South Portland Planning Board backs wider building coverage in light industrial zone

[0:00] Chair Kelly: Welcome. The September 23rd, 2026 meeting of the South Portland Planning Board will come to order. This is a public proceeding, and unless the board votes to go into executive session, you have the right to hear everything that's being said and to view all the exhibits that are offered. This meeting is being conducted remotely and in person in accordance with 1MRS Section 403B and the city's remote and hybrid meeting policy. The board works from a prepared agenda. It's been posted in city hall, on the city's website, and on the city's online agenda portal, board docs. The planning board members will disclose any conflicts, potential conflicts of interest, of which they are aware, at the time that an item is being considered, and before any testimony on the item. For each item, staff will provide an overview, followed by applicant remarks for up to 10 minutes, then public comment will proceed. Any person wishing to testify may do so during the public comment. If you wish to speak remotely, use the hand raising feature to be called on by the chair. If you're here in the chamber, simply raise your hand and be called on. When speaking, say your name and address, and then proceed. Public testimony is limited to three minutes per speaker. Planning board decisions are based on whether an applicant has met their burden of proof to demonstrate that the projects in compliance with applicable laws. Any reconsiderations of board decisions must be made at the next regularly scheduled meeting. And any appeals of the board's decisions must be filed within 30 days to the main superior court. All right, with that said, we'll kick the meeting off with the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. [1:45] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [2:00] Chair Kelly: That brings us to roll call. Director, inevitably call the roll. Yes. Mr. Bramble. I am here. All right. Chair Kelly. Here. Mr. Ladd. Here. Mr. McDonald. Here. And Mr. Taylor. Here. All right. We have five. And that is quorum, so we will proceed. With approval of the minutes from our August 12th meeting, questions, comments, clarifications on the minutes. Move to approve the minutes. Second. Motion by Miss McDonald, seconded by Mr. Bad. Any discussion? All right, can we get a roll call vote? Mr. Bramble? Yes. Chair Kelly? Yes. Mr. Ladd? Yes. Mr. McDonald? Yes. And Mr. Taylor? Yes. All right, by a vote of five, the motion passes, the minutes are approved, we'll proceed. There are a whole bunch of communications and petitions. There are reports out of de minimis change requests that were approved and performance guarantee releases. Is no actions required, and so that takes us to our consent calendar. There are three items on the consent calendar tonight. We have item 3a, minor amendment Sri Ram Inc, Cobblestone Coffee, 200 Gorham Road, concerning an occupancy increase, accessory structure, utility work with parking reduction and relocation of dumpsters. We have item 3b, a minor amendment Landry Circle Senior Housing 2 lop Landry Woods, 100 Adam Court, formally 51 Landry, tree modifications. And then we have item 3c, planning board regulations. This is an amendment to regulation number four, specifically application forms, to modernize the forms. All right, before we proceed, does any member of the planning board have a conflict of interest to disclose? All right, does any member of the planning board wish to take one of these items out of the consent calendar and treated as a public hearing item? [4:32] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Mr. McDonnell, I don't necessarily need to take it out of the consent calendar, but he mentioned that he would like to review some of this stuff. I think that's a good use of time. We have a pretty light agenda. I'd like to see what's in there. If you, if you would check that's your, that's your call, of course [4:45] Chair Kelly: sure, Mr. Director Nevada, would you like to give an overview of, I guess, the items on the consent calendar, and I think specifically Ms. McDonald's talking about item, the amendment to the regulation number four. Sure, is that fair, just to do the [5:05] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): forms? Yeah, okay, I appreciate that. I know the email came late in time for the packet deadlines, but still it came today, so just want to make sure everybody had a chance to put their eyes on it. The planning division uses forms that to process applications that this planning board has to approve. You have a regulation number four which lists all of the official forms that have to be submitted when someone's applying for something. A little while back you did an update to that list to adopt what we call the universal application form and that has basically allowed us to centralize all the applicant information that we have just historically asked for repeatedly things like application names and contact information and so on the universal application is something everyone has to submit no matter what you ask for what the next stage is to take individual requests and have updated application forms for those requests so in this case tonight we have the new modern version of the site plan Which is the most frequent thing you process and also the most complex thing that you process. And what we're doing here is a two-stage thing. First is the universal app, which gets core information about the applicant, and then we have what we're calling the site plan checklist. Our goal with this is that we can get these documents to be more readable, usable, and functional for applicants, so all the information is up there in front of them. That way, when they submit the information, they're more likely to be submitting a complete application, and they go through the process faster. So the checklist is a way of cataloging all the things we routinely ask for, including the things that our old forms never really ask for, but we always have to follow up and say, hey, you forgot this. Hey, you need to add more detail to that. So the checklist now is structured in two parts. Part one is everybody has to fill this out. These are the exhibits. This is things that you're all familiar with. We're not inventing new requirements, we're just reformatting. Third-party approvals, you have to have your DEP approval, you have to give us a traffic plan, you have to give us a landscaping plan. Everyone has to do that if they're submitting a site plan. Obviously, if the site plan scope is just interior retrofitting of a warehouse into residential, there's no landscaping work, we exempt the things that don't apply. But this is the sort of total list, and then certain unique projects may also have other additional standards, and these are as applicable. So are you doing a farmers market? Well, you've got to address those components. Are you doing coastal resilience overlay zoning? You've got to address those components. So some things have specific standards, they're all itemized here, and this all matches our ordinance. The way the checklist works is just like a checklist. The applicant is supposed to be able to go through here and say, yeah, I've got all this. Stuff in hand, I've done the universal application, I've paid my fees, I've submitted a project data sheet that explains my project. You'll see that in a second. With each of these exhibits, we used to just say provide an introduction and overview cover letter and describe the extent of your project. Well, what are we actually looking for? We now have a little bit more definition: what's the intent and the scope, site conditions, natural resource impacted, what's your financial capacity. We've updated what we accept as reasonable demonstration of financial capacity. Again, all these things are what you've always had and what you always see once staff has vetted a project, but now we're trying to put it up front so staff doesn't have to chase it and applicants are more aware and they have a more functional list to work from. So it just goes down the line, your plans, it talks about the format of the plans, the scaling of the plans, the details we expect to see in the plans, that all of its corroborated when you say you're 10 feet from the setback, do your plans actually show that? Do you put a date on the revision of those plans so we know the board plans coming to the board are accurate and up to date? It gives specifics on what we expect to see in those site plans so that applicants don't miss anything, and these are all the necessary components so that we can evaluate the project, and it goes down thematically. So there's your site plan, there's utility sheets, stormwater sheets, access and parking circulation plans, landscape plans. Again, the goal is these are check boxes applicants can go through, verify they've met all this, or confirm that it's not applicable to their project, and they can move forward more rapidly. This is supported by the datasheet, which is just the quick numbers that are critical for us to evaluate a project. Again, this is all stuff that's asked for in the form, it's just organized better and it's more comprehensive. So we've always asked for how much floor area, now you get to put it in neat numbers and we don't have to scan through a jumbled page to find it. How many structures are you doing? It gives you an opportunity to respond to more than just one. Give us the specific metrics for your setback so we can see it plain as day. And then with this, again, all this should be really familiar if you ever, if you compare it to our current application form, but what's missing in the current form, since it was back from the early 2000s, is updated information like now we have a New EV ordinance and we have specific different categories is it an EV ready and there's links like in this case what does EV ready mean it takes you to the ordinance and you can go ahead and dig right into it. One thing I will just add we will be hyperlinking more of the documents or more of the text in this document so that people can jump to the specific section of the ordinance which doesn't really appear in this form it's just going to be I've given you a few examples like what is dual frontage you'll be able to jump to this specific section read about it immediately that way you can answer it faster so any of this kind of blue text plus any of anything else that makes sense for us to reference we will do that so people can get the information they need so parking reserve not many people are familiar with that we gave the specific citation you'll be able to read it directly in the ordinance so this will be hopefully a better tool a more easily readable tool a form fillable tool that just gets applicants more comprehensive more complete and faster through the process we have again as I mentioned before the meetings the protected trees is a relatively new thing we're just itemizing again if it's not relevant to the project they ignore it wetlands you know explaining what you're doing with wetlands in just numerical fashion so we can quickly compare and contrast and evaluate the project so not really anything new of substance we're not asking people to do anything we haven't asked normally it's just how we're representing it and I can show you I know you the board sees this regularly but members of the public might not like what our current application form looks like and you'll maybe get a sense of why we're doing this so here's the current site plan app it's got stale information about costs for things that don't match up with our current fee schedule the it's sort of jumbled up and disorganized the facts that it asked for us like you're looking at property to information then you're looking at zoning suddenly you're into floor area then you're back to land uses then you're getting more back into numbers and then you've got this long list of exhibits with stale information we don't use we don't ask for some of this data this is an older reference map it's doing a lot of this cleanup to get it out of there right title and interest information doesn't really clarify what we know constitutes right title interest so we give them more Information about it, some of the financial capacity thing, it takes up an entire page when it really, it's just a quick, the four of these things on this list are actually functional and what we continue to use today and so on. So it's really just condensing in this case what's a 14 page document into a couple of quick punchy forms. The this gives us all the facts in two pages and the actual exhibit listing gives applicants more information again in eight pages. So a lot of trimming down, cleaning up making it easier. So that's what's in your packet for this consent item and again happy to dive into any of them if you want. We would have to have motion to take it off the consent. All right, thank you. Go [13:48] Chair Kelly: back to the planning board. As any member of the planning board wish to take any of these items off the consent calendar and treat them as public carry-on? All right, can we get a motion on the consent calendar? Move [14:02] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): to approve the consent calendar [14:04] Chair Kelly: as presented. All second. All right, motion by Mr. McDonald, seconded by Mr. Ladd. Discussion. Can [14:14] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): we get a roll call vote? Yep, Mr. Bramble? Yes. Chair Kelly? Yes. Mr. Ladd? Yes. [14:21] Chair Kelly: Mr. McDonald? Yes. And Mr. Taylor? Yes. All right, by a vote of five, the motion passes. Consent calendar is approved. All right, that brings us to our first public hearing item on the agenda. That's item 4A, zoning text amendment,, LVET sciences, amend building coverage allowance in the light industrial zoning district, properties at 200 John Roberts Road specifically. Before we kick it off, does any member of the planning board have a conflict to disclose? No. All right. Maren. [15:02] Maren Stevens (Community Planner): Thank you. Maren Stevens, community planner. Is there something I need to do to get it on this one? You just push and hold and then it'll take over. Okay, there we go. Great. Again, Marin Stevens, community planner. Today we have a zoning text amendment from Elvette Sciences. They're seeking to amend section 27904 for the light industrial which we refer to as the IL zoning district to change the building coverage from 30 percent to 40 percent. You will see on the left hand side the subject property is circled and the purple on the map are the light industrial zoning districts for the city which all exist on the west end of town. So just as a refresher for zoning text amendments, first they come before the planning board which is tonight. If approved, or you guys can recommend approval, then it goes to City Council and they'll hold two public hearings, a first read and a second read. If it's eventually approved by City Council, the ordinance takes effect after 20 days for an appeal period. So the proposed amendment is to add an accessory structure to an existing property at 200 John Roberts Again, which exists within the IL Zoning District. The existing building is 27,440 square feet. So the building was constructed in 1984, as far as we can see, and there's been no expansions to date. The building coverage currently is over the building coverage allowance for the zoning district by 1%, so it's at 31%. So the applicant is seeking to add this storage structure for their business, which basically is going to hold ethanol that they use to process hemp into CBD. But that storage unit would exasperate the existing coverage nonconformity. Again, it's already at 31%. So to rectify this, they are seeking to expand the coverage limit in the entirety of the light industrial zoning district to 40 to allow that storage unit to be possible. So staff analyze the request. So as you can see, this is what the proposed amendment will look like in the ordinance that is attached to the agenda. It's basically a simple cross out of 30 percent to make it 40 percent. So we as the planning staff have to look at Mr. Playing consistency for all zoning text amendments to see if it aligns with our new comprehensive plan. So again, there's three zoning districts that are light industrial. I've highlighted them in purple. All of these zoning just, sorry, all of the light industrial zoning district either exist in our future land use areas of unique growth or growth area, and within our future land use map up we have key land use priority areas, or K LUPAs. So the K LUPAs that exist for the light industrial are K LUPA one, which is our west end business park. Really, the priority from the comp plan wants to prioritize the economic development of that area and investment in office and other non-residential development. The existing property, why it's highlighted in blue, is within the main mall mixed-use KUPA, and this is really a vision of that area is to support the main mall and the shopping centers around that, and also try to put major investment in the area by repurposing older buildings, repurposing extra surface parking, or making that more efficient for uses, and really trying to bring in a diversification of uses in that area. The other K lupa with that exists for light industrial is the airport industrial area, K lupa number four, and really we want to see that remain industrial in character, and we're looking to support warehousing, logistics, light industrial, and lodging businesses there. So the amendment we feel supports the master plan because it is really asking to increase the building coverage to do some infill growth and really to support development investment in the light industrial areas. The comprehensive plan really supports this through a couple strategies in the economic development section and in the state strategies really again and specific call-outs to really see that infill growth happening in the light industrial area. So when we were looking at it from just a zoning district analysis, we wanted to compare it to other zoning districts that are also industrial and see what was happening in comparison. Why are we at 30% for light industrial and the other, the shipyard, industrial, residential and non-residential and non-residential industrial areas, why are their building coverages maybe more or are we out of date here in the light industrial? So the first thing we looked at is that across the board the maximum lot coverage is not applicable, so that means that for any of these industrial zoning districts you could cover the lot with pavement. There's no, there's no, there's no parking lot restrictions or say you needed an area for utilities, so there's no restrictions across the board, you know, and that is really to support the industrial development within the city. However, we have a larger range of building coverage permissions between the shipyard, the industrial residential and non-residential and the INR, the non-residential industrial districts, so we have kind of a disparity in the light industrial, although we're encouraging more building coverage and utilization for, you know, infill development in these other areas, so that basically is highlighting the other areas showing them at a larger amount. So we actually dove in a little bit deeper and did a desktop analysis of the developed properties within the light industrial zoning district, just seeing what their existing building coverage is, and we looked at 38 properties that had structures on their parcels within the light industrial zoning district. Two of the 38 were non-conforming already with the 30 building Coverage including our applicant today and their neighbor at 170 John Roberts, which is at 36, so that specific area of town is really already kind of feeling or are really restricted from any future building expansions because of that non-conformity. We looked at those that are getting close to the building coverage allowance, which we found seven of the 38 properties are at or above 25%. So they're not exceeding that 30%, but they're pretty darn close. We had some at 28%, 29%. So if they were like our applicant to come back, it would be pretty hard to allow them to do any extra development on their own properties today. So in general, we found that amending the building coverage allowance would be in parity with the other zoning districts. As we showed you at 40 percent, it's not a large increase. We find it a modest request to kind of get up in parity with the other zoning districts, and really it's supported in our comprehensive plan to allow these properties, these owners, these small businesses often, or even large businesses, to continue to make investments and expand their buildings to support development and our non-residential tax base. So in total, we're recommending that you recommend to the city council to approve the zoning text amendment contained in Ornette 726-27 to expand the building coverage allowance from 30% to 40% in the light industrial zoning district. I'm here if you have any more questions, and the applicant is here as well to answer questions. Thank you. Thank you [24:41] Chair Kelly: If the applicant would like to supplement the presentation, they're welcome to do so [25:03] Stacey Evans (applicant's representative): Good evening chair and members of the Planning Board. My name is Stacey Evans, and I'm representing Elevate Sciences Incorporated today before you in support of the proposed amendment to increase the maximum building coverage from 30% to 40% in South Portland's Light Industrial District. We believe the amendment is consistent with, as Myron mentioned, the South Portland's comprehensive plan. It aligns with existing development patterns within the Light Industrial District and supports continued investment and economic development in areas already designated for industrial activity. We also appreciate the South Portland's collaborative approach throughout this whole process and respectfully support planning staff's recommendation that the board approve the proposed amendment. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Thank you [25:55] Chair Kelly: And available to answer any questions you have. Great, all right, this is a public hearing item, so I'll open it up to the public. If any member of the public is with us remotely, feel free to raise your virtual hand and be recognized if you'd like to speak on this item. I see no hands online. All right, there's no hands in the room. Turn to the board, Mr. Led. [26:20] Speaker F (unidentified): I've got a couple of questions for the applicant. So if I understand this correctly, you folks own a unit of a building, we lease it, you lease it, okay, but it's part of a larger building, but there's different units, yes, okay. Is a storage facility going to be attached to [26:40] Stacey Evans (applicant's representative): your unit no it 's it's away from the units it's on the property but it's not attached to the [26:48] Speaker F (unidentified): building. Okay, so you're gonna be storing chemicals, bulk chemicals. Yeah, just a few, I think it's [26:57] Stacey Evans (applicant's representative): like 600. Yeah, up to 600 gallons of ethanol, and that's it. Okay, for the planning director, does [27:04] Speaker F (unidentified): that involve the city fire department being involved? Yes, there is. This is to [27:11] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): change the zoning to allow the coverage for the building, for any building. In this case, they're using it for the storage, ethanol storage, but then when they actually submit that request, it goes through full staff review for that. Thank you. In fact, one of the reasons why this building in particular triggers the coverage, which is a building-based metric, so the thing that they're building has to be a building. If it was just a storage unit, that's a structure, it's not a building. I know these are, you know, sound like synonymous terms, but our ordinance actually sees them differently. A shed and a structure that's meant for, you know, occupancy and under the building code, fire, and our code staff reviewed it because it's conditioned and because it's meant to contain specific kinds of material that need extra care and attention, we have to classify it as a building coverage, not a structural coverage thing. So that's kind of why they're here in part is because these other departments have been looking at it and are familiar with it. [28:12] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Mr. McDonald, were you finished? A couple questions you answered one by saying that you're renting. Another question that I have is, how are you going to capture or prevent the smell of the CBD-producing material from escaping? [28:30] Stacey Evans (applicant's representative): So currently we produce CBD animal health supplements in the existing building. So that's where they're manufactured currently. So it's not gonna be in the storage enclosure. [28:43] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): So it's already in operation right now? [28:45] Stacey Evans (applicant's representative): Yeah, and it's been in operation since 2018. Oh, okay. Yeah, so you can't even, you can't smell anything. You haven't heard about it yet? We're not gonna hear about it. We're just fine by it. [28:52] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): This one's also, this facility processes hemp, which is an agricultural product, right? And it's not actually regulated under our marijuana, you know, ordinances. So where we do have things like HVAC equipment controls, or it would have had to come to you as a site plan for marijuana approval, right? This is not a marijuana manufacturing facility, it's a hemp processing. Now, that agricultural product still has some of that same odor component, but to your point, and what we're hearing is since 2018, and we haven't had any complaints at all with that. [29:33] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): And what this may be for Marin or Milan, where do other communities in our area sit in this particular guideline? We're looking to move it up to 40%, which I'm assuming would then be cross-applied to everything in the I.L. If we're going to give an exception to this applicant, every other applicant going forward is going to have to accept it as well. Where are the other communities in our neighbor, I mean, Portland, Scarborough, Gorham, Westbrook, where are they in percentage wise? [30:06] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): So our industrial districts, every town is going to apply and look at their zones differently. It's not, I don't know that it's going to be a fair comparison to look at the two differently. I will say though, and I think Marin tried to cover this, the comprehensive plan wants this area to be significantly more invested in. Absolutely the IL zone most likely will be removed from this area when the overall zoning for the in the two-year process to implement the comprehensive plan will not have this area as industrial zoning, but it will have a proposal at least for a higher amount of building coverage because the goal for the mall area is infill development, right? So this applicant happens to need to work within the IL because that's the law today, and so that's why they're amending what they're amending. They're not trying to propose, you know, to implement our comprehensive plan, they're, they're proposing to work on their property in alignment with our comp plan, and they're only dealing with the thing that they really need to deal with. So I can tell you that the policy direction we have Is that this area has a relatively high building coverage percentage and industrial zoning is not prescribed in this area. It will be moving more towards mixed use housing, business, parking, and complementary type uses. That's the future comprehensive plan vision. The comprehensive plan also will not remove existing businesses. So all those offices that are in here or the light industrial type activity that has been happening in here, those are all allowed to continue. If they choose to shut those down, they may need to move into a different direction. That'll come with our comprehensive plan zoning. So I think that 40% is probably could go higher than what they're requesting, but they don't need it for what it is that they want to do there. I'm just wondering if we should [32:02] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): recommend a higher number if that's what we're trying to get to anyway and that way we could dip that in the buds we're not facing it again in the future that's just my thoughts that's [32:10] Chair Kelly: correct to the chair that's a recommendation you can make to council. Yeah I think you know it's likely to come up in the context of implementing the changes associated with the comprehensive plan like one mentioned that the light industrial zone could go away you know as we move through that process and I think that would be better sort of vetted in that context but I'm supportive of the proposed recommendation I think it yeah the analysis makes sense to me the fact that we have other industrial zones that it aligns with you know and it meets the applicants needs and I think we'll take a more comprehensive look yeah as we move through yeah Marin Stevens community planner I'm so I did [33:17] Maren Stevens (Community Planner): the analysis so the areas that I think that we would want to remain light industrial again I showed you that graphic of that there is no restrictions on lot coverage some of those areas have significant trees they're near stream protection in the West End Business Park so in we were actually looking at let's go big let's go large but then when we looked at the developed areas in the west end business park we recognized that you know they there would be you could extend into some significant you Know tree coverage and stream areas in that area, so we found the 40 a modest increase looking at the three different aisle districts. So that's where we landed today, but again those districts might change from light industrial to something else more industrial in the future. But in the Current analysis that we looked at, There the other light industrial areas aren't as developed as the main mall area. So that's where the modest kind of 40% came to, just to give you a little bit of background on our analysis. [34:39] Chair Kelly: Mr. Bramble and mr. Taylor, anything from you? I'M GOOD. ALL RIGHT. I GUESS I'LL CLOSE PUBLIC COMMENT AND TURN TO THE BOARD FOR ANY FURTHER COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, MOTION. [35:03] Speaker F (unidentified): I'LL MAKE A MOTION. MAKE A MOTION TO RECOMMEND THAT THE CITY COUNCIL APPROVE THE ZONING TEXT AMENDMENT CONTAINED IN ORDINANCE 7-2627 TO EXPAND THE BUILDING COVERAGE ALLOWANCE from 30 to 40 percent in a lot of industrial zoning district, all [35:23] Chair Kelly: right. Motion by mr ladd, do we have a second? Seconded by mr mcdonald. Discussion. All right, can we get a roll call [35:34] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): vote? Mr bramble yes, chair kelly yes, mr ladd yes, mr mcdonald yes, and mr taylor yes. All right, by a [35:43] Chair Kelly: vote of five the motion passes and the recommendation will be made. Thank you to applicant staff presentation the work on this, and that brings us to public comment on items not on the agenda. Any member the public has a comment on an item that is not on the agenda, now is the time to raise your hand. I see no hands on line. All right, and then one, I don't know if you wanted to, you mentioned you might want to talk about the process you're going through with the forms, like we can do that in number seven. Okay, it's not part of the workshop. Okay, yeah, then item six, we have no workshops on the agenda tonight. Item seven, comments from the planning board and director of planning, just [36:42] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): a couple of brief ones and then i'll show you a little visual just as a teaser of where some of the things we're working on. Comprehensive plan committee meeting is, comprehensive plan committee is meeting next week wednesday, and that'll be where we discuss for the first time the schedule for the implementation of the comprehensive plan. So you'll get a sense of well through your representative and certainly if any of you attend or listen to the meeting, kind of what the pacing is and what parts of Town will be tackling for implementing the core zoning reforms that we have to do. This isn't implementing the entire comprehensive plan, it's it's just doing the core zoning alignment. So as I mentioned, this area that was here tonight is moving to a mixed-use district, so the industrial zoning will have to get cleared out of there and to keep the things that make sense within that new vision. So we're going to show you the schedule for that. It's roughly in six month chunks, so around spring 2027 would be the first package of ordinance amendments to implement the comprehensive plan that comes to the board, and the comprehensive plan committee likely will see it in advance of that. So just as a heads up on that, whatever the CPC's guidance is on that schedule I'll report that out at your next meeting, or Jeff if you want to report that out, just so this board has some you know knowledge of when that heavier package is going to come forward and those ordinances are going to be available for review. Second thing is the council schedule is off in the next couple of months due to a variety of things, holidays, elections. They're out for a convention, MMA convention, a conference. And so their schedule is adjusted. And I want to just cover that so you're aware, because there's also a conversation that we need to have about the planning board schedule. So just for your information, October 13th and 27th are the only City Council dates, so that's when on October 27th they'll see the first read of a couple of zoning amendments that are council directed. You'll have those come to you on October 14th at your meeting, on October 14th, and then November 5th, November 12th is a workshop, and November 17th is their November meeting dates. For the board we have November 11th as your normally scheduled meeting, which is obviously Veterans Day and city offices are closed, so we would not be meeting on that day, and then November 25th. We talked about this at the beginning of the year, but we also I think Don you were not part of the board at that point. November 25th is the day before Thanksgiving, so I don't, I kind of wanted to do a quorum check to see if we're not able to meet on our normal schedule of the 11th our next normal schedule would be the 25th, which is the day before a holiday. If that's dicey for people, then what would be good is if we can pin down the alternative dates for November. November 18th seems like a good candidate because it splits the difference between those two. So number one is, November 25th, you know, not ideal. And since we have to cancel the 11th anyway, and that, makes it kind of a long wait for applicants do you prefer just to make it the 18th and just give people the 25th they don't have to worry about it and scramble the day before you know family arrives and whatnot so I think that 's what we're asking is do you want to cancel your November 25th date move it to the 18th or keep the 25th and while we're at it if there's any other scheduling that [40:52] Speaker F (unidentified): we want to change before the end of the year I think the 18th sounds good because it gives the applicants they don't have to wait till the 25th so I think the 18th is more user-friendly yeah [41:06] Chair Kelly: I agree I would not be able to make the 25th and 18th does work for me anyone else as I said last year I don't [41:19] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): mind working on Veterans Day it's due for some reason so I bought for you guys [41:26] Chair Kelly: to take the day off so but I'm okay with you okay any issues cooper mike 18th works for me let's shoot for the 18th all right great that sounds good all right so never November 25th [41:43] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): is out we're moving to the 18th the second thing I want to just that's right oh [41:51] Chair Kelly: is that i think you just said that's right no i'm just saying that 's good yeah i propose close that yeah that's good okay and if you say so mike the second thing is just based on our [42:03] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): current scheduling we will definitely have an item for you on the October 14th hearing date and actually these are two there'll be two council directed items so I'm hoping we can confirm quorum we can do that offline we don't have to do it right now I can text you or whatever to just confirm for the 14th but right now we're not having anything tracking for October 28th, except there's some discussion about an ordinance, again, that may stem from council. So if needed, October 28th, if you guys can just hold that as likely happening. I know we're trying to do once a month, but this is a particular month where, because of the adjustments to the other schedules and everything else, we may need to hold the two meetings. So I can follow up with you on that but this October month just plan on the 2nd and the 4th until I let you know otherwise if you can okay yep [42:59] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Mr. McDonald, I asked James when I went over to pick up our sweatshirts, which sweaters look really nice by the way. Can we get an updated list of what the calendar looks like? Because I still have things that are on my calendar that don't get taken off when we change things. I just want to make sure I can go through it, take everything off that's off, yeah, for the foreseeable future, what we have [43:19] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): available. Yep, I'll have Jim update your meeting invites and then give you also just like a sheet, yeah, it gives you the list. Okay, all right, very quickly, I don't want to spend a ton of time on it and we can enjoy an earlier night, but I did want to mention just because I'm excited about where we could go with this, we're trying to implement some AI driven tools to help us with application intake and we've been working with a couple of guys who are working coding or IT and government in particular and they've been helping us develop this tool. I just happen to be working on it earlier that takes the universal planning board application materials and moves it more into a digital realm. So this looks like a, you know, conventional form, but what it sort of hides behind the scenes is that it's interconnected with our ordinances, our planning board regulations, our application history, and helps applicants along as they're working. The model that we're trying to use for this, if you're familiar with it, is like Turbo Tax, where you're able to just, it prompts you with the questions and based on your answers it can also prompt follow-up questions. So if you say, you know, I'm in the shoreland area, yes, then it kicks in a variety of questions. So if you say no, you'll never see that portion of the application. So it keeps things simple for you if your project is simple, but if your project, if you feed in more information and disclose and we're asking the key questions we need to ask, then applicants using the ai tool will be able to build out an application as if they're talking with a staff member to get there 's a sort of self-directed version of this there's also a version where I see where I have it in here [Speaker F (unidentified): you] can enter in your location, it's tied to our GIS and can identify information about your property immediately. Yes, this is the location I want to go with, I want to talk it through. I'm interested in a marijuana retail store here. And then it sort of will mine our ordinance and try to dig into what it is that you need to know in order to get prepared so that maybe you can have more intelligent, you know, follow-up questions with staff, make good use of your time and it'll sort of focus you in the benefit to this versus just a generic ai tool like you can go to chat gpt at home and ask you know tell me what south portland needs in order for me to open a marijuana retail store what we're trying to build and we're not done yet, so these answers aren't exactly tailored. What we're trying to build is a is a closed environment, so it's not hallucinating, it's not pulling City of Portland ordinances, it's not getting other information, so we're fact-checking behind the scenes and interested in releasing this when we know that it's actually giving people helpful information, or if it can't get to that information because it's too complex and too many iterative tasks, that it knows when to kick it out to staff. But so far, we're in the early days of testing this out and building it out. The ideal is that we eventually get to this talk-it-through chatbot will basically identify all the component parts that you need, that it will then kick you into your actual digital application form, you can start it, save it, come back to it later, eventually fill it out, and then you're submitting something that is, you know, more ready. The other thing we've been working on, this is this plan review tool, and we've been testing it out with various examples. This tool is very cool. It minds the site plan application, the digital document that's submitted, and scans it for all the things that we're looking for when we review it as staff. So it'll find things, for instance, if you're providing a site plan set and you give a metric for height in that site plan that is some number, and then you're showing an elevation drawing a little bit later on, if your scale is off and if the elevation drawing says it's 40 feet but your number and your table says it's 38 feet, it'll tell you in advance with this sort of like audit of your submission. Is it consistent? Are you missing pieces? Do you have the north arrow? Is this digitally signed by the surveyor? Do you have the updated date stamp? Do you have the zoning table that tells you if it's compliant with setbacks? Have you measured distances to FEMA because this property's in the FEMA zone? It'll kind of give you this rubric, so it's elective. Applicants can just sort of choose to feed their application through this initial screen test, and hopefully it'll ferret out the things that staff will eventually come back to you with. It's just you don't have to wait 30 days for staff to compile its edits, you can get it right away, and that way your application is more complete. If you know the AI is hallucinating, it'll tell you, hey, you didn't provide a written statement on whatever. I was like, actually I did, it's here, you just missed it, or something went wrong or whatever, you can just ignore it, your application is still fine. But if it flags something that you actually know you need to address, you did not put the zoning district in there, oh shoot, okay, let me do that, because I know staff's going to ask for it later, and this saves me the time, and I can hit the ground running. So those are two tools where they can, we'll be using the AI to screen applicants and give this to applicants so that they can get better submissions and then make those submissions through the portal so that we can process them faster and we know where the answers are. So I think we're hopeful we can get to like a December rollout, we'll do a little bit of beta testing with some applications and whatnot not through November and early December, and then try to start testing it out with applicants and do a little bit of coaching along the way. We might be sitting with applicants and actually having, you know, sort of shadowing as they go through it just to make sure it's working. But, you know, so far it's looking promising. It's just we do have to really take a lot of care. Designing the systems is super easy that you can launch these, you know, within hours this tool is available. It's all the hope controlling for all the hallucinations behind the scenes that is really tedious, but if we can get it right it'll replicate a lot of what staff do at least for the easy stuff and let us focus on the, you know, [49:56] Speaker F (unidentified): the big important questions. Are there other communities in Maine using this [50:00] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): tool? As far as we know we're the only ones. This company has two others and they're actively in development, but no one has launched anything like this yet. I think it's a bit of a new frontier, so I'm eager to see if it'll, it'll be useful. It's been exciting to work on, but definitely requires some input. So more on this later, but I just wanted to kind of give you a window into that. Thank you [50:26] Chair Kelly: for sharing. Anything else? That's it for me. Yeah, I do have something I was [50:35] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): I was reviewing, getting ready for the upcoming meetings regarding implementation, and I found that we have a discordant fire code as compared to the federal standards that were implemented in 2021. So I can send you all the discordance that I would hope to be able to resolve, because in the same vein as you have all this stuff to speed things up, this is holding up and it's costing builders exceptionally more money to build something because our standards are lower than what the federal fire protection standards ask for. And we're the only city in the entire state that has that. So in our new comp plan, with our new comp plan goals of speeding things up and making things more affordable, this is going to be a pretty big initiative to try to... [51:28] Speaker F (unidentified): Can you give an example? [51:30] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Sure. The difference between high-rise versus a mid-rise building. Our high-rise, the national standard says 75 feet and above is a high-rise. High-rises have completely different building products that are required. Ours is 25 feet lower. So anything that we build at 50 feet, we have to build it using high-rise materials, even though it's not necessary, or at least the federal fire protection says it's not, and this is a barrier to building in our city that I don't know if it's intentional or if it just got stuck somewhere that people didn't realize about, but it is something that I learned and I wanted to bring it to everyone here's attention so that now that is one of the things that I think that we should really consider going forward to make the recommendation to make our fire codes align with what the federal fire codes are, whether it's the international building commission or the federal fire protection commission [52:36] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): this is something quite familiar with and we raised with the fire department a while back, actually just yesterday reached out to the fire chief and others so we can set up a meeting to get into this, because the comprehensive plan implementation does ask for some increased height allowance in certain areas like the mall and downtown. So specifically Jeff is referring to is section 8-4.2 in chapter 8 of our ordinance, which is the fire protection section. We generally adopt NFPA and other codes as The codes that affect are here, except there are certain instances where we say we are actually going to set a new standard different from NFPA, and there's a few cases of this. One of them is this high-rise designation. So in South Portland, the high-rise building is 50 feet, where nationally it's 75 feet. But yeah, I'm I'm very aware of the cost of construction implications of making that designation. Is something that we are working on with the fire department, so we hope we'll be bringing the ordinance package that will have an update on this. I'm again not sure exactly where we'll land and where the fire department will advocate on this, but it's certainly part of the discussion, and again the [53:53] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): cost difference is significant to the point where it's prohibitive to actually build some of the stuff that we're trying to push through. So I just wanted to make everybody aware of that. Thanks. [54:09] Chair Kelly: Does most of that live in the chapter 8 of the article 8? This is it. This is so that where we [54:18] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): amend other standards? Yes, in the fire world lives in chapter 8. Specifically all it would take would be deleting this one. If it was, I think what Jeff is advocating is that we just get an alignment, but we need to first understand why this was adopted, if there's any reasons why we are different, you know, and what's the justification. We're not different, we're [54:43] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): unique. We're the only one that has this. So there's a significant, it creates a significant problem with competitiveness in our city compared to everybody else in the state. [54:57] Chair Kelly: Yeah, what I was getting at was I don't, as a matter of course, the amendments to this section of the ordinance don't necessarily come before us, right? The planning board? [55:08] Speaker F (unidentified): No, they wouldn't. When was that last change? [55:13] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): 2021 is the edit to the last edit to Chapter 8, but it's not when this section was amended. So this goes back much further than that. I don't know the exact date. But, yeah, it's older. [55:31] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): It's older, it's, I think it's more than 20 years old. That's what I was thinking too when I saw the 2021, I was like, this doesn't, so I looked back at the 2020, 2021 was when we did the sprinkler update, and that's all I could find. I couldn't find anything in this, so I was wondering how did this end in there, because I was, all I read was a sprinkler code, so I assumed it's older [55:48] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): than that too. So I was here in 21, and that would have been a much bigger discussion with me, so [55:53] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): I would have remembered that for sure. I'm glad to hear that because I was really wondering how I got through it. I was like, wait a second, we're trying to streamline everything. How did that go? [56:00] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): Them through, yeah. But right, planning board doesn't have a role of like with zoning to advocate to make a recommendation. It doesn't mean that you all can't communicate something. [56:13] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Workshop or whatever, but that's why I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention because I don't know what our role is, yeah, doing this. But if we could even have a workshop and then submit a recommendation to the city council to get us aligned with everybody else in the state, because we're trying to do this in the new comp plan. If we can get this thing, because this is significant, think about this, all of the buildings we have are four feet or significantly higher, but you can't build a five-story. Building in our town because it's just too expensive. They'll build it. [56:41] Speaker F (unidentified): Instead, or they don't have to deal with this, so the significant structural issues, yes, yeah, there's. [56:51] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): An entirely different structural standard that applies. There's stand pipes and other fire suppression equipment that kicks in, higher technologies that are used, all of it contributes significantly more to cost in comparison to the non high-rise class structure. And nationally NFPA says those things are all important effective fire suppression techniques and tools, and we only will require them at the scale of a 75 foot building and we require them at the scale of a 50 foot building, so that's the. Big thing, it's not necessarily that those component parts are wrong there. If this is a question, if I'm understanding Jeff's point of view, is that we're, you know, it's sort of overkill for the size of the building that we're talking about. But our code says 50 feet is when we want to apply these additive protections. It'd be. [57:51] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Like requiring a sprinkler system in a garden shed, right? Nobody's gonna build a. [57:55] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): garden shed after that well this is the part that we're getting into and I can't speak to all of the benefits and you know trade-offs of making this designation these are these things all make the building safer no question about it right it's the question is it is it justified to put it at that scale and what does it mean for some of our other goals and is there is there a challenge in there and i think we need to hear more from the fire department about this because this was all adopted [58:22] Chair Kelly: before and certainly any of us are engaged on it. Well yeah, I'm thinking about like the coastal resilience, you know, and sort of like, you know, the need in certain areas to build up and how that aligns with, you know, because there's gonna be a cost associated with, you know, making improvements and, you know, layering on additional cost if you, yeah, I don't, I'm picturing those areas. They're not necessarily the ones where we're gonna see this, but yeah, just be interesting I think it definitely comes up in the context of the implementation work that the committee is doing? [59:10] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): The problem with the implementation, as Milan talked about, we don't know what the structure is going to look like, how long it's going to take, and when we'll actually address that. I want to address that pretty quickly. And we're not going to be doing the, are we going to be approving the implementations all at once, or are we going to do them step at a time? [59:29] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): It's too much to do all at once. I mean, we could do it all at once, but it would mean waiting two years and then doing it all at once. So hearing from you all and others, I think we're just going to try and take it in more digestible chunks. So we're going to be coming in six-month spurts. The first one is proposed for spring of 2027. [59:52] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): And I'll try to make sure it's on that one at least, but I was wondering if we can get ahead of it now that we know. [59:57] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): So I will share that the fire department has been collecting a variety of Chapter 8 edits because this isn't the only thing that our fire chief has been looking at and needs updating and refinement, like many of our chapters, it's so old and needs to be refreshed. So I know they're working on a bunch of other stuff and this has been something that I've identified that needs to be discussed when they amend Chapter Eight. This goes back more than a year or two. I think what's part of this is that the fire department is looking at all these other edits and this is one of the things and they're not yet ready for all of those edits, but to your point Jeff, maybe this one needs to be taken out of turn or just sort of like take it like we've been doing with miscellaneous amendments, take a few at a time and get progress incrementally rather than wait for [1:00:42] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): the whole big perfect thing. Does anybody here agree with me on that one? I think it's the sort [1:00:48] Chair Kelly: of thing where leaning on your city council person is going to maybe move it in a direction [1:00:56] Speaker F (unidentified): has this issue been brought up by developers in the past [1:01:01] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): Yes, yep, which is again why I brought up previously I [1:01:10] Speaker F (unidentified): think the sooner the better, you know, so [1:01:14] Dawson Nevilles (Planning Director): As I said, I think we're meeting a week from now or so to get into it and see the status. I mean, my main question is to see if we can pull this out and have it be its own thing and schedule some time with council on it, whether that's within the spring session or even earlier than that. Again, and this is the fire department's ordinance. So, or at least the one that they administer most closely. So it's the council's ordinance, obviously. We need to have those meetings and figure out where they're at. [1:01:49] Chair Kelly: Thanks for bringing it up, Jeff. Anything else? All right, should we take up adjournment? [1:02:00] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): Move to adjourn. Set up. [1:02:02] Chair Kelly: All right, we're adjourned. [1:02:05] Mr. McDonald (Planning Board member): You kids are really good.