Planning Board
Preliminary Meeting Minutes –
Recorded by Sharon Rossi
November 24, 2014
Members present: RMarshall, JFletcher, PRenaud, KO’Connell, SChicoine
7:00 p.m. Meeting Opened
PRenaud began reading the November 10, 2014 meeting minutes. Several spelling, punctuation and replacement of words were done. No substantive changes were made. PRenaud motioned to accept the minutes as amended. JFletcher seconded. Vote unanimous in favor.
RMarshall said he hopes at the December 8th meeting the Board can finalize the Community Facilities chapter for the Master Plan.
RMarshall informed the Board that Tim Rymes has contacted APatt about the Rymes property in town and they may be closing their gas operation soon. Their intent is to still separate the two properties and will be coming before the Board for a site plan review at some point.
RMarshall handed out a copy of MSerge’s e-mail and asked the Board to read through the e-mails. He asked the Board if they wanted to have MSerge review the Zoning Ordinance and other regulations? He noted that Site Plan Review and Subdivision Regulations are the two items that we use most often. SChicoine said he is more concerned about the Excavation Regulation. The Board recommended to RMarshall to have MSerge review the Excavation Regulation, with particular attention to procedures, in an amount not to exceed $1000 in charges.
Community Facilities Chapter of the Master Plan
RMarshall asked Board to review the Solid Waste and Municipal Water/Sewer sections of the Community Facilities chapter of the Master Plan from LMurphy.
Solid waste: Two corrections were made.
· In Paragraph 1, second sentence from the end, add ‘that need attention.’
· In the last paragraph, after the word respectable, insert ‘facility.’ Sentence to read: “…clean, respectable, facility for residents to visit.”
Municipal Water/Sewer:
· In the second paragraph, remove the word Thanks and add Responding. Section to read: responding to recommendations from a……”
· In the last sentence, remove the word on and replace with ‘about’ and after the word how insert “to make the best use of that open space….”
On the Expenditures charts, the Board agreed to stay with the pie chart. It was agreed that we need to make the colors more distinctive for easier reading. RMarshall will convey these changes to LMurphy with the intent to review these final changes for adoption of the Community Facilities chapter at our December 8th meeting.
7:31 p.m. Allrose Farm Continuation
RMarshall reopened the deliberation of the Allrose Farm Site Plan Review application. He announced that as a result of an e-mail exchange between him and Jason Reimer, Attorney representing Allrose Farm, they would not be prepared to continue the discussion this evening. The discussion will be continued until December 8, 2014 consistent with the original public notice.
7:35 p.m. Charrette Discussion
RMarshall said he and APatt have been discussing the result of the charrette. Some questions that came up:
1. How can potential business expansion take place in town in some of the homes that are in the center of the town?
2. Is that something that would work for us in Greenfield?
3. Could a home be used for both business and home rentals?
4. Is there something that the Board can do in the business/village district to help promote this combination?
KO’Connell said he is not opposed to the idea of business and owner housing, but right now I don’t see that happening.
PRenaud said the stumbling block for new businesses is the lack of broadband. FairPoint is the only company that offers internet service and because of their unreliability, right now, I don’t see happening right now. Also the first step would be to rezone the village district to a business district. JFletcher said I agree with RMarshall about homes and business being viable in the center of town, but unfortunately that is no demand at this time for this type of commercial business.
8:00 p.m. 2015 Zoning Ordinance Changes
KO’Connell began going through the Open Space Development Ordinance with changes that he thought would tighten up the verbiage to be consistent with the zoning regulations.
Discussion of the changes brought up the timing of getting these changes done and presented to the town via public hearing before Town Meeting. Well radius, cluster housing, septic designs all came up. PRenaud asked if this was something that we have jurisdiction over? I know that DES governs wells and septics?
SChicoine questioned if can we get this done this year? RMarshall said we have two more meetings in December. The public hearing is usually reserved for the first meeting in January.
PRenaud asked what the definition of a public water supply is? SChicoine said it seems that we have to go with the definition that the state has.
PRenaud said this needs to be done and we are doing this in a limited amount of time. I don’t think we have the time to present it to the public. My biggest concern is that we are doing this at the end of the year. Maybe further tweaking should be done, but we should not try to this late in the year.
KO’Connell said this is an ordinance on the books now, and I was trying to bring it into compliance with the subdivision ordinance.
.
JFletcher said there are a lot of little changes, but the changes are involving cluster housing development with open space. PRenaud said doing these changes are cleaning up and removing inconsistencies in this ordinance.
SChicoine, PRenaud and KO’Connell said to hold off on these changes in the Open Space Development ordinance.
PRenaud feels that we should talk to someone at the DES or a lawyer about the proposed ordinance SChicoine wrote. JFletcher feels that we should present SChicoine’s change and then we can tweak the open space ordinance that KO’Connell presented to the board.
PRenaud said “If you were a developer and could go either way, open space or cluster development, wouldn’t it be more profitable to do a subdivision rather than the other choice?” SChicoine said that utilities, well and waste water would be less costly.
JFletcher will be contacting SPennoyer for a copy of the original open space development proposal as changes have been lost over time.
PRenaud said if there is a big item on the ballot, many residents will ask why we are changing everything. I would rather we take our time in cleaning up and changing this ordinance before we present to the public.
9:27 p.m. Adjournment
9:27 p.m. KO’Connell motioned to adjourn. PRenaud seconded. Vote unanimous in favor.
| 
