Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:00] Peter Freilinger: Guys, welcome you all to the Long Range Planning Committee for October the 9th,
[0:11] Porsche Herschman: 2026. I'll do a roll call. Porsche Herschman here, Peter Freilinger here, Ed Hodgton here, Robin Saunders, and I know Jean Marie's not gonna make it. Rebecca's, I haven't heard from her or Judy, and then Rick, yeah, and Michelle's here, and Corey's not gonna, Corey's not gonna be here, right? So I do have an item I'm having to pull the votes, so we've got one, two, three, four, perfect. So yeah, we have media minutes we weren't able to vote on last time. Yeah, I just had
[0:59] Speaker C (unidentified): I'm going to change the minutes do
[1:07] Porsche Herschman: you guys want to review the movie minutes for 8 14 please
[1:12] Speaker C (unidentified): any comments changes I move to accept second
[1:20] Speaker D (unidentified): all favor meeting
[1:25] Peter Freilinger: minutes for
[1:31] Porsche Herschman: Robin you voted yes for the meeting minutes right
[1:38] Peter Freilinger: So we've just in September now we did now we need to do August. We did August, now we're in August, now September. September minutes. Anybody have any comments? Okay.
[1:53] Porsche Herschman: All in favor? Robin? We can't hear you. We can hear you like being alive, but we can't tell what you're saying. So if we ignore, if you start talking while we get through the discussion, I don't know if it's you or us, we're not really sure. Sounds like a teacher on, yeah, they're trying out. Rob and I turned the volume up. Oh, she said she wasn't at the September I'm meeting. Oh, okay. All right. No, that's all, just Robin.
[2:43] Peter Freilinger: All right, so we move to discussion items with the growth area destination.
[2:50] Porsche Herschman: All right, so I am going to share my screen. And we'll go through a slideshow. In your packet, I gave you a lot of information. And I tried to start summing up where we've been with this project that we've been doing. Thank you. So it's been a while, right? So we saw the last year, and then we worked into where we got last time, where we finished the map discussion. So now we're going to instead of looking at consolidated ideas for zoning changes, we're going to first take a step back and get councils of information they need the beginning of the year. So we're going to talk about growth area first, and we talked about growth areas during the discussion that we did. But it was kind of the Okay, do you think this area is in a growth area or not? It was a pretty high level, so I wanted to go through this, and then we need your input on some particular areas. So this, and you have this at your paper was one simple correction on page 2.
[3:59] Peter Freilinger: It's a started by going to interactive staff. So this lead exercise should be red led.
[4:06] Porsche Herschman: Oh, okay. Thanks. Yeah, nothing
[4:11] Speaker D (unidentified): Correction. But on them. Thanks for doing this. I have saved the porch. I was trying to repeat this last night, and I haven't been my house on. I'm just like blowing it out now like blue sleeves, you know? Yeah, I've said this. Yes. Yeah.
[4:24] Porsche Herschman: It was a challenge, so this is great. So this is what we have now, and this is our growth map. It's a very traditional land use map. It's sort of curvy, it's a little bit abstract, it doesn't necessarily follow the parcel lines. And so what has happened with the state changes we have to make, and I give you this so you can read this, you know, this is something that SMPDC put out, and I think they do a really nice job with flyers. Jamel used to work for Scarborough before I got here, and he's really great. And his group puts out really good informational things. But our current land use plan has growth areas defined, and there's several in there. So essentially everything is in a growth area except for the conservation and open space, rural residential. And what LD 1829 is going to do is if you're in a growth area, it's going to change the minimum lot size that we can require substantially. So we have to essentially create a high level zoning map now for a land use plan and actually follow parcels and. Zoning and make those choices. So when someone comes into our office says we'd like to do a new subdivision, we have to go through these choices. Okay, or the first one is, are you in a growth area? And if you are, and then you have water and sewer, the lot sizes are five thousand square feet. So our news. Wow. So do what postage tips? Yes. So it's like Eastern Village or Johnston. Yes. But it can be everywhere, right, with these things. So the first sort of the first choice to be made by the town is to figure. Out where we want.
[6:14] Speaker E (unidentified): Those kind of things to happen. That's the question. I remember in the comprehensive plan, and I'm glad you published this page, we had these little the bubbles, but the bubbles have no meaning under the growth or non-growth concept under the state law. So when I say the bubbles like the regional activity centers and Black Point in the middle hills like that, well under the state law so.
[6:37] Porsche Herschman: So everything in the bubble would be a growth area.
[6:39] Speaker E (unidentified): But it sounds like even stuff that's not in the bubble but is not conservation of rural residential would also be a growth area. Is in a growth area, yes.
[6:47] Porsche Herschman: Our map doesn't work for the child. So we are gonna have to, that's what we're gonna have to really.
[6:53] Speaker E (unidentified): So like Pleasant Hill Road out in the upper right hand corner, a lot of that's in a growth area, even though it's not really in a growth area.
[7:01] Porsche Herschman: Exactly, according to this, the way it's laid out and everything is in a growth area except for the light green and dark green, so yeah. And so I think maybe along the same lines I'm
[7:11] Speaker D (unidentified): looking at like one exec for example, and I live it out there, and they're really, I don't think there are any lots left, like there's no place to develop. But would it be that people can put ADUs on their property, so that would be the growth opportunity when you're taking a look at that, or
[7:28] Porsche Herschman: no, so you can already do the an ADU one per home, but what would happen is if your properties would all subdivide, so if you had an acre out there, if you were in the growth area in water and sewer, you could maybe do 10 lots out of your acre, so that's the potential for the redevelopment. So and that's what we have to kind of square away with the town, and it also lines up, show, remember we just did a one-year growth rate, yeah, so we're gonna do this and then we're gonna do rate of growth ordinance all probably in January start. Okay, thank you. So this is just very high level, this is kind of like why we're doing it and what 1829 does to growth there, so you just keep that in mind as we go through this. So we have some recommendations to start with for the designated growth areas. We are basically suggesting using zoning districts with some tweaks along the way, so our B2, B3, UR, RPO, IGUS, crossroads, and then TVC two and three, and so that's what this looks like, and I know so this is all B2 and B3, this is up there at Eight Corners, and then this is Oak Hill, this is north the turnpike, and then the Downs, Highest Parkway, and then a little bit of Dunstan. So that's sort of what that looks like. That in general sits well with me, I think based on what we have now and what's out here. So that's the first part is if this, and based on our conversations with you all in the past four or five months, this seems to match, except for maybe we have some questionable areas too. Someone wants to talk about there are
[9:22] Speaker E (unidentified): Some older neighborhoods like Anthony Mabel have which don't have, they probably have, they have probably have sub 10,000 square foot blocks down, yeah. So it's not like we're doing anything to that. Do we want to include that in the growth area or not? And then we've also got, and I'm thinking this is the only one here, you've got Higgins Beach and Pine Point and Black Point, which are all posted. I mean, they're not even built in the center, they're paper tiny. I
[9:51] Porsche Herschman: would not put any of those areas in the growth area, Matt. I wouldn't address those issues with our zoning change proposals, especially the cultural areas. They're not growth areas per se.
[10:05] Speaker F (unidentified): Say but the a lot sizes, right, so a lot of sizes maybe you're not true, but we don't necessarily
[10:13] Porsche Herschman: want to encourage a little bit, whereas like Maple Avenue, I think we all agree we should definitely rezone it with our next project, but I don't know if we should, if we have to put it in. It can be 2 separate things. So this is what we have. Does this sort of make sense for everyone? It's all Route One. Yes, I do have a question about this area. I'm going to ask you, sorry, that's North Scarborough County, we couldn't see where you've been, yeah.
[10:55] Speaker E (unidentified): If you, if you go back, you did mention there are some town and village areas that you didn't
[11:00] Porsche Herschman: include, did not include TVC4, that's down at Pine Point, and then there's a couple of areas
[11:06] Speaker F (unidentified): that I'd like to ask for clarification on. I get the TVC's, I feel so there's too many, there are
[11:14] Speaker D (unidentified): there's too many teams, yeah, just a clarification. So if you take a look at growth areas and are we taking a look, are we sort of naming them or classifying them, and then taking a look at like does infrastructure support that, or because I'm thinking about, you know, like Dunstan and just the controversy around just the congestion down there and everything else. So if we say that's a growth area, but then we're like traffic is already a nightmare, or the traffic flows, you know what I mean? So how are those complimenting or conflicting each other?
[11:57] Porsche Herschman: We struggle with that, too. I mean, yeah, this is, you could, you could say that the only growth area is maybe the B2, B3, and the downs of water. That's, that's what this discussion is about, and so the intention is we go through this month and hopefully next month, wrap the map up, and then we can work on the text, and then present this to council. I'm hoping to do an ordinance meeting in December to get it sort of moving along. But yeah, you could definitely make a recommendation to take Al Gunston out of the growth area for those reasons. Well, coming from
[12:32] Peter Freilinger: transportation, we really don't have any traffic issue as much as we have a congestion. We have congestion at certain intersections and at certain times of the day, for instance schools, okay, and so on. But we don't really have our traffic levels haven't changed that, you know, volumes haven't changed that much. The congestion is what gives people the perception that we have a traffic issue. So if we were to say okay, probably the best thing to do down in the Dunson areas to have a rotary, you know, that would keep traffic moving, so I think we need to keep perspective on that as well, or not necessarily with growth adding to traffic volume. I'll be fine, but the congestion issues around some of these intersections will
[13:20] Speaker D (unidentified): become increased. Yeah, I mean, I, this is a good point. I know that we're all doing like conversations, the station with counselors, and we've been out talking to people a lot the last year. I think we've been like 21 sessions. Traffic is the number one thing from traffic. They're like, we keep doing this, but then we're like, you know, backing into decisions we've made, and we should have a, you know, traffic plan before we ever approve, you know, and so I think people are really frustrated by that, and I agree with that, and I think in Dunstan, I don't look down there, but people that live down there do think it's a problem, and then in the summer, like that whole thing, they feel like is a nightmare, and I think that the retrofit they tried to do, I don't know, 10 years ago here when they went along, and nobody feels like that was literally helpful at all. It really wasn't because
[14:09] Speaker G (unidentified): the goal was to push traffic, you know, further down to Haggis Parkway, and nobody got the memo,
[14:15] Speaker D (unidentified): so i just think that 's why i'm i'm not advocating either way i think i'm advocating It is an issue. It isn't a plan before we just put in 500 or whatever.
[14:28] Speaker E (unidentified): The other thing that I'm done, but also all longer one is the whole idea of what is the purpose for one. And if one is supposed to be a high speed for lane through order, then why do we have these intersections? And why do we have the experience? Or if it's not, and that's the purpose of turnpike? Why are we have a four-lane high-speed corridor going through Dunstan right and to me and I live off of Pine Pond Road I lived in Jasper yeah my thing is why don't I get to have a commercial center that a usable commercial center at Dunstan and Route One like you've got it will kill why don't why are we kind of oriented towards OB and Saco for commercial activity when I live in Scarborough so I would rather I would follow the transportation committee we talked about this I would fall on the one Quarter study on the side of let's compress and slow traffic down to 25 miles an hour during in that area and encourage dense development and designating the growth area serves that purpose and then you now have a southwest Scarborough that has its own has amenities and that sort of stuff and to Porsche's note a couple of
[15:46] Speaker G (unidentified): Meetings ago with you know sort of the I'll use this term loosely but like the road diet in a sense like what we've seen in Falmouth what they did you know and I think that is kind of a better use of that or a better future look for that area than what it is now and even what happened before I mean yes they were trying to spread out the intersections but again there was no there is still and this is so always been my thing when the traffic issues have come up at Dunstan was but we're making it So easy for people to make the left back onto Payne Road which just continues to bottleneck traffic right so yeah where's the yeah Peter Ainslow let's drive so
[16:38] Porsche Herschman: Thank you all right so this area in the growth area or not I was whispering with Aaron and because in theory taking this out of the growth area doesn't do anything because the zoning already exists in this area that they still have but it would affect rated growth permits we would have to maybe work on those you know if you took this area out I would recommend putting it in its own bucket under and when you see the other areas that have proposed if you got to that part in the memo this might be It's another area that we can do kind of hysteria our revised definition
[17:24] Peter Freilinger: Of what growth areas are supposed to be, that's what we're just going to ask. Yeah, I don't want to need a better, yeah, I need like a real, yeah, definition on what a growth area is supposed to be for the Conference of Family. I was looking on QSC. Yeah, along those lines here, I was, I was
[17:41] Speaker D (unidentified): going to say to Autumn if she could look in a crystal ball, like if she defines growth area for Dunstan, like five years from now we'll find that one life. So would there be a coffee shop? Would there be, you know, a Trader Joe's? Would there be, you know, 100 condos? I don't know. There's
[17:59] Porsche Herschman: a lot of plan there that's not been developed. There's some opportunity to do a redesign of that broad turn kind of point intersection. There's a lot right away that the town has. There's even a statue we could put in the middle of the river. There's definitely some opportunity. There's some opportunity to close up some curb cuts and add some complete street elements and some landscaping and really sort of rehash it. There's land for something. I don't know, I mean, I don't know about getting Trader Joe's. Yeah, I was just like, but yeah, there's definitely opportunity, but to get things like that you have to have more density, and we saw like the Marsh restaurant density conversation with, but a lot of it was about access. So if there wasn't a way to get around it right in and out easily, I think that might work, so you wouldn't need it to be in a growth area to get the density to get the cool things, right? But it already has good zoning in place, you're right.
[18:58] Speaker E (unidentified): But to your point, you've got, it's got good zoning, but you look at for example the area around On the Vine, for example, that land, there's a lot of land, very developed, parking lots huge, but because of the mess of the Pain Road intersection, why would I put in a build anything in there? So it's, it's a matter of both transportation, but I think the growth density, if you put the density in there as well, now it's like, okay, this is, I can attract foot traffic, not just people zipping by at 50 miles an hour or getting caught at the left turn, right? Yes, it's not multiple friends. No, not
[19:36] Porsche Herschman: at all, at all, it's the worst. Yeah, Robin's our hands up, and she did put in the chat that it should be a growth area, and if we can get a turnpike connection at Broad Turn Road, I don't know if we can hear you if you try to talk. Yeah, I'm not sure either.
[19:59] Speaker H (unidentified): You got me. Yeah, I just feel like, you know, Route One is, you know, I agree that, you know, we want to sort of put Route One on a diet, but we're, we're literally so close to the turnpike there. If we could push people to the turnpike and go up and exit, why aren't we trying to do that?
[20:25] Peter Freilinger: So part of our Route One problem, this has always been the pass through traffic, and there are various, it's one aspect, there's others, but you know, and that pass-through traffic, depending on who you're at for, is maybe 30 percent. Yeah, could be a little bit less, like again, depends on who you ask. So you know, that's part of the strategy, you know, are you, are you regulating for the pass through traffic, are you regulating for what we want to have happen there, and then figuring out how do you, how do you attract the passenger tracking, you know, to the turnpike or some other route, and one of the things that was supposed to happen, I guess last year, was, you know, the turnpike made improvements at the Saco exit, right, and that was in their minds when they, before they did it, they felt like that was going to attract some folks to making it easier to get off there, and I don't know, I don't think I've seen any evidence, I drive that way, that's really, I mean
[21:29] Speaker E (unidentified): that's all that's really been there for a while. Yeah, they're, they're closer to benefit on the
[21:33] Speaker F (unidentified): improvements they made on what is 115 or yeah, 35, exit 35 and 36. But I think, yeah, but we keep
[21:41] Speaker H (unidentified): making, we keep trying to make this analogy to Falmouth and Falmouth Route One going on a diet, but we have the same, you know, but we have the same sort of proximity to the turnpike that Falmouth does, and that's really what Falmouth is doing, is saying get off Route One and get on 295. So we 've got to do this, if you want to do that, you've got to push the traffic somewhere else, and it's not going to go to Pain Road because Pain Road wasn't built for it. You 've got to get it out of Dunstan, and you've got to get it, you know, people are still going to go to, you know, people are still going to go to Old Orchard, and we've got to talk to the turnpike about it, and you've got to be honest with them about this is the way it is, you know, get it
[22:34] Speaker G (unidentified): Sorry, Robin. No, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, and I think this is probably an opportune time. When I was working in Saco, they've extended their sewer line right down to the Scarborough town line. They have sewer and water right there. We have water that comes up to that point. Do we have sewer were all the way along there on Route One? No, not past the work. No, okay. But I mean, pretty much we're there. So both sides are going to have a growth area. So it would only behoove the term pike knowing that growth is going to happen that they could, they could sustainably afford to build and exit somewhere in that area, given the fact of what the, what the state has passed as far as
[23:21] Speaker H (unidentified): road ordinance stuff. And in the long run, it will relieve some of that pressure to get out to Gorham, because we all know how quickly it is like for people who need to get to Gorham who like say work it south of Portland, you know, a lot of them are going up to the 114 exit to get out to Buxton or whatever. I mean, this would relieve some of that pressure, and I just don't understand why that an exit here isn't, isn't part of the plan. And with the turnpike reopening the Portland West opportunity, this needs to be on the table as part of a long range plan.
[24:04] Speaker E (unidentified): And I completely agree with Rob. You think about the traffic patterns out there coming into Pine Point and allergic beach. If you're coming from the north, as many visitors hopefully will return turn to come from the, if you visually look at it and map it on Google, it sends you on Payne Road. It's a shorter distance, it has fewer intersections, so get off at 42, come down and then clock up the Payne Road. So if you move that intersection, or if you built an intersection at Broad Turn Road, you're now directly piping traffic into piping and a lot of summer traffic, which is when a lot of the complaints happen, but it's from folks with Quebec license plates coming down. So I agree with Robin, it's got to be part of the conversation of where the congestion in
[24:52] Speaker F (unidentified): Scarborough was coming from. Generally, thank you. The Scarborough West proposal it involves
[25:01] Peter Freilinger: putting roundabouts in and so on again to keep traffic flowing, and that's the issue with congestion. You got to keep it flowing, because if you've got all the traffic coming into intersections from both directions, lights aren't going to handle it. And the theory is people feel better about moving. It may take them the same amount of time, but if they're moving, they're right.
[25:20] Speaker H (unidentified): I just want us to take this opportunity now that the turnpike and Maine D.O.T. is pausing with the Portland West alternatives, and if we don't take this opportunity to get something there at Broad Turn and use it as a way to alleviate the Portland West congestion and the Old Orchard Beach traffic, Dunstan congestion, we're missing the boat. We won't have the opportunity again, and if there's anything I can do to help that opportunity, I just feel like we're missing the boat if we don't put it on the table and to some extent at this point, Robin, we have some leverage
[26:08] Speaker F (unidentified): that we won't have later, right? That's, that's exactly right. All
[26:14] Porsche Herschman: right, so Robin, I think all your points are, we're all on board with them as staff too, so we all know, and I'll talk with Angela about it too. We have some Portland West meetings coming up to see what we can do about that conversation. Is the MTA is not at the table with this, so it's weird, but that may be the
[26:36] Speaker E (unidentified): opportunity for us to talk about board MTA and not to be weird, the MTA loves building things, has always loved building things, so we give them something to do.
[26:46] Speaker H (unidentified): Yes, but they do have a certain algorithm that they use to put in new intersections, including traffic studies. And, you know, if you know what they're going to say is Scarborough has enough exits already. And we need to be able to pull the right information together. Angela will know what to do, but we need to be able to support her. So part of being this long range planning committee is to give the, give Angela the information she needs about relieving these growth areas, you know, and so I just want us to be thinking about what it is that we need to give Angela and the rest of the staff the information they need to build to give to the turnpike so that they have the sort of Nexus that they need to relieve this traffic
[27:43] Speaker G (unidentified): traffic here and I seem to recall, and this is going back probably 20 years or so, the term I studied putting another exit between 36 and 42. It was studied, it was mapped out, it was going to be at Flagpond Road because it put it so that people could go directly down 80, 98, right down Cascade Road, right into Orchard, and then from there you could pick, do you go to Scarborough or do
[28:12] Speaker H (unidentified): you go to soccer? Yeah, perfect, that's good information. Yeah, they know where the road is going
[28:19] Speaker G (unidentified): To be, they're going to redo everything. It's done, it just wasn't at that point. No one really wanted it there because they were like, it was felt like, I don't, I again, this is going back, you know, in the aughts. And it was not, I don't know that the communities at that point were really invested
[28:39] Speaker H (unidentified): or wanting that, right? And it may not have relieved as much of the Portland West Gorham traffic, but you know, sort of Broad Turn has that, has that ability. So they may have to go through all of those study, studies that they did for Cascade Road. They may need to go through it there. So it could take years and years for them to do this, but we, but in order for us to get this started, we've got to have the conversations and give them the ammunition and the information that they need to do this. So if we're serious about putting Route One on a diet and or reconfiguring it to make sure that we're having sea level rise, you know, considered and all the financial, the financial implications that has, we've got to push the traffic somewhere else. And like Falmouth did, we've got to put it to the control of access Highway, you know, whether it's 295 of the turnpike, and the turnpike's got to come to the table and talk with us. Push [Speaker F (unidentified): back though, this] turnpike versus 295, exactly. So you know what, it's, it, but now that, now that DOT though, is in the conversation with the Portland West conversation, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's easier.
[30:03] Peter Freilinger: Like I said, we may have more leverage now than we'll ever have in the future. I think so too. Agree. Say, well, we need trees, we need, we need a lot of other things here. Yeah. And that's a no-build option, like if you can financially fix the going on a turnpike, if I can pay money fix the financial piece of that and makes it more like, not the same, but a little
[30:28] Speaker C (unidentified): bit more like 295. It's 295, it's a no-cost option, right? Yeah, probably going to look at this as a
[30:35] Speaker G (unidentified): benefit because they already know that 42 is probably getting to be capacity driven, especially with everything at the downtown traffic and all the truck drops. So there's the opportunity there to start looking at this before it becomes an exit 36 issue in Scarborough, you know, where they are, and yes, there's still a lot of traffic there, but you know, there's so much truck traffic that goes out to Hollis for Palmwood Spray and that, I think what's not, what
[31:03] Speaker E (unidentified): Was there in the odds, and is there today, is number one a lot more congestion or a lot more development in West Scarborough? We've talked about that rural residential district is much more residential than as it was 20 years ago, and then you've got all that kind of going that way, and you're, I think you're right on board with the x42. We don't yet have the truck traffic from the FedEx facility. We don't get traffic that might come back from an Amazon facility in the forum.
[31:35] Porsche Herschman: Part of the Downs traffic movement permit process is talking about capacity and some improvements.
[31:41] Speaker H (unidentified): And exit 42, we do think we'll have those, but still 42, once you get off 42, and if anyone wants to go to Dunstan, both Pain Road and Route One don't have the capacity to get traffic to get trucks from, you know, 42 down to Dunstan, down to Old Orchard, down to Pine Point, it just the road capacity isn't there, campers in the summer transportation,
[32:16] Porsche Herschman: So all those things come into play. I just we need to focus right now on land use map, and again, the growth area map is this high level zoning that we're really addressing to, so we can have a choice about how we input the 1829 and 2173 into our zone categories. So it sounds like the Dunson area is a growth area, but there are a lot of things that really need to be taken care of. I don't think there's any harm in leaving it a growth area because it already has zoning, but it says it's a growth area, right? The zoning's there. Then we have Highest Parkway CPD Payne Road corridor, I think all that makes sense for a zoning.
[33:03] Speaker E (unidentified): That's there, how far does the, I guess it's partially just the map that we're seeing, so I know that Hags Parkway is there, how like does this mean that the line Libby's is in the growth area? I'm just trying to figure out that on the map.
[33:20] Porsche Herschman: The Lend-Limits. Oh, this is all, yeah, Lend-Limits, because you've got the corridor.
[33:25] Speaker G (unidentified): It's like right down where the hand is if you go just to the
[33:30] Speaker E (unidentified): left. So that would be the intersection with the Irving?
[33:33] Speaker G (unidentified): That's right there where the hand is now. And then to the left would be, yeah, right there. That's that intersection. All the industrial park. And then you can see it extends down to where Tractor Supply is
[33:43] Porsche Herschman: now. Right there.
[33:46] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah yes, so my only comment was would be is that part on the north side of the highway past on Haggis is that really a growth area, this whole section? Yeah, everything else makes sense to me, but that's the one area that looks anomalous.
[34:08] Porsche Herschman: It could be that it's not there's.
[34:11] Peter Freilinger: Some vacant land in there. Yeah, Royal Bridge has some. Yeah, and we're not showing the industrial park is part of the growth here because it's not. We don't need to worry about it because
[34:22] Porsche Herschman: it's not. So no, I haven't. It is a, I haven't suggested as its own area. Yeah, it's not in a growth area because there's no residential itself anyway. Yeah, kind of makes sense, but this one. So what does everybody, how does everybody feel about this area? Yes, talking about, hey yourself
[34:39] Peter Freilinger: that again concentrates growth in a particular area. If we designate it as a growth area, it densifies, if that's really the word, growth, and then we can say, okay, here's where it can hit
[34:55] Porsche Herschman: I think I will say there's nothing there now. There's, there's not a lot of opportunity. This area is really wet, which is probably, yeah, so we call it and grow the area, you know, it goes there
[35:06] Peter Freilinger: What? Well, I mean, no, it's not wet. It's all wet. It's all wet. What a Pink Road is too. It's really
[35:16] Porsche Herschman: That's why I would say people have built on really wet stuff.
[35:21] Speaker F (unidentified): But that's not a good thing.
[35:28] Speaker G (unidentified): Robin's got a comment. She just said it's near environmentally sensitive areas.
[35:42] Speaker E (unidentified): I guess a great question to ask is, if you think about a growth area in this parlance, would support about eight houses per acre, so do you want to drop potentially 80 or 160 houses in that spot, given that it is close to environmentally sensitive
[36:03] Speaker G (unidentified): it's not once. Yeah, I would say no, and especially given the fact that it is Haggis Parkway, which was supposed to be commercial industrial as opposed to residential. Yes, we have the Gateway way up there, excluding that, then it doesn't make any sense to put that necessarily
[36:20] Porsche Herschman: in a residential growth area. To that end, I mean, Highest Parkways could come out, that zoning district could come out and not be in a growth area. I mean, because there's, there's land along Highest Parkway, but it's 80 wet. Yeah, it's wet. There's, there's some potential. Yeah,
[36:39] Peter Freilinger: Yeah, I think that's again that I think that may be something that will help clarify when we bring this to the council to public is when we're talking about growth in this context, we're talking about residential growth. Yeah, so because that's gonna look funny for not having the heavy commercial, right? Sense you just need to clarify what that means, right, because even looking at that, you know
[37:03] Speaker G (unidentified): that also includes the Enterprise Business Park down here that's supposed to be a commercial
[37:12] Porsche Herschman: Well, Highest Parkway is you can do residential with commercial development, it's like a mix you have to provide, and Enterprise did their commercial first, and so now they have on the books like 300 units or so that they could do with the density in the zoning district there. They just can't do it because of our rate of growth ordinance, the way it works, okay. But the Gateway, they are a contract zone and paid their way out of the commercial part, very limited words, so there could be, but they paid into the affordable housing, so there could be an apartment complex and Enterprise, yes, 300 units, so that's, yeah, that's the zoning that's there now, okay. So this conversation is not changing zoning, right, it's changing how 1829 and 71, 2173 affects our minimum lot size, right, yeah, that's the weird part, that's what the state has done, some really strange things to municipalities, so it doesn't, doesn't affect apartments, it's, it's houses, no apartments, it doesn't, okay, so 1829 it basically says that if you have if you have water and sewer and you're in a growth area, no matter what, you can do 5,000 square foot lots, and on that first 5,000 square foot lot you can put four units, and guess what, you don't have to put any parking spaces on those four units either. Have a fantastic day, Maine. And you don't need planning board approval. And you don't have planning board approval. So what you have a situation like Highest Parkway, if it's in a growth area, then that's what it can allow. So I'm saying the zoning is already there, but Highest Parkway zoning requires a mixture of uses. So it could be that the zoning is good,
[39:13] Speaker G (unidentified): good, but being in a growth area is bad, and I think, yeah, there being any growth area there is not a good use of this, because and I know we're not getting into a zoning conversation, and yes you can have the mixed use, but at this point I have not seen anyone really do that, so let's sort of use that as a, you know, to balance out, and I know Rebecca brought this up earlier and maybe I miss, but it's like how much residential slash business slash industrial do we need, and if we're lacking in one of those, this is where that opportunity comes in, and I know that gets into zoning, but you know, to keep it out of a growth area, because then once we're in a growth area, then we're running into, you know, other issues. She just texted something, how are you, what are you
[40:04] Porsche Herschman: It comes in the lower corner, so I don't know, I don't see anything on my screen. So I'm really, and it's quick, like it's very quick, it's like, oh, it's there and it's gone, right? So Robin said, are there mitigation measures that we will consider to protect these environmentally sensitive areas, marshes, beaches, water quality, over the long term? And these growth areas, can we make the growth go vertical instead of horizontal? That's the zoning, so that's the
[40:29] Peter Freilinger: zoning right yeah could you clarify that I mean this might help you can have probably that has that's designated in a growth area let's assume they both have the same zoning but it's in the growth area versus not in the growth area with sorry both of them have water and sewer yeah both have the same soundings technically but one is in a designated growth area and one is not in a designated growth area what's the what's the state difference yeah
[41:07] Porsche Herschman: it's this, so if it's in a designated growth area, it has water and sewer, it's a five thousand square foot lot. It's not in a designated growth there with water and sewage and ten thousand square
[41:27] Peter Freilinger: So there may be occasion where you have, you know, a area zone for residential, but you don't want to put it, even if it's high density residential, but you don't want to put it in the growth area, right? I'm of the opinion, this is just
[41:45] Porsche Herschman: my opinion, that we should do as minimal as possible in the growth area on the land use map, because I suspect state's going to keep on going with this little trend of let's do things in the growth areas and to keep our municipal control, we worry about ourselves, right? Worry about, and if we limit what developer, I'm afraid developers are going to come in because they're already starting like, hey July, what can we do here? I'm like, we don't have a banked out yet, so back off
[42:14] Speaker E (unidentified): off, buddy. And that would be my point for both Haggis and for that slug. Sorry, that sucks. That'd be my point for both Haggis and that slug, which is Haggis is supposed to be commercial, number one. And that slug, we have environmental concerns and other things. And there's no reason either of them need to be in the grocery cart area.
[42:34] Speaker G (unidentified): point, I think that would be better. I think that's a better, I think that's a better way
[42:45] Porsche Herschman: That's the cool thing. When we start to worry if we do the text, we can really address what it means. It is, it does sound confusing. I know for parents like, oh my god, you're picking the claim right, but it's not, because I know it's not changing the zoning at all. It's just changing these rules how the controls apply. Okay, so far we have the Dunstan area is in with a lot of caveats. This area, the South Gate, South of haigus area is out, and the highest Parkway zone is out. That's great. All right, so let's see, and then did you all want to look at anything in Oak Hill
[43:30] Speaker H (unidentified): So autumn, can you hear me, autumn? Yes. So was the answer to my questions that we can handle both through zoning? Say that again. Were they, were the answers to my questions that I just answered that we can handle them both through zoning, both the mitigation members, the mitigation protections, and sort of making development go vertical
[44:06] Porsche Herschman: instead of horizontal? It's possible. We also, Robin, we are, our low impact development standards are going to take care of a lot of those concerns, that we are actually on schedule to have that done by June. So now, so yeah, there's a lot of other things at play that I think take care of your concerns. Thank you so
[44:32] Speaker E (unidentified): this north or Oak Hill area, I guess my only thing is that 207 sign there is not helpful. It's right in the wrong place, it seems like. Well, there's some wetland conversation on this one, but along Eastern Road there, yeah, Eastern Village is already high
[44:57] Porsche Herschman: density. Yeah, that one is a, another conversation, that's another slide. Okay, I'm going to talk about it separately. Okay, no, stop talking. Okay, yeah, there's nothing under that 207 yet labeled on our map. It's a different, it's a lower density residential zone under that. Gotcha, that's
[45:16] Speaker E (unidentified): That's where the, it's one point road. Yeah, there's one apartment, one condo complex.
[45:25] Porsche Herschman: There's that old town building that it's actually town land and it's all wet.
[45:32] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah, well, but up on top of the hill what you're gonna talk about that.
[45:36] Porsche Herschman: So this all generally makes sense, right, nothing's kind of the smuzzy corridor. corridor all of these areas this area right here this is eight corners where we have the new apartment none such River breweries down here carriage carrier Woods is over here and we have some live industrial things happening there's a lot of wetlands in this area yeah this whole it's interesting too you know now that we're kind of talking about it a little more macro like pain road it's all wet so I'm not adverse to there's another slide there's a lot of there's a lot of land trucks there's another slide that I'll show you that looks, it shows you where all the resource protection and then the land trust. So some of this zoning will come out. So I think that would be good, we can kind of make sure this is a very high level overview of just these zoning districts, but some of these areas will actually come out in our actual land use fund.
[46:47] Speaker C (unidentified): Okay, I'm going to go to the next one, so
[46:52] Porsche Herschman: then we have other areas. So these are not residential growth areas, they are other areas, and so the LD 1829, 2173 rules would not have any impacts, just staying with zoning. So we're proposing an industrial area, and it's just our industrial districts, in our life industrial is pretty straightforward, no changes, it really just kind of acknowledges where we have these areas, but it'd be based on zoning that's on the ground [Speaker I (unidentified): today, and] then we have this is where conservation and open space area, so this is what I was talking about, like the Payne Road corridor, you can see a lot of these areas now come out of that and zoning, all of this would come out. So there's little pockets and, sorry, this one is several this morning, just meaning it's protected, exactly right. So we would just put everything that's already protected, state, federal, local, in a non-growth bucket. So I think that one was pretty, there's probably a few pieces missing. This is not always the most up-to-date GIS, but when we put it all together we'll be one color and we'll be so scattered, but this is just to give you some ideas. Let's see, there's a follow, when do flood zones come into play, because I'm thinking
[48:11] Speaker D (unidentified): like, one second, I'll have a flood zone because I'm really high, but I know that there are a lot of homes out there that are now considered a flood zone from an insurance perspective. So when you take a look at ADUs and other things, would the flood zone piece kind of usurp their ability to do an ADU because it depends on which zone they're in, if I'm remembering
[48:38] Porsche Herschman: correctly, and then how much room they have. But an ADU is a buy right sort of thing if you have a residential property. But it may be that you still have to meet your setbacks, so it may be that you have
[48:50] Speaker I (unidentified): to do it in your garage. But if you're in the flip zone, do you have to do you have to raise it up?
[48:56] Porsche Herschman: Yeah, there's really no one answer. Every one of these shoreline zone or flood zone properties is coastal dunes. They're all very unique. Like I can't give you a really good if you're in the
[49:10] Speaker E (unidentified): shoreline zone but you've built before 94, you have other rights. Yeah, this is why
[49:16] Speaker G (unidentified): the zoning board hates these. It's really well, it makes sense. And again, I'm not I'm looking at this sort of for the first time and not knowing a lot about like the flood zones in the shoreline because I'm way out on Gormer. We don't have to deal with that necessarily. Would it make sense to make sure that those areas are not in a growth zone because then that way we are taking those things into account and you know again to Robin's point maybe mitigating some of you know some of the environmental concerns that we already might have. This is a broad stroke, correct? Because it's like if you're looking at these things and we're concerned about sea level rise and things like that, let's make sure that those places that we're seeing that aren't in a growth zone because we don't want to be looking at problems further down the road when if what if our crystal balls are all correct, we're going to be having bigger issues at that point. That's kind of what I was getting. So yeah, okay.
[50:16] Porsche Herschman: What we've got so far is this will be our like our growth area map minus all of the conserved lands and any flood plains. There might be some along the Nonsuch here that would come out. So yeah, that's a good point. Well so it's like we'll start with the base zoning and take away
[50:31] Speaker G (unidentified): the pieces and I'm glad you put North Scarborough in a little bit of a growth zone up there. Well we're not we're we gotta get to that. Oh we haven't gotten to that yet. I saw it up there and
[50:42] Porsche Herschman: I was like, oh, we must have missed up, it's TDC up there, so that I think so. Li is another area, the conservation open space is another area, and the other area is an LD. When I turn, no, well, it sort of kind of is, it's like not a growth area. Yeah, one of the problems with our existing map is that even the rural areas, the green areas in the legend, they're called limited growth areas. So yeah, at the state level they're like, but that's gross, what does that mean? It's obviously not right. That's why it's a different definition. Yeah, so we just have to be very clear, like other areas and in the text is not growth area, not residential growth areas, they are these things. So we're suggesting our first, you know, name is low to medium density area, and that can be low to medium density, commercial, residential, it can be all the things. So it's kind of a capturing all the other districts that are left. And that's, I think it's easier to see on this one. So that would capture all of the, everything except for gray. So you can see that it's a big bulk of our land masses that would not be in a growth area. And there's even more that's not, I think because it's captured in that conservation group, but this just shows you everything in these zoning districts. I don't think we can get into the weeds on this one. I think that one's pretty like basic once we get to these other clarification areas. So this one is R4 and R4 and R4A and I need your you all's help on this area. So this is Dunstan and this kind of peachy zoning is R4 and so it's already pretty developed out for the most part. It has water and sewers. Those are the blue lines and the green lines. So it's definitely a 5,000 square foot lot potential stays in the growth area. And where exactly is that? I am at Dunstan Crossing. Crossing, okay, here, yeah, and then north of that, so yeah, and that's it's the Marsh, so Milligan, and then I'm right there at time point and Roger, you also
[53:03] Speaker I (unidentified): got a substation there too, so the Dunstan, how
[53:06] Porsche Herschman: much, how much was locked in there land-wise? I mean, he has got one more phase and then there's
[53:14] Speaker E (unidentified): all right there 's stuff but there's that stuff along route one on the back behind yeah
[53:21] Peter Freilinger: behind Dunson or behind where the funeral home, oh no, behind on the bog, there's about
[53:28] Speaker I (unidentified): 100 acres back there. No, there's, there's a family going in there, yeah, right, there's a funeral home.
[53:36] Speaker E (unidentified): home. There's a coffee roaster. There's a BYOB fried fish place. It's a really odd collection. But then behind that, there's a bunch of land that is nothing. I always have said they were
[53:52] Speaker G (unidentified): attacked at that part is I think that's the PG stuff that you're
[53:55] Speaker E (unidentified): referring to? No, it's it's if you go see what public state public station 25 is yeah just to the right of that like where the historical it's a little past that because you're you have to pass this fast i'm gonna go to south past lane
[54:14] Speaker D (unidentified): is it like past lucky lanes on the right as you're going towards saco no it's like on the
[54:19] Speaker E (unidentified): other side of the road from the chava tie oh yeah and so there's some stuff right along the cross and then exactly right along route one and then behind it is a bunch of forest oh i always assume they were just attached to lots on route one but it looks like from there they're
[54:38] Porsche Herschman: separate lots oh so they're going to turn on the aerial so we can kind of move around and play and
[54:44] Speaker D (unidentified): look at different things you know i guess on a good question when i think about this here it goes back to the whole you know turnpike exit thing too is you know if we really think that the solution is to have another exit that diverts traffic and kind of alleviates the pain points on our blind then would we want to have a solution before we all of a sudden say oh this is on growth and we end up in another situation where we have this delusion i tend
[55:19] Porsche Herschman: to agree with you that most of them says perhaps maybe we pull out maybe like yeah i'm gonna try to say i think some of it could be in a growth area but it's because it's already developed so it doesn't really matter if it's in a growth area anymore so maybe it's not the growth area at this point maybe we have to come up with a solution for traffic and we have to get the turnpike on board and we come up with our rotary design and we do some things the zoning still exists so people are not losing any value but what we're saying is we're saying there's a
[55:54] Speaker E (unidentified): problem and we have the problem that really comes from traffic coming in from the north traffic south of broad turn and pine point road is really not much of a problem it's i mean people would argue that the left turn to old blue point roads are paid in the ass i'll agree with yeah but and once you get by that though you're you're in a speedway i mean route one has very little traffic going south or north past blue point and that continues all the way to past route 98 in saka so i think keeping That stuff south of Broad Turn Road and south of especially Old Blue Point Road, but really south of Broad Term slash Pine Point, which is already very developed, but could be densified. And that does a vacation will continue to reinforce the idea that Dustin is a good place to. To focus development, so I would keep all that in the growth area. I
[56:59] Speaker F (unidentified): don't know what's going on question. We are under no mandate X amount of growth. Correct? Correct. So we should restrict. That's right. We can restrict it. But yeah, I want to talk about is.
[57:11] Speaker E (unidentified): We're under no requirement to have growth except for the pressure of people who want to move to
[57:17] Peter Freilinger: Southern. Oh, I understand that. It's just that we want to direct ways that help us, right? Well,
[57:23] Speaker E (unidentified): My point on this is this would, this directs us into where there's already densification going on, where south of Old Point Blue Point Road certainly, but I think more generally south of Broad Turn Pine Point, traffic is not as much of a problem as what we're talking about at Pain Road, Route One, et cetera, and
[57:46] Porsche Herschman: So here, so yeah, I think what you're saying is like keeping, maybe keeping South, the Blue Point in the growth area, but maybe the Dunstan proper, yeah, I'm not like
[57:56] Speaker D (unidentified): So around Dunston that might go from Dunston, yeah, that whole area that needs to be re-revisioned or whether it's a turn or whatever it is, but I don't think we want to dump 1,000 more people in there right now.
[58:13] Speaker E (unidentified): So this is Old Bluepoint right here. The lots I'm talking about are on the, are sort of these right around here. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm kind of with you, I'm agnostic as you get closer to Broad Turn, exactly. But these are not a traffic problem right now. I mean if you put a single in an Old Blue Point you'd probably take care of it, but it's not a difficult problem to do, even as you're adding all these houses in into Dunson crossing, you know, living around there. It's just people stop going on Route One in this section, and the people who are growing into the houses down here in Saco are all going south.
[58:55] Peter Freilinger: What's that? Well, they're using Broad Term because they've got a light that's right, or they're using
[59:01] Speaker E (unidentified): Broad Terms, but really I think they're going south and they're close enough to 195 that they're probably getting on that one, or if they're going west they're going on Ashwamp Road or
[59:13] Speaker F (unidentified): Flag Pond and all those similar connectors, so okay, so how does everybody feel about
[59:22] Porsche Herschman: that so where would sort of be the line of demarcation probably that's like maybe the intersection with the old blue boy and route one so the south of there we would say keep it in the growth area right and then that metal was going to take out but yeah it doesn't change it
[59:41] Peter Freilinger: Just doesn't change it. You can't do five thousand square feet right there, right? And that's what we're really saying with the growth areas, right? Well, these are areas you can do five thousand
[59:50] Speaker E (unidentified): square plus. And the thing is, again, if you think about the against occasion and the apartment buildings going up around Dunston Crossing, which are not on this one, actually it's a scholar aerial, it's making Dunston Crossing more viable as a little commercial area as well, which is not a bad thing, right? And again, I'm being kind of parochial here, but that side of town would love more amenities. We don't have many, yeah.
[1:00:17] Porsche Herschman: Yeah, my favorite part about that is there's a sidewalk the entire way, like where are we going? Okay, yes, I want to go work, so we'll put that, we'll show you that in the next iteration. So Robin said we need to be willing to be very prescriptive with our zoning and not be afraid to ask developers to pay for mitigation, environmental, traffic, needed to manage our resources and production. I agree with her 1000%. So we, yeah, we're working on putting our next impact fee area into place for the Dunstan broad term Pine Point intersection, so we're actively
[1:01:14] Peter Freilinger: pursuing that. Okay, what about the impact fee for paying so you don't have to do affordable housing? That impact fee ought to be outrageous. Yeah, that's, we don't want to call that an impact, right? That's that's a fee for, I mean, it's a it's an in-loop, yeah, but we don't
[1:01:33] Porsche Herschman: require affordable housing. Well, that's that's a really beautiful thing about all of the state, and that's my personal issue with it, is that they said they want you want municipalities to do all these things because it's going to make housing more affordable, but there's no affordability component requirement. No, it's like we've had a problem with this problem, yeah, and okay, great, you've just really opened up the door. I mean, I come from Texas with production builders, you just you just crank it out five thousand square, fill up, and no big deal, right? Now, yeah, that's standard, and so it's really naive to think that it's going to create affordability.
[1:02:15] Speaker D (unidentified): I mean, what's the average price of $900,000 right now in Scarborough? Just about.
[1:02:21] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah. I just saw a house going up in Dunstan. They're doing an open house this weekend on one of those small lots way in the back. $1.2 million. Yeah.
[1:02:35] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah. So we're not, I mean, we've been sort of getting, what they've done doesn't help our goal at all.
[1:02:44] Porsche Herschman: I don't think so, not with the, yeah, I think the idea, I think the idea was, oh, there will be more development, so just the mass and the critical, you know, count of homes will lower the building stock, will drive prices down. Exactly, but it's not going to happen at the right, there's too many other outside factors, especially right now in today's market and costs that are just not going, really mileage wrapper going for 850. Exactly, the demand that you can't build them fast enough to make that happen.
[1:03:17] Speaker F (unidentified): So yeah, those houses around, you know, how to have a house, oh my God, and they all sold. Yeah, like.
[1:03:24] Porsche Herschman: Developers aren't going.
[1:03:37] Speaker D (unidentified): To generously help us. No, so we want to build that into our growth mentality is right, what kind of.
[1:03:43] Porsche Herschman: Growth we're looking at in these areas. There is a little bit of a state incentive to building affordable housing, and that all of these areas are allowed to do a either a higher, a taller building, right, or a higher amount of density, or a lower amount of parking. So they were trying to incentivize it, but they didn't require it, right, which is the difference, and that's where we could.
[1:04:06] Speaker D (unidentified): Make a difference. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, the other thing we hear, we're doing all these listing sessions too, and this is no shock to anybody, and it came up with everybody in the gubernatorial debates last night, just property taxes, and it's, you know, with Scarborough, I don't know the percentages of people over 55 in Scarborough, but it's a huge number, and we hear it all the time, like we're cash more and property rich now, but if we keep, you know, if we subsidize, and I hope that's the correct word, you. Know affordable housing, and then people feel like we want people to have housing, but then we don't want our taxes to keep going up, so the state can do all this, but it's sort of like with the schools, it's sort of like all these mandates, but no funding comes with it, so towns like ours get nailed. It's a giant puzzle.
[1:05:02] Peter Freilinger: Of all of these, I know, impacts together. We were talking yesterday, we've made a decision as a town.
[1:05:09] Porsche Herschman: For the past 20 years to keep property taxes down and not make investments with that money, and now we're really at this painful point where like, oh, we should have maybe spent a little bit of that money over the last 20 years to fix some things, because now we're in a spot where we don't want our taxes to go up, right? Double right. But we need that money to fix our mill rate is low, our
[1:05:31] Speaker E (unidentified): mill rate is extremely low, and there's not much the town can do about supply and demand issues on real estate prices. So the fact that you are property rich but cash poor, it's like we can't help you. In fact, we've done all we can to help you by making sure we have one of the lowest mill rates south southern bay, but that means we don't have money to invest on things that actually could alleviate that.
[1:05:53] Porsche Herschman: It couldn't take care of it. Correct.
[1:05:55] Speaker E (unidentified): Exactly. Added supply, which affects. Right.
[1:05:57] Porsche Herschman: We're still given a pickle because we haven't spent any money.
[1:06:00] Speaker D (unidentified): Which is why people are very angry at developers in town.
[1:06:02] Porsche Herschman: Doesn't make it not need to be done.
[1:06:05] Speaker F (unidentified): Put it on the contractors. What's that?
[1:06:08] Speaker I (unidentified): Put it on the contractors and the traffic movement and all the mitigations required there. Put it on them.
[1:06:13] Porsche Herschman: You can't make a developer fix the things that we've ignored. No. Exactly. No. That's on us. That's on us. We did not do a good job. They have to address their impacts on the system, but if you already have a failing system, you know, right, the fact that we don't, I'll go, I'll stop, but yeah, exactly, we talk about these things staff like we are in a spot and it's a painful spot, right, and
[1:06:39] Speaker E (unidentified): pulling it out of a spiral is a hard thing to do. Yeah, it is, and we're in a spiral. Yeah.
[1:06:44] Porsche Herschman: No one's going to be excited about the solutions to these problems. Well, that's why when we're
[1:06:48] Speaker D (unidentified): having these discussions, I mean, all we can do is fix the future. And that's why when we're sitting here talking about all of this, it's like, I don't want another group to be sitting here 10 years from now saying, why didn't they do anything? You know, why do we have all these issues? Why do we have school issues? Why do we have traffic issues? Why do we have, you know, I think it's our job to start the fix. Yeah, to start the fix. And I think we're just used to
[1:07:13] Speaker G (unidentified): putting our heads in the sand and saying, if I just ignored everything, it's going to stay the is saying that it will go away and that's not the case.
[1:07:19] Porsche Herschman: I think you can make some drastic moves. I think the 2006 comp plan set you up for a lot of progressive thought and new things, but you didn't make the investments to stay with it. That's right. You just did the progressive thought and the new zoning and all these things
[1:07:36] Speaker C (unidentified): and none of the other,
[1:07:38] Porsche Herschman: the consequences were not well thought out. That's correct. And so I don't think it's, as a planner it seems counterintuitive to say, oh step back but where you are in this town it might be the right time to do that and it sounds like that's that's what we're hearing from all the residents yeah we are we're all we're hearing we need affordable housing we're hearing we need transit options we're hearing we need sidewalks and we need community centers and libraries and we need all these things that we don't have but we're so behind just on like road maintenance and culverts
[1:08:17] Speaker G (unidentified): that's not a good word to say
[1:08:22] Speaker D (unidentified): I know way too much about culverts my first year in way too much no but I that's where I'm at I'm I'm exactly where you are and I hear it from 95 of people we talk to people are like what are we going to put the brakes on and catch up and do what we should have done we just opened the floodgates and literally for 20 years haven't built the system to support
[1:08:47] Speaker E (unidentified): but the thing is i hear you and i 'm all on board for putting the brakes on the trouble is to get our vision and comp plan of things done would then now require us to spend money and
[1:09:01] Speaker F (unidentified): And people do not want us to spend money. It's it's the Yeah, no, I don't want to.
[1:09:06] Speaker E (unidentified): Yes, I know right it's yeah so how do you solve that? Well, the we stop all residents. We have to open the floodgates on commercial growth, because that's the only other option we've got to get money.
[1:09:20] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, as long as we don't give them tax breaks so that they end up not really contributing what we need.
[1:09:28] Peter Freilinger: We can put the financing of what might be a public piece of infrastructure. You can put that on them to do the financing.
[1:09:37] Speaker D (unidentified): People want to be here. We shouldn't be giving anybody a break. People want to be here. So it's sort of like, let's do tax breaks in Rageley or Millinocket or Machias, in places where literally they're dying.
[1:09:50] Speaker E (unidentified): Well, and I'm not disagreeing with that, but when I say open it up, it's we don't have enough land right now. Thank you, Robin. We've excluded land from we're out of industrial space for all intents and purposes. we're and so do we want to take some land from residential or rural areas and make it commercial slash industrial so that we get those types of checks being written for the town and that's and the town's pretty much consistently said no on that so again I keep I agree with you but at some point we've got to get money and so that money is going to come with doing things a lot of people historically is that 's not scarborough character it's like screw you we need the we need the cash
[1:10:47] Porsche Herschman: So that's where we are.
[1:10:48] Peter Freilinger: I know, I know there's a good and bad with everything. Can you stop? Yeah.
[1:11:03] Porsche Herschman: Yes,, I am. Yeah, I'm gonna go back to, sorry, I mean, this is all really, I mean, these are hard conversations. That's why I'm mad at the state. Oh gosh, and that's my favorite.
[1:11:18] Peter Freilinger: Have it happen here, because this is the one committee that has the interconnections that we're looking at how everything works together.
[1:11:26] Speaker G (unidentified): That and I do think, you know, as part of this, that to Peter's point is, yes, we do need to, and correct me if I'm wrong, we're so we do lean very obviously residential tax base. That hard question of where new and how we fund areas that are now going to be commercial to broaden that tax base, because I know there's, is there a magic formula or something of where
[1:11:52] Speaker F (unidentified): where you should be for residential? Yes, yeah, we've always had the goal of having, you know, moving to
[1:11:59] Peter Freilinger: like 25 percent being commercial non-residential, sure, and we were there for a split second, and then the revaluation that includes multi-packs, yes, well we, I think Nick might back to that, oh okay, good, industrial, yes, okay, so just non-resident, non-resident.
[1:12:22] Porsche Herschman: Yeah, because single-family homes don't pay for themselves.
[1:12:24] Speaker G (unidentified): Right. We know that.
[1:12:26] Speaker D (unidentified): Not having one child in the school system doesn't support that.
[1:12:31] Speaker E (unidentified): But that's what the people of Scarborough only want to build. They've been anti-multifamily. They've been anti-mixed use. So, okay, people of Scarborough, you've done your role.
[1:12:43] Speaker G (unidentified): But I think this opportunity that we're being presented with, you know, not just this, but also the work that we're doing before this on the exercises of, you know, we, you know, doing this zoning gives us those opportunities to say, look at how we're trying to push, not pushing Eric, but think about these things in a more thoughtful way. And yes, they're gonna, I don't want to say there's going to be winners and losers, but probably at the end of the day, not everybody's going to be happy, and that's probably the best solution that's out there.
[1:13:15] Speaker E (unidentified): That's being said, everybody's mad at you. Yeah, right. But I think what's going to happen, what could very well happen here, is that we will accelerate single family home price inflation because we'll make it more of a scarce asset in town while we're making these changes. And then the people who are property rich and cash poor will be even angrier, and the people who are trying to move in, because we have not yet built the options for them, move on other things, will not be able to move in. So that's That's what you do when you pull pause on the spiral. Well, prove me wrong. And to show you how those consequences don't play out, we built the most
[1:13:53] Speaker D (unidentified): housing of any town in the state of Maine for 10 years, and look where our prices are. So increasing
[1:13:59] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah, a lot of that was single family. Look at all the stuff in West Scarborough, it was single family.
[1:14:04] Speaker D (unidentified): It's also, you know, a million apartments. It's how many of the downs, like, I mean, those aren't thousands of units, and the prices are insane in there. But the diamonds are single family units.
[1:14:15] Speaker E (unidentified): They're not, they might be semi-detached, but they're single family units. We didn't build six-story apartment buildings. We have one little section around across the street from Cabela's. We have a little bit over that way between off of 114 on the other side of the library or further down, you know what I'm talking about. And you've got a little bit up in the road next has a little bit, a little bit off a Broad Turn, but most of what has gone in forward growth has been single family units. And that includes the downs. Actually, that's not
[1:14:52] Peter Freilinger: not for the dance, the majority of the units have been multi-multi-unit or condos.
[1:14:59] Speaker I (unidentified): Yeah, condo and apartments, so they're not all, I mean, it is a higher right in terms of density. They built three stories, I think, is the highest though, right? But I think it's, I think it's super
[1:15:11] Porsche Herschman: fair to say that the money that we have made from the downs and tax revenue and the Innovation Administration District and Costco and those things, even with any allowances made, has enabled us to keep our mill rate down. Yeah, I mean, if we're being honest about it, right? And that's the hard part of the conversation. Maybe you don't want to pay for the things that you need, and that's what we use it for. We used to keep the bill rate down rather than to fill the things that we want. Exactly, we're also We have impact fees that we're only collecting 40% of the rate because there's, they have to be so high to take care of the problem. We're never going to be able to get anything constructed that way. Those have to be, to your point, make the contractors or the developers have to pay for it. We need to put our impact, these at 100. But we also need to understand that for residential is going to be tacked on to the price of a home. So there's just, it is, and we don't change our free watches, right?
[1:16:05] Speaker E (unidentified): At no point do we change the attractiveness Scarborough from a demand perspective, right?
[1:16:10] Peter Freilinger: Right now, here's, here's the other piece of it. Until you start building affordable housing for people 60 and older so they move out of their single family, right, which opens up possibility, you're never going to get that buyback. You know, I know we had sent people, I know I have a lot of
[1:16:31] Speaker D (unidentified): friends in very big houses that are empty nesters and are like with big 400 000 but as we can't to afford. I mean that little house in Eastern Village that's right by the trail. Someone told me it's like over a million dollars. Oh yeah. A lot of houses. I mean it's this big. Yeah. And I'm like so someone's not going to sell their house at Colcord Farms. I paid $450,000 for it and paid $1.2 million for that. I'm going to be fair. They're going to get like $2 million for that $400,000. No I know. But you know I'm saying it's like they have no more. It's paid off there. There it's so in interest rates are crazy. So I think that, I mean the economy is what it is. I mean right now it's right in order to get, people are still buying, which is crazy. You're gonna have
[1:17:16] Peter Freilinger: to have some place for them or they're gonna have to go south. Some people are still buying
[1:17:20] Speaker F (unidentified): a lot, but there's more and more people. What do we have to try it back to the land use area so this
[1:17:29] Porsche Herschman: This is North Scarborough, so this is some TBC zoning that we have in North Scarborough right now. County Road and Gorham and should this be in a growth area? There's no water, there's no sewer.
[1:17:44] Speaker E (unidentified): We're not changing the zoning again, so if we took it out of the growth area, I don't think we're hurting it. If there's no water, no sewer, then it doesn't make sense to have it. And also, I think any of this should be a no until we have some clarity on Portland West. Yes.
[1:18:01] Speaker G (unidentified): Because even if the two lane bypass does go through then let's let that sort of sink in to see what the impact on traffic is before we start making those changes. I mean, ideally I'd like to see it, you know, like a Maple Avenue, you know, very, you know, very slow or much slower traffic. But to be able to do that now, you could, you couldn't, and if you forced it, you'd be shoehorning it in, and it's only going to exacerbate the problem. And then at that point, with our luck, the state will say, you know, we're just going to put in a bunch of roundabouts, and yes, it'll move traffic, but it won't, I don't know.
[1:18:38] Speaker I (unidentified): There's a lot of speed bumps that seem to have accomplished a lot in Portland, going Stephen's Avenue, yeah, all that stuff, and I'd see all the mufflers sitting on the side of the roads.
[1:18:47] Porsche Herschman: All right, I'm gonna, so this one is a TBC3 zone, so this is one of the ones I have highlighted. It originally, this is Black Point and Highland Road, I would recommend taking this out of the growth area. Yes, yeah, good, perfect, it's great, got it, Running Hill and Running Hill mixed use, so this is some of our best zoning in town with a little sentence that says you got to have sewer. There's no sewer, there's limited water out here, take it out, take it out of the growth.
[1:19:25] Speaker G (unidentified): Area, okay, sadly, yes, I think it would be great for commercial, but you know, it's not ready for it, yeah.
[1:19:32] Porsche Herschman: And it's being a growth area, and actually the zoning is already, I mean, it's there, so but we.
[1:19:37] Speaker E (unidentified): Can talk about the zoning on this because it should be commercial, I kind of, yeah, okay, all.
[1:19:44] Porsche Herschman: All right, so we made it. I skipped a few. We're going to make some executive decisions. So next steps, Aaron and I, and hopefully maybe one other person, fingers crossed, is we're going to finalize our map recommendations. And then we'll show you all those. And then we'll put together some. So this is the existing. We'll put together some draft text for us to look at. This is over the conflict, right? Yeah, this is existing for next time, and then hopefully in November we can come some sort of consensus, and then move this along to council, and then once you do that in January and February, we're going to start talking about we need to get some input on for the places we do have to change lots, because we have to change lot sizes everywhere no matter what, unless you don't have, unless you're outside of the growth area and you don't have sewer, we need your help with setbacks and some space and bulk. Things, just to get some feedback.
[1:20:45] Speaker G (unidentified): Oh, we got it, she's bringing in Broad Turner, she's bringing the Broad Turn Turnpike issue.
[1:20:53] Porsche Herschman: A referral to Transportation Committee about the broad turn exchange. Yeah, we'll do, and so we'll do space in bulk, and then, and then we'll get to come back to our fun. So we have, I think, staff has between engineering, sustainability, Aaron and myself, we have seven months of ordinances already planned, and that we must do to put some things into place for LID and for all of these things. So that'll give us time with this group, we can have these fun conversations, and then maybe in the summer, we can start figuring out what we plan to make a recommendation for, if there is rezoning or some right-side zoning, so obviously elections
[1:21:39] Speaker D (unidentified): come up in a few weeks. I was just going to bring that up at a state level. Do we, well, my thing too
[1:21:44] Speaker E (unidentified): is you shuffle the committees every time there's an election, right? So we don't know if it's going to be on the audience committee or anything like that right now. Yeah, I mean, I think
[1:21:54] Speaker D (unidentified): I think that some of it will stay the same. I mean, Larry's up for reelection, and he's a chair of finance. So he's running. We will definitely have 2 new counselors because John and Bill. Yeah. So that's a really good point.
[1:22:11] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah, part of why I ask is a lot of this, as we've already gone through pretty technical. That call, yeah, so Ordinance Committee, there might be some education for the Ordinance Committee and
[1:22:22] Speaker D (unidentified): that might lengthen things a little bit. I mean, I think Karen will stay chair. I told her I hope so, but you know, we'll have to make that decision. Nobody on the council's like, you know, trying to knock her out, so I want to be the chair of ordinance. So I think that's a good point. I was thinking though at the state level, do you, with the gubernatories, would any of that impact any of this? Probably
[1:22:51] Porsche Herschman: not this cycle, right? But it all looks good next time, right? Like I'm not going to
[1:22:58] Speaker C (unidentified): put it out there. So no, I don't think so. Okay, good. So when things are going, I think it's going to be
[1:23:06] Speaker G (unidentified): status quo in Augusta. I do too. That's what I think. Yeah, I don't think we're going to see massive changes because just the way that things seem to be shaping up, I think it's going to be a lot of the same rinse and repeat for the next four to eight years, depending on how things go.
[1:23:21] Speaker E (unidentified): Well, it seems like the LD18-29, and then it's revision exhausted a lot of people on that stuff. So I don't think there's energy in the GUSD attack right here.
[1:23:33] Speaker D (unidentified): We haven't even caught up to the decision yet. So, yeah. So, okay, good.
[1:23:39] Porsche Herschman: All right, so that concludes everything we wanted to talk about. I don't have any public fun, so a
[1:23:54] Speaker D (unidentified): lot of these materials were great, really well done. We have no general public comments, so let me talk about
[1:24:02] Porsche Herschman: committee and staff updates. I'll
[1:24:07] Peter Freilinger: vote for transportation. Say yay, Metro Connect has, it's been going and the bus started on Sunday, and I've taken Metro Connect now four times, really nice little service here in Scarborough. I also notified Bessie Commons and some of the other, yeah, so long Ron to say, tell your employees number one about that service, yes, but also Metro Connect for your ambulatory people if you get to doctors and so on, how we spread that word, but that's sort of, that's a yay. But we're also very actively looking at you know the West Scarborough connector ideas and the four different options of what the impacts might be, and Aaron was there and we said wait a minute, you know out here at County Road we've got potentially a commercial little village center here, you know we need to think about that in terms of how the traffic certainly goes around there, so that was a kind of a good interface, but that's my update for
[1:25:09] Speaker F (unidentified): transportation. Let's
[1:25:13] Speaker I (unidentified): see anybody else who wants to go thanks welcome with planning board last month we 've been seeing a lot of ordinance changes for public comment and it's all been good but last month we heard the ordinance change on essentially redefining what sorts of review some of these projects go through on our 405 zoning ordinance, but included in that was the landscaping and screening standards. And that was derived from some of the, I'll use the word clear cutting on some of the lots that we've seen developed, so I think this is going to help. The big thing on that was also on the zoning ordinance creating street buffers to 20 feet, they some were at 10 feet and now everything on street facing is 20 feet, so that increase, you know, the ability to keep trees and that's the whole thing. Also redefined the different trees, whether they're heritage or whatever, what are the other ones? Significant. Significant. And I think that was the 20 inch diameter is a significant. So I think all of that stuff lends itself to, you know, helping put teeth in our ordinances so that we don't have to fight with developers and say, well look, it's it's clear black and white so you got to do it. So that's a lot of that meeting. The other thing is we approved a first of its kind, a live work unit in Scarborough, where the music director, I think at the high school, or chorus director or something, is building a residential unit and it's also going to serve as his studio where he hosts you know voice lessons and what have you. So it's the first of a kind and that's on Willowdale. Yeah, right behind, right. And it was on a really small lot and he went through Rickerman Road to get that through. It oh my gosh, but and anyway it's the first of its kind and you're really calling out a live work unit. Yeah, so I think that was significant. And I think there was one other thing to me. Oh, a couple of sketch plans. Yeah, one of them very interesting on the Perkins farm. Yes, kind of a neat concept but you know something worth, we said go back and smooth things out and bring it back as a plan because I think there's a there in terms of and we don't look at public value in the planning board strictly land use, but there is a lot of public value to what they're trying to do and I think that shouldn't be mitigated at any point. And then there was one more sketch plan I think on a duplex, five duplexes off of the Cottages and off the Square roads, so preservation. He's kind of doing a little a little redesign because there's some wetlands that he's got to work around and we're going to hold them to, you know, don't build on this, right, minimize the impact on the wetlands is really
[1:28:41] Speaker G (unidentified): what we're going after. One of the developments that went and they have a sort of an offshoot arm there that was developed or was initially mapped out to potentially be some type of
[1:28:52] Speaker I (unidentified): multifamily and they didn't build it at that time and the road it could be a speedway if they if we
[1:29:01] Speaker G (unidentified): don't make them put some turns in and you know parking can be a challenge I think if there was
[1:29:06] Speaker I (unidentified): anyone you know besides the residents that were down there might be in there he was designing it as we were going through it so that's about it this month is a very light agenda more ordinance looks that look at but oh we did see the draft for the schools Wentworth and the middle school and yeah I 've heard about well we're on a budget so we can't do anything smart we just have to be with you those schools are going through the traffic
[1:29:37] Porsche Herschman: Management process. I can't wait to see that redesign stormwater, so see the next schools.
[1:29:42] Speaker G (unidentified): as a month or so now is that for both the wentworth and the middle school as well as the
[1:29:49] Speaker F (unidentified): elementaries no they've already seen it don't have to do a traffic movement eight corners i think
[1:29:57] Porsche Herschman: was it 99 trips instead of 100.
[1:30:00] Speaker I (unidentified): that's a big project in eight corners yeah it's a whole redo
[1:30:04] Speaker C (unidentified): we do
[1:30:07] Porsche Herschman: how about Council updates I think you have a whole lot of things coming back on October
[1:30:14] Speaker D (unidentified): 1st yeah we do I mean we do we're looking at climate study we're looking at the data center piece we're looking dealing obviously with a lot of the ice facility activity we have three council seats up for reelection we've actually had a ton of public engagement we're right now in the process of doing five more conversations with counselors we've done we do one last night one Monday night and we have one coming up at North Scarborough fire station one coming up at eight corner school and then we have one here on Saturday morning on the 24th I five days 24 I think so I don't know so we're trying to do one on Saturdays every time so you know we're done because you're working and kids and yeah so and Tom or Liam are actually attending all of them now because we're just getting a lot of questions that might be very like you know budget specific contract specific so that 's been great for them to participate in a great job and the thing that's kind of exciting is with the metro we had i think it was six or seven women from oh yes the taylorville yeah they came up to town hall to vote so tony got a great picture of them in front of the pluses all there we voted one of the women was the 100 year old who actually advocated needed from the addition of the room which is fantastic and the other thing partnering with Project Grace in the town the wood bank has been running and they've had two work days so far and they already Stephanie Cox said supported two or three households with deliveries in town and we're anticipating that to be quite busy given the cost of everything this winter but I think that between the Metro being expanded to really accommodate really the folks that truly we would really and they truly need it and I think the wood bank is just another great service and you know I think community in town so there was
[1:32:34] Peter Freilinger: A lot going on, it hasn't been a quiet year, no, not at all. I just want to say the our annual celebration of business at the Black Point, yeah, it's on the October 27th. We keep the tickets down so it's the only the price of the ticket, so it's the only time you're gonna have a meal at Black Point in for 20 bucks, yeah, and that's the truth, yeah. So we are we have generous sponsors that are yeah underwrite the cost of the tickets, so I encourage you to comment. I don't think that
[1:33:02] Speaker I (unidentified): the invite go out, yeah, you might it must have gone to my efficiency main and I don't have that
[1:33:07] Peter Freilinger: Oh, you know what, I bet it did, yeah, so okay, yeah, just you can either email, it's probably on
[1:33:13] Speaker F (unidentified): your website, right, yes, yeah, yes, other if you just want to email that too if you want to go
[1:33:19] Speaker I (unidentified): I can't be happy to register, okay, please do it, yes, okay, I love the way that Route One building across this one, doesn't that look great, awesome, yeah, that's Cindy Taylor, right, she did a bang up
[1:33:32] Porsche Herschman: job, she bought the Marsh View Restaurant, so I'm hoping when she wraps this up I can grab her and we can figure out what who is who is that Cindy Taylor, so she did Bessie Commons, right, she's a tiny but mighty little one, yeah, she's dynamite, she is, she's a long time starter housing developer, she's yeah, she's a really good, is she independent, yes, now she used to work for Joe Bush camper years
[1:33:58] Speaker I (unidentified): years and years ago because I worked for Joe which came through years and years ago
[1:34:02] Speaker D (unidentified): and I worked for Joe until he retired, Joe never will I don't know kind of well I don't know
[1:34:10] Porsche Herschman: he's supposed to be I guess, yeah, no, you should meet her, name is Cindy Taylor, and if you want
[1:34:15] Peter Freilinger: to talk about affordable housing she's the person you want to talk about because that's what her
[1:34:18] Speaker D (unidentified): company does, okay, yeah, no, that building was such an eyesore, it's had it's been like 40 000 different things in the last 20 years and I was like it's beautiful, I love it 's such this whole
[1:34:32] Peter Freilinger: circuit is just and they are one of our winners for this year, they're what they're one of our
[1:34:36] Speaker F (unidentified): I figured it would get, yeah, it should be housing in the building, it's commercial, it's commercial
[1:34:42] Speaker I (unidentified): therapy kind of big medical stuff, all medical, well I think she'll take anybody that wants to
[1:34:49] Porsche Herschman: red but I think that's what so the top level is going to be Parkinson's level of therapists
[1:34:55] Speaker D (unidentified): the other one across from that's on 114 that was eye clinic that, yeah, it's very nice in there, it's very good, yeah, it's so nice, it's right, it has to be radiology, yes
[1:35:14] Speaker G (unidentified): Yes. It's right near the post office, right by Key Bank. Yeah, Key Bank. Oh, yeah,. The one that I go by a lot. Yeah, that's pretty cool. They've done a really nice job. They did a nice job. There's such nice additions. Yes. And I like, you know, now that it's an eye, like they opened it up, there are nice windows and everything. Yes. And it's beautiful inside. It's lovely. And it'll have that business to grow to. Yeah. And there will be a new multifamily building kind of behind there. What's that? There's a multifamily building going up behind there. Yes. The dance studio. Dance studio.
[1:35:44] Porsche Herschman: So yeah, that's a nice little area. Does everybody know? Yes.
[1:35:53] Speaker D (unidentified): No, they're not. I don't think they're not. No, they're not open. I like going because they're
[1:35:57] Speaker G (unidentified): open. Oh, no, I don't want to go. I have to run the gauntlet. I have to avoid everybody's
[1:36:03] Speaker F (unidentified): I'd like to do with their. I'd like to petition Saturday. Can I get an adjourn? Oh, motion to adjourn.
[1:36:11] Speaker C (unidentified): Second. Yeah. All in favor.