances is what does that do to existing variances That a good question We did get I mean I got something from KP Law already but since then I not got anything else
I think the answer to that is that even now, those fall in a category of existing non-conforming conditions and you can't bring them up and re-argue them. So I think they just stay put.
However, I mean, it could get more complicated. Yes. You have a non-conforming condition, and now you want to add and make it more non-conforming. Right. So, you know, it will be a more difficult hurdle, I think, for a case like that. Yeah, I mean, if the reason it was non-conforming before had to do with, let's say, soil, and they're not really considering that anymore, then sure, add more on. Yeah. So, I'm going to try to gather more information about this in the coming months to figure out exactly where to go from there. Robert, in all of these, when I look through them, the only one that I thought we might need to consider is the pre-existing non-conforming. I can't remember what we have in our bylaw. I think we have the two. Yeah, yeah. And you can go to four years if you wanted to. And I think that the board needs to discuss whether it wants to increase the... That means if you haven't used a property for two years or it's set vacant,
and you want to do something with it after the two years of vacancy, I think currently, isn't that what we have two years? You have to start over again. It's not a pre-existing non-conforming use. But under this statute, we can extend it so that people can have four years of not using the structure. And then after that, and during that period, it would be a pre-existing non-conforming use. So we have a choice of whether we want to increase that. Yeah. That seemed to me the only one that was ripe for actual bylaw changes. Yeah. Is that what you thought too, Robert? Yeah, I mean, no changes unlike what we can can do so many stuff, but try and clean stuff, but we there's no need. And you use lots of like, when you tell them all, uh, variances, you would just be saying C-LAR, which now has been changed so so but i am have reached out to michael mccall about doing some kind of variance i've been string um and we'll save where yeah i think training for all of this actually would be really good for us and this i mean kp lives and probably building commissioner yeah i agree so um the note from kp law explained that the house budget bill which is still pending will make if it if everything passes and it stays the way it is it'll make more changes to the zoning law it's going to be very difficult i think for the zoning board to keep up with this stuff yeah definitely You're right. I can't keep track of all this stuff. So we might be seeing some of those changes too. You'll recall that we talked about this before. The budget bill had a provision whereby land that is church land would have residential dwellings on them as of right. And that also isn't fleshed out so that but we don't know exactly what that means.
Okay. It's like every year about this time, they decide that they're gonna adopt something brand new and we don't have time to get our bylaws. Oh, job security for me. They keep chilling. Job security, great. Yeah. Security and plan will keep it relevant. But yeah, it's a long run we don't get feedback or heads up and this is coming. some of the stuff we do the heads up, but this stuff, it's like, we have to react to it now. All the planners are running around going, what do we do? Here's what my loss from says in this one. They're saying that we should do this, and it's like, it's complete chaos. Great. Well, the problem is it's already chaos, and they're just adding to the chaos. Right. Yeah, it's really, it's very confusing. I mean, the common man can't possibly follow this stuff. No. Okay. Is there anything else that we need to discuss? And next meeting will have will be the, what's that, August? The 12th. 12th. Hopefully regulations for outdoor dining. Yep. And then for that. I just have a question about the property near the local school. Did they ever revise their plan or are they stalling on them? A site plan or what their plan was? All their drawings, they were going to update them. I'm not going to revise plans, but they also working behind the scenes to figure out the nonprofit. Right. They never got to do it. Yeah, there's some staff, some strategy that they're working on. I'm just curious. I don't think we need to know. I have no update plans. I would send you guys a plan if I had them.
Okay. And they haven't gotten back to us with where they are on that anyway, right? They're working on crazy nonprofit entity, something to try to sacrifice it. or whether they somehow try to go without doing Dover. They're trying to be, they're working with the council to try to figure out what to do. I mean, I got small information from them, but. Okay. And we've still been getting the extensions of time written? Yeah, I have it. I have the last one. Okay. Well, this is a short one. You ready for an adjournment? You know, with any of you, if we usually do the agendas on Wednesday before the next planning board meeting, Robert sends me something I add to it. So if anybody has things that they want to be on the agenda, you can either let us know now or then, and we can add them in. Just share me an email if you need to discuss something, put it on the draft agenda, and then the MAMShare will review it if it's applicable. Okay. Okay. Go for it, Robin. We have to adjourn. Isn't it time for room service? If you buy a whole bunch of crap, and we'll pretend to eat it. There you go.
I move to adjourn. Wow. Who's gonna second? Second, please. Okay. All in favor, Robin Borgestedt. Yes. Ira Montague. Yes. Bill Sterling. Yes. Annette Lewis. Yes. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.