Lisbon Planning Board Postpones Hearing, Extends Solar Approval

[0:08] Liza Kimball: Okay, we're live. Welcome to the October 8th, 2026 Lisbon Planning Board meeting. I'm calling the meeting to order. I will start with a roll call. all. Mr. Lehman, the chair, is excused. I'm Liza Kimball, vice chair, and I'm present. Mr. Carr, I'm here. Mr. Houston, I'm here. Mr. Cole, I'm here. And Mr. Fellows, I guess we're voting on something. Mr. Fellows, I'm extending voting rights for the meeting. For our very large audience tonight, the rules are posted on the wall should you like to read them. The most important meeting rule, I think, is that the, there is, this is not like a public discussion forum. If we have a public hearing, which we don't this evening, you're welcome to speak at the public hearing, or if you're called up to speak. Otherwise, you can speak to staff about getting on a future agenda. Written communications, I don't think we have minutes to approve, so those will be forthcoming. I'm sure there was a public hearing on the agenda. I've been told that there was insufficient notice to hold the public hearing, so that will be postponed to a future meeting. Do I need to do anything procedural for that, or no? No? Okay. Unfinished business was related to the public hearing, so that will similarly be postponed to a future date, which brings us swiftly to new business. [2:15] Planning Board member: I was just wondering, are we set to have it, does everybody know it's got to be posted again? Does the staff know? [2:26] Liza Kimball: I do not know the answer to that, but I see a nod in the audience from our council liaison. [2:32] Planning Board member: Madam Chair, if I may, I spoke to the town manager earlier today about an unrelated matter, and she brought this up and said it's going to be renoticed and a new date will be set. [2:42] Liza Kimball: Okay, great. Great. and we don't know what that date is yet. [2:47] Planning Board member: I think we have the option of the next meeting. That's the plan that I knew was that they're shooting for the 20th? So two weeks from today. Okay. [2:57] Liza Kimball: So let's plan for two weeks from today then. Okay. And unfinished business. I am trying to get, we have, sorry [3:21] Planning Board member: technical difficulties. do we have a memo for this? there's an updated findings of fact. this is an older issue from 2025. I see that I'm just looking for the case number. so There's no memo, just a letter. The top of the findings of fact lines up. There's the case number. Okay. [3:51] Liza Kimball: Okay. So, which brings us to unfinished business, case 24-12, site plan review, tier 2, next stamp. Boatenham Road, Solar Array, map R03, lot 9. Is there someone here to speak on this matter? [4:08] Planning Board member: Hi. It's designed for shorter people. [4:21] Henry Farnham: Crushed out a little bit. How about that? Henry Farnham on behalf of Lisbon Falls Solar and Nexamp. As you mentioned, we have a previous Tier 2 site plan review approval that was initially applied for in 2024. There was an updated findings of fact in October, I think the date is actually October 8th, 2025. After that review, the Planning Board approved the site plan for the project where I'm here on behalf of Nexamp at Lisbon Falls Solar to request an extension to that one year deadline from that approval. As I noted in my letter, we have had, you know, quite a few unexpected design,, or sorry, excuse me, construction plan delays. So we shifted to a bit of a new vendor set up for us, and it's with two different companies. And really, the whole point that we did that is to ensure a healthy design life of the project on the site. And so there were a few delays where APA, one of our vendors, and Pasity were working from outdated plans. And, you know, to get to that point, we've had to go through and do quite a bit more diligence on the site. Now we're set to have our plans actually released tomorrow. I checked in with our design team today and they're going to be completed then. At that point, we'll prepare the building permit application for review with the Code Enforcement Office. We also will need to work with Public Works to get a driveway permit approval for the site, and then once those are in, we'll be ready to mobilize for construction on the project. But the goal of the eight month extension is to get us through the code enforcement and building plan review. I know the town is without a code enforcement officer right now, and yeah, I think hoping to begin construction in the mid to late winter range. And then the project is projected to connect with CMP around this time next year, actually. So late October, early November is what [6:52] Planning Board member: we're going to schedule. Thank you. [6:59] Liza Kimball: I'll start down the line. Mr. Fellows, do you have any [7:03] Planning Board member: any questions? The only question I have is that long enough, for sure. [7:12] Henry Farnham: From what I have, yes, that is long enough. I actually, the eight months allows us to begin and kind of work out of the winter condition construction, and so that's why I've requested the extension to June 8th specifically. [7:27] Planning Board member: Okay, that's cool. You've granted for other solar projects extensions before. For granted, they're usually driven by CMP, not necessarily by construction issues. So there's precedent for this. I don't, I don't have any concerns for it. Okay, I have nothing [7:43] Liza Kimball: I don't have any issues with this either. [7:47] Planning Board member: Do we do a motion? I need to put one of the extension requests. Okay. I will make a motion that we approve the extension request. I'll second it. Okay. All in favor? Passes 5-0. Best of luck. Thank you. It was easy. Good luck. Okay. Okay. [8:12] Liza Kimball: Moving along to other business. Business. Does anyone have any other business they'd like to discuss? [8:23] Planning Board member: I have two small things. First of all, I'd like to introduce our new assistant town manager, Lee J. Feldman. He was introduced to town council the other night. I don't think you start for a week or two yet, sir, right? [8:34] Town planner / code enforcement officer: Good evening. Right. I start on the [8:36] Planning Board member: 19th. And he, if I understood correctly what they said the other night, you're going to be our sort of our overseer for all things codes. Yes. [8:44] Town planner / code enforcement officer: The first year of my tenure here will be focused on code enforcement, planning, and economic development. Hopefully taking a look at all of our processes and procedures and seeing if there are things we can change to make it better for the citizens here in town. [9:00] Planning Board member: That would be welcome. We've been trying to get planning and codes together in one place where you can pass things around and make decisions [9:08] Town planner / code enforcement officer: rather than wait weeks. Absolutely. I currently am in an office where code enforcement and planning are in the same operation. So I'm very familiar with getting that done. [9:19] Planning Board member: Do we have a code enforcement officer yet? [9:21] Town planner / code enforcement officer: That's not for me to say at this point. Otherwise, I'd be happy to say something for you. [9:28] Planning Board member: Next meeting, we'll bug you about that. Okay. Sounds great. Nice to meet you. And the other small item is the other night at town council, there was concern over what is the space now for SpringWorks. And what if that were to be purchased by someone within the marijuana grow industry? There was a great deal of anxiety of there, and it's under our purview, it's all things marijuana there are discretionary or conditional. Additional. So council felt that they could prepare for the purchase of the property with the new developer and not maybe sweep the rug out from the developer down the road by making a change. And Nick, would you mind? Sure. So, yeah, essentially the vote that we made was unanimous was to for the diversified development zone was to remove marijuana cultivation facilities specifically. That seemed to be the outreach that most of us had gotten from members of the community was that neighbors wouldn't want to deal with the smell. That was really what it came down to from a community outreach perspective was odor was the big concern. So that's how we went through. It sounds like there are still some standing questions on procedure and whether that from the planning board first I intend to look into and talk with the chair about and see what we have to do, yeah. That was my point was procedural and the point was to amend the zoning ordinance it's supposed to come before the planning board it says it can the planning board can either suggest it or the town officers can do it or a petition can make it happen. But approval if the planning board says fine, let's do it, then that's okay. You just need a majority vote. But if the planning board says no, then you need a two-thirds vote. My point was that the planning board can't say no if it's not considered. And that's where I think the procedure failed out. Well, like I said, I'll work with the chair and we'll maybe we'll have legal do a review of what went on if we have to come back through and do it you know the way it's outlined then we will and for what it's worth Nick I was thinking about this after the meeting the other night and I don't know how many of us were here when we were doing the weed thing but we were it was kind of the wild west and we were making it up as we go and we left a lot of things conditional because it gave us the latitude to say yes or say no. You know, granted, it's kind of a saying that without a reason, it would be tough. So if we look at down the road, we may want to look at our marijuana ordinances that are more abutting the more inhabited parts of town and take a look and see changing some line items here and there, if possible. I think one of the things, a concern that I heard a couple of times in talking to a couple of people was, you know, I did bring up the fact that it was conditional. Planning board has the ability to, you know, it's one of the checks that goes on. Are there emissions from the site that would be offensive to people and things like that? And people always brought up the fact that their light pollution was so bad that nothing was done about that. And so I think that made people concerned that the plan wouldn't have enough power or whatever it would be to stop something like the odor from a large marijuana grape. Not to sound like sour grapes, but it was more meetings no one showed up to. I understand. So like I said, from a procedural standpoint, we'll go back, we'll look at it. If we need to revisit it, we will. I think Chris made the point that if the auction happens and there's no issue, then if somebody wanted to buy it that has a marijuana connection, then there's no reason not to rush it. There's no reason to rush it and to send it down like it had been. So we can hope that. It'll be a Charlie's dealership this time next year. That's all. Anything else from anybody? Nothing else. Any [13:50] Liza Kimball: other business? I'm done. I [13:57] Planning Board member: did want to make a comment. It relates to the degree. One of the other things that came up the other night was wellhead protection, and specifically economic development had some questions about a particular property, and he couldn't clearly identify what wellhead protection zone that property was in. And then since then, we discovered when the town changed the website, it left off Google Earth in favor of GIS. And when it did that, those same maps were eliminated from the website. So the Google Earth KML files and all that had to do with wellhead protection are gone. I don't, we couldn't find any other evidence of them, except that I happened to have them at home on my computer. So I was able to resurrect the thing, but I sent a message to the town manager today and to Ross to say, hey, let's see what we can do to fix this somehow. I don't know if they can be converted to GIS or what. New speaker they do exist in hard copy form in the comprehensive plan maps, but that's [15:10] Liza Kimball: an old document now. New speaker I am nearly certain that there are ways to convert those files. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think town staff is the right path to connect you to IT. [15:23] Planning Board member: I just wanted to say it because I think we need that back. If we're considering, or anybody's trying to consider development, they need to know where they are in that. So, the GIS right now only gives flow designations of either under or over 50 gallons per minute, and that's all that's on it. [15:41] Town planner / code enforcement officer: What was the property that you were sequestering? [15:46] Planning Board member: It's one we've dealt with before. I'm not going to get specific. [15:53] Liza Kimball: I'm glad you have that. I say that because [15:56] Planning Board member: I don't think they want to be forthcoming yet. Alright. Anyone else? [16:05] Liza Kimball: Other business? Okay. Okay. There are no code endorsement officer items, I assume? Okay. If there is nothing else, I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you. And a second? Okay. All in favor? [16:26] Planning Board member: I was waiting to see if you could say something else. It was a tough meeting. This I'll tell you, but I'm pretty sure I know. Yeah. Off knees all's land right.