ANTRIM PLANNING BOARD
MEETING MINUTES
April 7, 2016
Public Meeting
Members & Staff Present:
Jeanne Cahoon (Member) Chris Condon (Chair) Michael Frosch (Member)
Colleen Giffin (Planning Assistant) Bob Holmes (Member) Janet McEwen (Member)
Carol Ogilvie (Planning Consultant and our go to girl), John Robertson (Ex-officio)
Members Absent: Elsa Voelcker (Alternate) Steve MacDonald (Member)
Public attendance: John Giffin
7:00PM Public Meeting:
Chair Condon opened the meeting at 7:00, he made note that with the absence of Mr. McDonald and our alternate, Ms. Voelcker .Chair Condon welcomed Carol Ogilvie back.
Zoning Board of Adjustments and Planning Board joint meetings
John Giffin Chairman of the Zoning Board was asked to come in to talk with board about possible joint meetings between the Zoning Board of Adjustments and the Planning Board.
Mr. Holmes feels that we should be looking ahead and he feels the Zoning Board has the ability see better where the boards might focus. Agreeing, Ms. McEwen pointed out
how it would have been helpful with lot mergers and other past Zoning Ordinance decisions if the boards could have met and discussed policies.
Mr. Giffin stated that in years past the ZBA has talked about joint meetings and thinks it is something the boards should do every year.
Thoughts about the upcoming conference and the importance of both ZBA and Planning Board members attending were talked about. A tentative date of June 16
has been set to have the joint meeting. This allows the boards to acquire new information from the OEP conference set for June 4th .
Business Meeting
Ms. Giffin let the board know that Richard Winslow and his son John Winslow have asked to have an informal sit down to talk about suggestions about selling the property.
Properties are; Map 228 Lot 25 24 acres
Map 228 Lot 13 21 Acres
Map 228 Lot 23 63 acres
Chair Condon reminds the board of the Office of Energy Planning Conference on June 4th. Ms. Giffin will take care of sign up registration and payments.
Approve March 17, 2016 Minutes
Correction to minutes;
Add Mr. Holmes name to roll call votes under election of officers.
Change introduction to read; welcomed the newly elected Mr. Holmes and the new ex-officio Mr. Robinson. Remove Mr. Levesques name.
*Board feels that we need to go back to numbered lines for the minutes to make it easier to share mistakes or fixes needed. *
Discussion
Janet questions the clarity of page 2 at the bottom “planning board and zoning board are short alternates” after brief discussion board decides the line is clear.
Ms. Cahoon makes a motion to accept the March 17th minutes as amended
Mr. Frosch seconds the motion
Vote: By a voice vote, all agreed.
Economic Revitalization Zoning:
Chair Condon explained the time it takes Ms. Giffin to get all the addresses and property information. He let the board know that the renewals were approved and we will review other applications next meeting.
Master plan
Mr. Holmes would like to see the board take all 12 sections of the master plan and focus on the most important ones, making it into a readable document.
Chair Condon wants to tackle process of looking at the whole thing in order to find the most important parts that should be updated.
Antrim 2020
The board looked through the printouts and talked about next meeting (Antrim 2020) on putting together the event.
Ms. McEwen updated the board letting us know that it has been broken down to three committees and will all have presentations.
Ms. McEwen had to remind the committees that the master plan and Capital Improvement Plan are not a part of the process.
Capital Improvement Plan
Ms. McEwen thinks a resident on the committee would be helpful.
Mr. Robertson agrees stating that it is a good way to bring the community into any process.
Ms. McEwen talked about Mr. Pratt’s concerns about the CIP when he leaves, and she has suggested an earlier meeting to go over how they might want to change and tweak CIP to try
to bring in community members. She feels it may be important to re-write the definition of what the Capital Improvement Plan is.
Goals:
Chair Condon suggests the board set-aside time to focus on strategies to accomplish goals we have previously come up with. He feels it will be a lot of over writing and finds it important to encourage businesses to come into town.
The ERZ helps that but, we need to think about defining our commercial district.
How should we accomplish some of these things?
Ms. McEwen would like to talk about what we are going to allow for providing incentives?
How can the Planning Board be more user friendly through the process for businesses?
Ms. Ogilvie was asked by Chair Condon if there is anything on our books where we have gotten feedback that says Antrim is less business friendly than other towns?
Ms. Ogilvie has not heard this concern, but noticed that the process with The Landsite Project went smoothly. She is going to look at everything regarding this process to make sure it
can continue to run as smoothly as possible and help the applicant be clear on what is required.
Ms. McEwen asks Ms. Ogilvie if our fees are in order with other towns. Ms. Ogilvie suggests the board look into that. Possibly being flexible based on square foot or other criteria.
Mr. Robertson brought up the fact that Mr. Burnside complained that by the time all the fees and other stuff was done for the Landsite project he was into the process thousands of dollars before he could even start the project.
Discussion ensued
Ms. McEwen is concerned that the Landsite project has taken a long time to get things on the plan completed.
Could we have done things differently to make sure it was not such an eyesore for so long? The plan shows an appealing site and it has not yet gotten to that point.
Lack of cemetery buffer at this point in the game is upsetting.
Ms. Ogilvie informed the board that we could create a time line on projects like this. She will go back and look at decisions that we made on this project. It may be possible to call
Mr. Burnside back in and insist certain things be done , a plan was approved and if it’s not being done, even without conditions set, we can raise those concerns.
Ms. Cahoon states that Mr. Burnside has completed the items that he finds to be priority and those things did not line up with what the Planning Board thought should have been done.
It is important in the future to make sure we set priorities in a clear way so that we are looking out for the locals also surrounding new businesses.
Ms. McEwen feels we have 10 components of the Antrim 20/20 whole process to consolidate we can look at the things to focus on, but it doesn’t make sense to re-write without more information.
We need to be thinking about what part of our master plan needs to be archived.
Mr. Frosch would like to go through and look at what we want that we know will be good information, this way, we have reference points to go off of.
Discussion went on.
The board looks at our bylaws and Chair Condon feels it will be good homework to all come back at our April 21st meeting with thoughts and suggestions about things that need to be changed in the bylaws.
May 5th we will talk about what we want to do with the Master plan.
May 19th chair Condon feels that the commercial business district would be a great topic to have discussions on.
Are there things to look at, a located document besides maps that says where the commercial district is?
“THIS” where is it defined that it is x number of feet.
Need to come up with a specific footage?
Ms. McEwen would find Rules about tax incentives helpful for this meeting.
Mr. Roberson looks at things going on in Hillsboro and surrounding towns for inspiration.
Mr. Frosch would like to see commercial zoning throughout properties (no multi zone properties).with the properties it would work on.
Are we to Restrictive on home businesses? Ms. Ogilvie has agreed to look up rules on home business.
June 2nd will be mostly spill over from the May 5th meeting
Mr. Holmes questions if we are concerned with term secretary for Ms. Giffin?
Discussion starts on this topic and the board feels that, Yes, we need to have discussion on this
Ms. Ogilvie brings up that the “secretary” is needed for signing the plans, but the chair can be the “officer” for signing of plans. For minutes and all that other stuff there are not many “secretaries” anymore.
Ms. McEwen adds that a job description of Ms. Giffin’s town position would be helpful for us to see.
Ms. Cahoon moved to adjourn 7:02 pm, Mr. Holmes seconded.
Vote: By a voice vote, all agreed.
Respectfully Submitted By,
Jeanne Cahoon
Planning Board Co-Chair
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