Town of Mashpee
Blue Ribbon Comprehensive Committee
Minutes of Meeting
April 6, 2006
The Town of Mashpee Blue Ribbon Committee was called to order in Conference Room #1, Mashpee Town Hall, 16 Great Neck Road North, Mashpee, Massachusetts at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 6, 2006. The Chairman, Don Meyers, presided.
Blue Ribbon Committee Members present: Zella Elizenberry; Chuckie Green, Vice Chair; Lee Gurney; Beverly Kane; Don Myers, Chairman; Douglas Storrs, Clerk and Ted Theis.
Also present: F. Thomas Fudala, Town Planner and Ed Baker, a Mashpee citizen.
A quorum being present, the Chairman called the meeting to order.
Approval of Minutes
Review/approval of minutes from prior meetings of March 9, 2006 and March 23, 2006 meeting will not be approved until further notice.
Communications
Public Comments
Mr. Ed Baker, a Mashpee citizen, commented on several items he had heard about in the last few weeks. One included an article he had read about in the Cape Cod Times regarding an estimated $45,000 wastewater treatment facility in New Silver Beach in Falmouth. He recognized it as something that should be planned for. He added that he had read in the Enterprise that the Town Warrant was published. He was looking at articles that would help the Town’s waterways. The only article he could find was one on duck feeding. He didn’t agree with the recommendation of duck feeding. He added that March 31st was the last day for oysters, where the oysters were a subject of pathogen closure, with harvesting being open from March 1st to March 31st, 2006. The water was cold
enough that the indicator bacteria don’t grow during that time. He stated that he had read that the lab results of late summer, early fall snapshots of the Environmental Commission volunteers for ponds each year and that once, again, Santuit Pond was three times what was acceptable to the top of the acceptable range for phosphorous. He added that he said it didn’t make sense to him that the Board of Selectmen didn’t want a by-law that says not to congregate the ducks, by feeding them.
Typically, the bread fed to ducks has refined grains in it, and does not have nutritional values to the ducks, but it teaches them to hang around, just the same, said Mr. Baker. He added that the Canada goose makes 25 to 30 pounds of fecal matter a week. Fecal matter which contains, he added, the indicator bacteria for pathogens. He said it was the same thing going on in town embankments. That the ducks’ fecal matter contained phosphorous in ponds, according to a University of Rhode Island paper from their Cooperative Extension Service, which also indicated that feeding waterfowl was not a good idea, because the phosphorous that they let out. He requested the Committee to find a way to have the Board of Selectmen change their recommendation on the warrant article to attend to the problems gotten by
feeding wild ducks.
Chuckie Green, the Vice Chair, interjected and said we (regarding the Board of Selectmen) were not going to say we were going to put this article forward. He said he was one of the three voting against it.
The Vice Chair added that the reason behind it that there was no source in funding that by-law. He asked rhetorically “Do we raise that tax rate?”
Mr. Baker said to the Vice Chair that the Town did not have the funding for a lot of by-laws, like littering and other things. But if you are going to send a message to people about the proper way to protect our waterways, setting the example just by creating the law costs nothing, he said. It would give a few interested parties a way to speak to somebody who violated the by-law and be able to say that it was against the law and a harmful practice. He also said that the there was a health consideration. The intestinal tract of waterfowl is a key element in the flatworm that causes swimmer’s itch. He said that there had been cases of swimmer’s itch in Mashpee/Wakeby Pond.
The Vice Chair said that the density of Title 5 systems were in that area of Town in Santuit Pond. He said if he tested the well water, you would find high conductivity, high phosphorous levels and the density in that area is so impactive as it surrounds the Pond.
Mr. Baker said some of the phosphorous in the pond gets buried and there is known regeneration from the sediments in the pond.
Mr. Baker added that there were multiple levels of phosphorous near the cranberry bogs in the area that went into the pond, itself, though he was not faulting the bogs. He said that there had been studies by the state, the Town had done its’ studies and everything has stopped short of carrying through to the end result. At times, he said the pond was loaded with ducks and Canadian geese. Even the herring contains phosphorous he added. He said that he was not trying to say that if you remove the ducks and geese, that eliminates the problem, but people were looking at a wide range of things.
Old Business
Reports from each Board/Commission regarding DCPS Objectives
Beverly Kane, Chair of the Planning Board, reported the events occurring at the Planning Board meeting on Wednesday evening and said they did not have time to address the storm water issue. However, the Town Engineer, Tom Rowley, said that he had looked at the site and had done some inspection and would have written reports. The Chair added that she would have some definitive reports at the next Committee meeting. Mentioned by F. Thomas Fudala was a Nitrogen in the Air conference in Falmouth, that it was a hot issue, there was a lot of research going on in various aspects of it, there were a lot of conferences about it, and it covered acid rain.
Zella Elizenberry, Chair for the Affordable Housing Committee, spoke about updates regarding affordable housing. She said that the Committee was trying to evaluate a pending project on Route 130, which was mixed housing rentals and was commercially and industrially zoned.
The Vice Chair mentioned a possible private treatment of wastewater plant, whose dumping site would be behind Popponesset. Mr. Fudala said that the site would be large enough for a treatment plant. The Vice Chair questioned how the plant was going to be regulated. He said he had never seen an association that has been able to maintain a subdivision.
Mr. Fudala said that it will have a Department of Environmental Protection permit and that they would hire a professional firm.
Ms. Kane asked who would be doing the monitoring of the plant, they didn’t have someone with experience with it and that the proposed association should look into what the town requires for them.
Douglas Storrs, the Clerk, spoke that the D.E.P. sets the standard for nitrogen— overriding the Town. He said that the operator had to be the supervisor. The operator would have to be certified. The State would have to have a mandate.
Lee Gurney said that she thought that the Ten Part Standard (of no more than 10 milligrams of nitrogen) was outdated. She thought that one part of the State was not talking to the other.
The Clerk said the D.E.P set a standard at five or below, people will be frequently in violation, if they set it at ten, and therefore people would operate between three and ten parts per milligram of nitrogen, then people would not be in violation.
The D.E.P., according to the Clerk, said that it was a pilot project, looking at input from all the towns, he said. He said that because of nitrogen concerns, the five milligrams per unit of nitrogen would be on the Cape, and ten where nitrogen is not such an issue. He added that the D.E.P. recommend any plant built in Mashpee should be five.
Ms. Kane said that the Planning Board had taken it upon themselves to be an enforcer. The Clerk said that nitrogen was the Town’s black eye, that the plant could be a major violator for nitrogen.
The Chairman said he the idea went back to the duck issue, with the issue being enforcement and said he would like to table the discussion and bring back the plant and D.E.P. up as an agenda item, to discuss the topic in detail.
Ted Theis spoke regarding the education of the public regarding nitrogen and other pathogen problems. He said he had talked with Joyce Mason and Lieutenant Reed about a Neighborhood Watch List, a list of neighborhood organizations in the community.
The Chairman asked him if he had a chance to meet with people in the jail about printing documents educational to the subject. Mr. Theis said that the printing could happen, and that the Town would only have to pay for the ink or the paper.
Ms. Gurney asked about a lawn program, someone to sponsor, an existing board.
The Chairman said that there was no reason that the Board of Selectman could not facilitate it on an ongoing basis.
Ms. Gurney stated that there needed to be more details to coordinate education issues.
The Vice Chair asked who was going to run it.
The Chairman said that there could be a volunteer’s board. Mr.Theis replied that a civic association, such as the Boy scouts, could solicit funds.
The Vice Chair said that the municipality could not solicit funds.
Mr. Theis said that two Boy Scout camps would solicit them. That there was a Merit badge for this requirement that was needed to be filled. Mr. Theis said that he would ask for participation from a few Boy Scout troops in town to sponsor one of them.
The Vice Chair said he had no updates from the Board of Selectmen. He added that he would have a recommendation voted on the floor.
New Business
Change in Meeting Times
Land management and usage—Douglas Storrs
The Chairman said he sent the Committee members a tentative schedule for the rest of the year, regarding changing the Committee meetings from Thursday nights to Tuesday nights at the same time. The members discussed the idea among themselves. The Chairman said that the Committee could meet on some months twice a month, and on other months, once a month. Finally, the Chairman said he would be sending out a revised e-mail to members of the Committee regarding meeting times.
The Clerk, Douglas Storrs, spoke about Euclidean Zoning, where in ancient times, it came out of the belief that noxious odors and toxins be segregated from the people of a town or city. He said that the “separation of uses” no longer was necessary, as there was no highly noxious gasses and that there be a breakdown the social fabric of the community. He spoke about Cape Cod having “a strong sense of socioeconomic diversity and needs.”
The Clerk said that the Euclidean model worked a hundred years ago and the social aspect of interaction of age groups and economic groups created job opportunities in the past. He added that the model would create knowing your neighbors and job opportunities. He said that he wanted to designate growth centers, which would include industrial areas and the rotary where growth should occur. He said that Open Space Development by-law fails as an economic by-law and the goals of land use should work with economics.
The Town Planner spoke and said that the incentive was to do the easiest thing possible. Allowed under the Zoning Ordinance, and that was to create a subdivision. It avoids the Cape Cod Commission in every way, shape and form. The Clerk added that there was dramatic changes since the Town Planner’s Local Comprehensive Plan came out—at the time there was a call for a need of schools and that now there was a dramatic decrease in school population, and that young families were moving out of town because of the cost of housing, which he described as a civic detriment to the community.
The Clerk said that the Land Bank was a wonderful job of setting aside funds to purchase open space. He said that in a perfect world, as we set aside the land, we wouldn’t as we set aside that land, we wouldn’t remove those units that are in existence, and that they would be market trade and would create affordable units.
He said that there needed to be alternative approaches to land regulation and an approach to zoning. He said that the smart use of zoning would be to regulate the use of land and not to regulate the market, which had been done with affordable housing.
The Clerk gave members of the Committee copies of the Smart Code Manual, which could be downloaded from the Web at cnu.org or Google it under “smart code.”
He added that Smart Code was a new document; it was to be used as a template that you tailor to each specific community.
The other approach to Euclidean Zoning is something called Form Based zoning, said the Clerk. Form based zoning concerns itself to the form of the structure; it concerns itself with the physical nature of it, much more than the use, he said. regarding the height and set on the street of the structure. He said Cape Cod had wonderful examples of form based zoning, including Barnstable Village and Nantucket.
The Town Planner mentioned design control. But the Clerk said that the monitoring and enforcement of it was not done properly. The Clerk said that certain parts of Cape Cod should not be old fashioned, that they should be similar to the building structure of The Gap in Mashpee Commons. The Committee members sighed over the mention of the building, but the Clerk added that regardless of what The Gap looks like, it shows that people are much more invested in the appearance of their community more than anybody believes they are.
The Clerk said that the Euclidean Based zoning was based on what you could not do, rather than what could be done, he saw it as an inherent structural mistake that needed to be corrected. None of the Committee members disagreed with the Clerk.
Ms. Kane asked if the Clerk had any specific examples of how the by-laws could be improved.
The Clerk said that there should be an overlay district for the best solution of land use and a parallel zoning ordinances that create incentives to mix use high density in areas supported by infrastructure supported by mass transit and capable of handling a full range of housing and a full range of retail and office in a very tight, very high density manner. He concluded that was the best solution to solving all of the land use problems in Mashpee.
A rebuttal was heard from the Town Planner, who said people wanted Euclidean zoning, which is why they had chosen it over the years. The Town Planner said that the Town should be doing transfer development, and the model chosen by the Clerk ignored environmental and traffic issues.
The Town Planner said that nobody had come up with public transit, disregarding the different bus lines on Cape Cod. The Town Planner said that the land use pattern was affordable housing, that there was a problem in the State. He said that rich retirees were forcing other people out of the market. He added that the Town should be doing transfer development. The two Town leaders debated back and forth the consequences of their views. Other members of the Committee intervened and discussed their concerns, with Ms.Elizenberry bringing up affordable housing, The Chairman added that the Committee shouldn’t be promoting traditional subdividisions—he wanted to them opened up in a mixed use manner. The Town Planner said that Popponesset Marketplace was mixed use. People didn’t want to bring
residential as opposed to commercial use.
The Chairman said that members of the committee needed to send feedback to the Board of Selectmen. Ms. Gurney stated there should be verbal requests to the Board of Selectmen, as to what is going on during the meetings.
The Chairman ended the meeting to later address the issue Mr. Baker raised, regarding wildlife—waterfowl feeding.
Motion: The Chairman made a motion to adjourn and so the Committee did unanimously.
(The April 6, 2006 Town of Mashpee Blue Ribbon Comprehensive Committee was thereupon dissolved at 8:30 PM)
Respectfully Submitted by
Kimberly Hurd
Board Secretary
| 
