Board of Adjustment Meeting Minutes

Minutes of 4/18/2024

April 25th, 2024

Town of Carroll Zoning
Meeting Minutes
April 18, 2024
6:30 PM
“These minutes of the Town of Carroll Zoning Board have been recorded by its secretary. Though believed to be accurate and correct, they are subject to additions, deletions, and corrections by the Zoning Board at its next meeting when the Board votes its final approval of the minutes. They are being made available at this time to conform to the requirements of New Hampshire RSA 91-A:2.”
Zoning Board Members Present: Anita Greer, John Greer, Karen Moran, Chairman Andy Smith, William Briggeman
Public Present: Karen Moran’s mom
Minutes Taken By: Steffanie Apostle
Item 1: The meeting was called to order by Andy Smith at 6:30 p.m.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
Item 3: Attendance Taken; Quorum Met
Andy Smith introduced the new land use secretary Steffanie and officially welcomed William Briggeman to the Zoning Board
Item 4: Approval of March 7, 2024 Minutes
Andy Smiths states – In the packet you do have the meeting minutes of March 14th. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to review those, when you do, I’d love to entertain a motion to approve the minutes.
William Briggeman says he would like to make a point of clarification. It looks like the 4th page in the Chair/smith paragraph about 2/3 of the way down the last line says we cannot build within 30 inches from property line, but shouldn’t that be 30 feet? It’s a typo and a small typo but significant if someone comes back as to say wait why not. One other question William had was in the Janet and Karen paragraph at the bottom of the page about ½ way through that paragraph there is a sentence that reads; It is not encompassing of the pool and he wasn’t sure talking about the variance and how 1998 specific to the pool granted use for the reasoning so they could put the pool in; it’s not stated what is encompassing the pool.
Karen Moran said they weren’t sure reading it if it included the pool house.
Andy Smith said that the pool house was in question because that’s what the variance is for moving the pool house. Andy Smith said he could live with that but that he certainly agreed with the 30 inches should be 30 feet.
Karen Moran said she had a couple questions. On page 3 it says there really is no disadvantage to not do it, which would be to reconstruct the pool house.
Andy Smith said it was double negative but it was how it was stated.
Karen Moran said that wasn’t true but just wanted to point it out, and that about half way down it said Aaron looking at 302 across, its route 3 not 302.
Andy Smith asked Steffanie Apostle if she got that and Steffanie said yes.
Karen Moran then said in that same kind of paragraph chunk they subdivided and that became the residence then, the white house the Marquis are living in was moved over and that could cause confusion on the setback and that Alan did a site visit but she thinks it was Aaron.
Andy Smith said that it should Andy, so Alan gets changed to Andy.
Karen Moran then made a motion to approve the minutes as adjusted and William Briggeman seconded. All were in favor of the motion and the motion passed.
Item 5: Election Results Zoning Board
Andy Smith stated #5 on the agenda tonight is Election results of the Zoning Board which has gone through the appeal period. Again, Andy welcomed William as an elected position and asked Karen Moran if she got re-elected.
Karen Moran stated she was not up for re-election Janet Merner was.
Item 6: Review Rules of Procedure
Andy Smith said Item #6 was to review rules of procedure, which he thought might have been a hold over because they had kind of beat them up already, but he was happy to discuss them again if anyone had any questions.
Anita Greer asked if anything had changed since the last time they had looked at them.
Andy Smith replied no that they were adopted and they did get presented to legal and they said they were ok.
Steffanie Apostle said that Bonnie Moroney said they needed to be done yearly after elections so we put them in.
Anita Greer said she did read through them and doesn’t have any questions.
Andy Smith said they didn’t have to discuss the rules of procedure anymore.
Item 7: New Business / Other
Andy Smith asked everyone if they had any new business or other and said the only other thing that he officially had was they needed to elect a chairman and a vice chairman so he opened the floor for nominations.
Karen Moran nominated Andy Smith to be the chair and Anita Greer seconded that.
Andy Smith asked if there were any other nominations from the floor. There were no others. All in favor of Andy Smith as the Chairman “Aye” Andy Smith thanked them and asked if they had any nominations for Vice Chair.
William Briggeman nominated Karen Moran and Anita Greer seconded it.
Andy Smith stated they had a motion from William Briggeman and a second from Anita Greer and asked All in favor before she runs for the hill. All were in favor and Andy Smith thanked Karen Moran and asked if there was any other business to bring to the floor.
Karen Moran said they were discussing for the record the one zoning article that passed that the selectboard is checking with legal to see if it was legal.
Andy Smith said he wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes on all of the zoning changes. Article #2 was Are you in favor in adoption of amending #1 as proposed by the Planning Board for the Town of Carroll Zoning ordinances as follows: To add a #10 to section 8021A-2 that includes maintenance and repairs that do not change the footprint of the building as an exception to the Building Permit requirement and that did pass but that it was under review by legal and maybe John Greer could bring them up to speed.
John Greer said that they were discussing this at the Selectboard Meeting Tuesday and that one of the problems is that the Town had adopted the IBC codes which before the warrant article was approved, we had conformed to.
Andy Smith clarified IBC was the International Building Codes.
John Greer proceeded to say that we as a town adopted that and Jules Marquis had said he checked with our Attorney about this and the attorney said that this warrant article is illegal and that she dug in and said the Building Inspector said we couldn’t deviate because they adhere to those rules and that the Town said to do it the way the warrant article says. They said they are not members of the IBC Code or that organization and some of the facets of that organization keeps our property insurance lower and things like that. John Greer wasn’t sure but said he didn’t think they could change that if it wasn’t legal, that if it was not legal, he would have thought that the State would have done that because they review the warrant articles and if some crazy warrant article gets passed and it gets approved. He said the State reviews every warrant article for every town for the whole State and if it wasn’t legal. He then stated it was done before every election and it just gets kicked out. This was still pending as far as legal goes. John Greer also said that Rena Vecchio brought up a really good point knowing he hadn’t been involved with this part of it, Jules Marquis and Karen Moran had moved the ball on this, but Rena Vecchio mentioned she would like the email strings between Jules Marquis and the attorney to see if Bob knew we were an IBC town and that Dave Scalley says Bob knows that, he knows we are IBC and based on what Bob says is legal than it looked like it was according to that but we needed to go back to them and see if that was still in fact anticipated and that was the way he understood it.
Andy Smith that we didn’t have any reason to be concerned about it at this point, but until we get it settled if they got a case before them, they would certainly want to address that. Andy Smith then continued to the next article which was article #3 and that was a change to Section 501 and that was a garage is to be used for storage of vehicles and shall in no way be used for residential purposes. Andy Smith said this passed as a definition in section 501 and that he personally wondered if that conflicts with the ADU requirements. You’ve got a garage but you can build an ADU in a garage, it’s a state law and it supersedes local zoning. Andy Smith clarified ADU is accessory dwelling unit.
John Greer asked what law that was and if it could be found
Andy Smith said he believed he could find it.
John Greer said he didn’t think we could make that more restrictive than the state.
Andy Smith agreed and said the State ADU supersedes all local zoning but it didn’t supersede any local covenants that a development may put on a piece of real estate but it does supersede local zoning which local zoning cannot prohibit ADU’s.
John Greer said it would be very useful to find that State Law because if that was the case then obviously it wasn’t enforceable. John Greer said they all kinds of ordinances that are not enforceable like private roads that they had been dealing with recently and they had covenants that they have to maintain the road in good enough shape so the ambulance can get help to people if they were in need and things like that but that they had some roads that haven’t been maintained and he was being told not only by our attorney but the NH Municipal Association that the options were to talk to the people to get them to maintain the road or we could declare an emergency lane and maintain the roads ourselves which we didn’t want to do. John Greer’s suggestion to the meeting on Tuesday was to reach out to attorney Bob and see if they could craft a letter for them to send to the residents on the roads, they felt were an issue for safety people.
Andy Smith said he thought that was the right move and we didn’t want to go down the road of maintaining them.
John Greer said we couldn’t fix everything
Andy Smith said a lot of them supersede zoning they were built and subdivided before there was zoning.
John Greer said Chief Duncan was all cranked up about it and he didn’t blame them because it makes their job a lot harder if they get a call, and that Chief Duncan was looking after the town. John Greer said we don’t want to go down the road of maintaining ourselves because it sets the precedent and they would have to do it for every private road that is in bad shape.
Andy Smith went back to the ADU’s and said he would send out for us to share how we saw fit the laws on ADU. It was a lot of zoning and he didn’t think the state differentiated a lot of state and local zoning and said ADU has to be an attached garage but he believed they just updated the State law to say that it could also be a detached garage so he would send all of us that info.
John Greer said it was his understanding that we are not outlawing ADU’s but we just want people to go to the Panning Board for approval.
Andy Smith agreed and said he wasn’t sure; this is a bad definition; a garage is a garage until it wasn’t.
Anita Greer said she thought that it was classified as residential
John Greer then said they were still working through that.
Karen Moran asked that he sends them to everyone
Andy Smith said he would send it to John Greer and the whole board. Andy Smith proceeded to talk about Article #4 which he was really pleased with which was in reference to “those uses not listed are not allowed” That sentence had been removed because it was too restrictive. The example Andy Smith used was a drone repair shop and drones didn’t exist 10-20 years ago and if they were not listed, they were not allowed, so this would allow a lot of flexibility in similar type business to be allowed. Andy Smith thought that was a great change that passed and we would probably use that in our deliberations on whether it’s an allowed business or not. Andy Smith moved on to Article #5 which was in regards to wetlands which was changing section 606.3A. All proposed development as removal of vegetation and alteration of the land surface within the protected wetlands is defined as: At least 2 acres in size and not consist of a water body only. Shall have at least 4 wetland functions as listed above in Section 606.2 one of which should be wildlife habitat identified in the most recent National wetlands inventory. It was a definition of wetlands and the buffer should be required and maintained; 30 feet on wetlands 2-5 acres, 60 feet on wetlands greater than 5 acres but less than 10 acres and 100 foot buffer on wetlands that have 10 acres or greater. That passed so we may see that asking for a variance to that and to make sure we had the updated zoning if anything came in. Andy Smith then moved on to Article 6. Article 6 amended Article #5 and this added the definition short term rental means any individually or collectively owned single family house or dwelling unit or any unit or group of units in a condominium or time share or owner-occupied residential home that is offered for a fee and for less than 30 consecutive days to Section 202. We did not have a definition of short-term rentals and they’ve obviously become a hot topic in the last 4-5 years so it was nice to have that addition of a clear definition. Andy Smith said the last one was adding Section 706 registration requirements and regulations of short-term rentals to the zoning ordinances. Andy Smith said he didn’t think it defined what the registration requirements and regulations were it just said that there will be requirements and regulations. Andy Smith asked John Greer if that was correct.
John Greer said he had not been involved with this particular one
Anita Greer asked if we could get a copy of the regulations with the amendments added
Andy Smith said we will certainly have that when they update the zoning but that it wouldn’t be red-lined but wondered if they could get a red-line copy
Anita Greer said that would be nice to see so they could focus on the changes and it would be nice to see that all wrapped in.
Andy Smith asked Steffanie Apostle if they could get a red-lined copy
Steffanie Apostle said she would make them one
Andy Smith said as soon as Article #2 is settled then they’ll update the zoning. Andy Smith said they certainly needed John Greer or legal to weigh in but all the others passed without question so they would be in effect. Andy Smith said Article #2 passed subject to attorney review but that the rest of them are in place and enforceable if anyone comes to them next month
John Greer agreed and said they were good to go on the others
Anita Greer asked if we had them all run by the attorney
John Greer said that they are all run by the attorney before the vote and so they had some issues there but they have gotten good opinions on all of them so what people voted on was legal. John Greer said there may be a period we had to wait that he thought may be a week or so.
Andy Smith asked if that included Article #2
John Greer said that as far as he knew. His understanding was we can work on our house but as of now the voters passed that and now, we were talking about amending it a little bit because they were thinking about putting a limit on it of like $3,000.00.
Anita Greer asked if we could do that after it was voted
John Greer responded no that the warrant article is as its passed and that’s what it is.
Andy Smith said he wasn’t sure why or when it would come to them because it was more of a Selectman Planning Board issue.
Anita Greer asked what if someone appealed it
Andy Smith said unless they appeal the requirement to get a building permit, then it would come to them. Andy Smith asked Steffanie Apostle if she would let them know when it was approved
Steffanie Apostle said yes
Andy Smith recommended to everyone to download them and have it in their file but in the meantime, they had the past ordinances so if someone did come to them, they would refer to the changes
John Greer said he would like to know what the lawyer says about the Section #2 Article and that he had several emails to the attorney about Tuesday night and about the private roads
Andy Smith said he had nothing else and asked if anyone had any old business to discuss or new business to bring up and nobody did. Andy continues to say that at this point they did not have any applications for variances or any special exceptions for next month for the May meeting which was tentatively scheduled for May 9th. Andy Smith suggested we waited about another week to see if anything came up but if it didn’t, he suggested not having the May meeting and maybe alternate months unless there was a hearing but he didn’t want to go any longer than alternating months
Anita Greer said that made sense if there wasn’t anything to talk about
Andy Smith said to leave it on their calendars and he would coordinate communication with Steffanie Apostle
John Greer said they had a selectboard meeting on April 30th and asked if there was anything we wanted to bring to the board and if anything came up in the meantime to email him and he would have it added to the agenda.
Andy Smith asked if there was anything on the Selectboard side to be communicated with Planning or Zoning
John Greer said he didn’t think so, the burning issues were the ones we had already discussed at the start of the meeting
Andy Smith asked if Alex Foti stayed on the Chair as planned
John Grer said yes that there had been no changes for Chairman and Vice Chairman. He also said that Alex Foti was on vacation so that gave them more reason to vote him in. John Greer also brought up how they had been discussing the Master Planning at the Planning Board the night before and asked Steffanie Apostle how much longer the meeting had gone after he ducked out for another meeting
Steffanie Apostle said it lasted until a little bit after 7:00pm. Steffanie Apostle also said they had discussed at the meeting possibly making Master Planning its own meeting because of how long it took. Steffanie Apostle mentioned that Echo Lake had been pushed off to the next meeting and had it not been the meeting would have been extremely long so they suggested creating its own meeting for Master Planning but wasn’t sure if that was the way it would go.
John Greer said that that was really the reason he had gone to the Planning Board meeting to follow the Echo Lake development and just watching because they had met as a water commissioner and they had approved their permit for the town but DES has to look at it as well as approve it and John Greer didn’t know if they would or wouldn’t.
Andy Smith asked if this was for Phase II
John Greer responded with yes it was Phase II as Phase I got approved. John Greer said there were some things he didn’t completely agree with. John Greer said he couldn’t understand if the development was on its own well system or public water and wanted to know how that would affect fighting a fire because either way you have to fight the fire and at least if they put the water system in and fire hydrants in. John Greer said he didn’t understand the argument from the Police Chief that we needed to have a x number of gallons a day
Andy Smith asked if bringing in the town water was just to fight fires
Joh Greer said no but had several concerns about capacity. The system was put in in the early 90’s and is about 40 years old and is showing its age a little bit and that as a Town we are going to have to make some decisions and spend some money because even though the whole town is not on it, they were still serving over 400 families and if something were to happen with the water system it would be an unmitigated disaster so we needed to look at that. John Greer also said that anything we do with public water is expensive and it was about a million dollars a mile to lay pipe and there were all kinds of regulations. John Greer also said we had hired an engineer to assess it and they came up with a report that said we did have enough water to service the town and John Greer said he had done his own math and thought that was true but that at some point as we grow, we are going to hit a point where we can’t supply water to new customers. John Greer said he didn’t know exactly where that point is but in his mind he said if you can pump 600,000 gallons of water a day into our tanks he was thinking 50% is about all we could do because of the way it’s being used isn’t equal throughout the day, that it was mostly used in the morning and nights and in order to keep up with demand you can’t pump 100% of the time, we need a rest period that the pumps needs to be able to catch up with the tanks. John Greer noted that it wasn’t really a concern for this board but it wasn’t bad for us to get some color on it.
Item 8: Adjourn
Andy Smith asked if there was nothing else if anyone wanted to make a motion to adjourn
Karen Moran made a motion to adjourn the meeting and Anita Greer seconded the motion
Meeting was adjourned at 7:02pm