Kennebunkport Select Board Reviews Historic District Rules, Solar Plan

[4:56] Select Board Chair: Gentlemen, welcome to the Town of Kennebunkport Select Board Meeting. This is September 24th, and I'll call the meeting to order at 6 p.m. Can you join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I [5:09] Select Board member: pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Happy birthday to me. [5:35] Select Board Chair: Before the next meeting, if we could all practice the pledge, please. Can I have a motion to approve the September 10th, 2026 Select Board Meeting Minutes, please? So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Thank you. Right now item four is the public forum. This is an opportunity for anyone who wants to address the board of selectmen with any issue that's not on our agenda tonight. Mr. Case, please. [6:26] Bill Case, public commenter: I think I've sent emails out there, everybody on the board, I assumed that you received them. When did you send them? Yeah, I don't think, several weeks ago. I did it off the site. Okay. [6:43] Select Board Chair: Okay, well, go ahead. Can you introduce yourself again? [6:46] Bill Case, public commenter: Bill Case, I live in Cape Porpoise. Now that the... I assume the majority of the construction of the pier, we walk down there just about every night, and I think the last thing, they got the occupancy permit for the harbor master, and hopefully they'll be moving that trailer off. But every time we go down there, one of our favorite spots is up on that little knoll with the beautiful view of Cape Porpoise Lighthouse, is probably, in my opinion, the best view of the whole town. And there are, I think, at least four benches up here now. Kitty Corner position, very dangerous to try to walk up here for a lot of people. So one of the things that we thought would be nice is, rather than just have the benches on that little knoll, is to put, at first we talked about just the platform that was level that people could go up there and at least sit, but in talking to several people they said, well, what about a gazebo or something with a shelter on it? And we've talked to Pete and Kate, we go down to the bitter end, they used to own the pier 77 7 and the ramp, which we used to frequent, but my history the Cape Orpus goes way back to Tilly Shanty and Cliff Higgins. I go back to Hazel, so you know, we go back a year old, and I knew the LeBlancs before. Anyway, one of my favorite spots, and the reason that I ended up moving to Cape Orpus, was for the sense of the community. My kids mostly grew up in Kennebunk, but we moved to Cape Porpoise. I used to bike down to Tilly Shandy, have a coffee, read the paper, and just fell in love with the community. My kids worked at both the hardware store and Bradbury Brothers Market before they ended up working at Walker Point. But I just thought it would be nice to have something nice, inexpensive, and that picture is from the school in Saco next to the library that burns school. It's just something I happen to go by, and I say, oh, something like that would be nice, and it could be, if you notice there, I call them bench tables. They're like a half a picnic table. It could be put together as a picnic table. And if you need money, I can't imagine that the whole thing would cost that much, but people could memorialize those benches, you know. Okay. And charge whatever, $1,000, $2,000 in memory of. Anyway, pretty simple ask. It's town property, so it's up to you to see what happens. But I've talked to, I don't know, well, you probably know Janet, the traffic director. At this time of year, you walk down there, 's nobody there but Janet. And I wonder, what the hell is she doing down here? [10:20] Select Board member: She does a wonderful job. She does, yeah. [10:22] Bill Case, public commenter: We used to see her at Goose Rocks Beach and everything. Always smiling. Exactly, yeah, very nice woman. But I mentioned the idea, and she said, oh, that'd be great, people always looking for a place to sit down and eat from the takeout at the chowder house. In my youngest son get married to Pier 77, and that would have been a nice setting for a photo op for, you know, the wedding party. But anyway, that's all I got to say. Great, thank you. Please. [10:59] Select Board Chair: Okay. And, Dave, anybody online? [11:04] Select Board member: Yes, we have three people online. [11:06] Select Board Chair: Anyone for the speaking? No hands raised. Okay. Nobody else? Nobody else. Thank you, Mr. Case. All right. Chief, you're up next. So we have an award bid for the cruiser. [11:21] Police Chief (or police department representative): Yeah, so on July 16th, we went out to bid for a new cruiser. Bids were due on July 29th, and at the August 13th select board meeting, you folks awarded the bid to Rondo Ford. That cruiser should be coming in about six weeks, so we're trying to get prepared to get that car upfitted. There's a lead time on the equipment that we have that needs to go in that car. So we sought three bids. We only had two responsive bidders. one was New England vehicle off-road who's been traditionally doing our setups in Island tech services the low bidder was Nevo at twenty one thousand six hundred and ten dollars the total amount of capital funds that we had budgeted for the cruiser as well as the up fit was seventy five thousand dollars the cost of the new cruiser was forty four thousand one hundred thirty four dollars so there is enough funds available left out of that capital line item to pay for that so i would recommend awarding the outfit to Nevo in the amount of twenty one thousand six hundred and ten dollars. [12:26] Select Board member: You know, I can remember when the cruiser cost twenty one thousand dollars. I do. [12:32] Police Chief (or police department representative): Too. I remember, you know, fourteen thousand. I remember when jeans were a [12:35] Select Board Chair: quarter. Yeah. Oh, we're not going there. Okay. I'll [12:38] Select Board member: take a motion. I will make a motion to award the cruiser equipment bid to Nevo for twenty one thousand six hundred and ten. Second. [12:46] Select Board Chair: Any discussion? All in favor? [12:49] Police Chief (or police department representative): Thank you. Great. Thank you. [12:51] Select Board Chair: All right. Next is Eric for request permission for a road opening permit on Old Cape Road. [12:59] Road Commissioner: Yes. Okay, and I think all of you that this already been cut. My apologies. That's why that was my mistake. When we had changed the ordinances to actually allow the road commissioner to basically approve the street openings, it was a cutout for the board to actually look at the requirements for moratorium streets. So the road has not been five years. It's probably been three years or so that it's been paved. And so they basically placed a water main across the street in one location. That's going to be the extent of that excavation. The contractor is aware of what the repair is going to be required, which is basically going 20 feet both directions from the excavation so they paved it in for the time being we won't be paving it in anymore until either the next year or the following year and at that point there'll be a full width repair across the road going both directions 20 feet and that's for them to come back and do yeah or we'll do it and build them one or the other okay yeah [14:03] Select Board member: So Eric, is this just one of those situations where it just kind of got [14:07] Road Commissioner: overlooked, not overlooked, but it just got, it's in the ordinance, actually we had to go back and look at it, reread the ordinance, is it just there was a, there's a statement in there that says yes [14:16] Select Board member: it has to go to the board. What might be helpful, I know this development particularly, so what might be helpful is when you have a road that's got that moratorium on it, if the planning department knows, so if any project comes in for approval to the planning department, they know too that's [14:34] Road Commissioner: Certain roads. They have to make sure that we can also make that as part of the review process as well. The, we do post our Moratorium streets. So we know that we don't get a ton of development here, but yeah [14:51] Select Board member: Make a motion to approve the road opening permit. Okay, road with the condition that the pavement be milled and repaved within 20 feet of the opening [15:01] Select Board Chair: second. I have a first and second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Thank you, Eric. Okay, item seven is an update from Ben on the planning on the historic district standards. And so just before Ben starts, I'm just going to do a quick recap, like I always do on this one. So remember, we've had a couple meetings between the select board and the GPC committee where we asked the GPC committee me to work on a historical type light and this was being driven by the density ordinances passed by the state LD 2173 and 1829. So this was an attempt by the town to say what could be the art of the possibility of the future that may impact the look and feel of our port of a New England coastal town. So Ben has brought forward language before the growth planning committee needs to move to the LD 2173. So as Ben spoke with you last, we're going to be going through the language improper and then the second part of that is the communication. So after depending on what you say tonight, we'd like to be able to take this to the planning committee as we've talked about, get their input, sort of round robin it back between gpc and board if there's any significant things that have to be discussed, and then this would be for a june ballot. So we have a lot of time for our quote Listening discussions with our residents as well as it will be in our fall newsletter that goes out of what we're looking at, why we're looking at it. We'll do special letters to the people in this district notifying them, and then again have the listening session similar to the board, similar to what we did when we were looking at the buses. So with that I handed over to Ben. Good [17:05] Growth Planning Committee member: evening. Thank you for really great synopsis of where everything has gone. As Mary Beth mentioned, the ordinance is before you. I spoke with you at your last meeting two weeks ago. I'm kind of giving you an overview of where the growth planning committee has gone, and now you have the full ordinance before you. The real mean potatoes of the ordinance is very similar to the conversation that I've had with you two weeks ago in the sense that this district would be overlay district over the two federal historic districts. It would be standards that would be required for new construction or for additions to structures that are within the districts that are visible from a public way. It would also require permitting for architectural changes or demolitions of building. There are several performance standards that the ordinance proposes that kind of helped dictate what a review body, what the planning board would look at, but I think it's worth mentioning that the as mentioned two weeks ago the permitting wouldn't be required for regular maintenance, for interior alterations, for landscaping, for paint color, or for lighting, and then again if it's not visible from a public way then it wouldn't trigger the permit review as well. I do have copies of the map if it's helpful for you the select board to be able to visualize that you would have seen one map or one map for each district previous to this, and I have one that shows the two districts together. I'm happy to give that to you if that's helpful. Yeah, thank. And the only thing that I don't know if we covered in your last meeting was this is an overlay zoning district. So these performance standards would kind of be on top of the underlying zone. So these would be in those areas that are on the two districts that are on the map. These performance standards would only be triggered if the types of proposed provisions were hit. So it would be only triggered if a building, if the exterior renovation was occurring on a building, or other provisions. The underlying parts of the zone, how you build on a lot, would still be in existence, so that wouldn't change. This would just be additional review on the way that a structure looks or the way that an exterior renovation occurs on a structure, so [20:16] Select Board Chair: Ben one thing that we talked about under general standards was the Secretary of Ontario standards is that something that I read that portion of it and because that came up in the last GPC meeting when you brought it forward I understand the reason for bringing it forward is that's like what people think about and how you explained it to us that 's a unknown thing within the architectural world and building world but that shows when I read through it has a lot more stringency and so when I read the ordinance proposal in totality, it seemed that if I was on the planning board I might be confused where we're trying to do a light version of that, so what's your thoughts on having that part [21:06] Growth Planning Committee member: removed? So to make sure the rest of the board is following along, you are in on page two under general standards. It talks about kind of what the planning board is looking at for those, the review of those performance standards, and when the growth planning committee was discussing those standards, they did really kind of vary between trying to determine what would be defensible standards and what standards would meet the goals of the select board and the goals of the process. So that first sentence states, the planning board may consider the secretary of the interior standards as well as the town's comprehensive plan. Those secretary of interior standards are more or less the Cadillac of historic preservation ordinances, meaning that they're time-tested defensible ordinances, with it being a May the Planning Board would not be required to review those provisions, but they would be, it would be something that we would provide them through the planning office to review. I don't see a harm if it was determined to remove move that, but it is in there to kind of give just that extra ability to defend the ordinance if there are any legal challenges to it, so the problem I had is [22:37] Select Board Chair: And maybe you can help me with this. So if I was on the planning board and somebody came forward with the, you know, and we had to do a review because they were changing the street view of their house in the historic district, and it had a, may I get that, but then when I open up the code they talk about things like color, and it's more stringent than what we're going for. So that's my problem is what does this, what does a planning board person do? Because it feels like it gives them the right to utilize what's in that versus what we were trying to do, which was here's the specific things that we're only going to be concerned about as [23:20] Growth Planning Committee member: mentioned. I don't think there's a harm in removing the secretary of the interior standards or lessening that in some capacity. The performance standards that the planning board is reviewing, or if it was a different body, that any board is reviewing, ideally are defensible, meaning that there is enough of a standard that a review body can make a determination. And ideally, it's using whatever that determination is. The standards are leading us to a determination that would be not using a kind of like the feel of the person making the determination. So ideally, these standards are something that actually do have some sort of subsidence and can lead the board to state a clear finding of fact that says this is what was modified and this is why it's going through permitting. [24:20] Select Board member: But wouldn't that be kind of confusing, putting this in but not really using it? [24:27] Growth Planning Committee member: It's a may, so it would just be a consultation if they chose to use that. [24:33] Select Board member: Could it also be a situation where the word may is in there and depending on who, when the project comes forward and who is on the board, that the may could be kind of forgotten for the first project that walked in, but on the second project that walks in all of a sudden somebody wants to hold them to a standard they may want to hold them to a stand, a higher standard. So we're kind of setting a situation to your point Alan where there's a lot of discretion up to the planning board members and it could depend on the project and are we setting something up that somebody's going to feel that they're being overly burdened and someone's or someone isn't, someone's getting away with something by definition this is an aesthetic, we're talking about an aesthetic is subjective, so there needs to be some, and I hear what you're saying, but they're also, it can't all be, you know, down to a pantone if it were color, right, but I will bring up that So at the planning board meeting last, the last planning board meeting, we had what I would say is a very basic project to raise a home down at Goose Rocks Beach. And that board meeting became very confusing, that no decision was being able to be made because the planning board members felt that the ordinances were in conflict or that the wording was in conflict or the interpretations were in conflict. And I just think that would be a good, I think it's a bigger conversation we need to have is regarding ordinances that are in conflict with each other now. And this needs to go to the planning board members because they really need, I appreciate the growth planning group, but the planning board, if they're going to have to be the ones making this, they really need to read this. And they need to be the ones who are actually going to come back next and say, I have lots of questions as to what's going on. Yeah, that's part of the process. That would make a lot of sense. [26:25] Select Board Chair: And I think I might be, so I'm again, I'm checking my understanding here. So the way I read when I went to the document from the Secretary of Interior, they're very strict on color, they're very strict on window type, and that was not our intentions. So if I'm on the planning board, I may use that, and to David's point, I may say, well, I can use it because it says I may use it, so I'm going to hold you to a color standard which was not our, like we have on our exception thing that says no, we're not going to hold you to a color standard, so we're in conflict if I'm interpreting it the right way. We're in conflict within our own ordinance potentially. Well, no, because the interior says yes, so you can get to a point where you hold it to a higher standard than what our ordinance says. We go into great detail of what is, what's included and what will be considered and won't be considered, and we talk specifically about street view, we talk specifically about not maintenance, we stop circuits specifically about not plantings, not color, so we've made it so that we are going after what our intention was is, again, I'll go back to use the phrase I've said a number of times, if you drive through our town now and then you drive through our town 20 years from now, you're going to make that statement, oh, that's a very cute historical, you know, look and feel New England town. You're not going to drive by and say, oh, that house used to be something else and it's still there, it may not be there, it just might have the Look and feel of a New England house that should be in this historical district. I just think it should be taken out. It's my opinion now. [28:22] Growth Planning Committee member: It's worth mentioning that there are multiple types of standards that the Secretary of the Interior guidelines are for, are actually four. So there's renovation, there's reconstruction, there's different ways of building a house, and there's different ways of being accurately historically accurate on a hundred percent or on a zero percent scale. And those standards are kind of meant to help a project move through those processes. Much of the performance standards that are actually the thing that the planning board would be reviewing are based off of some of those. And so these performance standards were our own hybrid of things, but they were generally from communities around the state that utilize some version of the Secretary of the Interior standards. So what we have for the performance standards may feel sort of similar to the rehabilitation part of the Secretary of the Interior standards, but with our own sort of Kennebunkport twist, which would be the public viewscape provision or some lessening of what those interior standards would require. But in general, this is like the part that talks about what I think is really where the ordinance is trying to go on looking at what the view scape is and ensuring that the form and mass and spacing of structures that are new or that are existing within the district stay the same. Those are all straight from the Secretary of the Interior standards. Standards. So those standards are just a time tested standard that has faced legal challenges and has been upheld in court, but we don't necessarily need to reference them because some of them may have our own version of that within these standards, within these performance standards. [30:32] Select Board Chair: So do you guys feel, so we went to the, so what I think I'm hearing you saying Ben is let me test again. So what I think I heard you say is we've already lifted this, the significant parts of the standard that our time tested legally, and we put our own Kennebunkport twist on them, and they're called out specifically in our ordinance language. So we are in essence grabbing from the Secretary of Interior's standard the stuff that is applicable to us, and we've written that out in longhand in ours. So we don't lose anything specifically other than a generic reference back to the home body but so it should be okay I think what I'm hearing you is that it should be okay if we do not have that reference because we pulled out the stuff that we're actually looking for I [31:22] Growth Planning Committee member: think that's fine okay and say and my reason for saying that is as long as we are comfortable with these performance standards that start at the bottom of page two and really the bulk of it's on page three that's ultimately what the board is going to be reviewing and going to be trying to make determinations on right so we if the board and the greater we feel comfortable with those performance standards that's where we would move forward with but if those are if those should look different then I would certainly encourage you to let the growth planning committee know that so they could talk about if those performance [32:03] Select Board Chair: standards should be different I think the growth planning committee has gone through this a number of times have been and I think they've sort of been listening to what the board's feedback was so you know colors been yanked out and you know Street views been the predominant player because again it's the look and feel if somebody wants to add a deck on to the back of their house and it's not a public street view they can do that it won't trip it won't trip the wire for them to come into the planning board for this approval, so it again it achieves, if the board is okay with this light touch of approach, this is what it is, it's street view, it's some aesthetics, we're not going to become color police, but we have a thousand foot radius from that house in both historic districts that you would want to maintain the look and feel of that area, so basically is a thousand foot circle around your place and you can just pop those around the neighborhood and that's, that's how we're going to try to maintain the look and feel. I do, I do [33:15] Select Board member: have a question to that point. I was going to bring it up talking the nearby building and talks about a thousand feet. When I look at the gap between our two established districts, I would, I haven't measured it but I would assume that's far less than 2,000 feet, right. I mean 2,000 feet is two-fifths of a mile, alright, so that's, so clearly that area is protected in terms of look and feel even though it shows as a gap between the two districts. Am I correct in that? [33:50] Growth Planning Committee member: Assumption no, so the gap. And for any members of the public that wanted to, if you were going to let the public speak on this, I do have maps here. Folks come up. But that gap that you're referencing is there are a handful of structures that are not within either of the two federal districts. So theoretically, permitting would not exist within that gap. So when the two federal districts were created, there were, there was a architectural survey that was done, and they determined that those bounds of those districts made sense for the [34:32] Select Board member: individual district. So there are no controls on what the look and feel of a new structure placed within that gap need to be. Correct. It also is worth [34:42] Growth Planning Committee member: mentioning that at least some of that gap is water because it would be Chicks [34:46] Select Board member: Creek. Oh, I see that. But there's a heck of a lot that isn't. They are in the [34:54] Growth Planning Committee member: historic districts. They are. And it's hard to see on this map with both districts, and I apologize. I never know which is the easier way to look at it, either both districts together or separate, because the district [35:06] Select Board member: saying just cuts off at the building, to cuts off right at the line of the building. So nothing, so again, if the, as I understand, as I've seen on the map, these lines that define the boundary are actually the physical structures of the buildings. So if you get to the other side of one of those lines, there are no there are no controls. So it's kind of, it's a thousand feet going only [35:37] Select Board Chair: exactly. So you're not, you're not gonna say you're at the end of the [35:42] Select Board member: district, you don't have to look a thousand feet one direction, and you [35:46] Growth Planning Committee member: still own a lot of property there too. I actually think it's opposite, but it would be up to the applicant to make this determination, or they would be the one that would be proposing this to the Planning Board. But I think that the applicant would be the last structure in either the most southerly of the Kennebunkport district or the most northerly structure in the Cape Arundel district would still require permitting, and they would have a 1,000 foot radius in which they could say, this is my neighborhood. And from that 1,000 feet, that's what they would be trying to propose the look and feel to the planning board. [36:23] Select Board Chair: I think that's something we have to talk about, because I would say it would have to be 1,000 feet within the historical district. So for example, if you don't, if you can't do a complete radius of a thousand feet, you do a thousand feet of whatever part of that pie. I could have a quarter of that pie of a thousand feet, you know, in or you know. So I think, I think it's something that we've got a hair, because what could happen then is in that gap space, play it forward how many years, who knows, but let's just, you know, because we are trying to achieve, we are putting forward an option to the voters to try to achieve, because we see headwinds coming down from the state about the density growth and what potentially could happen. So if that thousand feet, if that gap area that John is calling out between the two historic districts, just say that becomes flat roof places, pure windows, you know, completely modernized views, nothing wrong with those houses, but they're not That view, and then if I'm on the edge I can claim one of those modern houses as in my neighborhood, and I don't think that's our intent. Our intent is to stay within the historical [37:35] Growth Planning Committee member: Then the growth planning committee talked a lot about the distance, and there were discussions of 500 feet or 250 feet or a thousand feet is what they landed on. I think it certainly could be a conversation again with the growth planning committee of reducing that distance to better align with the gap within the two districts. John has a map that's zoomed in of the only map, the only copy I have, but a map that's zoomed in, if You want to share it with the rest of the board? [38:05] Select Board member: Can we change the, these districts anchor saying to, can we change them? Why are we, why are we having to do these crazy districts? Why can't we talk about Kennebunkport as we know it, as opposed to what somebody from the outside said was historic? [38:19] Growth Planning Committee member: So the federal districts are kind of their own thing, but for our local permitting, we could create whatever bounds we wanted to create. [38:30] Select Board member: I want to talk about this. There's some good places along Ocean Avenue, have some great old buildings. I think the old firehouse is not in this. It just doesn't make sense to me. [38:39] Select Board Chair: Right, so we talked about that, I think, at one of these meetings previously. I think in an effort to move for the June ballot, the GPC committee, we were trying to hold this line of the current things, knowing that we would go back at a later time and potentially widen the growth, widen the historical district as another ballot item later down. But we wanted to protect at the same time that 2173 and you know those ordinances changes are coming into our land use. We wanted to get something on the books that protected our current two historical districts. So it's not John that they're looking to say, you know, we shouldn't protect those. It's just these are the ones that are outlined right now. So let's get something on paper right now, and then we can talk about expanding if we needed to, you know, if the, if people wanted to do that expansion of the growth of the historic area. [39:40] Select Board member: But I do think this conversation is a great example of what the poor planning board is going to have to deal with if we don't have those answers before we adopt an ordinance. So it definitely needs more work so that something like that, we're just having this conversation, is not in front of a planning board member trying to figure it out. [40:00] Select Board Chair: Yeah, so I think the one thing right now is what we poked at is that thousand feet, and if you're, I think that the question really back Ben is if you're within the district and you got a thousand feet, somehow that thousand feet has to fall within the historic district zone, and if it doesn't, then you either truncate it to whatever it is within this, you know, there's probably many ways to get to that end point, or write language to do that to stay within the current box, and then that box if it ever shifted in the future, then you know the language could stay because it is within that box. I [40:39] Select Board member: just think this language has to be specifically brought before the planning board. Yep, and that's the next step. I mean, the general public too can start weighing in, but these, the people on the planning board are going to have to be able to ask any question they want on how they would deal with this. So I think that's going [40:58] Select Board Chair: to happen next before we go any further. Oh yeah, I think that's a good. Anything else from you? [41:04] Growth Planning Committee member: Guys, can I just share that if members of the public wanted to view the ordinance, it's up on the website, it's on the growth planning committee's page. You can also email or reach out to the planning department and we can get that to folks as well. And we have some, there's a comment from [41:21] Select Board Chair: the floor. Okay, Janet, I just want you to, I want to be on record that I said the appropriate [41:30] Public commenter (real estate agent): name tonight I have a lot of comments I'd like to make on this but I'll save them for the other meeting I just wanted to make a general comment that if I go to show something like this to a buyer there I've got an open house of people coming in there looking at this is very vague and I think this kind of gets at what you were all talking about if somebody's gonna say gee I want to buy your house but what can I can I and can't I do with it and they see things like rhythm of solids to voids in the primary facade, rhythm of spaces to buildings on the street, I don't think they know what that means. And this gets into just one other detail, I think this needs to very clearly spell out what you can and can't do, and I think that's the challenge of doing a historic light, it's, it's not really clear. Does that, do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, I think. You don't want somebody to have to go to planning and say, oh, no, that's not what we were thinking. [42:34] Select Board member: That's my concern. Yeah. Is that it's going to end up at the planning board, and the planning board is going to be the people who have to deal with this all the time. [42:42] Public commenter (real estate agent): Right. It concerns me in general. I think I had said at the growth planning meeting that I am not against doing this, but if I had seen this, if I had seen anything like this, I wouldn't have bought my house. So there are people that just don't want to have to deal with this. That said, I support going forward and trying to figure out something to work, but there are people that won't, and so it needs to be written very carefully so that somebody that may be buying in here can understand what they're getting into and make that decision. [43:11] Select Board member: What I would suggest, I mean, you have the language, right, and you should feel free to start commenting on it and send the comments to Ben and to us. [43:20] Public commenter (real estate agent): We're waiting for the meeting to... [43:22] Select Board member: Well, I mean, I think to some extent, it's a public document now, right? It's a public document and you are free to send an email or comment on any public document. I mean It's not that we can't take We get emails all the time, right? Mm-hmm. So I'd have to do an awful lot of writing of it [43:41] Public commenter (real estate agent): So, you know for me to write an email on it. I'm just saying [43:44] Select Board member: Everything and nobody has to wait until we decide we're having a public meeting at this point this right [43:49] Public commenter (real estate agent): Right, but this isn't the form either to go through because I'd have a comment on it. [43:54] Select Board member: We have plenty of time, and if you want to do it in your leisure, you can send it in at any point in time. We have to make this decision, so the more information we get from people who live in the district and people who have concerns or have questions, it's better to work them out now than send this to the voters. [44:08] Public commenter (real estate agent): Absolutely. Every single thing I see on here, I would say, is very vague, and I wouldn't know how to know what I could do with my home. can I put a brick patio in my front yard with chairs can I put solar panels on my roof can I take down a porch because my neighbor did we have a lot of things that have been done in town that are much more modern that really enhance the old stuff so I'm not real pro saying that everything has to look old or be a reproduction of something old [44:40] Select Board Chair: no it doesn't I think this sort of came up at the last GPC meeting too it 's maintaining the look and the feel of the port as it is today so a lot of the stuff within the historic district and the thousand-foot say around homes doesn't necessarily look old it has a certain type of historical viewpoint of a seaport and I can understand the appreciation I appreciate it the comments about the vagueness so what i'm thinking through is you know because we were trying to maintain the look and feel so do you do you go down to finite details once you go to finite details versus saying here's here's views of houses i right now i live in this colonial house i'm gonna i have a federal house right next door and i'm gonna my house is getting torn down i'm I'm tearing it down, and I'm going to give you a street view of a Federalist house because that's within my 1,000 feet. I don't want to look like a colonial house anymore. Okay, good, done. So I think that's what we were trying to get at versus when the GPC committee looked at all these other historical things from Bethel and Kennebunk and many towns that have districts, and they were so specific window types, of facades, you know, of that house of that period, and that's what we weren't trying to do. So yeah, so do we just say nope, you can't have anything that looks beyond a modern, you know, I mean, there's so at the beach. So what we're trying to say, because I know this question came up too, is why are you doing it, and we don't have a crystal ball, and but we do know that there is stuff coming down from the state that's that has the probability or has changed the landscape of our of our board within our historical district of the art of the possibility of what could happen on these lots and what happened at the beach, not that there's anything wrong with it, but there's two flat roof houses that look completely different than a New England Goose Rocks Beach traditional homes that are down there, and so after that happened the town went back and said yeah, you gotta, we're gonna have an ordinance where you gotta have a roof pitch similar to whatever house that you had to stay away from completely changing the whole view of the beach, and that has, you know, we've had house is a lot of houses torn down, but the view of that beach has maintained itself as a new england coastal beach. Nobody would go on our beach at goose rocks and say this now looks like, you know, a california beach or a hampton, you know, beach. So i think, i think that's what we're trying to do. So i'm, i think we'll work with ben, we'll work with the team, we'll get input in from the planning, we'll get input in from the people, and but we just have to keep the discussion going because I would like to see us get to a point especially for [47:57] Public commenter (real estate agent): the June ballot. I would just like to focus to it, if what we're, the problem we're trying to solve our density issues, that's different than we don't want a modern structure in that story district. That's why when I started watching the meetings I was hearing, gee, it sounds like we're just trying to implement some rules about what you can do versus what are the problems that are being brought on by next July's legislation, and we had talked about how in this old part of this more dense part the dock Square Historic District, most of the lots are three tenths of an acre, one tenth of an acre. You wouldn't be able to put four separate buildings in there. My house is right next to the post office, so maybe you're familiar with it, and I did the numbers on what I could put there. I would have to convert my house into three apartments with maybe [48:42] Select Board Chair: an ad you squished in the back. So on a 5,000 square foot lot in the new law you [48:48] Public commenter (real estate agent): can put four structures, right? And I'm about 12,000, but it won't fit because you have to have room for parking. Well, I think, yeah, there's, and then the permeable, and if you have four units you have to have a turnaround for the fire truck. So it, I would like to see, and I think maybe this will be part of the discussion when we get there, is putting up examples of what is the reality of the problem of the density in addition to what we want it to look like. I know on Green Street there's some apartment buildings where the church used to be, and there's four cars that park right up against the road. And we don't want to drive through town and have these structures that look the way we want them to, but have eight trash cans lining the road and when four cars or more squished onto a three-tenth of an acre lot. So I think there's more to consider related to the density issue. [49:43] Select Board member: I'd agree with that. [49:47] Public commenter (real estate agent): Thank you. That's it. All [49:54] Select Board Chair: right. So we're going to take, we're going to take this input back, we're going to look at, we're gonna, Janet, we're gonna look at taking out that one verbiage, look at the thousand foot and how can we keep it within what better words we can use, and then we'll get this in front of the planning board to get their heads starting to wrap around it, and anything else been that you think that we should be doing to get more clarity in here from what you heard tonight, no [50:41] Growth Planning Committee member: I think that makes sense, and I think when the board is thinking about this or members of the public are thinking about it, there are quite a bit of exempt activities which I think really gets to the crux of where you were hoping that this ordinance would go. But again, to the comment that you just heard, there is a fine balance between having something that is detailed and allows the board to be able to have some sort of standard that they can actually make a decision on and something that's vague. And the hope was that this kind of blends the two of those. But if the determination at the end of this process is that you ultimately want something that has more provisions in it. A lot of the communities that the GPC had looked at do have design guidebooks, which ultimately help. But that is a much more lengthy process, and it would ultimately be the higher of the restriction, but it would allow for better form more ability for an applicant to be able to understand what they're doing and more ability for an applicant to be able to say this is what the form of Kennebunkport looks like and this isn't what it looks like but that's not the process that the GPC has been going [52:08] Select Board Chair: forward with and so that's the problem of when we go down that path is now of a sudden we dictate to these people what their houses will or will not look [52:19] Select Board member: like but you know it's neither fish nor fowl you know it's neither it's neither defining what the look is going to be or handling the density issue it's it's it's kind of a half way that I think we're getting wrapped around that it's not specific enough to be enforced yet to do that would be a huge amount of work and restrictive on the on the people's rights so this is a tough one for me all the way around and I just want I appreciate that we're trying to get this to June but if this isn't ready to go I don't want something forced on the town on the residents in that district on the voters just to get something to June I'd rather get it right or as best we can then to just try and make it deadline so I think I just think it's gonna end up with a lot more questions before we're even ready to even talk about when it's going on the ballot. [53:20] Town Manager: Okay. So, I mean, I think that the next steps are we're going to go to planning board. We're going to give them an opportunity to look at it. We also haven't reviewed this with our attorney. Of course, we want it to be in a more firm format before we start that legal bill going. But one of the things that Ben and I have talked about is developing a frequently asked questions. I think it's hard to take this ordinance language and imagine what it will do. So developing some frequently asked questions that we can review with Amy to make sure we're interpreting our own language correctly and Having that for a public meeting Sometime in the near future. I think we would help people draw out those questions as well as maybe give us additional [54:04] Select Board Chair: Valuable feedback. Okay, very good. All right, let's move it on then [54:09] Town Manager: One question was, we were looking to have a public meeting at some time this fall, send out a notice to everyone in both districts. And the question was whether you want that to go back to GPC or would you like it to be at the board level? [54:26] Select Board Chair: I think we'd like the public discussion with the board. I think that would be just like we did with the buses. I think it's important for the board to hear directly for the listening session from the public. I do think before we set the date, I'd like to find out from the planning board, you know, if this is a complete throw up or is there something here, you know, that we can be working on, or if they say we can't even, right, we can't deal with this at all, because if they can't deal with at all, then I'm not sure what we would bring forward into the public right at this point. It would just be a massive [54:59] Growth Planning Committee member: amount of questions from the public. Yeah, and the planning board has been sent the ordinance, but they have not formally reviewed it in their meeting at all. Okay. [55:07] Select Board Chair: Okay. I think that would be great. All right. Thanks, Ben. This has been, thanks for all the work. I know it's been a lot of work. A lot of work, and we appreciate your guidance. Thank you, Janet. Thank you, Janet. All right. Number eight is the Climate Resiliency Committee. Committee. Solarization. Presentation. John. [55:31] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: Dave Jordan on the Climate Resiliency Committee. And I wanted to talk about a initiative that we're proposing to move a little farther forward that I've been doing a little research on, that is solarization of the town municipal electricity use. I have a short bunch of slides here I want to go through very quickly, but I'm happy to take questions at any time. We can, we can do it that way. Next please. So I know you're all familiar with this, but for those listening in that may not be, the climate action plan for the town established a climate committee, or climate resiliency committee as it's called. And among the initiatives in that plan was to look at the benefits of installing renewable energy generation for municipal buildings. So that is what we're gonna talk about today. We've been meeting for the last year and a half and doing some other things as well, but that's the topic of today. Next one please. So it turns out that the town had already been looking into this and had funded a study by UNE about putting a solar farm on the town landfill, and they did that work, and I can't vouch for any of the numbers here, but it's in their study. The bottom line is, yes, there is a sizable area there that would be an outstanding location for a solar generation facility that could provide a fair amount of power, but it is a long way from any three-phase power connection. And to do this level of power generation and distributing around the town, you would need three-phase power, and it will cost a lot of money to do that. So the conclusion of that study was it's, it's not cost-effective. I think it deserves continued consideration, but that's where that ended up. So our committee said, well, next slide please, is there something more modest we could do? And we considered, well, can we just solarize the town's municipal needs, taking advantage of net metering and single-phase power? So the first thing that we needed to do was to try to understand, what is the problem? And with the wonderful help from the town, we were able to accumulate all the data, assimilate all the data of our usage history, and there's 36 accounts, as I know you know, it's a little tricky to keep track of and pay all those bills, and it was a lot of fun to try to assemble all the numbers, but we did that. And on the next slide there's a, there's a summary, and there's a couple of things to point out here. Obviously we don't need to focus on every number, but in the first line is the sewer department, the sewer processing facility, and if you look at the bottom line, that's 52 percent of our power usage of the town. The next biggest uses, users of the pump stations, another 18 percent. So 70 percent of the power usage of the town's municipal power budget it goes to moving and cleaning up the water. The fire department, communications, which is a police department, and town garage, town office, and so on, I thought you'd be interested in seeing how those things pan out. They're all small percentages, but they do add up. Now, going up to the top line where it says rate, I want to draw your attention to that one because the power of the sewage facility is billed at what's called a demand rate. So because it has such a high power demand, they only charge $0.12 per kilowatt hour, but they have an additional charge for the kilowatts that you're using, the power you're using. So the bill is more than $0.12 per kilowatt hour, but the 12 cents is the only thing that's available for net metering all of [1:00:07] Select Board Chair: the other metered excuse me I don't follow that so what are we actually be [1:00:15] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: in charge then so they charge 12 cents per kilowatt hour but they charge something additional for the kilowatt level that you know how much power yeah not the power. [1:00:30] Select Board member: That number we don't really understand. The point is that in terms of trying to offset the cost of the electricity, the only target we'd have would be the $0.12, and they don't even allow that to go through a net meter, correct? I think they do. Ah, but it just would be the $0.12 we'd offset. [1:00:50] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: said yeah so the other user the other metered usage in the town is all at about 21 cents which we can net meter the only one that's not is the street lights they don't have meters on [1:01:04] Select Board member: all the street lights so explain quickly what net meter means so we're all on the same page okay [1:01:10] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: sure so net metering is where we can generate solar electricity maybe in excess of what we're using and the power company is obligated to give that power back to us at a time when we need it and they accumulate it for a period of time and then we use it like say in the winter time where we're not generating as much solar power the power company CMP gives it back to us so that's that's the way the regulation is written and that's why a lot of people like myself can have solar panels on our house we're only generating power during the time when the Sun is up and we're using it at other times but CMP saves that power for us when we're over generating it gives it back when we when we when we need it so we can take advantage of that as a town and but it 's it's only not It's less useful to do it when you're only paying $0.12 as to when you're paying $0.21. So the idea is that we should focus on where we can get the biggest return. So on the next slide, just to summarize that, we have about 52% of our power that is metered at 12% or $0.12. cents we've got another couple percent that's lighting that's not metered at all, so we can't really take advantage of that. The rest of it, which is about 46 percent, is all of the other municipal uses. So it's roughly half of the of the use of the town, and that cost us about a hundred thousand dollars a year roughly. So that's the that's that's what we're talking on a target, that's what we [1:03:08] Select Board member: we pay in electricity to CMP? [1:03:10] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: Well, that's right. The bottom line is about $190,000. [1:03:15] Select Board member: All the others. So $190,000 is what the town pays CMP for electricity. Correct. [1:03:25] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: So, next slide. I went to Maine Solar Solutions. Now, I am just a committee member. I'm not authorized to commit the town to anything or spend any money, and I made sure they were aware of that, but they were willing to help out anyway, and they looked at a couple of options. The folks at Maine Solar were the ones that pointed out that the sewage facility was probably not worth considering because of the lower net metered cost, but they looked at a couple of different facilities, and the one in particular that's shown here is the school street. We can still put panels on the sewer facility, but we're not powering that facility with these panels. That gave us a basis for calculating how much we might be able to do if we put panels around the town. I didn't want to push them too far. They gave me a lot of good help, but I didn't want to lead them on because they may not end up being the provider. A couple of things that they showed me was how much it would cost to put panels on a typical on a roof and how many we could fit on a typical roof like that, and also what kind of credits we might be able to get, and I say might because we don't know really what the future is for tax credits. There's also something called the renewable energy credit where we can sell the greenness of our facility and get some credit for that. Next slide, please. So I looked at several different perspective locations, and Lori was helpful in telling me which roofs were in better shape than others, and these are ones you're all familiar with, the sewer facility, parks and rec, fire stations, and so on. I also took a look at putting up in the in the spirit of the UNE project, could we put up a solar farm in the landfill or somewhere else? We looked at a couple of different locations and that's certainly a possibility. However, my initial assessment of that was it cost more to put up the structure and the cabling then, you know, it just adds to the cost. So it's certainly an option and it should be considered, but I'm not complicating this talk by talking about it today. And the next slide please. You know what this looks like, but my point is that I looked at all these different roof structures and I tried to estimate which what was the south facing portions of them to do this assessment. And next slide please. And so this is the summary of all the different locations and what I wanted to point out a couple of things. The bottom line total is on kilowatt hours per year is 443,500, which is about more than 90% of what the town's municipal use is other than the sewer system. If you add up all that cost of putting all those panels on all those roofs, it amounts to about $923,000, but you would have to do some repairs to those roofs to make that happen. So there's an additional rough estimate of what that would cost. And then there's an estimate of the potential credits. And the final line shows you what the payback time is. And typically the cost of just putting solar on, if you had a perfectly good roof, it would be between five and eight years, depending on what kind of credit you could get. But, you know, adding cost of roof repairs and so on might make it longer. But we're looking at between five to 13 years to get some payback on this. [1:07:49] Select Board member: So what's the life cycle of a panel solar panel? [1:07:54] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: So they last decades. So I think they're guaranteed for 25 years. [1:08:00] Select Board member: And can last longer, so 25 is 80 percent, they guarantee at least 80 percent, isn't that what how that works? So if you have a roof that was put on a building in 2015, you know, [1:08:15] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: that's actually pretty old, right? Yes, you might, you might consider that, you know, do you want to replace the roof? And also I think to some extent these panels help extend the longevity of a roof because they kind of provide some protection. But each roof needs to be assessed on its own merits as to whether it is useful or not to put the panels on. [1:08:42] Select Board member: And that's something the solar folks are very familiar with, that they've run through doing that for years, making that assessment to where is it cost effective. You don't have to take it off to put on a new roof and put it back, sort of thing. Right. [1:08:55] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: Right. And again, all I'm trying to do is get a kind of a top level idea of what we're talking about here. I'm not an expert. I'm not an engineer. You know, we definitely need to get those kind of experts involved in refining these numbers. I have one. If you can go to the next slide, please. Yeah, this just summarizes what I just said. 1.2 million dollars would be the total cost if you repaired all the roofs and put in all the panels, and maybe if you were lucky you could knock that down to seven hundred and sixty seven thousand if you got all the credits. Yeah, more than 90 percent of our non sewer municipal use, so yeah. [1:09:50] Select Board Chair: Yeah, so 90% of 48%. [Dave Jordan: Correct.] So it's 98% of 48%. [1:09:59] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: We're saving, in round numbers, $100,000 a year-ish. Right. Obviously, the advantage of going with a solar farm, it might cost more, but you could expand it further. We could look at the sewer facility and the school and other things. [1:10:17] Select Board Chair: So a solar farm always has to go back to the three-phase? Is that always going to be the issue? [1:10:23] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: No, but if it's a large facility like is going to provide power outside of your own build network, then you need to have the ability to spread it all around the town, and apparently you need three-phase power for that. [1:10:45] Select Board member: Yeah, so we have to be careful with our terminology. A solar farm would imply a very large ground-based facility. So like the landfill. Like the full landfill, and that's where you need a three-phase. But a ground-based facility next to a building could work fine if you didn't want to put it on the roof, right? [1:11:01] Select Board Chair: And I think when we went through the town hall stuff, from what I remember, when we looked at the solar stuff of it, the credits were only available when the solar panels were or by the municipal building, for a municipal. They had to be on site. Yeah, right. [1:11:24] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: Yeah. I'm sure that's the case, yeah. All right, and the last slide is just a summary of what we've been talking about. So we're talking about potentially savings of 100,000 a year. It might take an investment of up to, I said 1.5 million, that's if you add some standalone solar panels in addition to or instead of on roofs. Roofing repairs are included in these numbers, but they're just preliminary. I'm not a professional, and of course we haven't taken into account what the accounting department would look into, which would be cost of money. Electricity rates are only going to go up. It's going to cost to finance, and so on. So my recommendation is that if we want to move forward with something like this, we need to gather some more information, and the folks at Main Solar or Revision Energy will be happy, I think, to work with us to make some more, credible assessments, of, the, of, the possibility. And they might even suggest some alternatives that, I haven't thought of when they really look at it. And also we really need to look at what's, what is the, condition of our roof in, detail. So that's, that's as far as I could take it. And I'm, I'm hoping that we would like to look at this a little bit further. [1:12:57] Select Board member: So, again, as I say to my fellow board members, this is basically the art of the possible. The committee is not asking for a decision tonight, whether to go or not go, but rather for your agreement to say that this might be worth going, let's get some more numbers, let's engage as a town, and obviously the committee wouldn't do this, we'd work through town hall to engage with them to have them give us some more solid numbers on what would it cost. No, they being the solar. Okay. Yeah, and I'm happy [1:13:38] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: to continue to volunteer to support the town and anyone with this as a rep from [1:13:44] Select Board member: the CRC. Yeah, sure, it would, well, this, it depends, but it would float up, we'd float a bond is what we do. It's a bondable thing. So that's how it would work. Sure. But what I'm hearing John from David is we're not there yet. Absolutely. So we're not really talking about a bond at this point. Not at all. Not just yet. [1:14:09] Select Board Chair: So I'm going to interject something. So by the way, David, thank you for this presentation and for all the work. You're welcome. It's very enlightening. [1:14:19] Select Board member: She explained it in a way that's easy to understand. [1:14:21] Select Board Chair: Yes, and kudos for putting it together in a very easy and digestible presentation. We were grateful for that. So to my fellow board members, sometime in the month of October, Lori's brought forward to me some potential things called Kenny Bunkport goals, which would be more or less some of our strategy tentacles that would be sort of pulled from the comprehensive plan and things that we have been working on that we think are core. And one of them was there's probably three items of these ten that are foundational to our town, one of them being develop a long-term municipal facility plan. And so we're going to bring all this to you for you reading, and then we'll discuss when all board members are at a meeting so that we can have full board participation and their thoughts. So this facility plan sort of plays into this, right? So this would be discovering when windows have to be replaced, when doors have to be replaced, when roofs have to be replaced, when HVAC systems have to be replaced, when floors have to be replaced, when toilets have to be replaced. So we would have for each building a maintenance plan that would feed into our capital budget planning discussion and just as we're doing just as Eric has this wonderful plan for our road maintenance we would have a similar wonderful plan for our building maintenance so to David's point we just wouldn't build a building and let it stay we would build a building and actually work to maintain it actively we have been doing good but it's been up as Laurie said it's been up to the individual directors that live in those buildings to bring items forward when they need to be fixed so this would get us ahead of the game get us planning so to that point the how if you agree to this at some discussion in the future the how would be to bring in a you know an engineer to go through our buildings and do the assessment at that point we could add in a discussion about you know looking at the structural i know when we did the town hall about this building the option about this building we did Have Owens look at the roof for structural for panels for this building, and it was going to have to be shored up and work was going to have to be done, so it's not only the life of the roof, but it's this is it structurally sound to hold to hold the panel. So I would like, you know, I would think as we're sort of melding together, this would be a first step, you know, so that then any company that if we wanted to talk to anybody would have this as this is what the town has to look at and do you say in the engineering study be [1:17:16] Select Board member: the first step or maybe we could do these in parallel I would hope would that make sense that while we are doing the engineering study the committee through Dave and with town support town hall support could reach out to the solar providers and say if we're thinking of this what would the cost be what are the possibilities in terms of actual roof surface number of panels connectivity the kinds of issues that Dave wasn't able to run to ground but we could get them to give us a feasibility. I think what I am hearing is that the town needs to take on a capital awareness of our town assets and have someone, an engineer or a, come in and look at all these buildings and figure out what is the useful life of these buildings and the equipment that is within them and come up with a plan with that. I think you could incorporate, if you were to modernize it and include solar, that's a fine way for them to sort of incorporate that into the overall plan. But I'm kind of with what Mary Beth is saying, is I think that as stewards of the town's assets, we need to, and we don't have this right now, we need to come up with a fully engineered study of our buildings and our infrastructure, like we do with the roads, and figure out what is it going to take to maintain and upgrade some of the buildings that we have so that we can plan more efficiently. I do know in my work a lot of municipalities tend to build buildings and they kind of neglect them. And then everything comes due at the same time. And I think if we were in a position where we could actually get a better handle on that and we could plan budget-wise and incorporating solar maybe into what that would look like, I think that would make a better use of our money at this point in time. Well, again, we're not talking about spending any money. No, I'm not talking, so I just want to make sure, I mean, I agree that we're not putting solar panels on any of the buildings right now, but I don't have a problem incorporating it, but I think we do need to look at overall, what are we doing with our assets? Absolutely. No question, but I, that, so that doesn't get in the way, certainly, of the committee moving forward with these solar companies to find out what the actual cost would be. [1:19:41] Select Board Chair: So would that include do the solar companies want money for these studies? No their proposals and I think what I'm still not Convinced about and I've talked with John about this. I've read the report a couple times I thought about it and I talked to a John about it. I don't understand And again, we don't have to solve this question tonight, but I don't understand the onus to do it all at once so for me I'd say okay yes when we looked at the option for the new town hall we looked at geothermal we looked at solar we looked at renewable energy sources solar one for a cost basis perspective and that's what we brought forward you know to the town so when we're redoing our buildings why wouldn't it be you know so if we're putting a new roof on a building why wouldn't we just incorporate that at that time and then our dollars are spread out over instead of having to go out and take a bond we're just saying when this roof has to get redone or if it has a roof age that makes sense we would look at it at this point why would we want to do everybody at once because then we're putting this chunk of change that has to be to Alan's point when these things go you know down to 20% or whatever or the roofs have to be repaired, you know, we're at another big chunk of change versus dollar cost, you know, averaging [1:21:11] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: that over. I certainly don't know that there's any economy of scale in doing them all at once. It might be easier to get a bond to do them all at once, you know, that might simplify matters on your end. and there may be factors i'm not aware of but it seems to me that one could attack each facility independently yeah because that would be more what i was thinking about dave [1:21:40] Select Board Chair: Is you know as we're when we go through our budget process, once we get this foundational facility municipal plan together, you know that will be part of our capital stuff that starts getting put aside, and then part of those things that would be spent on would be when a building roof has to be redone or something that has to be redone. Now if you said something like, oh, for each building we can be independent of the structure, then that's a different discussion, but and I don't know if that's an as an option, you know, like for ground for each building. Well, you know, right now we're tethered into the building, so that sort of causes you to pause because you're like, okay, now I'm tethered into the building and that's a life and foundationally, why would we want to keep doing that big cost? Why do we keep doing it? I don't understand why you think we [1:22:31] Select Board member: keep doing a big cost. Well, because at some point, we're going to [1:22:35] Select Board Chair: redo all these panels at once and then as our life, we're going to make all these changes to these roofs at once because I don't think any of these roofs are structurally sound to hold solar panels. And so then you're doing that cost [1:22:49] Select Board member: You're not redoing it, 's a small cost to remove the panels and put them back on so you're not rebuying the panels again. No. Okay, I just want to be sure you understood that [1:22:58] Select Board Chair: No, but you're redoing the roofs because you sort of went and did a round robin and all your roofs are being done now versus when we put our facility plan together. We most certainly wouldn't want to redo our roofs all at once [1:23:09] Select Board member: Let's see what the engineering study says in terms of the age of the roofs and what needs to be done [1:23:13] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: and then we can go from there. Yep, and I know that having worked with particularly with main solar solutions on my own home that one can go to them and say, gee, I'm thinking about solar, can you figure it out for me and tell me what it would cost, and they'll be happy to do that for you without charging you. It's a different matter when we go from the town, you know, you can't pick them ahead of time. I don't think I don't know how you would you go about that, so I would we'd have to get bids we'd have to go to multiple places and ask them [1:23:53] Select Board Chair: the same question. Sure, so I know we're sitting at 12 and 52 percent of our usage, 12 cents and 52 percent of our usage. What I didn't understand is that charge that we don't see, is that like, could that be $0.08 somewhere per whatever that all of a sudden we're up to this $0.20? [1:24:18] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: Yeah, and actually, when I looked at the bills, and I have to admit, you really have to study them to understand what's going on. [1:24:27] Select Board member: Are they CMP bills? Yes. When you can figure that out, let us know. [1:24:30] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: It appears that for the sewer facility, there's the $0.12, and then there's an additional charge based on the power not the power not the kilowatt hours but the kilowatts that you use and when you add the two up it amounted to about 20 cents maybe a little less because when I looked at the total bill for the sewer facility it was less than 21 cents but not by too much so the way the regular as it was explained to me by the folks at Main Solar the way the regulations about net metering are currently written you can't net meter that power part of it only the part that's the what in our case is the 12 cents and it's a regulation thing and that could change someday where we can net meter both elements of it all right so just [1:25:28] Select Board Chair: I'll stop asking questions after this one but I just because I read this a lot so I've you know I've got too many questions in my head so I'll just this is my final one though so is there a thought process about the wastewater plant because we have land there yeah we have land that we want to save for build out but we also probably have some other land that we could throw some potential I'm just shooting from the hip here could we generate power at that facility for that facility but it's more than that facility needs and then we're in essence since selling it back to CMP and getting a break. [1:26:07] Select Board member: Well, that's net metering. That's net metering. You just defined net metering. [1:26:11] Select Board Chair: I know, but then do we get a break in essence? You know, that's a... [1:26:15] Select Board member: Does the town get a break? [1:26:16] Select Board Chair: Yeah, does the town get a break? Does that get you over your... [1:26:21] Select Board member: Do we get accredited as a customer of CMP? Well, yeah, we do. I mean, so that's how net metering would work until you actually are generating more than you're ever using, then that becomes a little bit of a different question. And then you've come to a different tier. But I don't see us getting that many panels. That would be a lot of panels. And the concern with the land around the... [1:26:40] Select Board Chair: For the wastewater plant. [1:26:42] Select Board member: Around the wastewater plant, we'd have to cut a lot of trees unless you put it out on the McKay property, which I don't think you want to do. [1:26:48] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: But I think maybe what you're suggesting is if we have a base, because presumably that plant runs 24-7 and consumes power all the time. It might be that if we took a look at it, and I don't know that I have that information, but there might be a baseline amount of power that it's using. You know, let's say 100 kilowatts. I don't know, 100 kilowatts. I'm just pulling a number out of the air. If we put in enough panels to cover that base and then bought the rest of the power, we would be solarizing at least the baseline of power, and then we're using the electric company for the rest of it. So that would be an interesting approach. [1:27:31] Select Board Chair: Yeah, it just seems like, you know, you got 52, to me, it's like the one thing that I'm having problems with is you got 52% of your power usage right at one facility, and that's one facility that we potentially could have some area around to do something different, or it's a facility where you could look at one roof and do something to get, if that's a way to then get the biggest bang for the buck. [1:28:00] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: And unfortunately, solar only works during the day, so that's why this net metering is such an important factor because we can generate enough power. If we want to generate enough power for our needs, we have to generate more than we need at certain times during the day when we've got sun and during the summer, and we have to depend on the electric company to save that and give it back. [1:28:25] Select Board member: Or have batteries, and we don't want to spend for those. But we don't want to spend for those because this makes it battery-less. [1:28:31] Select Board Chair: That's another way. Yeah, no. [1:28:35] Town Manager: So can I just note that the sewer treatment plan, all of our buildings we have contracts to purchase power, and so we do them every so often. It could be a one-year contract. It could be a five-year contract. Depends on when we sign and what the best deal is at that time, so the contract we have with sewer is a contract that will end and then we'll need a new contract. There is the question always with the wastewater treatment plant whether you do a demand contract or fix, they give you two choices, and it's it's like insurance, it's risk, right, so you are deciding what is going to be your best avenue, and what happens is when we, when there is peak demand in the state, and you are at your peak demand, your demand charge goes up. So like, you know those days, we get notifications all the time from CMP, this is gonna be a really hot day, all the air conditionings, and they send them to us, demand customers, and say, beware. And of course, those always come in summer, and that's our busiest time. So we do have the option of going on our generator instead, and we have done that a couple of times rather than use CMP power. But it is a fluctuating cost. I am not aware that does not mean we cannot enter an agreement with CMP, but we would have to negotiate that, and of course it depends on what the contract you have at that point in time is and the [1:30:03] Dave Jordan, Climate Resiliency Committee: regulations on net metering, which yeah, apparently is one other thing is that a [1:30:09] Town Manager: A couple of years ago, maybe it was three, Revision Energy did do a project looking for the schools. The schools had asked them to come in and look at all these solar projects, and they had the same issues. Roofs. Roofs needed to be repaired, and so they were kind of putting it in their long-term municipal facility plan. But they did come in and talk to us about doing a consolidated school with a wastewater treatment plant joint project, and that they could put panels on the school roof as well as some in the field, and really benefit both facilities, so that's just another thing to think about. [1:30:46] Select Board member: Good, thank you. Yeah, so can I ask if the board would be, would give the nod for David again with the town support as part of the CRC move forward, just to get further information on what is possible with solar on our town facilities? I don't have a problem having them continue to look into it. Thanks. Alan? I'm thinking. Smell the wood burning. Smell the wood burning. I would, as far as this goes, it stops with the, just the walk and see, right? Yes, absolutely. We're not committing to moving forward or how to fund it or anything. There's nothing. [1:31:51] Select Board Chair: Yeah, and I think I would like to see, instead of maybe looking through the lens of all buildings at once, to look at Biggest Bang and, like Laurie said, if there's some buildings that would tether together, and it may be complex to do the school and the waste butter, But there may be some gems within our town that, you know, we could stay away from a bond and put it into just our capital budget. [1:32:18] Select Board member: I won't vote for a bond for this. I don't have a problem doing what you want to do, but I would rather see it do it in steps, you know, take the best first and then work down from there over a four or five year period where we can just write a check for it. I don't really want to do a bond first. Or definitely incorporate it. I mean, this study that we're going to do, we haven't approved yet, but we're thinking of bringing it up. I mean, that should be part of that, looking into that. But the important thing to remember when you think of a bond is that this is actually generating, saving the town money as they are working. Right, but you're also paying for the bond. You're paying for the bond, but you're paying on 20-year money when you can get this whole thing paid off, the whole amount paid off in much less than 20 years. So it's something to look at. We just factor how does this make sense. Yeah. Okay. [1:33:18] Select Board Chair: Thank you, David. Thank you, David. David, thanks for all your work. Sure. All right. Moving along. So now we have considering item 10 is to consider adopting mooring regulation. [1:33:30] Select Board member: Nine. Unfortunately, we have one more yet. Okay. [1:33:34] Select Board Chair: Number nine. God, you guys are really sort of picky tonight, aren't you? All right. Item nine is consider a non-for-profit request to operate Dock Square parking lot during prelude. So, as you know, the last few years, we've allowed nonprofits to operate Dock Square parking lot on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the two weekends of Prelude. So, we've closed these operations after Halloween. Lori, do you want me to talk about this, or do you want to talk about this? [1:34:04] Town Manager: It's up to you. You're doing great. Okay. [1:34:06] Select Board Chair: The Prelude weekends are the major drivers for tourist traffic, and the people – so, we have allowed this. We've had the not-for-profits I think some of us have attended those in terms of working so town staff comes through and trains the volunteers each not-for-profit and they work the lot and assisting drivers addressing issues so the town has received $20,000 950 and revenue and 25 and 20,000 450 and 24 we share these, as we've discussed, 50-50 with the non-for-profits. So the question on the table is, do we want to keep those operating conditions, and do we want to make a motion to approve a non-profit request to operate the Dock Square parking lot during this season? [1:35:01] Select Board member: I don't have a problem with it. Nor do I. It's worked well. I will make the motion to approve the non-profit request to operate Dock Square parking lot during Prelude and share the revenue 50. [1:35:12] Select Board Chair: 50 second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Okay. I was approached by a [1:35:24] Town Manager: non-profit outside of Kennebunkport and I did say that, you know, in the past we really focus on Kennebunkport nonprofits. I don't know if you guys have any [1:35:33] Select Board member: feelings on that. Where were they from? Across the river. I would only do that if there was not, if there wasn't a Kennebunk Port, then it was an opening, because no Kennebunk Port wanted to do it, then I would have no problem with that, but I think Pennebunk Port should have first call. Kennebunk Port non-profit, based non-profits have, to me, preference, but if it's a Kennebunk non-profit that serves the people in Kennebunk Port also, I don't have a problem with that. Or they're serving the three towns, I don't have a problem, but would you agree that the Kenny Bunk [1:36:05] Select Board Chair: Port still should? I think they get the priority. Yeah, I think there's a couple not-for-profits in Kenny Bunkport that haven't been involved and I'd like them to get involved, specifically Chems, so I'd like to air it out and make sure that we knock on, you know, we make sure that we get those into the queue because I think it's important for them. Yep. Is that an answer? All right, item 10, we're considering adopting mooring regulations. So we discussed last meeting the incident that we had down at Goose Rocks Beach in August and it came to the conclusion that we needed some mooring language change. Did you want to talk [1:36:44] Town Manager: about this, lawyer? Yeah, as we discussed at our last meeting, the question was whether you wanted to bring forward an ordinance or a regulation policy that the board has the authority to adopt. The guidance I received was that you would like to consider a policy regulation for now and then consider a harbor waterfront ordinance amendment in June. So the mooring installation removal and relocation regulation I have before you, I did review this with Amy and she had no issues with it if you are happy. With it, then you can adopt it tonight or you can consider it for another meeting. After that, you also see the mooring permit holder guidelines, and it was suggested that perhaps whenever a mooring is given out, we need more guidance for people. And so that is not a part of the regulation, but more a brief overview for people of what is necessary. Mary Beth also noted that we should probably note on the guidelines where you can launch a boat, and launching a boat at Goose USARC speech is not authorized, but that there are other locations. [1:38:02] Select Board member: Namely, our boat launch. I don't have a problem with this. Nope, I like it. And I would prefer it to be a regulation because you can always change it if you need to change it. I like that. [1:38:11] Select Board Chair: Okay, and I think this was a good find in terms of a hole between us and the state. So I will entertain a motion. [1:38:18] Select Board member: I'll make a motion to approve the more in reg. I'm sorry? [1:38:27] Carol Morris, public commenter: My name is Carol Morris. I live in Kennebunkport. Today you guys may have heard there's a storm coming in, and there was someone on the beach getting their boat out on wheels, and I assume they also probably put it in on wheels, and I was unable to get my boat out because I left it a day too late, so I may be selling splinters, so we'll see. But people launch on small boats on that beach on those wheels, you know what I'm talking about, yeah, and so they're not talking about like driving a trailer down there or anything like that. I just don't don't know if that's something that you want to consider, because that will be a change for some people. I've launched my 17-foot rowboat I'm on wheels now. I've launched it over in the river, but it's hand [1:39:16] Speaker M (unidentified): It's hand-powered. It's hand-powered. We're talking motorboats. [1:39:20] Select Board member: Well, it can be motorboats. [1:39:22] Carol Morris, public commenter: Okay, that's all I wanted to know. Wait a minute. [1:39:24] Select Board member: Some people put a small motor on a Lund and do it by hand by the wheels, too. [1:39:30] Town Manager: I think this is a subject we probably should discuss another night. Okie doke. But I'm not planning to change operations if you start a speech. I think we're just trying to, for people who are unaware of the regulations, make it clear that you can't just launch it anywhere. Yeah, this individual had a large boat [1:39:49] Carol Morris, public commenter: Well, yeah, and you don't want people launching boats with swimmers. They're the right [1:39:53] Select Board member: Driving through Jeffries or Dyke Road as a trailer. That's [1:39:57] Carol Morris, public commenter: The regulation is the guidelines [1:40:08] Select Board Chair: The guidelines was to give guidance in terms of, you know, awareness of where things can be launched and can't be launched, so that's and that's just [1:40:18] Select Board member: normal operating all right motion yes I move again that we approve the Maureen [1:40:26] Select Board Chair: regulation policy further discussion see none approve thank you item 11 is to appoint Robert Schuller to the sewer advisory committee. He's a new resident. I talked with him on the phone. He's been involved in the sewer committee and is in different formats. He's interested. He met with Peter and Eric. He went on a tour of the plant. And so he's interested in filling one of these openings. And again, the sewer advisory committee really takes effect when they're doing the budget work and they go over the plan with Eric. [1:41:12] Select Board member: He sounds like he's well qualified. Yes. Indeed. [1:41:14] Select Board Chair: So I would like to make the motion to appoint Robert, since I talked with him, to the Sewer Advisor Committee with the term expiring June 27th. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Everybody. All right. Item 10 is a consideration for a market pay rate adjustment. so as we've been meeting over the last few months you know it's come attention to various towns within Maine the labor rate or the labor market in terms of what it's been doing to municipal workers so with that the select board has engaged in multiple areas within our town employees and comparing compensation packages across other similar towns and so we met in an executive session to remove to review the town managers compensation in comparison with similar municipalities across York County we look through the lens of what our town requires in terms of our summer terms our long-term residents being a coastal community and then with our current town managers manager's years of experience and what she brings to us far beyond some expectations. So I would say since we've reviewed that, I would like to make a motion to approve the amendment to the town manager's employment agreement providing a 5.6% increase to the town manager's current base salary and a town contribution to the Mission Square retirement may equal to 15% and this would be effective as we've done to the other ones back to our fiscal year start so it would be effective July 1st 2026 second any discussion well-deserved okay all in favor great thank you thank you all right, other business time. Nothing, ma'am. I'm all set. Okay, I've got one thing. So a while back when we had the bus discussion, we originally had talked about using $100 payment fee for the drop-off and then the pickup, so that was going to be in our system. We had gotten feedback from the bus companies that we were sort of catching them after they had already done their rate payment schedule for the season, and they've already taken reservations. And so we acquiesced and went down for a ramp up build, you know, to introduce them at a $50 drop-off pickup rate, you know, one $50 for both, to include both. Yeah, inclusive. So my question to you is, we are entering the fall season, and I'm pretty sure this is the time that we started engaging with the bus companies. So I would like to hear the board's opinion about going to the $100 and notifying the bus companies that we would like to go to this rate, which was our original proposal. For next year. For next year, for the next season, for 2027 bus reservation season, but I'd like to hear from the fellow board members on your thoughts. [1:44:49] Select Board member: We had mentioned that. I think that price was, if I remember hearing correctly, it was understood as something that was within the market, and I think I would, I would support that, so. I have no problem. I think it would be fair. It gives them enough time to start that conversation with them, and I think we should have a follow-up conversation to how the season went, right, and maybe a larger conversation on how this would be a revenue generator for the town in terms of its tourist support service, if you will, that there may be a time to start having the conversation of what other things can we do to sort of generate money for the town from the tourists who come to visit, so that. May be a larger conversation. Okay, so is. [1:45:46] Select Board Chair: This an agreement for, do we have to make a motion? Yes. Okay, so then the motion on the table would be to, well, I thought, okay, sounds like we're all, we would, we would, yeah, we would say we would let them know that as we originally discussed, we're looking, we are going to be raising the rate to $100 for 2027 bus reservations season. Per visit, which means. [1:46:18] Select Board member: Both pick up, drop off, pick up, twofer. [1:46:22] Select Board Chair: So you can drop off and pick up $400 in 2027 season. So that's the motion on the table. Second. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor? Okay. [1:46:37] Town Manager: That's all I had. Yeah, just speaking of buses, Yanina and Hope have been meeting with some website developers about taking our Simply Book system and turning it into something more refined. We had a couple of obstacles, one being doing the pick-up and drop-off together, and so I think they're having some good luck, and at some point in the future we'll come back with a proposal. Okay. Great. Great. So the only other thing is I'm passing out to you an item that came to me today regarding a local sales tax initiative. So as you know, we've talked before about a 1% sales tax that would stay local. For decades, this has been discussed at the state level and never been approved. So right now, Greater Portland Council of Governments, which is like our SMPDC, is working with AVCOG, which is Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, on a proposal and an analysis. So I printed off the analysis for Kennebunkport. So one of the issues in getting this passed at a statewide level is that it is seen as winners and losers. so if you are South Portland with a lot of commercial density you are going to get a high amount of revenue and if you are Alfred main you are not going to see that and so there is a large rural constituency in the main house and Senate and that's why this never gets approved so this proposal help me you're [1:48:16] Select Board member: not going to see it because there are less people, but are you hurt? Is it just that you therefore not get as much money from the state? Does this affect in any way what the state would be giving Alfred? [1:48:29] Town Manager: I think the concern always is that the state giveth and the state taketh away. And even though the state statute says that they will share 5% of the revenue sharing, they don't. They have decreased that down to 2% in the past 15 years and then brought it back up slowly. So I think the concern is that the state is going to look at all revenues given to local municipalities when budgets get tight, and I think it's also like we, I think that rural communities do not see [1:49:08] Select Board Chair: the pain service centers and vice versa. So right now, when I mean we've had this discussion because the whole previous year we had an education and our sales tax and what doesn't come back to us and what goes to other towns, this one specifically would stay with us. So 65% would stay with us, I believe, is the [1:49:38] Town Manager: percentage. So if you look down here under the boxes that say 1.2 million 36 six cents etc., under there it says one percent on taxable sales made in Kenny Bunkport. So another thing is what's the definition of a taxable sales? And so usually these initiatives will define what they're taxing, but in this scenario they're saying they would estimate we'd generate 1.6. Then Maine Revenue Service would take a 1% administrative fee, and 65% would stay with the locality where it was raised. And then 35% would be put into a county pool. And then what they do with this money in the county pool is they give it back directly to residents who are most at need. And so you can see what Kennebunkport would get back. So when it says we get back 1.28 million, that is different than the number 1 million 30,000 which is up above, because they're counting what would come back to Kennebunkport residents under a certain income level. So the net, so we're actually getting, sorry, so we would really see in our coffers one million but two hundred and fifty five thousand would come back to residents, supposedly like a check to a resident. So what it says here up top is that we would potentially avoid thirty six cents on our tax rate, so it could decrease our tax rate. Avoided increase if you had a $740,000 home, which is considered a median home. And then how much is going to come back in refundable credits. So if you go to the next pages, and you can kind of see a little glance over this, but you can see a renter or homeowner. So let's go to the homeowner which is the third group down at the $500,000 home, so you can see their incomes and what they put, what the added 1% tax. So if I am making 50 to 75,000, I'm having a $500,000 home, I'm gonna lose just under $300 because now I have to pay 1% that I never had to pay before. We may know what you're paying [1:52:13] Select Board member: that 1% on what, good, on everything you buy. So you're assuming how much I'm [1:52:18] Town Manager: gonna spend, right, got it, got it, got it, based on your income. And then what you would get back in a refundable credit. So in this case I would get back a hundred and ten dollars in a credit, which puts me a direct result net 189 negative. So you can see the lower your income the more your credit is, and the more your income you don't get a credit at all. Then you talk about what was avoided in taxes, and what you avoided in taxes is what did that revenue the town kept, so it decreased your tax rate. So this is a little convoluted, you can kind of look [1:53:00] Speaker M (unidentified): it over. So when you, when you go back, when you go to the last page, it talks [1:53:29] Town Manager: talks about 33 of 64 modeled scenarios where a Kennebunkport household comes out ahead, 31 scenarios where it does not, nearly all above the $80,000 credit phase-out. So if your income's above $80,000, you're probably going to pay more in taxes overall because you're paying 1%. But you do keep that money locally. So this is a large analysis. You can go to this website and I can send you the link, assuming that you're buying, so that's for [1:54:02] Select Board Chair: When you buy local, when you buy anywhere in the state, when you buy, I would say when you buy [1:54:07] Town Manager: anywhere, you're now paying the one percent, but then the other amount is what has been generated locally, and you can see in this scenario every town in the state and how their scenario works. So I just wanted to give you, this is a working draft. We've talked a lot about the sales tax initiative and whether or not this is something you might want to think about, become engaged in if it does become a proposal, or want [1:54:39] Select Board member: to have input on. 31, the 31 that you're paying, what did that include? You're paying less on property tax, so the property tax is factored in here, right? Well, it would probably... Because you're offset. You're offset. Well, you potentially are offset. [1:54:54] Town Manager: What they're doing is they're showing a decrease in property tax because that revenue would be kept... [1:55:02] Select Board member: But when you're saying that out of my pocket at the end of the day, it factors both what I'm going to be paying in the 1% and what I've not paid. [1:55:11] Speaker M (unidentified): What you would save, yes. [1:55:13] Select Board member: And this rebate that supposedly comes... [1:55:16] Select Board Chair: And so if I order from Amazon, do I pay the 1% local tax rate? [1:55:22] Town Manager: It's not about what you're paying locally. It's about, I mean, there's two things going on. One is just what you're paying because you're paying an extra 1% because the whole state would pay an extra 1%, right? [1:55:33] Select Board member: So it's a 1% sales tax. [1:55:35] Town Manager: It's saying everybody's going to pay an extra percent. It's just how that 1% is going to be used, whereas some initiatives have said you have a local option. So Kenny Bunk could choose to do it and we choose not to. This one is assuming everybody's paying one percent extra and how that one percent gets used. So it's assuming whether you pay, whether you're buying Amazon or you're going to LLB or you're going to the local store downtown, what you [1:56:03] Speaker M (unidentified): potentially could pay in additional state tax. This doesn't help me help us get revenue from [1:56:10] Select Board member: from people who come to our state to vacation. Well, it does if they buy. It would if they're here on vacation and they buy something, but it's also going to take you. [1:56:18] Town Manager: Well, what do you mean? Who do you think is spending all that money here? [1:56:21] Select Board member: What I would rather see is something where the hotels and the restaurants and the high end of where the tourists are frequenting, that there's a local tax on that comes into the town, not a sweeping 1% on everything I purchase. That's my point, is put it on what the tourists use. [1:56:42] Town Manager: So I'm saying that if you're trying to get state legislation passed, you have to make it meaningful to everyone in the state, and not everybody is tourism-based. We have not been successful at getting any legislation passed. So this is something to consider. I wanted to make you aware of it. [1:57:04] Select Board member: Well, something we could talk about. I mean, it's not like we can do it, [1:57:14] Select Board Chair: The motion for the warrant so moved, second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Great. Dave, motion to adjourn. All in favor? Good night, everyone.