T

TOWN OF SUTTON

Pillsbury Memorial Hall

93 Main Street

Sutton Mills, NH 03221

PLANNING BOARD

Meeting Agenda for Tuesday April 28, 2020 at 7:00 p.m.

 

Due to the COVID 19/Coronavirus Pandemic and in accordance with Governor Sununu’s Emergency Order #12, pursuant to Executive Order 2020-04, this Board is authorized to meet electronically. The public had access to contemporaneously listen and participate in this meeting through Zoom video conferencing at https://zoom.us/j/593864573. Directions to join the meeting were provided to the public. For technical difficulties, citizens were instructed to call Peter Stanley, Zoning Administrator, at 1 603 630 0017.

 

CALL TO ORDER: A quorum was reached at 7:04pm. Chair Wells asked David Hill, alternate, to sit in for Jim Lowe, who was absent. David agreed to do so.

 

ROLL: Roger Wells (Chair), Glenn Pogust, Deborah Lang, David Hill (alternate), David Angeli, Mike Tardiff (Upper Valley Regional Planning Commission), Will Arnold (Labsphere)

 

ADMINISTRATIVE:

  1. Approval of January 21, 2020 Meeting Minutes

Chair Wells commented that he didn’t have any corrections, but asked Mr. Stanley to ask Franco about the maps, as they do not appear online as promised.  Peter agreed to do this.

Mr. Pogust said there was a blank that should be “Sutton Mills Village.”  On page 3 it should say “North Sutton Village.”

IT WAS MOVED (Glenn Pogust) AND SECONDED (David Angeli) to approve the minutes of January 21, 2020, as amended. THE MOTION WAS APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY. 

Roll was called for the vote and each member voted in favor of the approval.

 

  1. Approval of February 4, 2020 Meeting Minutes

IT WAS MOVED (Glenn Pogust) AND SECONDED (David Angeli) to approve the minutes of February 4, 2020, as circulated. THE MOTION WAS APPROVED. 

Roll was called for the vote. All except one voted in favor of the approval. Debbie Lang did not vote as she was not present at the meeting of February 4th.

 

  1. Election of Officers

Debbie Lang said she would like to step down as Vice-Chair and moved to nominate Glenn Pogust for Vice-Chair.  David Hill seconded the motion.

Roger Wells moved that he would remain as Chair.  The motion was seconded by Glenn Pogust.

A vote on both motions was called.

THE MOTIONS WERE APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY.

Roll was taken for each vote and each member voted in favor of the approval.

NEW BUSINESS:

 

  1. LABSPHERE, 07-704-474, Temporary Structures – Need for Site Plan Review

Will Arnold is the director of engineering at Labsphere. He explained that the technology they are working with is meant to work with satellites. There will be four devices, as explained in his Powerpoint presentation, placed in their back-parking lot which will be removed before July 31, 2020. A map was shown to illustrate where these devices will be placed, which is in the rear of the building. He reiterated that the devices are all temporary and the parking lot where they will be placed will be blocked off to traffic. Even in doing this, they will still have plenty of parking available for employees and guests. Peter said that not only are the devices going to be away from the woods, they are also far from the property boundary. There are no wetlands that would impact the setback requirements.

Mr. Arnold added that the electrical component to these devices are self-contained and so no electricians will be needed.

David Hill asked if this blocked off area would impact fire apparatus from getting to the site if needed. He suggested touching base with the Fire Chief regarding their plans. Mr. Arnold said he hasn’t looked into this. He said the only impact would maybe be if they were to have a fire drill, the devices would be near the area where they gather. They do have it closed off to traffic, but could leave a fire lane open for sure.  Chair Wells opined that this would be mandatory.          Mr. Arnold asked how they would need to designate a fire lane. Chair Wells said that the Fire Chief would need to give these details.

Chair Wells said the approval would be contingent upon removal by July 31, 2020, unless they come back and asked for an extension.

David Hill asked if the devices would be moved off-site once they are finished with their testing at the Labsphere building. Mr. Arnold said that they will be moving the devices to South Dakota University.

Chair Wells asked if there was anyone from the public who wished to comment. There were no members of the public in attendance and therefore, no public comment.

IT WAS MOVED (Glenn Pogust) AND SECONDED ( David Hill) that no formal site plan review is required for this request on the condition that all equipment be removed by July 31, 2020 and that there be a designated fire lane around the back of the building.                                                        THE MOTION WAS APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY.

Roll was called for the vote and each member voted in favor of the approval.

Chair Wells noted that the next step is to meet with the fire chief and then meet with the Selectmen to get final approval. The Planning Board wished Mr. Arnold good luck.

Will Arnold left the meeting.

OLD BUSINESS:

  1. Continued discussion of Master Plan Process

Mr. Tardiff agreed with Chair Wells’ comments about the Master Plan being shorter this time around than last. Chair Wells said they need to address key issues and what is important to them. He asked if there was anything in the comments he had forwarded to everyone that anyone disagreed with.  He said he shortened the “to do” list significantly; was everyone OK with this?  He offered that if people had not read his comments, he would like them to read them and forward their comments to Mr. Stanley. Mr. Tardiff said the core of the Master Plan is the Land Use Chapter and vision and then all the other information feeds into that.

 

Chair Wells said he looked at all the charts and tables. He does not think that format communicates well. He would like to see only the information from 2005 until present day. Older information can appear in the appendix. He is only interested in information that can actually be used.

 

Mr. Tardiff said that demographics have changed from the last Master Plan as people have aged. Mr. Pogust said that the best way would be to set up a new text based on his comments, to include the updated appendices, and they can edit that document.  If they start with the data in the appendices, it would be easier to pull information and support the things they want to include.

 

Mr. Hill had a comment about Chapter 1 – Transportation.  He didn’t see a vehicle to identify specific roads that need attention. Is there a way, even outside of the Master Plan, to do this?

 

Chair Wells said they don’t want to list all the roads in the master plan, but say that it is important that the Town implement a strategy for maintaining and improving the roads. Mr. Hill said that it would be helpful to specifically say that there is a way to know how this matter is being tended to. Peter said that this needs to be tied to revenue and how road upgrades would be paid for.

 

Ms. Lang asked if they should spend the money to update any of the charts? Chair Wells said they won’t do everything they did in 2005 and they will use the charts that are helpful. But they will not pay to have all of them updated.

 

Mr. Tardiff said he could get what his colleagues have come up with so far forwarded to Peter to distribute for review. He will send what they have started with, which has to do with young families and population. This would at least get the conversation started. Chair Wells said this would be good to see how they are putting the information together for a portion to catch any issues they might like to rectify for future chapters.

 

Mr. Hill asked if they needed to include information from the other towns in the Kearsarge School District. Chair Wells agreed that it didn’t really matter what the other towns pay for things. They want to stress that only the information important to Sutton be included.

 

Mr. Pogust opined that there may be some value in comparisons to other towns in the school district as it pertains to housing types and commercial businesses. These are the towns they are sharing the burden with in regard to the school.

 

Chair Wells said he would like the language of the document to be directed to a lay audience. He wants everyone who reads it to be able to understand it. They can’t use all the jargon that they use with each other.

 

Mr. Pogust suggested using different types of graphics to be able to see some other options to communicate information.

Mr. Tardiff said that for other towns they have created an executive summary on one 11×17 sheet of paper. Further information is available on the website. He was hoping to talk about how they can get 150 people to respond to the survey. Mr. Tardiff said he can get the postcards made for the Town. The Town would need to pay for the postage. They have about 32 responses to the survey online. Mr. Tardiff suggested advertising in the Intertown Record, on Facebook, and using Elly’s distribution list from the Town. Chair Wells said he would like to leave this to     Mr. Tardiff and Peter to do. There was some discussion about enticing people to read the postcard and take the survey.

 

  1. Master Plan Survey – next steps

Chair Wells will have notes on the next three chapters for the next meeting. He asked Peter to re-send the previous notes to the Planning Board members to review. He asked members to look at all the data and charts. If there is a piece of any of those that they’d like to include, indicate this.

 

Peter said he noticed that there are assumptions on how the town is split up. Where did that come from? Mr. Tardiff said he would need to go back and look. They would re-do the map Peter was referring to with help from the Planning Board. There was discussion that some people call things like a golf course as a commercial recreation/commercial zone. Peter said that some towns also use it for residential to help meet density requirements.

 

There was discussion about the amount of acreage in town that is undeveloped, and under current use.

 

PUBLIC COMMENT: There were no public comments.

 

 

IT WAS MOVED (Glenn Pogust) AND SECONDED (Debbie Lang) to adjourn the meeting. THE MOTION WAS APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY.

Roll was called for the vote and each member voted in favor of the adjournment.

 

The meeting adjourned at 8:11pm.

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Kristy Heath, Recording Secretary

Town of Sutton