Meeting Minutes - PC
Town of Leicester
Planning Commission Meeting Minutes
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
*Unapproved*
** See subsequent minutes for any changes
Members Present: Donna Swinington, Chair, Pete Fjeld, Tim Johnson
Absent: Gerry Flint, Jeff McDonough, Bethany Menkart, Charlie Makovec
Others Present: Sandra Trombley, Secretary
Call to Order & Review Agenda: Called to order the Planning Commission Meeting at 6:08 p.m. by Chair and roll call.
Donna stated that because Kate Briggs was here that we would skip down the agenda to old business.
Old Business:
Kate gave the Planning Commission a list of zoning issues she wanted to bring up. Kate noticed that the PC had municipal planning grants on their agenda and she had it on hers too. The first item Kate brought up was the Municipal Planning Grants for 2010. She informed the PC that this had to be done on-line.
Donna stated that she thought all they had to do was bring up last year’s grant and fluff it up.
Kate asked to have this meeting postponed a week because there was a meeting of Zoning Administrators hosted by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns to talk specifically about zoning applications, etc. and she felt she desperately needed to hear about this. That was last Wednesday. At that meeting they talked about the Municipal Planning Grants. She said they had to be done on-line this year.
Salisbury did get a grant in the last go round and they just adopted new zoning by-laws that just went into effect in June of this year.
Kate thinks that they can make an argument that they should get a grant because it is extremely important they have a coherent approach toward Lake Dunmore because we share Lake Dunmore with Salisbury. It is already an issue that Salisbury says one thing and Leicester says another. We have to argue that our zoning laws are from 2005, now Salisbury has been updated, so Leicester has to update theirs. Leicester has to stay in sink and not have the problems of people saying, “well Salisbury did that”.
Donna informed that Leicester was completely passed over last year. They were promised right through January that Leicester would, in fact, get a reduced grant, but they got nothing. Donna had to call her once a week for months to try to find out. I just kept on going on. Donna was told from Elizabeth Golden that she was 99% sure we would get a grant because Leicester was planning. But, they got no grant money. At the time, we had Shelley and Heidi who had computer experience and could get this all together for us. Now, we have lost Heidi and Shelley.
Donna talked with Elizabeth Golden today at Regional Planning. She was surprised that we had lost two members of the PC.
Kate got the feeling that Leicester has a very strong argument because Salisbury shares this major zoning issue with us. Salisbury’ got the grant last year and has just revised its regulations. All that stuff is on line under the Town of Salisbury. It’s even more elaborate and complicated than it was before. It’s over 100 pages. Kate has downloaded it and is in the slow process of comparing it to Leicester’s. They are dealing with a lot of the problems we have talked about which is the impact of continued development, they driveways, etc. They have different issues because they have more intensive commercial use than we have.
Kate stated that we have a lot in common with them. She thinks we can use that to say we really need to do it this year. We can’t do half the lake in one century and the other half in another century.
Donna stated that we only had two year reprieve from having our zoning regs brought up to our plan and brought into compliance, and that is this year.
Kate stated that they had talked earlier about revising the application. Shelley sent me the stuff that she did for revisions. When she went to the meeting last week, there were 20 towns there with a variety of applications with some that are a whole lot better. They are going to post them on their web-site. As soon as Kate gets them, she will make copies. One of the things that a lot of towns are doing is making the basic application simpler, but requiring that the plan submitted has more information and actually be correct. Make the basic application easier to fill out, simpler to do and the plan more accurate. There are a lot of very good ideas.
Before we go ahead to try to change ours, Kate would like to show the PC copies of some other town’s applications.
Kate stated that some of the things in our by-laws, we are not even doing. Kate stated that we are basically violating Vermont State Law with some of the things we do. Example given: Say someone takes something to the ZBA. Nobody contests it. Nobody is there. We go ahead and grant the permit. You have to always allow the appeal period. She explained that it’s the Environmental Court that decides who has standing, not the Town. You always have to allow that time and it’s always the Zoning Administrator, directed by the ZBA, to issue that permit after the number of days. You could get into a situation where somebody started building and somebody comes out of the woodwork and says they weren’t notified and tear that down.
Kate read the Act once and doesn’t claim to know it, but states that is another reason to review the by-laws. Kate stated that we need written procedures for all of the participants of this process so that we do it by the book. We don’t have the problems of some of the towns with very contentious subdivisions with people fighting each other and litigating. We haven’t run into that, but probably should be aware.
Kate said she thinks it is her responsibility to write the procedures, show them to the PC, get people’s input, then say, this is actually how we are going to do business and site the law.
Kate said that we need to pursue the Municipal Grant very aggressively.
Kate stated she would certainly help in every way she can putting stuff together with the writing, etc. In terms of the things that you actually want in the by-laws, obviously that needs to come from the PC and other people in town. What needs to be changed, obviously the driveway piece.
Kate stated that she doesn’t think the people at Regional Planning write that well. In some ways they have made it more complicated. Salisbury’s plan is now 102 pages and some of it is hard to follow. Kate doesn’t know that we need anything that elaborate. In some ways, we should just simplify and clarify, so people understand
Kate stated another thing we should look at is, if every time we make changes and it’s a hard written copy, it locks you into years of that copy. Kate thinks we should go with having them on-line. Having good instructions for people of how to use them, of how to deal with it. Have some printed copies in the Town Office and Julie will help anyone that comes in; as well as, she will help anyone that comes in. Getting away from the hard copy.
Pete asked if we were required to provide hard copies. Kate said she didn’t think so. Donna said that we have to have some available for people who do not have computers or computer literate.
Kate stated that she noticed in other towns when people do zoning applications, they have to come in with the receipts. They have to come in with the list of abutting neighbors and receipts showing that they mailed them by certified mail. All the burden and expense is put on the applicant. Here, the applicant barely has to show up. We have almost gone too far the other way. We let people change their applications endlessly.
By the way, the Cameron’s are back with new things; new decks, new this, new that, that they want to do. They want to add things. They want to change yet again. Kate was saying at some point, its one application fee and it has been warned twice, the ZBA met on it twice. This really does need to be clarified in the procedure. At what point does that fee not cover five more things that you want to do. It just needs to be clarified.
Donna stated she would like to see everything simplified from the application to the language so that anybody could pick it up and not have to get an interpreter to find out what we are talking about. Donna doesn’t think that we need 102 new pages of rules and regulations.
Tim stated that he feels, as far as our town goes, he doesn’t feel we should worry about what Salisbury is doing or what Brandon is doing. He feels that if our PC has issues about this book, this is what we need to address. Go through this, recommend our changes, and then vote on it. Who cares what other towns are doing.
Kate stated, because of the lake. She only cares about Lake Dunmore. She doesn’t care about any other lake.
Tim asked why? As long as we are happy with our book, that’s what we should dwell on.
Kate said that she thinks we can learn from the issues other towns have dealt with. For example, docks. People are confused because a lot of people don’t live here and they don’t know our zoning and they don’t know Salisbury zoning. We should look at the things that have a similar approach to things such as docks, to this, to that, about Lake Dunmore. Because people don’t know, they go ahead and do stuff. It’s always harder to fix it after they have done something than it is if we had prevented it in the first place. Kate thinks it would simplify the communication.
Tim stated he understood that point, but it sounds like to him that your hot spot of your interest is the lake area. So maybe you want to add more stuff in this book on the lake. Tim stated that what he is trying to get at is, instead of adding 100 pages to this guy and 100 pages to this guy, and trying to implement all of these new things, look through our book and see what we think we need. You are saying Lake Dunmore needs attention. Maybe we could make some chapters in here that specific ally deals with the lake.
Kate stated that the bulk of our revisions should be to reflect exactly what our experience in Leicester has been and to make it work better for Leicester and she agrees it should go toward simplification and clarification and not to further obfuscation. When she looks at the Salisbury by-laws, that’s how they look to her. They are even harder to read than ours are. Kate sees a value of consistency; however we express it, on lake issues. So, we have the same approach. One of the problems is we have very limited resources in which to communicate with people. We really need to do things to make it easier, especially for the out-of-state people, to do it right the first time. We’ve got a screwed up driveway on Hooker Road with out-of-state people. Now what do you do? How do you fix it? Fight with them. Now the town’s going to have to spend some money. They didn’t know. The contractor didn’t tell them. It’s always this after-the-fact stuff. To the extent we can say, we have clear cut zoning rules about this. We can say, go to our web-site. We send this out with our tax bill; we have zoning in Leicester and it’s your responsibility to do this, and then we also have to actually enforce it. Nobody wants to do that. So, that’s my job. People went ahead and did stuff without permission, bad stuff that caused roads to wash out and cost lots of money, Kate thinks we need to act on that. If we did that one or two times, they would be a little less eager to do that in the future. It ends up costing a lot of money.
The content of this is ultimately up to you. All I can do is make suggestions and facilitate the process. The content is the PC.
Donna stated that our goal will be to simplify.
Kate stated something that they can look at a glance and not struggle to find something.
Tim stated from what he’s hearing, did anything but simply their zoning.
Kate said they went through the same process that we are going to go through. This was written by Addison County Regional Planning. You get the grant and they write it, that’s how they are going to write it.
Donna stated in their defense, if they say something, we can say “no” that’s not our terminology.
Pete said that Addison County Regional Planning will take Salisbury’s and basically copy it. But, then we must edit it. It’s always easier than rewriting it.
Kate said tons of it is not appropriate and that’s why she is going through it comparing what they have with what we have. Some of it is the same language.
Tim asked how it comes into law. We revise the by-laws.
Donna stated that we have some notes somewhere that Ron Fiske gave us, certain laws that have come into effect since 2005 to include in this. Donna explained that when we come up with a plan, you have a series of public meetings where you are inviting everybody in town in to review this plan and give input. If they have input, we must take it into consideration and sit down and hammer out the final product. Then it is voted on by the Town to adopt it at Town Meeting.
Kate thinks that it does not go to the Town to adopt, but to the Selectboard after a certain warning period. Kate will check on that and find out.
Tim is concerned that the people of this Town have input and vote on what these changes are.
Pete read from the front cover of the by-laws book, PC Hearing and Approval, Selectboard Hearing, Selectboard Adoption.
Kate said she doesn’t think is at Town Meeting, but by the Selectboard.
Donna stated that you do have hearings. That’s what part of grant money is all about. What we wanted to do was send a questionnaire to people asking them what they want to see changed, what people think is working well. That was part of our grant proposal was to have a little bit of cash in there to do a mailing and then we would go from there. Work with Regional Planning and we’re going to say that less is more for us.
Tim stated it sounds like the lake is the hot bed, that’s what he is hearing. To him, if we send out in tax bills the little blurbs to warn people they got to call the ZA before any work is done, I would hope that the town would do the same amount of effort for every individual who owns property on that lake to be duly notified. Not an ad in the paper, but they be sent a letter or whatever so that they know tonight’s the hearing, you need to be here. This is going to affect every property owner on the lake.
Donna stated we would have some money to do some things like that. It is not something you can do without grant money. There is no money available. It is a number one priority to get feedback from people about what they are thinking.
Kate said she is learning a lot. Kate stated that we are really straining relationships with neighbors because neighbors want to get along. My neighbors have done some things I don’t like at all, but if I weigh that against a long-term relationship with my neighbor, I think “no”, I’m just going to let that go. But, collectively that’s bad for the Town. That’s why we have to have good rules that we are willing to enforce. We can’t keep passing it off to the neighbors, and say well if you didn’t object then nobody minds.
Tim stated the neighbors don’t really have anything to do with it. If Mr. & Mrs. Smith come in here for a variance and we feel their variance, and I’ll use for an example the Cameron’s property, to move their house over.
Kate stated that wasn’t a variance. Kate stated that should never have been done.
Tim stated it was and they met everything that night. Tim stated that Kate should have been here for the meeting, that’s all he’s got to say. The thing is with the neighbors, it’s not up to the neighbors to say Mr. & Mrs. Smith can’t build this. If they meet the setbacks and they meet the conditions and we approve that and we give them the variance, or if we give them a conditional use, if we as a board do that, one objection from a neighbor shouldn’t have anything to do with it. The neighbors shouldn’t be able to do that. They got to have a law saying they can’t do this for this reason. Not because I don’t like it.
Kate stated, the problem is, we do have a law and it’s called zoning. What was done that night was something called “spot zoning”. Basically there was no reason to approve it. There is a second primary residence built on a two acre lot.
Tim said we are allowed to do. Kate said, “no”. Tim said yes. Kate said no. Kate said we got two more coming along, we will see how you handle those.
Tim said, the same way. I treat everyone in this town fairly. That’s how I am going to do it.
Kate said they didn’t have a fire, they didn’t have a building, and they just wanted to build a building on their two acre lot.
Tim said as long as they can do it. Kate said they can’t do it.
Tim researched the Cameron issue. He brought up four or five things in here that night about it. Everything they talked about, we can do this, we can do this. I kept showing them different ways that they could do this. So, if the other people can do this, he stated he will vote the same for that one.
Kate stated that the problem is that we have two acre zoning, ok. This is just a violation of two acre zoning. It’s spot zoning.
Tim said, no, you need to look at the book. There are different subchapters in here which allow them to do different things in under two acre zoning. It says you can do that in here.
Kate said you’ve read it, but she doesn’t think Tim is interpreting it correctly.
Tim believes he is. He stated that obviously the Board agreed with him that night.
Kate stated that spot zoning is something that should be addressed. There is pressure to do that.
Tim stated that the Board is here to give variances or hear people’s cases. Forget the term “variances”. We are like the judge. We are here to hear people’s cases and take all the evidence into play and make the best decision. We give people leeway. That’s what the Board does. If the State of Vermont didn’t want us to do this, there would be no zoning boards. They would come to you and here would be our laws and if they are six inches under the limit, they wouldn’t get a permit.
Kate stated that Tim was missing the point. There are words that are different. There is a difference between a variance, a waiver and spot zoning. That was not a variance or a waiver. That was spot re-zoning. A variance would have been to say you could build a building on that burned down site and it’s not the same footprint. That would have been a variance. A waiver would be to say, yes you are too close to this, but that’s ok. But to allow the construction of a second primary residence on a two acre lot where there is two acre zoning, that is not a variance and that is not a waiver. That is spot re-zoning.
Tim stated that according to the book, it’s not, but whatever. That’s not what we are here to talk about and it’s done and over.
Donna stated that we will have to bring that up in planning. So, where are we now?
Kate said it’s not over with because you’ll be hearing about some other people that want to do it.
Donna said ok and asked where are we here? Kate said, she was done. Kate is looking at going forward working on the grant, helping and doing a lot of leg work on the grant and figuring out a strategy for that.
Kate commented on training for ZA, ZBA and PC. Given the number of new members and Kate’s newness, there is a lot to learn. For her particularly there is the whole flood plain, FEMA stuff. She is responsible for that and doesn’t know anything about it. Kate is trying to figure out some vehicle where we can get the new members and old members trained. Kate was going to talk with Vermont League and Regional Planning to see if we could get some kind of orientation, maybe at the Town Office.
There have been a lot of State changes. Some have trickled down and some haven’t. Kate found she wasn’t aware that the State supervisors rental properties. For example, she was called and asked from someone who wanted to rent their camp for a week this summer and asked if there was anything they needed to do. Kate didn’t think so, but found out that the State regulates that. You’ve got to meet the life safety code and have at least smoke detectors and in theory you have to do all this. This is something that nobody here was aware of. We didn’t know there was any regulation whatsoever of rental.
Pete stated that the State has regulated short term rentals. Rentals of less than 30 days. He said what brought it about was renting ski houses. People would rent the ski house for the winter and they would have 40 people staying there and that scared the Fire Marshall to death. The fear of someone getting killed. Not just from fire, but from carbon monoxide also.
Kate will check into training orientation for the changing world and what we are supposed to do, so at least we don’t want to tell people the wrong thing.
Donna said it would be nice to have someone come here to one of our meetings or specify a night designating two hours to get an update on some issues of importance. Donna would like to hear what they have to say. She didn’t know anything about this 30 day rental thing.
Kate said in other town’s zoning by-laws there are requirements that you have certain State permits for the Town to do something. Apparently, the courts have ruled, no. People get caught in this thing where the town says I’m not going to do it if the State does it, and the State says I’m not going to do it if the Town does it and nothing gets done. The courts say, no, you have to act independently on your area of jurisdiction and you can’t have rules that say a person can’t proceed with the permit application, if they don’t for example have a waste water application approved. That’s not supposed to be in your by-laws. Your application is independent of what the State says about these other issues. You have to have the State’s approval too. Kate doesn’t think we are doing that, but she’s saying that’s an example of many changes.
Donna stated that Addison County Regional Planning might be able to help us with training. They helped us with the Grant.
Kate said that Mark Wilks, the ZA in Salisbury, said that people from the Regional Planning Commission are coming to meet with them about their zoning regulations. He invited Kate to go to the meeting. When Kate knows the date of the meeting she will let everyone know. Kate would be curious about what they had to say. It’s going to be kind of a training session about the content of the regulations, why they are as they are.
Kate has heard some people say we should have coverage rules, when you look at some of those small lots where they want to build a garage, build this, build that, and they are really little. It turns out those are almost impossible to administer and maybe it is better not to go there.
Pete stated that he thinks at some point, you have to. Sudbury has just changed theirs because they had so many problems around the lake with little lots. So, they increased the amount of coverage allowed because you could never make it work.
Kate will come up with a plan to make a simpler application and then good instructions on what they need to put on the actual site plan, where she thinks most of the information should be.
Donna asked if Kate could get this to us by the next meeting, August 12th. By then Donna will meet with Elizabeth Golden and Kate and Donna can start working on the Grant.
Tim stated just so everyone knows that what Kate gave him is exactly verbatim to the one we have currently in Section 560 word for word. It’s exactly the same word for word. This is the one he showed to the Selectboard the other night.
Kate stated there was some other language in here about that.
Kate asked if anyone has been trained in this whole flood hazard thing. This is one area that she thinks she needs to learn something about. A huge part of Leicester according to the drawing is in flood hazard land.
Tim stated that what he is running into from the lister side of things; is wetlands. There’s a difference between wetlands and flood zones. Wetlands are a protected State thing. That’s a little bit different.
Kate stated in the flood hazard area, it actually requires an application to FEMA to do any development. She has a form to fill out which was filled out in the past in which we claim there is only 486 buildings in the Town. It’s completely wrong. Where this information came from, she doesn’t know.
Kate stated that supposedly there is some kind of zoning part to the NEMRC system that can be used to help with zoning to pull up information you need for zoning. That software supposedly has zoning features. That would be very helpful to know how many properties we have in the Lake District.
Tim stated the cards have the same information. Mr. Mackey came in and he wanted to send out a letter to all the lake residences and we said, yes. We thought we could, but it turned out we couldn’t. Terry was down the next day and they asked about it and she couldn’t so she had to download the whole list of everybody. Tim will double check with Terry, but he doesn’t think we can. Tim said it’s really touchy software.
Donna stated that the Selectboard has ordered us to use the new improved format which we have not come up with yet, and so declared it two months ago and Donna would like to get onto a new improved format ASAP so that would be one thing off our plate before we dive into the Town Plan and questionnaires. We are a little group with a lot of work. We’ve lost two of our computer people that would have been so handy of we had gotten the grant. We’d be 2/3’s done, but it didn’t happen.
Kate is confused in terms of the administrative piece and past practice about charging fees and things. We do need some kind of clarification around that.
Donna explained what they had done in the past. They took the cost of the previous year, divided it out between the different applications, and through in secretarial support and tried to make it so the town broke even. We didn’t want to charge high fees. It wasn’t a revenue center, but it didn’t cost the town either. We tried to keep the fee schedule down, not be a money maker, and just break even.
Pete stated that if it did generate some income, that would be income you could use for planning purposes.
Kate thinks we are losing money on some of these applications because of the filing and other things. There are a bunch of things we are supposed to send certified mail and we don’t send certified mail.
Donna stated that we can review the fees. The fees haven’t been touched in five years.
Kate stated that apparently the law changed in 2005/2006 and now most towns don’t have most applications rejected by the ZA. They have an application that the ZA can approve and other things go through the ZA to make sure they are complete but people pay the fee based on the fact that they are going to the ZBA, which is a higher fee because it’s a more expensive review process. So they have fee schedules that kind of reflect that.
We have a situation where somebody files an application. It is something Kate can’t approve and it must go to the ZBA and she refers it. She doesn’t deny it; it’s something she can’t approve. She would really like to have our application and procedures reflect that. Kate thinks we should have a clear set of procedures. The problem is we have one application. It is confusing and negative.
Pete stated that if it can be approved by the ZA, we don’t have to send out certified letters, have a hearing, etc. It also gives the people reason to do it within the zoning by-laws.
Kate said most of the towns didn’t think it was a good idea to have the applications completed on-line. It’s better if they actually come in and do a little research and talk to somebody before they go through this whole process and do this big application which is totally out in left field. The application is available on line, but they recommend not completing it on-line.
Kate left Salisbury’s by-laws for Tim to copy.
Approval of Minutes:
Motion by Donna to approve minutes of March 11, 2009 and November 19, 2008. Second by Pete. All in favor. So approved.
Update on Grant:
The update is that there is money, which is good. Donna stated that we have to say that they have given a grant to Salisbury; they have to give it to us because we share one common body of water, period, and not get into any of the other stuff. We should use that as leverage as to why they should be giving that money to us this year.
Pete asked what happens with the Grant. They give us some money. How does it get spent?
Donna explained that it’s in things like the questionnaire we want to send to the town’s people, having Addison County Regional Planning review the legality of what we come up with, and working with us. A lot of the money is spent for someone to come and help. We give our input. Changes are made and they come back with copies ready for us to review. They are a guiding vessel. They are going to tell us what’s legal and if it’s challenged in court, what will hold up in court. They will do as much or as little as we want them to. It will help pay Sandy’s wages because it will be tied into some of the stuff. It’s really very beneficial for the Town. The Town of Leicester pays a fee every year to belong to Regional Planning. If we’re not going after these grants, then we are not getting our monies worth out of Regional Planning.
Tim stated, along with that said, just like Donna said, they would approve it and they have lawyers that tell us whether we are in compliance with the law. That’s what he goes back to. That’s what we have here. He understands that we want to look at this for reevaluating, but he keeps hearing that things in here are wrong with the law and we have to post grievances for the neighbors. No, we are doing what the law says to do in this town. As far as the book goes, he hopes what happens is the Planning Commission all gets together, instead of reading everyone’s town law with all these new laws and ordinances, but just go through our own book and see what we feel needs to be tweaked.
Donna stated that this is what they did in the beginning. It took a whole winter, meeting two nights a month and we went over every word and how local towns people that came and asked questions. The only reason we are incorporating Regional Planning is to help out with the work and make sure it’s all legal.
Tim stated instead of the words rewriting our zoning laws, which makes him cringe, it needs to be revised. I think us as Board members should do it and I think personally what I’m hearing from Kate, she’s going to do the lake stuff. She’s going to write up what she wants to see happen on the lake. That’s a given. The lake is her hot spot of interest. It keeps getting brought up over and over and over.
Donna pointed out that Kate is not one of the Board. She can bring the Board her suggestions or anything she wants, but she doesn’t make the decisions. She can tell us whatever she wants about the lake. She can tell us whatever she wants about the grant, but it’s our proposal in the end. It’s nothing to do with Kate.
Tim foresees Kate coming with a book of stuff she wants added about the lake.
Pete stated that what Kate’s point is, and he thinks she’s correct, is that the densest development in the Town of Leicester is at Lake Dunmore. A large part of zoning is controlling density.
Tim stated that to him there is special circumstances around that lake where he doesn’t share Kate’s views on limiting everything. Like, if there’s a person that bought a camp and they get a permit to change it over to a year round cottage, from a seasonal, and we grant that to them, and they do it and they take care of all the State stuff, and guess what, they want to put a garage there now because they are going to live there year round. It’s Vermont, they want a garage, and you can’t blame them. To me, we have it in the zoning book here which covers the minimum requirements for a lot and how much area you can take. That’s all in here. That’s why when he gets into a discussion with her, he gets upset, because he’ll go over against anybody the night the Cameron’s hearing was here, he quoted right out of this book. He wasn’t making anything up. He will talk to any of these things. She, to me, seems like doesn’t read this book and runs to the State for advice. This book is what we have to go by right here. This governs Leicester. It’s approved by the State.
Donna commented that the only thing about the Cameron’s was that they were getting more into compliance by letting them move out to the side yard other than having the houses backed up. Aesthetically, it was much more attractive to move the house out into that big open field. They are more in compliance with the rules and regulations being out in the middle of the side yard.
Tim stated that Kate’s only defense is, it’s a two acre lot and their not allowed to do this. He can show them page for page in here that are marked, yes they can. He brought the points up at the night of the meeting. He didn’t make that stuff up. He read it right out of the book. For Kate to sit there and say that we messed up, then #1, she should have been here. She could have excused herself as a citizen and been here as the ZA. We followed the law and we granted them what needed to be granted.
Donna stated that it goes down to the necessary relief. We ask is this the least we can do to get them where they want to go. Donna thinks it’s going to look 100% better.
Tim stated that he hopes when the day comes we do revise these things that’s one thing that I’m going to strongly push for, especially if there is all these new laws and regulations around the lake, that every one of the lake residents get notified in writing. Not just posted in public places. We are going to send all the out-of-state residents a new form telling them where to get information, so let’s do the same courtesy and say, hey look, there’s some serious stuff happening about the lake, they all need to know about it. He doesn’t want what happened in Salisbury to happen here.
Donna stated that you can do a mailing once you get the grant. You don’t have to use the grant money just for redoing the plan. There are a lot of extenuating things you can use the grant money for and that would be to notify all the residents of the lake and entire town of the changes.
Time said that the people of the town are the ones that pay the taxes. They are the ones that have the rights to stuff. They need to be informed. That’s why he shakes his head when he comes to the Selectboard Meeting and there is one person in the audience. Doesn’t anybody care what goes on in this town? It’s amazing.
Motion to adjourn by Pete. Second by Tim. So approved. All in favor.
Adjourned at 7:15 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Sandra L. Trombley
Planning Commission & ZBA Secretary