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EAST LYME PLANNING COMMISSION

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SPECIAL MEETING - PRESENTATION   Thursday, APRIL 10, 2008

EAST LYME PLANNING COMMISSION

MINUTES

PRESENT:                 Paul Dagle, Mike Bowers, Christopher Sandford

ALSO PRESENT:       Peter Miniutti, Presenter and Associate Professor, UCONN

                                 Jack Hogan, Ex-Officio, Board of Selectmen

                                 Meg Parulis, Planning Director

                                 Mark Nickerson, Rosanna Carabelas, Norm Peck, of the Zoning Commission

                                 Chuck Reluga, Conservation Commission                                                                             

ABSENT:                   Lisa Picarazzi, Francine Schwartz, Tom Perron, George McPherson, Alternate, Sandy Mulholland, Alternate, Bob Kleinhans, Alternate

I.  Call to Order

Paul Dagle said that due to a lack of quorum that this would be a Special Presentation. He called this Special Presentation by Associate Professor Peter Miniutti from the UCONN Community Research and Design Collaborative on proposed “Lands of Unique Value” Study for the Plan of Conservation and Development Update to order at 7:05 PM and gave some background on Mr. Miniutti prior to introducing him to the audience.

II.  Presentation by UCONN Community Research and Design Collaborative on proposed “Lands of Unique Value” Study for Plan of Conservation and Development Update

Mr. Dagle introduced Mr. Miniutti and asked everyone to move to the audience to be able to view the PowerPoint presentation.

Peter Miniutti explained that the “Lands of Unique Value Study” was developed by him and that he has successfully used this methodology in Towns to analyze all existing land features (natural and cultural) to determine the most logical and reasonable future land uses while balancing conservation, preservation and sensible development. This arose from questions such as “What will Towns look like in 10-15 years,” where he found, for example, that ‘Cornfield Apartments’ is now a former cornfield with apartments. He said that he works out of UCONN with grad students where they do research, analysis and then make recommendations to the Town regarding conservation, preservation and sensible development.

He said that he did the Town of Mansfield Study whereby they developed location and topographical maps of the various resources so that people would have ‘visuals’ of what exists in the Town. He said that the public directs the process and defines the issues and that UCONN provides the objective ‘structure’ to be able to carry this through the process. They map out the land that is ‘accounted’ for so that they know what is left that they can change. He said that he is also a landscape architect so he gets to work from that end also.

He then explained what happened if they follow the regulations and the types of things that they can end up with. In looking at these issues, they quantify the amount of development possible within the existing regulations and show the consequences of development within the existing regulations. He said that this works better if they work with the facts rather than personal absolute likes and dislikes. In the recommendations phase, they take the lands of high and low value and lands of unique value and assign them appropriately. They look at higher density development as that takes the pressure off of the other land.

Some design techniques are the cross-section view which allows a different look and can make for a win-win situation; and a ‘protect the edge’ approach whereby what you see at the ‘edge’ covers for a housing development located behind it – providing a nice view from the road and privacy to the housing development. Topography is utilized a lot to achieve these effects.

III.  Questions and Answers

Mr. Peck asked how Mansfield protected the farmlands.

Mr. Miniutti said that they allow the net and gross density to be different and if half is active farmland the other half can be of a much denser development which allows the farmland to remain on half. They also have progressive regulations that hold up. The key cultural and natural resources have to be mapped on plans so that there is no question.

Ms. Carabelas asked if this holds up in court.

Mr. Miniutti said that for the most part it has although he is not sure of all of the details. He said that he thinks this is a vehicle to allow the Town Planner, Zoning and Selectmen to say that ‘this is what they want’ – such as open space, etc. This makes for a better application and the developer usually complies although they do have to be reasonable with what they request.

Mr. Nickerson said that he is the Zoning Chair and that the Town has a lot of farmland up north and that this sounds like he is suggesting that they get the Town together with these groups and possibly re-zone the area which while not a guarantee, may work for them as well as for a developer and potentially enable them to come out with a good product.

Mr. Miniutti said that is exactly what the process is trying to be and do.

Ms. Parulis added that they will have design standards and not just up-zone the area and leave it. She said that she expects that with Mr. Miniutti being a landscape architect that they can get some of that input.

Mr. Miniutti said that you would do a ‘yield plan’ on the traditional zoning and once that is determined, you would state what you are looking for.

Mr. Bowers said that it seems that the more input you have – the better the product. He asked Mr. Miniutti if there were any sure-fire ways of getting the Townspeople interested in working on this.

Mr. Miniutti said that in the Town of Farmington that they put sandwich boards up temporarily on the key street corners advertising this a week ahead of time and got 300 people to come. He added that you don’t want to force people to come – you want people who are genuinely interested in being there.

Mr. Dagle asked if this study includes roads.

Mr. Miniutti said that it does and that he worked with Public Works in Mansfield and that he also works with a transportation engineer who has designed pavement that does not break down and who has now done an about face to ‘smart growth’ and ‘demonstrated needs’ for roadways.

Mr. Reluga said that this is discouraging to him as it seems that some of this is inevitable. He asked if it is based on population growth and what happens if the population remains stable or declines.

Mr. Miniutti said that the scope of the study is – what do you have and how can it be done better. He noted that some people in conservation want to preserve everything however they were able to work through a lot of that with them and get them to come around to a better merging of ideas and uses.

Ms. Carabelas said that this does not mean that something will just automatically be approved as there are other considerations such as water etc.

Mr. Miniutti said yes, absolutely there are other factors. He noted that any project is only as good as the client.

Mr. Sandford asked what other Towns he has done this study in besides Mansfield.

Mr. Miniutti said that he has done partial studies in the ‘quiet corner’ and pieces of other Towns around the State. Mansfield is the first full Town study.

Mr. Sandford asked if most Towns have followed this and taken it to the next step.

Mr. Miniutti said that most have not as while they are very positive about it and energetic, they have to have the impetus to move forward and this involves the Planner and other elemental people staying in the Town to help carry it forward and see that it receives the dollar resources necessary to do this. This does not always happen and people move around from Town to Town.

Mr. Peck asked if he would only be doing the land use portion and not EDC or other areas.

Mr. Miniutti said that was correct, they would do the land use portion to go along with the update of the POCD.      

Mr. Peck said that the last time that the POCD was done that there was an EDC group, transportation group, natural resources group, development and other groups and that it took a few years to get funding and to get the study done. He asked what the mechanics of this would be.

Mr. Miniutti said that there would be a steering committee made up of the Planner, Selectman, people from Planning and Zoning, and Engineering and that they would meet once a week. If any information was missing he would have to go into the community to get it.

Mr. Peck asked if one steering committee would do the answering for all of it.

Mr. Miniutti said yes.

Ms. Parulis said that they have had a lot of open space inventory done already plus they have GIS which Mansfield did not have. She said that she feels comfortable that they can craft this to their particular needs in Town and that what they have to do now is wait to see about the budget request for this. She said that they are not starting at ground zero here as this is an update of a current POCD.  

Mr. Dagle asked if this would be similar to or different from the Yale Charrette study they have.

Ms. Parulis said that it will be similar but the Yale Charrette did not have the resource part behind it.

Mr. Miniutti said that he has worked with one of the people who did the Yale Charrette study and that they are architect based and that the UCONN study is land based. He said that they do an excellent job on the architect based end.

Ms. Parulis said that she thinks that they will be complimentary to each other and not duplicated.

Ms. Carabelas said that she thinks that the aerial visual is really important and beneficial to this study.

Mr. Miniutti agreed and said that the purpose is to engage people and get them to work together.

IV.  Adjournment

Mr. Dagle thanked Mr. Miniutti for his presentation and everyone for coming and closed this Special Session at 8:05 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Karen Zmitruk,

Recording Secretary