Zoning Board of Appeals Meeting - March 2, 2026

to the zoning board of appeals meeting of March 2nd, 2026.

Gentlemen, we're in session.

Uh, at this time, I'd like to call upon everyone to stand so we can pledge allegiance to the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I'd ask that we all remain standing in a moment of silence of as of our soldiers past and present. Most importantly, the four four soldiers that we lost this weekend.

Thank you.

[snorts] I'd like to announce that the next regular scheduled meeting for the zoning board is March 16th. Um, and that will be one of them will be the 40B project.

Uh, and I can also announce that the meeting after that will be on March 23rd and that's also well the first one that I mentioned the one that's on for March 16th is Sherbrook Farms the 40B hearing.

Um, the one on March 23rd is the Hawthorne the residences at Hawthorne.

That's also on for March 23rd at 6:00 p.m. at this room, room 304. I'd also like to announce that this meeting is being recorded by Dartmouth Community Media.

So, at this time, um, I'm going to ask gentlemen if we okay with taking a couple of these out of order.

Yeah.

Um, so the first matter we have on is a continued case. I'd like to move on because there's a matter that's they're requesting a continuence.

It is actually Bono Court.

U, it's a special permit case. So, we'll open up the case and then we can I'll read into the record what we've received.

Special permit case ZSP25-6.

The petitioner applicant is Jenny Reynolds and the owner is Tracy Nunan, manager 8 of Bono Court LLC.

Uh the subject property is 8 Bono Court, also known as map 121, lot 19. The property is located in the general residence district. The matter was legally advertised. We already waved the reading of the abutters list. The petitioner in this case is Tracy Nun Nunan who's seeking a special permit proposing to construct a 576 square foot addition to a non-conforming structure built in 1950 which is required to

increase the non-conformity of the structure. The current structure meets one 10-ft required yard setback and the front yard setback of 20 ft. The addition is proposed to be built 11.9 ft from the street. They're seeking relief on the article 10 section 375-10.4D3B 4 D3B setbacks and section 3756.2B2 non-conforming structures. The property is located at 8 Bono Court in a general

residence district and identified it. I already read that. Okay. So, uh, gentlemen, we did receive a letter.

Where's the letter on this? Is this the letter you just gave me? Oh, yes. This is it.

It says, "Dear Miss Vieiraa, I am the applicant for the special permit scheduled before the zoning board of appeals for 8 Bono Court South Damoth, currently set for Monday, March 2nd. Due to current weather conditions, the proposed addition cannot be properly staked in advance of the hearing as previously requested by the board. Snow cover and ground conditions prevent accurate layout and meaningful

visibility for a sitewalk. In order to fully address the board's request and provide a complete record, I respectfully request that the hearing be continued to the next available meeting date. approximately one month out.

Please let me know if any additional documentation is required to process this request.

All right. So, gentlemen, I believe we have people here in the audience who had spoken the last time. I see some familiar faces who had spoken the last time um that this matter was on. This is the first time that they're asking on this case that they're asking for requests. I know that they didn't appear at a prior hearing, but that matter was dismissed and it required them to file over again. Um, as

as is usual, it's our customary practice to grant people continuences. Um, especially given some of what's gone on.

I know I did indicate that I wanted to go by and take a look at the property. I wasn't going to attempt to do that last week. I know I haven't done that. Um, but I wasn't also aware that they were requesting a continuence until a little earlier today.

So, um, it is a public meeting. If there's anyone in the audience who has any additional information that they'd like to add since the last time and they came before us, I invite you if you'd like to come before the podium um and add anything new or if anything new has transpired or anything different has transpired since the last time we were here. If there's no one, then I'm going

to turn to the board to see whether or not they're willing to entertain a a request for a continuence. We would somebody would put forth a motion and then we could either approve it or not approve it. Oh, so someone wants to come forward. Yeah. Bruce Brooks, owner in uh Three Bunnel Court. Um after looking in the plans, and I wasn't even aware of this, um her whole addition is actually

going off to the side of the the existing house where why doesn't she just go straight up, you know, and so to even see the need for this is I think mute because I mean she's got a foundation. There's no reason why she can't go up or second floor to accomplish what she wants. wouldn't be encumbering, you know, incumbent encumbering on anybody else. And to even be wasting our time here and hearing this is, you know,

we're working around somebody's working around the system and that's the problem.

Well, I don't know if that's accurate because working around the system would not would be avoiding us. They can't avoid us, right? But the way they're classifying it, instead of going for uh zoning variance, which normally requires, which I've had to go for before, when I wanted to elevate an existing building, I wanted to go up, but since I was already non-conforming, I had to do a zoning variance.

Right now, the interpretation is different since we've changed building commissioners. Over all the years that I've been doing this, that's the way it was set. Now, it's not. So now you turn around and you come for a special permit because you can't show a hardship for what you have. I I'm sorry. It's not We're not the ones that make that determination. That d that initial determination made by the zoning

enforcement officer who is the building inspector, right?

And I think that there have been other interpretations very similar to that and in similar circumstances in which he has interpreted it of requiring a special permit and not a um not a variance. This is not a unique property to that effect.

So, there have been other instances, but I understand your concern and I'll be honest with you, I have difficulty sometimes differentiating the two given the application. Um, thank you. Well, and obviously you can we're going to we're going to address that concern the next time they come before us. We haven't picked the date yet. Um, oh, I think there's someone else who'd like to speak. [snorts]

And I think you announced the last time you were just here as a as a resident of Dartmouth.

I'll do the same. Yes. Heidi Brooks and I'm here as a resident of Dartmouth. So, um I was very concerned about the drilling of the pylons that was discussed for the first time the last time we were together. Um, so I did speak to um Tim Barber at the DPW and he is concerned because of what that might do to the sewer line that runs alongside that property, not knowing how

close those pylons are and is wondering about can we get a bond from this um individual for future damage because should there be a rupture at some point after that. So, I'm just throwing that out.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. Um, Attorney Farri, you're the one that actually sits You're the one that actually sits on this. I really probably should not have opened up for public comment unless you had sitting, but you're here to listen. You're listening to everything because he's the one that's deciding on the first one.

Albert the first one. Oh, we did.

Okay.

And sit on the second one.

All right. Fair enough. But we got you both here. We got you both here.

Just the last one.

Good evening.

Evening. Pamela Troy Redern um at 5 Bono Court. I just want to point out um we've all been here for every hearing. Um there's been no effort even till today by by the applicant to reach out to the neighborhood and talk about concerns um in a meaningful way.

Thank you.

All righty. So let's assume we had an available date. What would what would we have available to us?

Well, we don't have anything to match and then we have to discuss because March is out.

March is out. We have not that might be the end. We're going to look at the end of April.

This we have circumstances that we can't we'd have to discuss the date. You want to discuss them now?

Yeah.

Okay. The only thing that we're going to have available is the 6th of April, the 13th of April. And that's and we can go on the Thursday on the 30th.

We can't do the Thursdays, right? Um I have the 23rd. I don't have you.

But the 30th, right?

We can put on for the 30th.

Excuse me, Michelle. Yes.

The 13th of April is a select board meeting.

So, we don't have the 13th.

Okay.

I just went through that for last month.

Oh, we'll make it simple. Make it April 30th.

All right. So, okay. When Susan gets here for the 40s, we'll have to discuss that.

Why?

Because we put on at 5:00 anyway.

This will be at 5. They can do the 40 be whatever.

Yeah. She wanted to talk about it because of the continuences.

That's Hawthorne. Okay.

Okay. Exactly. Exactly.

So, I'm looking at April 30th, gentlemen.

It's fine with me.

All right. I'll entertain a motion.

I make a motion that we continue special permit ZP25-6 to April 30th at 5:00 p.m.

I second that motion.

All in favor? I I the eyes have it. It's on [clears throat] for April 30th, folks at 5:00 in this building.

Can I get clarification? Mr. Yman was not he was for the first We have Mr. We have attorney uh right but when he said he was next he was here only for the v for the variance but not for the special attorney far will be present.

I just wanted to make that clarify that that would be the board that would be voting. Thank you.

All righty. So, do you want to move on to the next one or you want to What's the next one?

Well, we could go to the Mr. Williams.

Well, we can move on to the next one.

You want to move on to the next one?

All right.

So, moving on to variance case ZAV 25-12, which was continued from January 22nd, 2026. The petitioner's Paul Cussen. The owner is also Paul Cussen.

The subject property is one Cleveland Street. The property is located in the general residence district. The matter was legally advertised in December 18th and December 25th. We previously have waved the reading of the abutters list.

The petitioner is seeking a variance to construct a one-story addition 9.5x 25.7 9.5 by 14.2 kitchen extension and a 9.5 I I should explain in the aggregate the addition is 9.5x 25.7 ft. It will consist of two separate structures per se. One is the extension of the home, a singlestory addition to the home that's going to be a kitchen at 9.5 by 14.2 and also a 9.5 by 11 12 porch extension that encroaches

into the setbacks. It also encroaches into the required line of sight triangle and exceeding the maximum amount of lot coverage. A variance is required for the following. to encroach the setbacks from the required 20 feet to 6.7 on Cleveland Street. A variance to construct a visual barrier in the intersection site triangle setback and a variance to exceed lot coverage from 50.9 to 54%.

Article they need relief on the article 375-10.4D setbacks intersection site triangle setback 3B and article 375 10.4F percentage of lot coverage. So, gentlemen, I don't know if you remember this. This is one in which Mr. Cussen was here. Uh, he explained to us I don't have I saw the current plans.

You have the plans on this?

I saw them on a computer, but I did not print them out.

I do.

I'm a little concerned. I'm not sure where the changes were from the last time. [snorts] Oh, is he not doing the actual front part any longer?

No.

Okay. So, that's why I was confused.

I mean, you want because it was two plants. It was two plants part of that packet.

If it's a PBS and then Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, the problem I had, what I don't understand is this is why I had difficulty. This plan was already dated September of 2025. So, he has a plan with September 2025 that's ident that's different of the same date. Well, I'm I'm sure I'm going to find out why that's five. You mean?

Well, it says here September five. Oh, maybe there's a latest revision that 22 22 226. That's what that is. revised the 226.

[snorts] Okay, I see what they did here. Fair enough. [clears throat] Mhm.

I'm going to have to change some of the language I put together. So, I'm going to call upon the petitioner, their representative to come forward and plead their case.

Hi, Tim Cson on behalf of my father Paul Cussen. Um, we made changes to the plan.

We eliminated the porch and after meeting with the the new plans, after meeting with the uh bill inspector, he informed us the only thing we actually required is the lot coverage um variance. So we can eliminate I think we the car plan shows two.

So hold on. I I can't hear you very well.

Sorry.

So you are changing it. So now you're only requesting what? Lot coverage.

That's it.

That's it.

And it's still the same percentage of 54 to whatever it's listed there.

It's currently at uh it's going to 52.7.

So it came down a little bit coverage because he took the description didn't say any of that. Okay. So now you you you believe that you only need relief from law coverage.

That's what the inspector told us. Yes.

All right.

Being done by varants and not special permits.

Yes.

Okay.

What's your take on that?

Yeah. Uh well, he doesn't need the variance on the uh what's the lot coverage? 50% lot coverage. He's already over.

Right. But you're asking for a variance or a special permit? Special permit for the lot coverage, right?

Uh says variance variance from section h okay that's what the fact told us we need all right variance is variance but you need a special permit you're already existing non-conforming so right we've always done it by special permit okay whatever okay no we'll give you a I mean it's it's fine but he's eliminating the variance on the setback because he's matching the existing frontage on this on the uh

I get that yeah And that why but the thing is but it's but it's supposed to be 20 ft from a street and he's only 11 point something.

Uh the existing Yeah, you're right.

I know inspector Florida. So they have to do with uh he considers the frontage on uh on the street and we cuz we thought we needed that also but he he told us we did not need it. So because we had really requested it but he told us we don't need it.

So it's 10 ft on on the side.

We've historically treated frontage as frontage and you got to comply on both sides. Yeah, I'm not sure.

We would agree and that's why we had the request there, but he was very adamant that we didn't need that. So that's why we have the request there.

Our engineers thought we needed it, but the building inspector disagreed.

All right.

Well, I have a much more elaborate, you know, some findings that I put together just for suggestions for the board, but I'm going to have to change some of that stuff because this has certainly changed.

All right.

Well, you know, the existing is on the other side. I can't see it. It's 5T from the side. So maybe that's why he's saying he's already 10 ft from the sideline on each side existing structure.

We know it's non-conforming law. We know it's a non it's a it's a pre-existing non-conforming law and it's a pre-existing non-conforming structure.

Um and given that it's an expansion of that, I figured at the very least it would have required a special permit or at least a variance on on this dimension here. But that's okay if he's saying you don't need it. We we thought we did, but he's telling us we don't need it. He was very adamant that we didn't need it.

But you might have to explain that one to me at some point. But what I'm saying, they already applied for it, right? So why don't we give it to them anyways? Because I think this is the power plan does ask for it and and it states for those the two that you're talking about. So we're fine if you would give us We thought you needed it.

We thought we needed it.

Well, I think you need it.

I think you leave it in there and request it then.

I uh Yeah, I think you I think you should request it. All right, let's let's leave it as is and we'll request it then.

Okay. [snorts] All right. So, this is a public meeting.

Um I always allow people to speak. I don't know whether or not I don't think there was anyone either in favor or in opposition the last time we this was on in January.

Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak either in favor or in opposition to this request?

All right. All right. So, I can report to the viewers at home that there are people here in the audience, but no one is coming forth to either speak in favor or in opposition. All right. Can you um you have those suggested findings?

Oh, I guess one of these is mine, right?

All right. So, gentlemen, these are just some proposed findings I put together.

We might have to alter this a little bit because some of the request has changed since the last time I reviewed the paperwork.

So one, the subject property is located at one Cleveland Street and is known on the town of Dmouth Assesses Map as plat 117 lot 169.

The property has been owned by the Custoen Living Trust since April 2020.

The property is located in the general resident zoning district wherein a dwelling must be 20 ft from a street line and this lot has frontage on Cleveland Street and Bridge Street. The property is a pre-existing non-conforming lot measuring only 9,720 ft in size with a pre-existing non-conforming structure. The petitioner owners seek to construct a one-story addition measuring 9.5x 14.2 ft on the south side of the

dwelling for a kitchen. Now, I had something here about expansion of a covered porch, so I'm going to have to remove that. Mhm.

[snorts] So I'm going to put for a kitchen reducing the existing front setback from 20.9 to what is 11.41 is 11.4 11.41 what is it?

No that's a sign but you're talking about front crossing it out.

All right. Okay. 11.4. Yeah 11.41.

Oh you have it. Okay. 11.4.41 street. Yeah. from Bridge Street. Okay. Y [snorts] All right. The proposed addition will also create a visual barrier to the intersection site triangle setback and will also increase the lot coverage from 50.9 to 54. Now, we don't need the visual barrier 7 because you did get rid of that covered porch area. So, I can remove that.

We'll also increase the lot coverage.

Yeah.

Increase the lot coverage from 50.9 to 54. 52.7 52.7 change the 52.7 Mhm.

It would have been 54 if we had the porch.

Correct.

Okay. The 52.7.

The petitioner seeks relief from article 3.7 375-10.4D2 setbacks wherein the dwelling must be 20 ft from a street line. Let me get rid of the other one.

It's no sight.

And article 375-10.4F percentage of lot coverage. The board finds that the petitioners have demonstrated that they satisfy the statutory [cough] [clears throat] requirements of Mass General Law 48 section 10 variances. So gentlemen, I'm open to any interpretation on any of these. Okay. On the four-prong test, there are circumstances related to soil, shape, and topography that especially

affect the subject property that do not generally affect the zoning district in which the structure or land is located.

The subject parcel is a pre-existing non-conforming lot with a non-conforming structure. Many of the lots in the general neighborhood al are also non-conforming. Allowance of the addition within 11.41 ft from Bridge Street is in keeping with the setback of other lots in the general area.

Two, a literal enforcement of the provisions of the bylaw would involve substantial Well, if you think I could do something, we could do something better, we could do something better. I'm I'm always open to this. Okay. I think given the the the location of the existing structure, the only the only possible uh location for expansion would be on the south outside of the property.

Given the location of the existing and maybe the uh the existing floor layout because you're expanding a kitchen so all you have your plumbing and that everything's there. Yes. Yeah.

Nonconforming structure in relation to the lot and given the layout of the existing floor the existing floor dwelling. How about to the dwelling? The layout the floor layout of the dwelling. Okay.

The dwelling because he's expanding a kitchen that plumbing on that side. So floor layout of the dwelling future expansion is limited to the south side of the property.

[snorts] All righty. Good luck reading my writing.

All right. Second prong. A little enforcement of the provisions of the bylaw would involve substantial hardship, financial or otherwise, to the petitioner. The addition of the covered porch, which is not true.

The addition, let's put the dwelling addition in a location other than the south side of the house. Right.

The addition the addition of [snorts] well the would involve substantial okay modification to the plumbing system all that so that would great you can I wasn't thinking about going in that direction but that's fine um well let me just read what I have first then we'll decide how we're going to rewrite it I put in here the addition of the kitchen will improve the usefulness of the property and its

compliance with current building code the widening of the port. Well, there's no porchess and egress.

All right. So, what did you want to indicate there? So the um placing the addition in any other location than what it's shown on the plan would uh necessitate substantial u u uh modifications to the existing plumbing system and substantial modifications. s [snorts] existing plumbing systems. How's that?

And for Yeah. Which would involve substantial hardship to the petitioner.

That's the hardship.

That's what we'll do.

Financial. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Right.

Yes. Resulting in a financial hardship.

Substantial hardship.

And substantial hardship.

All right. Three. [snorts] Desirable relief may be granted without detriment to the public good. Granting the variance will only promote use of the property, safe use of the property, and the proposed construction improvement to the dwelling will not pose a detriment to the public good. [snorts] The variance will not nullify or substantially dergate from the intent or purpose of the bylaw. The proposed

construction of the character and the improvements are in keeping with pleasing aesthetics and will not derate from the intent or purpose of the bylaw.

I'm open to any suggestions, Mr. Cussen.

I think it's the property. We're improving the property. It looks better.

It fits in well with the community. So, all right, Mr. [snorts] Hume, is there anything else you'd like to add?

I was just thinking you might want to put in that's consistent with the other properties in the neighborhood.

All righty.

[snorts] Character improvements. I put R in keeping harmony in harmony with the Well, I put in Okay. R in I'm going to put are in keeping with the character of the of the neighborhood.

All righty.

So, gentlemen, um I guess I would need a motion at this point to close the public hearing.

I make a motion that we close the public hearing on case Z-25-12.

Second.

All in favor?

I I I the eyes have it. So now, gentlemen, what's your pleasure?

I make a motion that we approve uh variance case ZAV-25-12 uh with the uh facts and conditions previously stated and the findings as previously stated.

Second.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it.

Thank you.

All right, moving along. The next case is actually the first case that was listed. I took it out of order. some of the others out of order, but this case is variance case ZAV25-13.

I have previously uh recused myself on this case and I'll have to do the same.

So, we're going to take a short recess so we we can reconvene with Mr. Schuba as the acting chair for this hearing and I believe we're going to need attorney Faria on this as well because you heard the matter before. Is that correct, Attorney? All right, great. All right, short recess.

Question. Our next uh case on tonight's agenda is um use variance zav2-13 and this case was continued from February 12th, 2026. Uh the applicant is um petition is John Williams and the owner is Margaret uh Tomquitz. The subject property is located at 576 F Corner Road and it's located in the office industrial district and this case was advertised in the chronicle on November 20 2020 2025 and November 27,

2025. Uh we did open this hearing before and we read into the records all the comments that we had from various uh departments and uh the petitioner owner is seeking a use variance to allow the relocation of a corporate office to the subject property along with the operation of a masonry construction business. The proposal includes the construction of a garage warehouse for the storage and repair of vehicles used

in the business uh is a contracted dis dispatch yard as well as the storage of equipment and materials necessary for use in the masonry trade and this was under section 375.22.2 allowed uses allowed use and 375-5.2A 2A definitions and um I believe at the last meeting attorney Williams you came to this board for the relief on the use variance and we didn't have any plans we asked that you prepare a um at least a

site plan that we can look at the uh proposal just to get an idea what you're trying to do I know at the meeting you explained that this is going to be like a contractor's yard and uh mostly for employees to be parked there after uh business. And if there's any storage of materials that would be hitting or or uh behind the building or in a way that's

not going to affect the uh uh the u the zoning district and uh we did receive uh a site plan uh we have on record now and uh I if you don't mind if you can explain to the board what you're trying to do.

Okay. Um we have we have um John Romanelli uh for regarding the engineering of the site so he can show you he can show you a little bit easier. So um we didn't have a site plan and and and my client had spoken to someone who supposedly went and checked the wetlands and uh and there was nothing on the uh the wetland mapping and the concom. When we had the

site plan done, uh, we we retained a botist to go through there. It turns out there's there's there's pockets of upland, but you can't it's very difficult to get to them. So, when when I first came in there, I knew there was an issue here having a contractor's disp dispatch yard, right? You know, in this in this new newly created zoning district. So, um, we we had planned to

put above and foliage up in front um, so you wouldn't you it it wouldn't be visible to the on FC Connor Road. But if you look at the plan, um, there's that's that's that's the building and it's back as far as you can get with the setback requirements with the Concom and the parking's in the front. So it's it's difficult or almost impossible at best to to create enough foliage so you don't see that. Um they

do have um most of most of the materials uh Fernandes Brothers Masonry they do schools, hospitals and they do have um the materials are dropped off at the site. They're not dropped off at at at the location here, but when they're done, if there's two pallets of bricks that are done, they they got to bring them back to the to the site to use them again. Um, so maybe um maybe it'd be

good to have uh Mr. Romanelli just go over the Sure.

you know, limitations here. Go ahead.

Oh, you you John Romanelli Zenith Lance.

So, as as Mr. Williams discussed when [clears throat] you look at this mass microphone.

Uh can can you get closer to the microphones, please? Thank you.

Uh as I was saying, there were no mass wetland mapping on this site. And [clears throat] if you were to drive out there and look at this, it looks very it looks like it's all uplands, especially there's a tree line right here along this uh wetland line here. And if you look at it, there's tall pines and whatnot. It didn't look like there was going to be any wetland vegetation to me out there.

Uh we hired Steven Smeal to do some test borings out there. And um when he did the borings just inside the tree line there, he found hydric soils.

So uh unfortunately there was snow on the ground when he first went out there.

We were hoping that he would get out there before this last storm. So, he hasn't actually done a quote unquote wetland and delineation.

He did again auger some holes and I did locate those holes and he gave me a sketch from his best judgment as to what he thought the intent or the impact of the wetlands would be.

So, it's obviously a lot more than what we expected.

Uh, I know Mr. Williams had talked I was not here at the last hearing but talked about putting some type of a screening up at the uh at the street line but due to where that wetland is in the 25 foot no activity zone that Dartmouth likes to um hold it would be almost impossible to do anything to push it back any further would be almost impossible and the other

item that we haven't looked at yet but we know we would have to address is drainage and we'd have to put some type of retention basin along that that wetland line as Well, and there's obviously quite a bit of impervious area that's being created by this. So, it would be a sizable basin to say the least.

And you you probably have high groundwater table anyway. So, and filtration would be probably correct. And when I did further site visit, there's definitely some some ponding of water in that wetland area, especially this time of year.

All right. Thank you.

You're welcome. Uh well attorney Williams I think this is the reason why we asked for plans and I remember at the first meeting and you said you know the building is commissioner didn't think we needed a plan but this is this is how we need to make a decision based on facts and you know so um so yeah like Mr. the Roman Eye said I mean on the on the on the mappingss it showed no wetlands.

I understand and and my client had someone walk it and they but you when we did this we both we said we need to get a botist out there.

That's what exactly we wanted to look at the size of the building, the location of the building, the impact on the on the district because you're here for use variance and obviously, you know, this is more like kind of it's an office but not the type of offices that we have in the in the office. This is more like we have more medical offices. We have, you know, so it looks more like an

industrial type of use. You the garage is facing the street now. you know, you're parking on facing uh font corner.

If you have any extra material, like you said, they might have to be in stored in the parking lot where you can see them probably from driving. So, that made a kind of difference from what I had in mind at the last meeting because obviously we didn't have anything to go by but uh but again, I mean, you know, we'll it open. It's a public hearing and what's the uh feeling of the board members on

this one?

I really I Mr. Chair, I really have some problems with this plan. First of all, when it was initially came in, it was represented without a plan. In all difference to Mr. Williams, we know that they he he didn't recognize that there was some serious problems there.

I I really have a problem with some of these use variances and I know that this board has granted use variances but uh you know what the planning board spends a lot of time zoning the town creating these things. If this use variance was compatible with everything in that area, as the chair pointed out, it's offices, medical facilities there. This is doesn't seem compatible. The use doesn't. And I understand that it's

going to be corporate offices, but it looks to me like it's more of an industrial site. And I don't think that's I don't really want to usurp the authority of the planning board that spends a lot of time planning out these maps and all of a sudden the board of appeals grants use variances. And as I indicated, we have if it's compatible, I just don't see that this is compatible.

And I hate to say that we we're here to try to help people, but this isn't helping the town by uh taking an office park or medical uh facility out there where which is expanded and putting an industrial uh use there. And I I just don't see how I can vote for it.

Attorney, I didn't [clears throat] I didn't don't really have a problem with it. Um I understand what Mr. Barrier saying um I guess I I have a couple of questions. That that green item or the green space that's all building?

That's building. Yeah.

Mhm.

Correct.

And the uh the lines in the building.

What is that?

So these are the contractor bays.

There's five bay doors on the front. Oh, this is the office here.

Okay.

And what happens what happens with a contractor's bay?

What goes you just put contractor material in there?

Um, no. There'll be equipment. They have LOLs. They have uh um backho materials.

But when they they also need someplace to store trailers because everything is transported with trailers, you know. It Okay.

It's a it's a decent size site and and initially it was thought that they'd be able to store in the back. I mean, there's a wetland. You can you can fill 5,000 square feet of wetlands, but and but you got to get to the back. You got to replicate it in the back. But, um, it it it just um it it's it's for what they for what they need it, you know, it it

it it's difficult, but I mean it, you know we're um contractor's dispatchard is a thing.

You could put their office there, but the this contract is this bad shot is the reason we had to get go for a variance, a use variance.

Uh, one more question, attorney uh Williams, uh, the contractor's bays, right? Those are you you are you uh proposing any repairs within those building too, like maintenance? I would assume they would probably have to do something some kind of maintenance to those vehicles, right?

Yeah. If they have to do like oil change or brakes or whatever, you know, stuff like that.

Yeah. If they have to do repairs, they they'd be doing it there, you know.

They wanted one location where they could do their whole business.

Mhm.

Yeah.

[panting] Okay. Um well uh this is a public hearing so uh is there anyone in the audience for this case tonight either in favor or in opposition please come to the podium and state your opinion.

Seeing none, I guess we'll go back to the board. So, uh, for discussion. Um, attorney human, I agree with you. First, when I heard the the the concept, which and again, like no, no, uh, nothing against attorney Williams, you know, because, you know, the it's still the same concept. Their concept is to store material there, have their employees park the cars. But it was a different

concept that the building was going to be pushed back and all this the the storage will be in the back of the building and the activities no activities in the front except for the employee parking basically. Now all the trucks will be in the front you know u maybe some construction materials in the front. You have a door, garage door opening, closing with people going in for repair, coming out. So, it's kind

of, you know, it's unfortunately the wetland is right in the middle of the So, you can't go to the back of it. You can't, you know, if it was pushed back another 50, 100 ft, maybe they would be able to do what they wanted to do. But uh uh it's a nice piece of property, but I don't I just don't see this use uh fitting in with the the other

Yeah, I mean we know all that we did I there was a case but it was on on a side street. It wasn't I think a garage that back then we it was very small not to this scale anyways and it wasn't on F's corner. It was one of the side streets you know that we granted variance for but uh nothing on fonts corner. I know that area is mostly that section of font

corner is all medical and you know offices and professional offices you know or empty or empty or empty but nothing there right but they'll okay I mean this is my opinion I don't know what uh I think I'm kind of inclined to that's hard uh not to uh grant this variance but um I'm one of three. So what's your I mean and obviously we need all three on this one but u unless you

can convince me otherwise I don't how about attorney Walter you're on the same so I I I just can't you know I can't see I I can't see this concept here because of the wetlands Mr. Williams had represented before this board that all the trucks were going to be in the back and you didn't anticipate all the wetlands. Now we're finding out that, you know, I wouldn't want to have a a

medical building or an office there and then look next door and see back hoes and trucks out there and garage doors. I just don't and I think, as I said, I don't always agree with the planning board, but I don't want to usurp their authority. They zone this uh for an office park. And you know what? It's hard. It's really hard to say uh to give grant use variances because what what we

we're doing is rewriting zoning. If it was compatible, I wouldn't have any problems with it.

Y I I just can't vote. I I I think it'd be against the interest of the town. It's a nice It's a beautiful piece of property, but it's got to be utilized. And now it's got it's problematic. It's got some wetlands there that you got to find the right buyer, but I I just don't see that this use is the right Okay.

use for that area.

So, so Chairman Chuba, I I'm I'm getting I'm getting the feel of the board.

You need three out of three. Um I don't want to impact the seller in any way to be able to come in and get another variant. So, I'm going to request to withdraw the petition prior to a vote so it's not voted not voted down. It just seems to me that that's that's where it's going to go. So, uh yeah, I mean, in the past, we've we've always allowed the uh the

applicant if we had a feeling that this is not going to go their way to to withdraw without prejudice. So, this way you're not tying the property for another two years and for some But I mean, you wouldn't come back with the same plan anyway. So, but uh but yeah, I think uh we can I think this board will will accommodate this this request, I'm sure. And I don't have an issue with

that. We're always So, if you want to uh uh request a withdrawal without prejudice, is that what you I do.

Okay. So, uh on behalf of the applicant.

On behalf of the applicant. So, we have a we have a request to withdraw without prejudice. Uh what's the I don't have any problems with that.

I have no problems with that. So we need to vote on that though. So uh so you you accept somebody will make a motion.

I make a motion that we approve attorney Williams request to withdraw this petition. Uh which is uh attorney before we go too far I don't think we close the public hearing actually but right so uh we we need to close the public hearing to withdraw the petition.

I'm not sure but I think it doesn't motion. No we close the public hearing.

Second.

All in favor? I I Okay. So now you can I make a motion that at the request of the petitioner that the petitioner be permitted to withdraw uh use varian zav 25-13 without prejudice.

I'll second that motion.

All in favor?

I Okay.

Thank you. Thanks. Sorry.

Um I guess uh we'll take a five minute recess. Thank you.

Zoning board is back on in session.

Moving on to the last matter that's on for the local portion of tonight's meeting for the 5:00 call is special permit ZSP26-1.

The petitioner applicant is Greg Jones.

The property owner is Beaten Family LLC.

The subject property is located at Five Turn Lane, also known as map 103, lot 3.

located within the single residence B district. This matter was legally advertised on February 5th and February 12th of 2026.

I make a motion that we wave the reading of the bud.

Second have a motion.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it. The petitioner in this case is seeking a special permit to bring plumbing into a proposed bathroom and exterior rent station to an existing shed to service the ingground pool that is currently being installed. They're seeking relief under article 8 section 375-8.3B accessory buildings or structures with kitchen or bathroom facilities.

So moving on to the denial letter is a letter dated January 12th is addressed to Mr. Greg Jones and indicates it's regarding five turn lane. It says, "I've reviewed your application and at this time your proposal cannot be approved due to non-compliance with current zoning regulations. applicant proposing to add a bathroom and exterior rinse station to an existing shed to service the inground pool that is currently

being installed at the property. A special permit is required to have an accessory building with a bathroom per 375-8.3B.

And basically they need relief under 3758.3b which indicates that accessory buildings or structures within which a kitchen wet bar or any plumbing is installed such as but not limited to cabanas, garages or studios. Such an accessory use is allowed by special permit granted by the board of appeals if the following requirements are met. The board of appeals determines that the accessory

building or structure will not be used as an additional residential unit on the property. The board of appeals shall determine through a review of submitted building plans that the nature of the proposed building, excuse me, the nature of the proposed plumbing, wiring, or other utilities is not proposed in such a manner so that the accessory building or structure could be used or converted

into an additional residential unit. If a special permit is granted, there can be an inspection once a year after notice to the owner to determine that the accessory building or structure has been converted into an additional residential unit. conversion will result in the revocation of the special permit after a public hearing in accordance with Mass General Law Chapter 48. The property is located in the single

residence B district. All right. We also have some concerns from other town boards.

The board of health indicates that this property is serviced by an on-site septic with a design capacity per plan dated November 4th, 1996 for a three-bedroom. Due to a previous expansion in 2016, a grant to restrictive covenant limiting this facility to a four-bedroom has been recorded at the Bristol County Registry of Deeds. The Board of Health will review ZP26-1 pursuant to 310 CMR 15 due

to an increase in building area and whether it is in compliance with an existing approved design capacity or if the increased design flow shall be performed in complant in full compliance with the requirements applicable to new construction. DPW is their usual restrictions and conditions in which they seek compliance.

And that's it. I don't have any other comments. So at this time, I'm going to call upon the petitioner or their representative to come forward and state their case.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Greg Jones, architect for the client, Tom and Gail Beaton. Mr. Beaton's here in the audience as well. If anybody has any questions for him, he'd be happy to answer them. Um, as you described, we have an existing shed. It's about 336 square ft. Built I think it was 2018 2019 as a storage shed for the golf cart. Uh some wood storage and potting shed sort of stuff. Uh the client is now

installing an ingground pool. Um as you can see on the uh submitted site plan and would like to put a toilet, a sink, and a small shower inside the existing shed. uh and use that instead of having to track across the driveway to get into the main house. Um there'll be no increase in footprint of the size of the existing shed. Um the only heat that we're considering, and we actually

haven't even decided if we're going to do it, is to put a small electric mat in the bathroom section so the tiles don't condense uh in the summertime. The rest of the structure will be used about 25% of it for the machine equipment for the pool. Um a bay for the existing golf cart. Um and then a small section reserved uh for potting sheds, garden type stuff. Um so it really can't be

converted uh terribly easily into a housing unit. Uh but if the board sees fit, a stipulation to that effect in your findings uh would be acceptable to the homeowner. Um, I did review the board of health's concern about the septic system, met with uh uh Mr. Misho as well as his assistant. Um, the client is going to be installing a whole new Title 5 compliant system uh to replace

the old system um that will accommodate the additional bathroom. Um, and that's addresses the board of health's concern.

Um, so when all is said and done, the new septic system, even even though the current or the proposed cabana is not an additional bedroom and the flow would be minimal, uh, the new system will be designed for a six-bedroom house. It's currently a four-bedroom house, so it'll be more than adequate to pick up the extra flowage from the from the cabana. Um, there's a picture here. here. I think I

submitted pictures of the existing shed.

Very minimal changes to what it's going to look like when all is said and done.

And again, no change to the footprint.

Um, can it stay the same height?

Same height. We're not actually touching the roof. Um, answer any questions you might have. And as I say, the homeowners here as well.

Just one other thing. So, I presume that the h the the proposed the proposed pool is going to be between the house and the existing shed somewhere in that distance there.

No, if you look at the site plan, which I've got a copy of it here, it's a fairly large site.

Yeah, I don't see where the plan I don't see where the plan indicates that there's a pool to be even proposed.

You're right. I'm sorry. I submitted the septic plan. So, the the pool itself, this is the existing shed here. Yeah.

This is the house.

Yeah.

The pool is being installed, right?

Okay. So, it's out in Well, it's behind the shed because the front Yes.

So, it's behind the shed. I see it. All right. That makes sense. Fair enough.

Any questions, gentlemen? [sighs] Questions?

I have no questions. I was just concerned about the septic system and its issues.

Yeah, but usually I I think they're going above and beyond because usually it's determined by the number of bedrooms, not the number of fixtures that there are in in a in a dwelling.

Correct.

You can add bathrooms and not necessarily have to change and increase the septic system. But originally the the director board of health director was going to do calculations for the cabana to see if it would change the fourbedroom status of the old system and said, "Well, we're going to be doing a new system anyway."

And he said, "Well, then we're not going to worry about that piece of it."

Well, that's not a concern at this point, I guess. All right. Um, so this is a public hearing. Is there anyone in in the audience that would like to speak either in favor or in opposition to this request?

I can report to the viewers at home that there are people in the audience, but no one has chosen to either raise their hand and come up and speak either in favor or in opposition. Oh, I've got a gentleman.

Just state your name and address, please. I'm Thomas beaten Five Turn Lane in Dartmouth and I'm in favor of this and uh appreciate u all the questions that you guys have had and if you have any questions for me I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else in the audience that like to come forward and speak?

There not appearing to be anyone. Um gentlemen, I think at this point we could take a look at some proposed findings.

Yep. Here we go. Thank you.

So, the subject property is located at Five Turn Lane, Dmouth, Massachusetts, and also known as Assesses Map 103 Lot 3. The property has been owned by the Beaten Family LLC since August 2015 and is located in a single residence B zoning district. The petitioner seeks a special permit to bring plumbing into a proposed bathroom and exterior rinse station to an existing shed to service

an ingground pool that is currently being installed on the property. Mhm.

Petitioner seeks relief under article 8 section 375-8.3 special permit uses accessory buildings or structures within which a kitchen wet bob bathroom or any plumbing is installed. And the board finds that after review of the submitted plans that the nature of the proposed plumbing, wiring or other utilities are not proposed in such a manner so that the proposed structure should be used or

converted into an additional residential unit. The board finds that the allowing the plumbing to the existing shed will not be detrimental to the neighborhood and is har and is in harmony with the general purpose and intent of the zoning bylaw. We also have the usual u conditions to this in which they have to secure necessary permits from all other applicable boards and agencies including

prior to the issuance of a building permit and also that it's subject to an inspection once a year to determine the accessory building has not been converted into an additional residential unit. So, I always ask and I always indicate if you could extend to the property owner that the the property is subject potentially to a yearly inspection to ensure that it's not converted into an additional resial.

Not an issue at all. Yes.

All right. If you could just relay that.

Yep.

All right. Um, gentlemen, having read that, any comments?

No.

Anything you like to add? No.

No. Straightforward.

All right. I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing.

I make a motion that we close the public hearing.

case ZSP.

Oh. Oh, you're right. CSP 26-1.

Second.

All in favor?

I I I The eyes have it. All right. Um, what's your pleasure, gentlemen?

I make a motion that we approve uh special permit case ZSP-26-1 with the proposed findings and conditions as previously stated.

Second.

All in favor?

I I I the eyes have it.

Thank you very much.

Good luck, Mr.

All right.

Um we have a few so we have a decision we can make. We have several administrative matters that we can handle or we can postpone them to another date.

Excuse me.

All right. So, we got to get some of them out of the way. Let's see how we can make out with this.

What are we doing?

All right. So, where's the uh We're going to go to the end, gentlemen.

But I need you guys last page.

Administrative.

We're going to the administrative portion of tonight's meeting. We have a It's review and approval of administrative minutes of December 4th, 2025.

I make a motion that we approve the U. I have Well, I have no comments.

Okay. No comments. Any comments?

No comments.

All right. I'll entertain a motion, gentlemen.

Uh motion to approve administrative minutes of December 4th, 2025.

Second.

All in favor?

I The eyes have it. Moving along. Review and approval of use variant ZAV2-11 for 411 FS Connor Road.

No comments, Mr. Chair.

No comments.

I have no comments. Attorney Farriia.

All right, gentlemen. I'll entertain a motion.

Motion to approve um minutes of use varian ZAV2-11 for 411 Forner Road.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it. Next is review and approval of special permit 25-5 for lot map 163 lots 31 32 35 state road minutes.

No comments, Mr. Chair.

No comments.

I have no comments.

No comments.

All right, gentlemen.

I'll entertain a motion. I make a motion that we approve the minutes of special permit ZSP 25-5 for uh map 163 lots 31 3235 State Road.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it. Next is review and approval of varants ZAV2-9 state road map 163 lots 31 32 39. These are the minutes.

Same. No comments. Mr. Chair, I have no comments. I have no comments.

[clears throat and cough] I'll entertain a motion.

I make a motion that we approve the minutes of use in ZAV-25-8 from map 163 lots 31 32 and 35 as written.

Just for clarification, I might have misheard 25-9, correct?

Yes.

25-8.

Uh, no, this is 25-8, right? Uh that's a different v it's the same property but this a different variance type of thing. There was a special permit that we did first. Now this is the first variance. There's another variance. It's listed as 25-9 on my on my sheet here.

No, there's one above it.

One above it. It's 25-8.

And which one we doing? We just 25-8.

Okay.

Second motion.

All in favor?

I.

The eyes have it. Moving on to review and approval of variants ZAV2-9 state road map 163 lots 31 32 and 33 minutes.

No comments, Mr. Chair.

No comment.

I make a motion that we approve the minutes of uh use of variance ZAV-25-9 state road map 163 lots 3132 35 as written.

Second.

All in favor?

I the eyes have it. Review and approval of comprehensive permit ZCMP25-1 minutes continued from October 30th, 2025 regarding 970 Tucker Road.

Uh I make a well no comments, Mr. Chair.

No comment.

Attorney Faria.

No comments. I make a motion that we approve the minutes of um comprehensive permit ZCMP2-1 uh from October 30, 2025 9 for 970 Tucker Road.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I the eyes have it. Review and approval administrative minutes of December 11, 2025.

I have no comments, gentlemen.

No comments.

I have no comment.

Make a motion that we approve the administrative minutes of December 11, 2025.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I I I the eyes have it. Review and approval of variance ZAV2-4 regarding 25 Thatcher Street minutes continued from November 13, 2025.

No comments, Mr. Chair.

I have no comments.

I have no comments.

Gentlemen, make a motion that we approve the minutes for variance VAV25-4 for 25 Thatcher Street continued from November 13, 2025.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it.

Review and approval of use variance ZAV2-13 576 Fawns Corner Road minutes of December 11, 2025.

No comments, Mr. Chair, I have no comment.

I have no comments. Attorney Fario.

All right, gentlemen.

I make a motion that we approve the minutes of December 11, 2025 for use variance ZAV2-13 for 576 Forner Road.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I the eyes have it. Last but not least, review and approval of comprehensive permit ZCMP-25-2 minutes of December 11th, 2025 for 498 O Westport Road.

No comments, Mr. Chair.

No comments.

I have no comments.

I have none. I make a motion that we approve the minutes uh of comprehensive permit ZCMP-25-2 of of December 11th, 2025 as written.

Second.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it.

Okay.

All right, gentlemen. So, now we move on. Not too bad on time. We're moving on to the last matter that's on the agenda, which is the 40B. We'll just uh take a short recess. Okay, gentlemen.

A great idea.

Good evening. The zoning board is back in session. Moving on to the [clears throat] 40B portion of tonight's meeting.

It's a continued case. It's comprehensive permit ZCMP25-3.

The petitioner is Philip Cadero on behalf of the Haway Dartmouth LLC.

Um, the property is located on Hathaway Road, also known as map 57 lot one. It's located within the single residence a zoning district. The matter was legally advertised on December 18th and December 25th. We've already waved the reading of the abutters list at a prior hearing.

Um, the petitioner in this case, Mr.

Philip Cadero, is seeking a comprehensive permit pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 40B sections 20-23.

the comprehensive permit guideline 760 CMR56 [clears throat] from the Massachusetts general laws and diamond zoning bylaw regulations. The petitioner applicants proposing a development on approximately 113 acres to be known as the Hathaway to be located on Haway Road in the single residence aid district.

The development will have a total of 300 units.

All right. So, um we have a lot of people here tonight.

So, just so I can let the petitioner know, I guess there are a couple things that can be done. So, we either have civil that can be discussed tonight or we can have traffic that's going to be discussed tonight. Um, because I want to give the people in the audience an opportunity. And I've always promised my board members that we don't go beyond 8:00 even though I'm not always adhered to that just because of the

circumstances and how things lend themselves on certain evenings. Uh, but I I still would like to adhere to an 8:00 um time frame. And I know we're not starting right at 6, but that's because we've handled local business. We now expand our meetings to start at 5:00.

So, we deal with all I call it the local business um and not the 40B. Not that 40B is not local. Um but so I leave it to the petitioner to tell me, but I I would just forewarn you that we do have I believe we have our peer reviewer on the civil part of this. Yes, she is here. And we've been provided reports. I we've been given reports on

both sciences and I thank you for that.

Um actually from them. So I I leave it up to you to decide what would you like to move forward on either the traffic or the civil with knowing and keeping in mind that we we are you are paying indirectly and we are utilizing the services of the peer reviewer for civil.

But I I I let you make that determination and it's Mr. What's the last name?

Mr. Calhoun. David Calhoun. And that's just and we corrected it last time. The applicant is David Calhoun, Saxon Partners. We corrected that Phil is the civil engineer, but just for correspondence purposes, they should be reaching out to me. Uh, and you have all that information.

Wonderful. But um in in full disclosure um um I'm joined here tonight um by Vaness Associates, Jeff Durk, our traffic engineer, our council, Matt Eckle from Fletcher Tilton out of the Worcester area, Jack Luffle, my associate, and Phil Cadero, our civil engineer. Uh when the hearing was continued at the last meeting, um there was an effort uh to get the peer review going and one of the items which we

endeavored to do was to very very quickly fund the account which we did within 48 hours of concluding the meeting. Uh and then an effort went forward to get peer review and try to try to get that turned around so that you would have your team's responses to our reports so we could have professionals. Unfortunately, um the traffic uh peer review from the town was not concluded from what I understand. You

received the traffic peer review report last Friday uh from your peerreview engineer. We have not seen that yet. Uh I did ask for a paper copy but paper copy was not available. Uh but the town administrator advised me that it would be up on the portal tomorrow so our traffic engineers can see that. Um but when we concluded and continued the hearing um we were trying to make tonight professionals

night, civil engineers, traffic engineers and the reason why I believe the chair was doing that uh was out of respect for the public uh to make sure that when the public came they could talk about traffic, they could talk about civil. Um having just our civil excuse me our traffic engineer here is not really a fair playing field. Uh, but what we would like to do because Jeff is here is have Jeff simply give a quick

rundown of the traffic report. He'll take How quickly can you do it, Jeff?

Can you 10 or 15 minutes of traffic just give you a summary, give bullet points, maybe we could spend 15 or 20 minutes with the public asking questions about him so that when your peer review does come back at a future meeting, we can all collectively hit on the issues and then let's spend the remaining hour we have with civil engineer doing peer review face to face if you're okay with that.

uh knowing that there would be a time constraint.

Yeah, that's what you'd like to do. You want to start off with that or keep it tight. Uh I'm sure there going to be a lot of concerns. Uh there probably going to be a lot more questions about traffic than there will be about civil from the general public that's here because they're more concerned about probably Haway Road and Route Six and how that intersection is going to be impacted by

this along with Sloum Road and Haway Road which are the two more two immediate intersections in which people have to deal with we all have to deal with as members of this community. Um, so I'm sure there's some significant concern, but the fact that again you said and as you put it, I think it's uh appropriate that we don't necessarily have a level playing field given that we don't have our our consultant here. But

if that's what you want to do and you keep it tight and people are going to be able to touch upon, but I'm going to give people an opportunity to express what their concerns are. But I I do know that, you know, civil certainly has a lot of impact with the immediate butters along along Eisenhower Street given the proximity to these structures, given their height in relation to their single

family homes that will be abuing this.

So, I'm sure that those are other concerns that they're going to have as well. And we can we can delve and probably maybe spend time on that. But if that's what you want to do, spend about 10 minutes, that's fine. Let's go.

Thank you.

Great.

Will you stand up there, Jack? Are you stay? Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Uh, good evening, Mr.

Chairman, members of the board. For the record, Jeffrey Durk with Vanessa Associates. Um, we're the transportation consultants on the project. And I I promise to be brief. Uh, Mr. Chairman, what I'm going to do is just for the standpoint of I think the audience is to at least uh present what's in the traffic study and kind of our data collection and methodology initial findings and then we'll kind of move on

from there because your consultant needs to deliver their report um to critique some of the information that we're presenting. So I'm just going to give an overview so that the uh audience as well as the board can ask questions on anything that we did as a part of the transportation assessment. Next slide please.

So just by way of a highle overview of the assessment um as the board is well aware but as the audience may not be aware uh we work very closely with the town when we conduct the transportation assessment. Um so we need to understand the transportation system both at present as well as in the future and we work with the town uh to understand that. So we work very closely in

conducting the study. Um, in this case, because we're close to the city of New Bedford, we worked with the city as well because we have the interchange exit three um uh within our study area and a significant portion of our traffic is going to be going uh toward that interchange um as well as well as route six and the intersections uh that the chair had mentioned. So, as we undertake

our assessment, it's a transportation assessment. So, we are looking at pedestrians, bicycles, as well as motor vehicles. Um you'll see an an assessment of all of those modes of transportation um in our study. So, we're looking at a very comprehensive approach. Um, you'll hear very often and you hear this on all traffic studies generally. Uh, what we're reporting as it relates to the

impact of the project is it's not a significant impact. Now, I want to be very cautious in saying that Route 6 is over capacity. The interchange um at exit 3 is over capacity. What we're talking about in terms of significance of impact is how this project impacts those conditions. So, um yes, we have backups on the ramps on 140. Yes, we have queuing on Sloum Road. Yes, we have queuing on Hathaway as well down at

Route Six. Um, so we're looking at how the project impacts those conditions, but also recognizing, and I think uh the board's aware, residents may not be aware, there are improvements that the state is undertaking. And so we look at how those improvements uh relate to conditions um that the project may add traffic to, but how it will work with those improvements in place because those are actually funded and will be

constructed uh in the future. Um you can go to the next slide actually. Uh other things as it relates to the transportation study is safety and safety is the most important thing that we evaluate and that the board considers. When we're looking at safety, it's safety of the access. So as we build this project, we want to make sure that the driveway is safe. So we look at sight lines in relation to the speed

that vehicles are actually traveling along the roadway. So as we do our data collection, uh we make sure that we're measuring vehicle travel speeds over a very extended period because people aren't driving the speed limit. uh they're going faster than that. So, we need to make sure that we account for the fact that people are driving above the speed limit. The sight lines are sufficient for the speed people are

actually driving. Um and the last thing in in terms of safety is looking at motor vehicle crashes at intersections.

Uh if we have a location that has a predominance of crashes, uh we want to make sure that we're addressing those crashes so that we come up with some improvement measures that may be able to be undertaken to address the fact that we have a uh locations that have a higher than average crash rate. So there's more crashes than what we would expect would happen based on the volume of traffic going through the

intersection. Next slide please. And you can actually jump ahead to the next slide. So in terms of the study area that we've assessed in the traffic study, um this is the project site shown in yellow here. Um this is Haway Road here stretching between Route 6 and here's the interchange with exit 3 and Route 140. So, our study area is basically the entirety of Hathway Road from the Route 140 interchange all the

way down to the intersection with Route 6 and then Sloum Road at both ends as well. And I'm going to forget the name of the road here, but this is Wilbur uh Street at this location here. So, those are the mo major intersections that we looked at as a part of our study. Um when we do see the peer review, one of the things that the peer reviewer does is make sure based on the amount of

traffic we're going to produce that this study area is sufficient to um assess the impacts of the project. So that's one of the first things that they undertake as a part of their review. So we'll um see if they want us to add anything to the study area that we evaluated. So we've conducted traffic counts at all of these intersections as well as along Hathaway Road. All those traffic counts were done in early

November, so they weren't impacted by what we see out there on the ground today. Uh so prevailing conditions, generally sunny days, um no weather related impacts to traffic volumes in the area. Um just in terms of numbers as we look at Hathway Road. So the section of roadway where the project site is located um accommodates about 14,500 vehicles per day. So that's two-way traffic and that would be just to the

northwest of Sloum Road. So we haven't dispersed the traffic at the Sloum Road intersection. So that's all of that traffic that's going basically to and from uh New Bedford on the roadway there. As I mentioned, we measure the speed of traffic and we actually do that over a two-day period. So if we have about 14,500 vehicles per day, we measure the speed of about 29,000 vehicles. Um again, we want to make sure

that we've got a very accurate database as we look at the speed of traffic. So the section of road where the project is located has a posted speed limit of 40 mph. The majority of the traffic, so 85% of the 29,000 vehicles we were measuring, they were traveling at 44 miles an hour or less. So as we're looking at those sight lines at the driveway, what we're looking at is assessing sight lines for 45 miles an

hour. So it's about 5 miles an hour above the posted speed limit. And again, that's the measured prevailing speed, which is slightly above the posted speed limit. Um safety as I mentioned looking at high crash locations. There are four high crash locations within the study area that we evaluated. The two ramp intersections are both had they have crash rates that are above the state

average and then the two intersections with uh route six. So Sloum roadway road. So the crash rates or the number of motor vehicle crashes that are happening at those intersections in relation to the volume of traffic going through the intersection is above what would be expected u at each of those locations. So there the um the number of crashes exceeds what's um would be considered um an average condition or

average in this area of the state. The other thing that we look at at crashes is not just a number of crashes but the severity of those crashes. So, we're looking at uh property damage, personal injury, and any fatalities that may happen in the area. And that's another way of looking at safety at the intersections. As it relates to severity, none of the intersections within the study area exceed the state's

um severity index for this area. So, large number of crashes, but the severity of those crashes tend to be fender benders uh predominantly rather than personal injury type crashes. But we're focusing on those four locations as it relates to safety because as I said, we don't want to be adding traffic to an intersection that today has a higher than average crash rate. So we identify uh counter measures. Um looking

into the future, um as we're doing a transportation assessment, we're required to look at seven years in the future that's set by the Department of Transportation. Um in this case, our future condition was the year 2033. And we look at all of the projects that the town has before them. And I know the zoning board has is quite a few projects that you're considering. Um so there were six projects that working with the

town as well as the city of New Bedford that they identified for um this area for us to include in our transportation assessment. U probably the most significant of which is on the board's agenda which is the uh residences Hawthorne. So we've included the traffic numbers from that project uh in our transportation assessment. There was also a few projects in the city of New Bedford uh that we included as well. Um

general growth in the area is about 1% per year looking historically. So that's also built into our future projection.

And then I think as we're talking uh earlier on about roadway improvement projects because this is a consideration uh looking into those future conditions.

So Mass DOT is a roadway improvement project along Route 6 which actually ends at Hathaway Road. Uh the Hathway Road intersection is going to be placed under traffic signal control. uh that roadway improvement project which is basically from Font's corner road to Haway Road is fully funded. Construction is expected to start in 20 uh 2027. So it's been funded through the state's

transportation improvement program list.

So monies have already been allocated for that project. So that's one of the phases of the Route 6 improvement project. There's a second phase that takes it from the Hathaway uh road intersection to the city of New Bedford line and that's the second phase of that project that is currently under design.

So as we're looking at future conditions with the project in place, this funded project at the halfway road intersection with the installation of a traffic signal is reflected in our analysis. The Sloum road intersection because it's just under design, there are not improvements considered in our transportation assessment. However, we have made some recommendations for safety improvements as well as some

signal retiming at that intersection.

Next slide, please. I'm going to speed this up, Mr. Chairman. Uh, this is the trip generation estimates for the project. Um, so as we're looking at um the top number, which is the large number, the 1,338 vehicles. So, as we're looking at um the project that's before you with the number of units that are proposed, what you see in the yellow column is the uh additional traffic that will be added to Haway Road. The top

number, this is the daily number. So, this is the number, as I said, this 14,500 vehicles on Hathway Road today.

That's the number that would get added on top of the 14,500 vehicles. That's a two-way number. So, it's 669 entering, 669 exiting. That's over 24 hours. The next two numbers are the uh critical peak hours when the traffic volume on Hathaway Road is at its highest levels.

And I've identified those peak hours here. So, as we've undertaken our traffic counts, the peak hour on Hathaway Road is 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning and then it also there's another peak that occurs between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. I do want to mention that as we undertook our traffic counts, we actually counted from 2:00 to 6:00 because we know there are schools in this area. We know that Sloum Road and

some of the other roadways are influenced by school related traffic.

So, that extended count period allows us to make sure that we capture the peak on the roadway. So there's probably a school peak that happens in the afternoon, but the absolute highest traffic volume hour is four to five. And that's the condition that we're looking at because adding the project's traffic onto those peak hours is the worst case analysis condition in terms of looking

at delays and vehicle queuing. So again, 13,038 vehicles um is the 24-hour number.

During the morning peak hour, so this is 7:30 to 8:30, the project would add about 118 vehicle trips. It's 27 entering, 91. The majority are exiting in the morning, in the evening. So, this is 4 to 5 in the evening. The project will produce 111 vehicle trips. It would be 71 entering um and 40 exiting. So, I just want to very quickly mention that as you're looking at the numbers here

and you'd say that doesn't make sense because it doesn't add up to the 1338.

We're looking at the peaks. So, if I plotted the 1338, you'd see it peak in the morning, come back down, and then peak again in the evening. that probably as I said a little peak that would happen for the school related time periods. Uh, but what we're analyzing is those peaks, the spikes. If I distributed over the course of the day, you'd add up to 1338. But those spikes that happened during the course of the

day when we're doing our analysis, that's the 118 1111. If I slid 7:30 to 8:30, if I moved it to, let's say, 720 to 820, it's not going to produce 118 vehicle trips. But it also doesn't mean it drops off a cliff. It's not zero. It could be 100. Um, so that's the way this works. It slowly rises up, peaks, drops off, rises up again in the evening. So that's how that numbers are dispersed

over the course of the day. But the total would be about 1338. Next slide, please. So those numbers once we've estimated the amount of traffic, as everyone knows, everyone's going to different places to work, dropping children off at school. This is the dispersal of trips. So as we look at this area, the traffic volumes in the area and looking at demographics. So if you live in the town of Dartmouth in the

US census, you report where you work. Uh we're able to look at from this project site, let's say, um if you worked in Fall River or New Bedford, how do you get there from this project site? So as we can look at that, uh we arrive at the pattern that you see here. And just, you know, to summarize what you see on here, about 65% of the traffic is heading towards exit 3. It's either getting on

140 or it'll come down and get on to 195. So the majority of the traffic as you're thinking about it leaving is turning left to exit and a right to come back in. 35% of the traffic would be taking a right to go out or a left to go in and it's heading mostly toward Route 6. So you see as we're looking at Route 6, we've got 18 15% heading uh to and

from the west, 10% from the east, and then we have another 10% that's cons continuing along Sloum Road. So those numbers I had shown you on the previous slide, this is how that gets dispersed onto the roadway network. So and when I made that very general statement about no significant impact, one of the reasons for that is this. It's the dispersal. So we have concentrated traffic at the driveway, but when we get

away from the project site, the numbers get smaller and smaller. So the impact of the project gets smaller and smaller as you get away from the site. Um again, all of this is going to be reviewed or has been reviewed by your peerreview consultant. I'm just giving you kind of a summary of what's in our analysis. Um obviously they'll do a critique of these and we'll make whatever adjustments may

be needed to it. Next slide please. So as we've undertaken our analysis what we're measuring is we're already getting a 15 minutes.

Okay.

So we've measured motorist delays in vehicle queuing at intersections and because of that um the project has impacts and so because of those impacts uh we have recommendations and these are the recommendations that we've developed um as a part of the project. The first set are site plan related recommendations. I think as a board, these are things you'd expect to see in a site plan. A good site plan would have

all of these elements. And I know that our civil engineers incorporated these into the plan. So, it's about driveway width. It's about making sure that emergency vehicles can circulate, that we have pedestrian and bicycle accommodations. You can go next slide, please. Um sight lines at the driveway, make sure no there's no uh signs or landscaping placed within the site triangle areas. The existing site

triangles at the project site driveway, there's no vegetation or anything that impedes sight lines. the sight lines are over 600 ft. Um the board I'm sure has been out there. So there's no impedance to sight lines. We just want to make sure as the site plans develop nothing gets placed there. Next slide please. So now we look at recommendations for offsite. Uh we have capacity recommendations and we have safety

recommendations. And these are things that we'll be working on with the town and your review consultant. So, as I said, the route six halfway road intersection is going to be placed under traffic signal control. That will create the capacity and address the safety issues that we've identified at that intersection. Sloum road has a much longer timeline for future improvements.

So, what we've done is identified safety related improvements as well as some signal retiming to address the added traffic at that intersection. Um, these are standard things. Again, we'll go through it with your review consultant, but it's really addressing safety related items. Next slide, please. Sloum Road at Hathaway Road as well as Hathaway Road at Wilbur Avenue. Um as a part of the due diligence, we did note

that there are as we're adding traffic, there is a need for um some signs and pavement markings. So, we've identified those at those two intersections as well. Next slide. I apologize to everyone. I'm going fast, but I'll be answering any questions that you might have later. Um the next two intersections are the two intersections within New Bedford. These are the ramp intersections. We've identified safety

improvements at each of the intersections as well as capacity improvements. The backups on those ramps are such that there is a traffic control need at those ramps. So, the traffic control needs are either installing a traffic signal or potentially reconfiguring them as modern roundabouts. Um the the state requires that we look at roundabouts. Given the lack of available rightway, it's

probably signal control at some time in the future. Next slide. So, this is the north and southbound ramps. same recommendations, safety and capacity.

And very last slide, uh these are transportation demand management measures. Unfortunately, where the site is located, we don't have access to public transportation. All of the public transportation is on Route 6. There's three bus lines that run on Route 6, but they don't currently go to the project site. Density development in this area may seek an opportunity for some redirection of the buses, but at this

time there isn't access to public transportation. But we do want to make sure residents are aware of uh the the uh amenities that are in the area. Um so walking, biking, and connections to public transportation. We do want to make sure within the project site because there are bike lanes in New Bedford. They may come and extend beyond uh the overpass toward the project site.

So we want to make sure we have bicycle accommodations. I apologize for being so quick. Um happy to answer your questions and [cough] certainly any questions the audience has. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Um, we can do this one of two ways. We could start asking questions here, but we have our peerreview consultant. I'm going to ask that they put forth their civil engineer so we can emphasize tonight on civil engineering.

And we're going to have a peer review basically explain the impacts that that's going to have on all of us, especially the people who are media tossers. So, at this time, I'm going to call upon your uh your civil engineer to come up and and Phil Cado uh just just quickly, Mr.

chair. Uh, for the public's information, we'll have this PowerPoint sent over to the ZBA administrator and she can put it up on the website if you want it. That'd be great. It's a much shorter read.

Thank you.

Uh, good evening. For the record, Phil Cordiero from Allen and Major Associates. Um, I will be equally brief because I know there's going to be a lot of discussion, but I want to make sure I touch upon the important points as to where we are at uh relative to the application. During the initial introduction meeting that we had back in January, um, I did Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. Uh, I did go over the particulars

on the project, the metrics of the project. Those by and large have remained the same. Uh what we have done in the interim is certainly we've we've engaged with uh our neighbors uh to the extent possible. Um we have had meetings with the church which is our director butter to project left on the screen. Uh we have also had the benefit of peer review from Mel Associates and uh Deborah is here this evening so we'll

let her speak towards those comments. Uh and then we've also had the ability to respond to those comments um in short order that for the next meeting we hope that she'll have some updated materials in tow for the board to review. As a general reminder for the public obviously six buildings uh the layout that we have full circulation which is driven by uh fire department requirements. The site is very steeply

sloped in terms of topography. So the challenge was to find a site that worked with that topography and the buildings as presented here on sort of step and walk their way down the slope and that affords us the opportunity to integrate drainage storm water management within each of those areas uh between the buildings underneath the parking system. And what's a value to uh to the local community is that we are

handling 100% of our storm water on site. We are recharging it on site to the maximum extent practicable given the soil conditions. Uh what we can't recharge on site will naturally drain into the wetland resource areas which is behind the site or page north on the screen. As a reminder to the public, the land that is owned by the applicant or the subject parcel is about 113 acres.

Uh most of it is wetlands. We're developing the front 10 or so acres of it. Uh but the rest of it is wetlands that we hope to create conservation lands out of. Um from a technical aspect, everything that falls on the site plan, as you see, is encapsulated by storm water management and only drains to the rear of the property. Um, there's no drainage that is increased runoff towards the church. There is no

drainage increase towards the homes on the back side of Eisenhower. And your peer reviewer will put us through our paces to make sure that that statement is true and accurate as best it can be.

Uh, we believe it is. Um, but we also know that this project is a large-scale project and the neighbors will certainly have concerns with it. We have concerns relative to the height of the buildings.

And one element that I'll point out for the board and the residents that are here this evening is the site planning efforts that went into this were documented during the first hearing. We provided uh sort of a flip book of sorts of all of the plan iterations that we went through. Some of the feedback we received during the project eligibility letter application phase, feedback that we received from the conservation

commission and the planning board. And all of those comments told us that what we needed to do is really make sure that despite being an increased density development, the activities are drawn away from our residential abutters along Eisenhower and the rest of the subdivision. So these buildings have migrated plan left throughout the iterations on the project. We have moved our clubhouse. We have moved the pool.

We've moved the activity center again as far away from the residential utters as possible to mitigate the increased activity that will be present here. The other thing that is of notice is we have gone to a single entrance. Now that's something we're working with the fire department on. It is of adequate width, size, grade, and layout that the fire department can enter the site, make full

circulation. And we're meeting with the fire department continually and making sure that it meets their demands from a life safety perspective, but in providing the singular entrance again as far away from the uh the the denser residential subdivision, we put the traffic as far away as possible. The other thing that allows us to do is because of the steepness of topography, especially along Hathaway Road, we're

traveling from the cursor here to the entry, there's about 12 to 14 ft of change in elevation. So, we've tethered the driveway to the lowest point along Hathaway Road. It allows us to recess these buildings down an additional 12 to 15 feet from the adjacent topography. So in essence, even though these buildings are fourstory on the high on the shorter side, fivetory on the taller side, we're

able to lose 12 feet in the natural train uh change in topography along this portion of the site and bring that scale, bring that effect, bring that feeling that the residential butters would have uh down as much as possible.

And we think that that's it that will provide an overall improvement. We'll also note as a reminder that the layout of these buildings, the face of the building is obviously towards Haway Road and the wetland resource area, but the shortest sides of the buildings uh the ones that are facing a butters on both sides are really to minimize the concerns that uh neighbors would have relative to privacy, relative to

windows, relative to lights. Um those have been minimized as part of that layout. Now since we met with the board in January in addition to the peer review we've made a couple of changes based on feedback that we heard uh one is we have introduced a bus stop uh adjacent to our entrance for school buses or aggregation or as Mr. Durk pointed out if we are successful to get the bus route to come up towards this

this uh development we have an area of congregation that people can get together. So we have that located on the updated site plans. In addition, we've also incorporated a recreational sports court at the back of the site highlighted here. And what that does is that further increases some of the amenities that we have, but it also provides us an opportunity to share the recreational sports court with the

church next to us. Uh, one of the comments that we heard from the cho the church is they're limited in terms of their ability to develop and expand and provide campbased activities because of the restrictions to the wetlands that they have on their property as much as we do on ours. Um, we've developed a situation where there may be a shared opportunity for them to utilize this sports court with coordination between

the on-site property management. So, we've integrated that into the site development plans. Um, we've also provided, [clears throat] excuse me, uh some updated uh uh parking calculations on the plans. Uh I know the board is anxious on let me just get my numbers here is we have provided an opportunity for 428 total parking spaces. It was an element that we did not touch upon um during the first hearing, but that 428

is comprised of 341 surface-based parking spaces as shown on the plan on the screen. But we do have an opportunity to expand with additional parking located along the westerly sideline adjacent to the New Hope Church and along the wet wetland uh resource boundary plan north. We are identifying those as banked spaces um to demonstrate the ability to expand our parking if we uh reach capacity at any point, but to

limit the amount of construction at this point to minimize the amount of impervious areas, storm water runoff, we'd rather ensure that that that remains as green for as long as possible. Um the comment letter that we did receive from Maro Associates was detailed. It was very thorough. It touched on touched upon a lot of technical points in terms of making sure our calculations were accurate

throughout. Um it certainly identified a couple of inconsistencies uh with our numbers which we have since corrected. Uh it is a lot of under the hood technical data that I'm happy to get into if the board would would like me to this evening. Um but we have already put those responses together, resubmitted those materials to the town and awaiting for further technical review and uh hopefully agreement there.

Um so that I'll go quick uh in terms of the details. I'm happy to get into all of the aspects of the site planning to the extent the board would like this evening, but I know we have a full room that you want to hear from. And I'll happily um defer my time to your peerreview consultant uh to provide an update as to where Yes.

I think I'd like to do that next. If we could have it come up.

Thank you.

You mind?

Either please.

Good evening. Um my name is Deb Keller with Maril Engineers and Land Surveyors.

I'm a licensed engineer in Massachusetts. So we completed the peer review as mentioned um and as mentioned to a lot of it is um looking at the technical calculations and how they've developed the site and um I'm going to start with storm water. That's usually the the biggest number crunch that we're looking on this on this property. And as they stated, they have three subsurface large subsurface chamber systems

underneath the parking lot. Yep, that's one, two, and in the rear is three. Very long. With the outlet dischar overflow outlet discharging towards the wetland and right to the right of that outlet, they have a retention basin which is capturing the runoff that comes off of the Eisenhower, the backside of the Eisenhower residences in that side slope. they've captured that and directed it to that retention basin.

What that does is it helps them minimize the amount of or focus on the storm water that they need to treat, which is more of your sidewalks and your pavement areas and your roof your roof runoff and so that they don't have to expand those subsurface chambers systems any larger than needed to address those those portions of the development. Um so we did review their drainage their wersheds

um were accurate with regards to the cap catch catchment areas of the storm water runoff in in having them being directed to the appropriate uh storm water facilities. We did have a few comments uh and corrections in the drainage which uh have been indicated that they have been corrected. Um I do have their review letter. I have not completed a full review to say yes, everything has

been uh done, but uh from their review letter, it looks like they have um agreed with my comments and and made the corrections that were necessary. So, in the next week or so, I'll I'll be providing a letter to you stating whether or not um I I I see that in the calculations.

Um, next we can go with um sewer, municipal sewer. They're in they've noted that they're working with the town um to connect to the municipal sewer system and there are some improvements that they're coordinating as well as the uh ser water service to the site would also be coordinated with the town and it sounds like there are um water improvements that are being coordinated as well. Um I I have not seen that work.

I know that they're working with the town on that and I would recommend having whatever those improvements are incorporated into your decision um as you move as you move through the project and that may be something that um Phil can provide more information on as he get goes through that process with the town.

If I may, Deb, just to interject, we we are working with the DPW on having a separate peer review done on the water and sewer system. Um they would engage Stantech um to do a capacity analysis and the results of that analysis is what we will coordinate for the mitigation that uh Deb is referring to. Y so as mentioned also they they do have I believe four hydrants located on the

site and there is one existing fire hydrant along Haway Road sort of midway along the frontage of the site. Um I did ask whether that was reviewed with the fire department. Um it was indicated that they are working with the fire department uh for vehicle turning movements through the site, fire hydrant locations, water service, water size for for water sizing, excuse me, for the site itself. Um we did look at uh

parking again as mentioned they do have um some future parking. Uh, one of the things that we talked about, uh, which I I think I I didn't see full clarification on it, but I know we did discuss it, is how do you address it, let's say, in the future, 10 years after the project, they need they need that additional parking. They build it. What I think would be nice to define in the

project would be is how they address that impervious surface, whether that's with additional BMPPS or whether or not that additional future impervious is addressed through the current system.

Um, Phil, I don't know if we got a final on that.

We we we didn't. So I'm sorry to engage directly but uh to address the question through the chair you know we obviously uh we will work on making sure that there's capacity in the storm water system that should it be built out it the the infrastructure is already in place for it um to to mitigate the need for certainly coming back in front of this board but the rear of the property

is also in conservation jurisdiction so to avoid future permitting with conservation we'll make sure it's incorporated now.

Okay great.

Um I think the majority of can't read my letter. Um my comments were with respect to uh details within the plans, making sure that they had consistent details with what was shown on the proposed site plan. Um parking space sizing. Um they have 9 by18 proposed on the plan. Making sure the details were consistent.

uh looking into sort of the constructibility of some of the retaining walls on site. They are greater than four feet. Some of them are up to even 10 12 feet high. So they will be required to be designed by a structural engineer and um looking at just the limit of work with respect to those walls and making sure that there's an appropriate space for that construction to happen. I would anticipate is this a block wall

construction and as noted it would be built from the high side or the development side and building it up because it's to support Phil. Um, so there would be maybe not as much um workspace required on the back side of those walls, but that should be clarified just to ensure that you're providing uh appropriate area and you don't have the contractor coming out there and going, "Oh, I need another 10

ft." And then the next thing you know, you're clearing more area than what was uh proposed here.

Um a as mentioned we uh we had discussed uh looking at having a a bus stop not only for school children but again maybe a future connection for public uh public transportation signage throughout the property I believe uh should be provided on the plans.

We also did uh one of the things that I I believe they mentioned that they addressed was looking at both of those um side slopes plan left and plan north towards the uh church and the wetlands. You have a very steep slope. It is a 3:1 that they're showing. Um you do have some those are where you do have some of the larger retaining walls. So, we're looking at guardrail along both of those um either

parking areas or the driveway aisle for safety purposes or or fencing if needed at the top of the uh retaining walls. Uh looking to see some coordination between uh snow storage areas on the property as um to know how they're going to address that. As as we've seen in the last couple weeks, sometimes we can get a lot, sometimes we don't. So making sure that we have that planned whether they

have a certain amount of storage they can uh provide on site and if that is maxed out how do they address that? Do they then now have to manage that snow storage offsite?

Um there was a just some detail clarification for lighting uh lighting fixture heights. Um that goes along with a lot of the waivers. I didn't get into a detail of the waivers. I figured that would be maybe a meeting or so. Uh next let's see. Uh so um as mentioned there was some corrections that I felt needed to uh be addressed during uh through the storm water report which uh they've mentioned they've uh addressed.

They also did look through the storm water to um meet the local storm water regulations. So they have completed um additional water quality um treatment volumes on the site as well as phosphorus calculations and they have provided or they will be providing a storm water pollution prevention plan um once the project starts uh prior to construction that would be required uh through EPA and

that's for erosion control and management of the site during construction processes.

Um they they provided an operation and maintenance plan uh for the facilities uh primarily this goes to uh to look at your drainage treatment facilities as well as maintenance of the pavements, landscaping etc. to minimize um fertilizers and and and such to um reduce any type of treatment needed for the property.

Uh we did ask them to just look at their landscaping plan to make sure that they coordinated between the utilities. There looked to be um and usually it's the one of the last steps anyways where we don't want to have trees built over um any of the utility structures. So there might be a little bit of juggling around uh there that is needed. Uh but the landscaping plan was was detailed.

And lastly, um my last comment was um about the proposed billboard in the farther north portion of the site. So there's an inset um showing where that is, but there's no um sort of definition as to how close it is to the property line. number one, how did that um I think a little bit more detail on how that gets incorporated into the project might be something [clears throat] that

would be interested in hearing about. Um as well as how that uh meets any uh zoning requirements or I I do know they've asked for a waiver for that. So that would be something that you would have to consider.

Thank you. We haven't heard anything about that from the petitioner other than the original application. I'm sure they'll address it at some point.

Okay.

But if you could just stand there.

Sure.

Um just to to the board. Attorney, do you have any questions of our peer reviewer at this point in time or No, I do not.

You do not. How about you?

Uh I don't have any questions. I did go through the comments. I understand what's going on. We we do this on a weekly basis. So I trust the professionals.

Questions? Well, I have a couple questions. Um so, and [clears throat] I guess it gets a little tricky sometimes how we measure this. What's the height of or the tallest one of these structures based on measurement from median ground level? What is the height uh of these of the buildings?

Uh I would have to look at their architectural plans to determine that.

Um but I believe it was over they were asking for a waiver because they're over 55 ft. M Mr. Chair, if I may, 55 ft. So as a to remind the board, these buildings are split level. So this area through here is fourstory and this area through here is fivetory. So the fourstory side including these two front buildings is 44 feet in total height flat roof and then on the fivetory side it's 55 ft.

Obviously the 11 ft delta is the additional floor.

I don't recall. There might have been one in there, but a a section showing how that kind of steps down.

We we had provided we might have them.

Uh we have the architectural sections from last time.

We're going to see if we if you have the elevation view on that, that'd be that'd be great.

Yeah, we'll see if we have those. We'll bring those up.

While you're doing that, I have another question. What is the parking ratio per unit as it stands with 428 parking spaces?

428. It's one I believe 1.13.

Uh so if if I may um with the full buildout at 428 would be a 143. Uh without the banked parking build out is 1.

It's less than 1.2.

So right now you have 428 less than 1.2.

Sorry one. Yes. One 1.15 four. It's 1.14. Okay.

All right. So let's we can step back because I I didn't hear all that.

Sorry. So you're proposing 300 units.

Yes.

And there right now based on the plan that you presented to us, there are about 428 parking spaces.

Now there Mr. Chair, just as a clarification, there are 341 surface parking spaces on the initial construction plan.

Okay.

341 parking spaces leads to a ratio of 1.14.

Okay.

Space per unit.

with the bank parking. Were that to be constructed, the total parking goes to 428 and then the ratio would be 1.43 spaces per unit.

Hold on.

Hold on.

We'll we'll get there. We got I'll give you an opportunity. Absolutely. I will.

It doesn't help the public understand some of the link.

No, I understand.

You're gonna have an opportunity to ask all those questions. I'm just taking some notes. We just have to have a form as to how this actually uh transpires.

Um so it was 1.43 units at 428 spaces.

That's if one of the things that we require as a condition. Okay.

That would be the full buildout.

All right. And did you verify this math?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

All right.

Mr. Chair, may I Yes. May I comment?

Sure. So, the plan right now calls for 341 parking spaces and the remaining parking spaces are going to be along the side of the building, the side of the property. Am I misunderstanding?

No, you you're not misunderstanding.

We'll get the plan back up here in a moment. Uh, what happens?

Go ahead.

The side view is just No, no problem.

There go to that one. That's fine. Let's bring that up. That's good enough.

My apologies on the delay.

Blank screen.

[cough]

Okay. So, the I'm sorry. Go ahead. that there's going to be 341 parking spaces around the buildings.

So, the 341 parking spaces are designated in front of and behind the buildings along these interior parking trays.

And the expansion uh to bring it up to 428 is to the left of the picture. Is that correct, sir? would be a combination of an expansion of spaces along this property line plan left. I think you'd see the cursor.

Y and the opportunity for spaces along the property the the area adjacent to the wetland resource areas.

There is no expansion of parking along the subdivision the existing Eisenhower residential subdivision.

Right. And when you refer to bank spaces, you're referring to the fact future that you could utilize.

That's correct. That's correct. So, so the term bank to indirectly answer the question through through the chair is the notion that we can demonstrate to the board that we can construct additional spaces and then work with the board on crafting a condition to construct those if we need to. So the notion is to preserve as much of the site as uh landscaped or green space unless there's an emergent need to

create additional parking.

Mr. Chair, can I Yes. May I ask a question?

Where's the retaining wall supposed to be along the rear?

So the if I can point with the cursor, we have a retaining wall that is here.

Then there's a gap of natural topography and then another retaining wall here.

So, if I may, actually, I think I could do it because we're on the plans now as opposed to the PowerPoint. Bear with me.

Let me just jump plans if I may.

So, I guess [clears throat] it'll more clearly demonstrate the parking.

So these dark shaded areas, these are the retaining walls along the rear of the site and the dash spaces here.

Hopefully they read on the screen.

That's the opportunity for the banked parking 43 spaces to exist along that rear line if we needed them. And then similarly just to fill out the conversation along this property line is 44 additional spaces that we could create if we needed to dimensionally equal to the spaces that are between the buildings.

Okay. At a 1.75 ratio. So I I don't even see that as an option. I think it has to be put on the table that that's what you're going to do at this point. But that's just me talking. So, um, we've already had our our peer reviewer. So, now I'm going to open up to the public comment. I think it was a gentleman here who had a question. I don't know if it

was completely addressed. Somebody had spoken.

It was It was addressed, but it spoken.

It was addressed. Okay.

Thank you. So now, yes, but I may need you soon. I'm sure there going to be questions that we can't answer. So, how this is going to work is anyone can come up. you're gonna have to state your name and your address and you ask the question through me and then we get the person to answer the question. Uh if it's not answered then we'll try to find a way to get it answered. But I think

most of the these two between these two people they'll be able to provide us an explanation as to what they're trying to do. So at this time I'm going to call upon anyone in the public who would like to speak either in favor or in opposition to this petition.

Come on up.

Hold on one second. That podium seems to be a little twisted. No.

Yes. Great.

Uh Daniel Rodri, 17 Eisenhower Street, Dartmouth. Um Mr. Chairman, board, special counsel. Uh I'd first like to start to um address a comment that was made at the last hearing uh by Mr.

Calhoun. Um I'd like to quote that he said um this project is next to the highway and has next to Noah Butters.

Um, so I think if you look around the room today, I think you'll find that that uh comment wasn't accurate and it was very offensive to the Butters here.

Um, the butter isn't just a name on a tax map. Um, where neighbors whose basement will flood uh if this project fails, where parents whose children could get struck um due to the uh the possibility of of the extra traffic is being added. Um, and where neighborhoods privacy is going to be trespassed by not only light but also due to noise from I95 195 due to the uh destruction of our natural buffer. Um,

so to suggest to this board that we don't need to worry about the real life impact of this project um is not fair to us. Um, and I think that blindness kind of continues on uh with the rest of the engineering. Uh, Mr. Cado testified that the lighting would be captured on site.

Um, so just as Mr. the Calhoun failed to see the people in this room. Uh the lighting model I think fails to see the windows on the back of our yards. Um so I guess my my first question um on the traffic for Mr. Durk is that um the estimated traffic counts that were identified um appears to be uh you have to address it to me. I'm sorry.

Everything has to be addressed to me then we'll go to them. But I'm going to interrupt you just one second. Did you send a letter prior to was it an extensive letter? Were you the one that drafted the letter?

I I Well, we the neighborhood sent the letter uh that was signed by over 40 people. Okay.

Um and I also sent the letter on Sunday night uh with listed 21.

We read those letters, but I am going to read them not read them, but I'm going to um announce it not tonight. It'll be another night because I don't have them all listed. I want to list them all succinctly and have them become part of the record. Okay. So, um, and I know there was one that was quite extensive that was written and I I'm not sure. It might have been sign that might be the

one that was signed by all the neighbors. It just said from the neighbors, I guess. Um, but I don't have the specific list and I don't want to leave any behind. So, at the next meeting, they're all listed in the portal.

They're all listed on the portal, but I I'd rather just refer to them specifically so that we can vote on them and have them admitted. Okay. We'll do that at the next hearing. Okay. So, I I have a question about the traffic impact assessment that was submitted. Um the the counts that they were just shown on the screen. Um it appears that they used a land use code of uh from the IT of

221. Um and I believe that code should be used in an urban environment. Um this project is suburban. There is no public transportation. There's no subways.

Every trip to Ricardis to get a pizza.

every trip up to Cland to get a gallon of milk is going to be via car. Um so I think those um that number is off and I'd like to question through the board why they use that uh land use code.

We'll do that another one.

Yep. Um in uh addition to the traffic study um they mentioned that they work with the city of New Befford um and they mentioned the the new u industrial park um at the Welling City golf course that's being proposed. um but they didn't include it um in their assessment for future growth. So I like to question why they omitted that. I think in their assessment they said because it hasn't

gone before the New Befford Property Board, but it has since gone before the board and it's a point of record.

So can you I didn't hear the first part of what you had said. I know they had indicated that they had been communicating with the city of New Bedford in order to make an assessment.

What was what was your concern specifically?

They didn't include the the project in the traffic future traffic counts. Okay.

Um, additionally, another question from Mr. Durk, um, has to do with the stale traffic data. Um, looking through the report, looks like they use data from 2018 through 2022. Um, and they didn't use anything from 23 to 2025. And if you look at there's significant amount of crashes uh, from from 23 to 25. And I I like to understand why they omitted that data.

Anything else? Um, I'd like clarification on the building height as well. The architectural plans uh identify the building as 55 ft. Um, however, the dimensional arrows on the architectural plans only go to the top of the windows. So, is it 55 ft to the roof or 55 ft to the top of the windows?

And I guess last question to the board, I guess maybe to special counsel. Um the project eligibility letter made no mention of the billboard. Um now does that require uh is that considered a substantial change and would that require uh a new assessment from Mass Housing based on the project change?

I don't see how the bill billboard's even relevant, but we'll hear from them and see what they're trying to Well, it's commercial use, right? This is a residential.

Oh, absolutely. That's why I don't believe I get you. But they haven't even They may have put it in the original application. I did remember reading it and they were seeking a uh a waiver for that. Um but I haven't heard anything from it since. Nothing verbal to either support or state that they're going to abandon it or anything. We asked for a waiver and they have it in the civil plans.

And then um I guess lastly for Mr. Cado the the lighting plan I'm sorry through the board I'd like you to ask the civil engineer. Uh the lighting plan that they proposed it showed um that there wouldn't be any trespass but it appear appears that they use like a flat earth model. There's no calculation summary table um and there's no proof that there won't be any light um shining up into

our uh you know second story windows. So I think we demand a vertical uh lighting study that would measure light at you know 15 ft above grade.

So and I guess I'm sorry I have one more five continue.

I think it's it's for civil and probably for the peer reviewer who did the civil um question I'd like you to ask them would be um the existing conditions that were provided. Um there's a note five in there that identifies that the wetland delineation was initially done in 2014.

Um and then they just rehung flags in 2025. So to me that sounds like they just went out there with some GPS device, figured out where the flags were and rehung them. They didn't do any kind of assessment. They didn't do any wetland survey. And I think that's stale. I I think over 11 years I think the wetlands could change.

All righty.

Thank you.

So, anything else?

There's more in that letter, but I guess we can I don't want to waste the whole public record time.

All right. So, I guess we'll call upon our consultant to provide some clarification on this for us.

So, it's Miss Keller, right?

Yes.

All right. So, Miss Keller, the first question that the gentleman had had to do with the land use code that was utilized.

Excuse me.

That's a traffic question.

That would be traffic.

Okay, that's true. That is a traffic question. So, we're going to put that one aside. Thank you.

Um, and next one is also a traffic question.

Uh, the other has to do with the height requirements. I guess there was a 55 foot marking. However, on the plan, according to him, the arrow only, it appears that the arrow is only showing that that's the top of the windows and not necessarily the top of the flat roof line. Do you have maybe I have to ask uh the petitioners expert on that, but that that would have to be clarified.

Ask him. Yes.

We also have the billboard concern.

You've already brought that to light.

I'll ask him about that. What about the fact that there's a very limited lighting plan and they're concerned?

You can't hear that?

All right. There's a a lighting plan and there's concern about any um spillage of lighting onto more importantly, I guess, the residents of Eisenhower.

So, if they do a section and showing the heights of the lighting, they could they could analyze looking at vertical to make sure there's no spillage going along. Typically we do foot candles that are uh horizontal on the ground and so we look at that light spillage.

Usually we have cut off lights, dark sky compliant, everything is directed downward. Um for the parking lots or any uh wallpack lighting, building lighting uh is everything is supposed to be shining downward so that when you look at the property line, you're looking at trespass horizontally, ground level. So if knowing that these buildings are four to five feet sto uh stories high, you you could evaluate that.

Okay. But that hasn't been done in any of the plans that they've provided us.

No.

All right. So obviously we'd look into that to make sure that we can minimize any of that.

Well, we already have bylaws that speak to that anyway.

All they have to they can provide lighting planes. That's not a big deal.

Fair enough.

All right. Now, with regard to the wetland delineation with existing conditions, this note five, I know it's a little unfair to just to point that out and ask that you you know remember a note five, but I obviously I don't know how I don't remember how long a wetland delineation is valid for, but three years typically three years. So it is old and I did note it um and I noticed the note um uh in their

narrative they identified the fact that the wetland resources were redelineated or rehung and re-reviewed by GDDR consulting and that they indicated that those resources were reviewed by the conservation commission. So we could contact the conservation commission to confirm that um that that was done but that was what was noted in the rep their re narrative report. Okay.

All right. So, I guess since we don't have and this is why I didn't want to I didn't want to open it up with any of the traffic stuff, but we have a few questions. Let's see if this gentleman can address them.

First was the land use code. Why was the land use code of two? I don't remember the exact number. Why was that utilized?

So, Mr. Chairman, it is actually a suburban land use code. It says that.

So, when you look at the land use code, it says urban/suburban. It's suburban.

If it was an urban location, we adjust the numbers downward to account for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transportation. So, your reviewer will affirm that, but it's the appropriately in use code. It is suburban.

And what is the code that was used?

I believe it was 221, which has to do with the question about the height of the building. Um, it's residential mid-rise, multif family midrise, which is buildings that are four or more stories in height. It's basically four to 10 stories, is a mid-rise building for land use code 221. Okay. Um something about it didn't project the [clears throat] didn't count the project in the traffic count.

So this has to do with the background development. This is the industrial park at the golf course in the city of New Bedford. At the time that the traffic study was undertaken, there was not a development plan. In order for us to include that project, the two things that have to be defined are how much traffic is going to generate and what are the improvements that go along with it. None of those were defined at this

time. So we can't include it in our traffic study. The easiest or the simplest reason why we don't do that is because if I include their traffic, I have to assume mitigation. So when we were talking about what's going to happen like at the ramps uh with uh 140 with that development, those ramps have to be signalized. So then what I would do is include the traffic, drop traffic signals in at those ramps, then add our

project's traffic. And then what I'd say to you is similar to what I'd said that it's general statement is no impact. But the real e the real issue is who's paying for those traffic signals. So we don't want to assume that that project's built that there's traffic and that there's mitigation and improvements that are in place that no one's proposed to do. So at the time the traffic study is

proposed, no development plan, no traffic study and no mitigation identified. So therefore, we did we identified it as a potential future project. We didn't include it in the traffic study. And the way it works is we don't have to include them because there wasn't a project. They do need to include us because we have a project with a traffic study that's in spitted to the board. So that that's how it works for that.

What was the proposed future project for that site?

See if I have We're talking about the we're talking about the golf course, correct?

But it's still a golf course as we speak.

Correct.

So I'll give you what the city of New Bedford told us was being contemplated.

So I'll and I'll um the commenter can tell me if I So this is the Whailing City Golf Course. Um it was an advanced manufacturing campus. Um so it's 95 acres. The development will include 995,000 square ft of buildable area when complete. That would include research and development space, laboratories, biotechnology facilities, as well as supporting child care, gyms, brew pubs, distilleries restaurants retail

stores, and medical offices. Um, at the time that this traffic study was repaired, the city had submitted a request for proposals to developers uh to redevelop that project. Um, and it says responses have been received again at the time we prepared the traffic study, but have not yet been presented to the city council property committee, which may have since happened. Um but what we need is we need a development

plan, traffic study, mitigation that goes along with that because you can't build all of that um with the infrastructure that's out there. There would be significant traffic and significant infrastructure improvements.

Those haven't been identified. So we've listed the project so the board and the public is aware of it. Um but there was no information beyond the RFP that had gone out.

So it's just an idea at this point.

It may have gone beyond the RFP, but an RFP. Correct. An idea that an RFP was submitted. They were looking for developers to embrace that idea and come forward to them with realistic proposals.

I get it.

Um um the next one is that's about it.

No correct thing about the crash data.

2018 the data was 2018 to 2022 commenters 100% correct. The the Department of Transportation as I was talking about as we assess crash rates so the number of crashes per million vehicles going through intersections.

Mass DOT publishes those crash rates.

Those crash rates are based on 2018 to 2022. So the commenter is correct. There is data and what it's called it's unredacted data. So um if we think about all the stuff that you've heard in the news where people are shoving out um information coming out of that where you see black line through everything. The state goes through and looks at all of the crash reports that we as public

citizens submit to the registry of motor vehicles. They then go through that and they have to redact information, eliminate duplicate reports that go in in order to have a comprised set of data that is valid that they analyze. Any data from 2022 to present has not had that done. So the data is available.

It's publicly available. We can pull it.

It has not been redacted or comp uh consolidated. But also those crash rates I was talking about, they're not calculated for anything after 2022. So, we could pull the data, but there's nothing for us to compare it to. There are times, and your reviewer may request this, that we use the data through 2022 to do the crash rate comparison, but then pull the more recent data to see what's going on. Has there been any

changes since 2022? We can absolutely do that. But that's why we that's why it's 2022 because the state does not publish crash rates, at least at this point, that are for anything after 2022. So, we need to compare to the data that's available.

Mr. Mr. Mr. Chair, I'm just making a list of so that a list can go to the applicant post after tonight of all of the questions and information. Do you want pulling that information to be included on the list?

Yes, we could do that.

Okay,

believe there's also been some case law concluding that you can't even use that for any purp.

I right. I think that the board though and the public has entitled to know how many crashes there have been since 2022 in the project area for their information and the board's requested it. So, all righty. Um, I think that answers most of the questions that gentlemen's raised. So, moving on. Is there anyone else that would like to come forward?

Oh, I'm Mr. Chair, before you move move topics, could I just jump in for one second?

Sure.

I just want to share with the board, I know lighting came up. Uh, so I think it might have been indicated that we had not provided a lighting analysis. So there is a plan. Uh, so it is in the it is in the record. So we could take a look at it. We could discuss it from there. It's up here on the screen. And what the goals are, Miss Keller stated them correctly. It's to identify the

lighting fixtures that illuminate the site. Um, and they have to be dark sky compliant, meaning they can only shine light downward and they can't shed light off the property. So, in terms of reading this, there's a lot of dense data here. I won't bore everybody with it, [snorts] but the focus is to review all of these numbers that are on the plan represent foot candle illumination

at the ground level. And the requirement is that it has to be zero when it gets to the property line, that we're not shedding light onto other pe other people's property. Um, I know there was also concern about the height of the building relative to the windows. So, what we're looking for when we're dealing with light illumination is bright spotlights uh that could be shining outward. Obviously, an an

illuminated window doesn't throw light the distance that a bright uh LED light fixture would. So, we don't include that thrown light from the elevation of the building. It's something that we could certainly take a look at. Uh but usually we focus on the ground level illumination which this plan does. Um two other quick points. Um the building height that came up, we do have it noted on the plan. It is 44 ft

and 55. As I mentioned, it is on the architecturals. Perhaps it's a little misleading. Uh but it does point to the top of the roof on there. And then uh lastly, there was the conversing the wetlands. Um this site, the board may be familiar with it as these abutters are likely familiar with it. This site was the subject of study for a number of years before we got involved. So that's

why the wetland delineation originally done was was in 2014. We re-engaged Goddard Consulting to refresh their flags, meaning go back out, check the wetlands, uh wetland line creep can occur, meaning the line can actually move, rehang the flags as appropriate to the wetlands that you observed out there, and we'll make sure they're located on the plan correctly, which is what's being presented in front of you.

Excuse me, Mr. But have you gotten them redelineated since 2014? There's one thing to go out there and confirm them by the you are consultant.

Yeah.

But has the conservation commission issued an ORAD?

No.

So they are not confirmed.

So right there. So wetland line delineation can only be affirmed through either the issuance of an OAD or an order of conditions under a notice of intent. We have to go through that process with the conservation commission. Uh we had discussed that very very briefly during the introductory hearing um when Mr. Chair had mentioned that this is a one-stop shop application. Um and I respectfully

corrected that we also have to go to conservation um to to deal with the conservation matters for not only the confirmation of the wetland line but also for approval of work within 100 ft of that delineated wetland line once affirmed.

Mr. Chair, just before that, what's that blue line represent? Oh. Uh, so that that blue blue line represented uh we we received one of the comments during the portal. I think it was from the planning director uh to identify where the zone 3 line on the town's aquifer map may inject into into this property. So there's a small finger in this location. So it's overlapped on title plan.

Mr. Chair, before he steps away, one of the other questions gentleman asked about the drainage. He was concerned that we would flood onto his property.

Could you address that? uh through the chair to address it. So everybody on Eisenhower Street will remain above us topographically. So they'll be above us.

So any water that we are creating, and I use that term probably incorrectly applied, is going to flow and move downhill. Um so the opportunity to flood out the neighbors quite frankly doesn't exist on the property because of how steep and sharp the topography is and the terrorist grades that that we're we're creating.

Thank you. I I have I have a legal question. Sure, that's okay.

Um that sport court is uh going onto the church's property. So, how is that legally going to be established and also it may notwithstanding the fact that they're a church that the primary use of that is not for church purposes is for private purposes which does create a zoning issue potentially for the church.

So, we're going to need more information, particularly legal opinion, regarding the ability to put that sport court on the church's um property line inside their setbacks.

So, so the intent so acknowledged, we'll we'll take that under advisement and certainly uh sus out what you're suggesting. Uh but the intent is the sports court would reside on on our property. Um but there would be shared access for them to to get to it.

Okay. So, can you go to the first sheet? Because on the first sheet, it clearly shows it on it clearly shows it over the property line on the first page.

So, the so the the corner of the sports court resides right along the property line here. Now, can you blow that up, please, just so we can get a better view?

Let me see if I can. Sure.

Slight delay. I apologize. Now I've gone too too much.

Yeah, that appears to be over the property line.

So, what you what you're seeing the sports court is here. This is the corner of the sports court, which we do need to enclose it in a protective fence. So, the the dash line that you're seeing is a fence and because of the topography, uh we would need to support it with a retaining wall and a gravel access path.

And how long is that retaining wall? How tall? I'm sorry. Uh, so in this location, well, I can if it's more than if it's I I'll have to check the the town zoning bylaw as to what constitutes a structure, but if it's above a certain height, it's a structure in the setback on the church's property.

I I will look into comment received and I'll look into it for confirmation.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Attorney Calhoun, if they can come up to the podium just so I got a quick question to ask you. You the billboard situation.

Yes.

Is that something that you're seeking?

Yes, it is. Okay. And how is it that you feel that that's applicable to this project?

Uh it's on the site. It's site signage.

Um it's, you know, it's a benefit to the property. Uh what it does is it provides additional income to the asset which also gives us the ability to we're working on a bigger plan is to donate or gift to the right charity whatever land we don't need and the ability to do that is going to be driven by whether or not we have the income uh from the billboard. Uh we've been working with

the Dartmouth um preservation trust.

We've also reached out to a few of the groups. They actually tooured the site.

I don't know if Mr. Wildman is here. Uh but they tooured the site. Um and we're working through a plan um as to what we can do with that land. But you know, the billboard is something that we would love to have. Uh and if we don't get it, uh we'll deal with it. Uh but we would we would like it and we think it's a benefit.

Well, I just see that it's there's a significant wetland area. I'm not sure how you get to it from from Hathaway Road unless you're thinking about accessing it from from the highway. So, I I I'm not sure how that would work.

Yeah, we're working on that. There's a couple different ways to access it. Uh the other worst possible option is to come in by air and and you know, it's it's set on a piling and it goes in place. Um and other than that, and we do have the ability to cross the wetlands uh for construction and purposes like that. So, uh, we have it in the application. Uh, it's at the board's discretion. Uh, okay. Thank you.

And I'm not an attorney. Easy attorney.

Okay. I apologize.

That's okay.

I gave you a title that you don't have.

All right. Um, is there anyone else in the audience that would like to come on up? Cool.

Hi, my name is Amy. I um live on 10 Your last name Koalo.

I [clears throat] live on 10 Eisenhower Street and I'm here to formally state my opposition to this proposal, the Hathaway. I am not opposed to growth, but I am firmly opposed to irresponsible density that disregards the safety and character of established neighborhoods.

My concerns are as follows.

Architectural incompatibility and scale.

[clears throat] The transition from a quiet single family residential area to a five-story high-rise is an extreme departure from Dartmouth's suburban character. This monstrosity will obstruct natural views and eliminate the open air quality that defines our community. It will destroy the natural habitat for the wildlife that currently thrive here. A two to three story limit is far more

appropriate for this site to ensure that the project complements rather than dominates the existing landscape.

[clears throat] pedestrian safety.

Pathway Road enti entirely lacks sidewalks. Our own children have narrowly avoided being struck by vehicles while waiting for the bus for school bus. To add 300 plus cars to a road with zero pedestrian infrastructure is to create a danger that is real, foreseeable, and completely unacceptable.

The proposal of 341 spaces for a project of this magnitude is mathematically insufficient and is a fantasy. Where public transportation is not available on Hathaway Road, multicar households are a necessity. The bank spaces will become a necessity immediately. Yet even then, the overflow would inevitably spill onto our quiet quiet side streets.

This will narrow our res residential roads creating a direct hazard for our children playing on their lawns and more critically impending impeding the response time of emergency vehicles.

Hathway road already experiences significant significant congestion adding an estimated 300 plus vehicles to an already failing infrastructure is a recipe for gridlock. The board must consider the hidden costs to residents who will now face dangerous delays simply trying to exit their own streets.

We bought into a town with trees, wildlife, a good neighborhood, not a city feel with high-rise apartments.

Affordable housing should never require existing residents to sacrifice their safety or quality of life. This project, as currently designed, appears to be a prioritization of developmental profit, a land grab over the lived reality of Dartmouth residents. I urge the board to deny the current five-story proposal and require a significant reduction in scale and density to the protect the safety

and integrity of our neighborhood.

Thank you. Is there any anyone else that'd like to come up? Oh, I sorry.

This gentleman was next. You'll be next, sir.

Hi, I'm Dr. James Griffith. I live at 134 Hathaway Road. Uh, my property abuts Eisenhower Street.

Um, I apologize for not being a traffic engineer or building engineer. I'm just trying to understand what all of this means for my immediate environment. Um, I have two things I can't square and I would appreciate your ability to clarify it as we go down the road here. Um, the website for the Valley View Condominiums at 915 Haway Road, New Bedford, which is less than a quarter of a mile up the

street from this, says in part, "This area is considered a car dependent area and most errands will require requ.

There are few traffic options. In their own publicity for their facility, they give a bike score of 32 out of 100.

Now, I have walked Hathaway Road for over 40 years. I I go on Hathway Road walking every single day. When I come out of my driveway, I go northeast towards Ricardis.

Um, I do the best I can to get off Haway Road and go into their two housing developments, two U-shaped ones, and I walk in there and it's much safer there.

Uh, but I can tell you from my um non-engineering viewpoint, Haway Road is a death trap. There are no sidewalks.

The cars fly down there. I whatever the traffic studies are going to show, I mean, they they fly down there. Uh, in commuting times, you are taking your life in your hands.

Um, I have cared about every environment that I have ever lived in. Um, and as I walk up the pot of Hathaway Road that leads to where I can get off it, I pick up 9 to 15 nips per day. So, somebody is drinking on that road, coming and going from whatever they're doing. Um, and I don't know, I have no expertise to know that that contributes to the danger of

Hathaway Road, but adding 1300 cars a day, I I cannot believe uh improves the safety of any of us who live in this community um nor the tranqu tranquility of the town of Dartmouth. and I would just appreciate your searching for any clarification to my confusion about this situation. Thank you.

I'm not sure I have a specific question that I can pose to anyone based on what you indicated, but um I can tell you this. We're going to have our peerreview traffic consultant at the next hearing likely at the next hearing and they'll be able to provide us and I'm sure that their traffic um expert will be as available as well. So that any issues concerning the additional traffic that's going to be um

experienced by members of this town would certainly be elaborated upon from their perspective as to how many cars they they've presented that number. I don't know if that number is accurate just as yourself. I'm not a traffic expert. Uh but I've been doing this for a little bit and I haven't seen a single time in which they say there's not going to be additional traffic. They always

say there'll be an increased count, but to me it's, as far has said before, it's common sense. If you add more cars, you're going to have more traffic, and here we're adding more cars because they're going to be more units. But they seem to believe that there's ways to mitigate this that are acceptable.

We'll have our own expert. They've already provided a report. I have a report here. I'm sure if it's not already posted on the town website, it will be, but there's a narrative to pretty much everything that this gentleman has indicated. They've reviewed it. Um, they're going to make they're making certain recommendations in this report. I'm sure he's going to address those recommendations. Um, and

then we'll be able to get them to explain to us a little bit more about what is uh bothering you in the sense of you're not able to square it.

I [clears throat] haven't been able to square it for quite some time and it's not just on this project but that is the science that we have to follow. That's the acceptable science that's supposedly been um put forth as what we need to you utilize in the analysis and there's this code that they follow with based on certain number of units certain number of traffic a certain amount of traffic will

come from that. I don't know how accurate that is, but that's what we need to follow because there isn't another science to follow. So, I feel you. Um hopefully that person will give us a little more explanation as to specifically, but I am really concerned about the intersections there. There are intersections. The more immediate intersection may not be the most dangerous one. I think the more most

immediate one is Sloum Road and Haway Road. That may not be the most dangerous one. Um I know that Hathaway Road and Route Six is a mess. There's no other word for it, right? Unless you have another word, but it's a mess. Um, so I I I I feel it. I feel you. Uh, but hopefully they can explain to us what can be done to minimize that. I know one thing would be if the project didn't

exist at all, we'd be stuck with where we're at, and that's already not good as it is. But anyway, that's enough of me.

Is there anyone else out there that would like to speak? Come on up. Oh, no, no, wait a sec. I promised this was next. I apologize. I have short-term memory loss here.

Hi sir, it's uh Tom Babington uh 19 Kennedy Street.

19 what?

Kennedy Street.

Okay, fair enough.

So, in regards to the traffic, I know we're going to go back to that some other time, but um the project for Haway and Route Six has been on the docket for years, and and the problem I have with it is, you know, the last project for this lot, someone from the town, from the planning board, the chair of the planning board told me that don't worry, it's going to get fasttracked. is going to get

fasttracked. That improvement project that was 2021 and I'm sure whatever the town the state's planning on doing, the scope's probably out of date. The traffic has changed dramatically in in Route Six.

Um, back to their traffic study, they didn't include the intersection of Force Corner and Route Six. You look at the three intersections, Florence Corner, Route Six, Tucker and Route Six, Hathaway and Route Six, they're all kind of joined together. It's one big mess. And the select board will tell us, you know, they've had meetings with the police department trying to understand what

they can do to mitigate the problems on Fence Corner, Road Six. Those three intersections are linked together. The other intersection they didn't include that's within the scope of the development we should say I think it's is it Rodman and Hathaway Rockdale. Thank you. Senior moment.

So that's another dangerous intersection. There's just a stop sign on on Rockdale. Um it backs up quite a bit. That wasn't included.

The only mitigation they're proposing is a stop sign at the end of the development. That's all they're going to pay for. I realize there's limits on what they can do with what who pays for what, but that's not really addressing it. There's even a section in the in the in the traffic study about having a um a public transit um advisor for the development. There's no public transit available. There's no sidewalks.

There's no bike lanes. There's no sidewalk from on on Sloum in that section or on Hathaway. And back to my neighbor Jim, you know, he's he nailed it with a lot of emotion, but that street is dangerous.

And if we go back to the parking, I'll go back to the civil side of things.

Besides the shortage of parking spaces, the parking spaces are undersiz. They're only 9 by8 ft.

A Silverado pickup and F-150 pickup is over 18 feet. Anything, any large SUV is over 18 feet.

So, if you've got shortage of spaces, no public no access to public transit, you're going to have a couple that's going to have two cars. They're not going to be able to get anywhere.

And I don't know about you, but I used to be an automotive as an automotive engineer. The F-150 and the Chevy Silverado, the most sold vehicle in North America, there's going to be some full-size vehicles. Even a small car like an SCRV is larger than it used to be. So if you go undersiz on the [clears throat] length of the space and short the number of spaces, you're going to have a problem.

Now back to the height of the building.

Um there's quite a bit of a slope downway. If you looked at the lot parallel to to on Hathaway.

So hold on. Are you talking about the road the road is sloped or the lot itself? The lot is sloped. Yes. from Hathaway towards the highway.

Right.

Okay.

And then if you go down Eisenhower, there's quite a bit of a slope down. So if I'm a if I'm one of the abutters, if I'm one of my neighbors living on Eisenhower, I'm going to look up this gigantic monolith because there's probably a 60 foot incline. So if the building's 55 feet and I'm three three houses down, the thing's going to be almost like a hundred feet when I'm

looking up to it. If you look at the If you look at the landscaping map, there's only a single row of trees between the Abua, I can't tell. I can't I can't scale the the landscaping map all that well, but it only looks about 30 feet wide. That's all there is for a buffer. There's no residential building in Dartmouth that's five stories tall.

And another thing with the with a small amount of but you know the the buffer zone being so narrow people in an apartment building going to be coming and going at all hours of the day their headlights are going to be shining on my neighbors backyards.

If you bring up if if one of if the developer would bring up that landscaping map, you'll see that if if this development was a a big box store and we had a a residential zone A abuing a commercial zone, you you the board would ask for a lot more buffer.

A commercial building is not open 24 hours. There's going to be people coming and going from that apartment building at all hours of the day. When you talk about 300 units, someone's going to be working third shift. someone's going to be leaving for a a work, you know, a job in Boston at 3:30 in the morning with only a very narrow buffer, you're going to have a problem. The other thing

is they got a dog park abudding a wetland. They got that retention pond abudding one of my neighbors backyards.

If that overflows, I I don't see how it can be down downhill. I think it's going to end up in their in their backyard.

So, I've submitted a couple of things to the town that's already posted.

One kind of covers some of the stuff from a from the civil side. There's another detailed letter about some of the concerns I have for traffic. Um, getting back to traffic. I'll be a proxy for one of my neighbors that wasn't able to make it, Michelle Smith. She actually contacted the Dartmouth Police Department and and has some police records from 2021 to 2025 of um Hathway Road, Hathway Road and

Route Six. And it's over 200 vehicle accidents in that time period. And I'll submit that. That's about all I have to say.

All right.

Now, have you previously submitted any of this stuff or is this the first time you're submitting it?

That's going to be the She's I think she submitted a couple letter uploaded to the town website.

All my all my correspondence has been posted.

It's addressed to a Michelle Smith.

That's the name of She couldn't make it.

She couldn't make the meeting, so I'm trying to Okay. Se take a look at it. If you want to admit it into the record, we could do so. I'll let you let you guys look at it.

It's all the same, but hold on to it.

Um, so let's address some of these concerns.

They're all the same.

So the first one is the traffic. I guess when I looked up, I saw I think five different traffic points that you studied were intersections. One of them is Rockdale Avenue and Haway Road. Is there any reason why that was emitted?

So the um one one of the things your peer reviewer will do is look at that study area to determine if there's additional intersections that need to be studied. The the base parameters as it relates to scoping a traffic study set by the Department of Transportation is the it's you study any intersection where the project will increase traffic by 100 additional peak hour trips or a 5% increase in traffic. the

intersections we've captured um either meet or exceed what those standards would be. The other intersections, we wouldn't exceed any of those. Now, that doesn't mean that they should not be they can't be looked at. Um similar to as your council was asking for us to pull additional crash data. We can absolutely do that. We rely upon your peerreview consultant or the board itself uh to the extent that there's

interest in looking at it. What I would caution is like the fonts corner road intersection in particular because as we're talking about these projects, I know the chair is very familiar with it.

We're required to mitigate our impacts at least as it relates to capacity. That mitigation is what's known as a fair share cost estimate or fair share costing.

When we have a project that has a limited increase in traffic happening at the intersection, it's not saying that improvements are needed, but what it would be saying is that the responsibility of this applicant to implement improvements at that intersection is proportionate to the amount of traffic that's added. So, Fon Corner Road is an intersection. The state's supposed to improve. If we have

a less than a 1% increase, our contribution toward any improvement be less than 1% of the cost of that improvement. it doesn't get anything done. So, I think part of this peer review process and what the board is going through is to really focus us representing the applicant on where can this project make beneficial improvements to the transportation infrastructure rather than collecting

let's say $100 for a fix at Fon's Corner Road where that's not going to do anything but that's all the applicant is required to do because that's their fair share contribution. Again, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at additional intersections, but we do rely upon the board and your professional consultant to tell us, is this an intersection where in their professional opinion the project would have an impact

that would be meaningful and would result in beneficial mitigation to the town. Um, the six intersections to us, they're obvious ones and I think to the board and to the public, those are obvious. The question is, do you go beyond those? And I think that's where we'll we'll wait to hear from the peer review consultant.

I think that makes sense.

All right. for the computer. The other one's parking spaces, full sign mapping.

No, I'm going to need the other gentleman to come on up.

So, there were concerns about the fact that the parking spaces are only 9 ft by 18 ft.

What's your position on that? So, uh we've done a number of developments and you'll find that zoning bylaws have by and large adopted a 9 foot by 18 uh in certain I'm not saying Dartmouth has adopted that. I'm saying we've used 9 by18 as a standard space uh that is adequate for most cars. There are certainly exceptions to that. There are larger vehicles. Uh so in the case of larger vehicles, we want to make sure

that there's adequate area that if they overhang the space u they're parked in spaces that where they would overhang like a natural green space and not the sidewalk necessarily. Now in this case uh where we have the predominance of our parking spaces are adjacent to buildings where there are sidewalks directly adjacent to that we would want to encourage those larger vehicles to park

at the rear of the site where they would overhang that slope moving down towards the wetland resource area.

[snorts] And what about the landscaping map and shows that um only a single rows of trees and a very narrow buffer. So, what we've Oh, sorry.

Let me just bring that up and we can we can speak to it uh sort of real time if you don't mind.

the project over there on Victoria near Victoria Drive. The one with Kenstein.

How high was that building?

Can't remember. I think that's four one side, three on the other.

So, Mr. Chair, I think what the gentleman was referring to when we were looking at the landscaping plan. So this I'm thinking more along Eisenhower, the rear of the people on Eisenhower.

Yes, sir. Uh so as I mentioned during the initial hearing, what we endeavored to do by moving the site away is preserve as much of the natural tree buffer as we can along that zone. Uh so the clamshell shape that you see on this plan represents tree retention. Uh meaning we have a minimum of 20 25 feet sort of in the that the narrow zone through here. it thickens out into the

40ish range range through here um to preserve those trees. But what we also found through the on-site site visits and and maybe the neighbors can certainly attest to it as well is there are gaps in the natural tree line. We want to we want to infill those buffers to provide as much of a solid screen as we can. Uh and that's what the designation is with the additional plant material, evergreen shrubs, etc. to be

located within that tree line uh to provide an effective solid wall screen.

Now what happens is I I'll remind the board again this site is moving down slope down slope. So this is also a down slope from that existing wood line. So the building the landscaping the drive aisle the parking spaces. So the movement of a car coming through say this drive aisle is actually 10 feet lower than the adjacent grade that would be at the property line adjacent to those Eisenhower neighbors. So, what

we're endeavoring to do is not necessarily shield headlights from cars because the natural topography will do that. It's really to just block all of the activity, any lights that you may see from the first floor of the building, any of the light posts that I showed you on the lighting plan to really block some of that by putting the landscaping on top of the slope and provide the maximum screening there. So

yes, in certain areas it thins out because of the natural topography and how we blend the transitional grades in, but we do want to supplement that as much as possible.

Mr. Chair, yes.

Uh, in addition, and I know Phil mentioned it early on the process, when we first filed with our project eligibility letter, what came back was a rather extensive letter from the planning department. And if you had a chance to watch the planning board meeting when they discussed our project, uh their point of view was let's not put a whole bunch of barriers in place. This is going to kill a great affordable

housing project. Let's put a bunch of challenges in front of them. Get these guys to move away from the abutters. Get them to move their buildings. Get them to change the buffer zone. Get them to create more green space. And if you look at the planning board's letter that they provided to Mass Housing, we went and implemented almost every single item they have and we increased that buffer

along the neighbors. We're not spending every single night here showing you the 13 different versions of this plan. We got to the best plan we possibly could that solved even though we don't have to go to the planning board, we believed addressed their concerns. So, a lot of thought went into it. Uh, I think when you really dig into it, obviously the big concern, they don't want to see an

apartment building. That's why the buildings, you'll notice the short end goes to all the neighbors. That's why the lighting's there. That's why we took away parking along that side. If you really want us to grow the parking and you look at the parking studies that have been done on completed projects throughout Massachusetts, they're all dropping down to 089.1, excuse me, 1.0. I mean, there's so many

developments, whether it's retail or residential in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that even at their peak load, it's an asphalt jungle. And that's what we're trying to step away from.

We're trying to create more green space, but if it finds out that it is we need the more parking, the structure is already there. We can take up the lawn, we can put down the asphalt, but we don't want to do it unnecessarily.

I don't follow that logic because you could just reduce the units.

I'm having a lot of difficulty with this being a four-story and a fivetory buildings across the board. the the I've never I I've not allowed ever.

I don't I don't recall this board ever having allowed a five-story structure.

We just haven't done it.

Well, Mr. Chair, the four-story concept comes from playing the grades.

Let's do a three and four. So, I'm going to ask that you guys put forth a a plan with three with three stories and four stories and just give me an indication as to how many units you're going to end up with if we do a three story and a four-story complex. And no, thank you, Mr. Chair.

That's not our application.

I understand it's not your application.

It's not our application, but I'd like to know how many units it is.

It translates to, Mr. Chair, I'd also like to note that when the elevations were presented, and this was at the last hearing, there were elevations from every direction except what it would look like if you were on Eisenhower. So there's no elevation of the buildings provided by the applicant that shows if you're in the backyard or looking out your window in the back of a house on Eisenhower what you're looking

at. So that's a elevation that hasn't been provided as well, but it's still it's a fivetory building that they're seeking this board to approve.

Yeah, chair.

The the fivetory concept is when you look at the building from the high side, it's not there. It's like having a walk out basement rather than wasting that basement.

It's still 55 ft tall.

Hold on. That's not how this works, right?

From the backside. And but the other thing that comes into play is when you really look at smart growth and I'm going to hear a lot of noise, but the goal of smart growth is to go as dense as you can and touch as small a footprint as you can to create the greatest benefit. I mean, you can you to create 300 units of affordable housing in this town.

Most of your zoning most of your zoning is halfacre acre lots. You have to take 300 400 acres to do that. This is truly smart growth. If you talk to some of the open space groups, they would probably support this concept because we're going dense in preserving open space. That's what we're doing. I know you say, "Oh, do a three-story walk up." That's not a quality product. We don't want to do that.

We do fourstory products. We do fivetory product. We're not garden style property owners. People do who do garden style, they're walkups. They don't have elevators. They don't have enclosed hallways. That's not the product we're trying to build. We're trying to build a highass product that people want to live in. We have three-story units with elevators in our town.

We have many three-story units with elevators in our town. The problem is it may not be economic for you to do it with elevators.

It's not it's not it's not it's not what we do.

We do a high quality product.

Mr. Chair, just a point of clarify. Hold on. point of clarification. It's it's not 300 units of affordable housing.

It's 75 affordable units and 270 market units. So, I just wanted to clarify that for the record. It's not a 300 unit affordable building. I'm working on another project in another town where it's going to be 100% affordable. It's going to be senior housing. So, there's a big difference. So, I just want to make sure that's clear. Mr. Um, and again, and just because it's already been stated by one of the consultants,

um, if I asked the chair if you're interested in information and you say yes, is that a request to the applicant to provide it or do we need, you know, every time a piece of information gets asked for, does the applicant going to say, well, did the board specifically ask for it? So I just wanted to clarify that for the record whether because in the the 40B regulations say in addition

to peer review the staff and the boards also provide comments etc. And so the question is are we going to have a situation every meeting or in between meetings when the staff or myself asks for information that the applicant says well not unless the board asks us for it. So, I just want to the the staff and council as well as the peer reviewers are acting on the board's behalf to get

the information so that this can be in efficient the way that the applicant is wishing it to be efficient. And so, we just want to confirm with you that requests for information or questions posed by peer reviewers, staff, and council between hearings should also be addressed. Is that a reasonable request, Mr. Mr. Chair, I think it's a reasonable when you say staff. I just like to clarify that

obviously council if you ask for something on our behalf.

It may be the um DPW director. It may be the, you know, town planner, etc. Um that may have questions for the applicant.

And I don't think that would be a problem for them. That shouldn't be a problem. You could provide it for them.

They requesting it.

Every time they've asked for something, we've provided it. Just like our peer review fee, we put [clears throat] that in place 48 hours. No, it wasn't required. We helped out recommending peer reviewers. We helped out. Some things didn't get done in time. Um, I'd like to clarify the affordability piece uh with your attorney. As far as the state is concerned, you receive credit for 300 affordable units. M I'm

speaking, Mr. Chair, because it's rental product. If this was for sale product, you would only receive credit and would be only considered 75 affordable units.

The way the state looks at it, when it's rental, it's 100% credit towards your subsidized housing inventory, which is key because it gets you towards your 10%. So, let me ask you, what do we do to ensure that these are not going to be transferred out to some other property management company or property investment company and then condoed off as individual units?

There there's a there's a deed restriction that runs with the property.

They cannot be turned to condos. They cannot be the affordable piece runs with the property in its uh it used to run for 30 years. Now, it runs forever. Uh, and it's right in the requirements of your permit. Every 40B permit requires it. Uh, before we get a building permit, there's a final cost certification that goes back to the state. They double check it. So, there's there's no way

that that they can be changed out by a developer.

Well, that's not true. There is a process under the regulations to do it.

So, I guess the question is whether or not the applicant would agree to a condition that states that it will remain rental. what he said deed when he says the word deed restriction right but he's referring to the regulatory agreement that he has to sign with the um no we're also referring to in every 40b permit we've received to date there's a that it runs with the deed that it's it's right in your permit

that it will be rental and will not be converted correct you have to ask for a condo converted right and we're not okay so so we'll add that as a condition we can clarify that all right uh there's the lady that I have to come on up.

Please state your name and address.

Thank you.

Hi there. My name is Nancy Helma. I'm actually here to speak on behalf of my parents who live at Two Spring Hill Road and Hathaway Road. And right in front is Wilbur Avenue where my aunt and uncle live on there. Before I forget, I wanted to just address the um the engineer about not including Rockdale Avenue and Hathaway Road in that traffic count. I don't know why that wasn't included

since you have to pass by there to get to 140 entry and exit. I have heard I don't know if it's true or not, but I have have heard that that corner right there is like one of the top five accident spots in the city of Dubatford.

So, I don't know if that was I'm curious to know if that was excluded for a reason, but uh my parents have experienced since the years that they've been living there five really bad accidents on their property that has taken down the telephone pole directly in front and the bushes that are on the halfway roadside. One of them leading to a death in my in their neighbor's yard.

um earlier. I'm the numbers, the traffic numbers. I'm not an expert in it as well either, but I just don't those numbers just don't seem right to me. From the beginning of Thanksgiving until the first two weeks of January, traffic when I lived with my parents would come down to maybe the golf course. It now comes all the way up to my parents house. And this is constant from those weeks during the holidays. And

I know that the town, it was mentioned that the town's got some projects to mitigate that problem there with the uh Tucker Road being transformed into um Hathaway Road. Why don't we wait until those projects are done to see if that's going to resolve the problem that exists right now instead of adding more volume to this? Because if you're going to add a stop sign at Sloum Road and Hathway

and then one at Wilbur Avenue and Spring Hill Road. So, yes, the cars come down really fast. We probably need to have some more vigilance or have more police presence to slow people down, but now you're adding stop signs. That's going to slow traffic even more because as it is, it kind of flows cuz they're kind of going fast. They do stop down there at Route Six. But if you start adding these

a lot more things. But I think right now the biggest problem is going to be the traffic, especially if New Bedford has this high um industrial park going on right there. That's going to affect 140 as well. Unless we add another exit, I just don't see the traffic problem becoming any better.

If anything, it's going to be worse.

And then uh and then just a a quick comment [clears throat] about what you guys were just talking about. Is it uh going to be in the deed for the 75 affordable housing units are not going to be able to transfer or or is it all the apartments?

All the apartments.

All the apartments. Okay.

I can answer that one. Um with regard to the questions that you had, he already addressed that concern as to why it was that they didn't they didn't analyze that intersection. It's because they actually look at on a percentage or there's an allocation.

But I'm going to have you reserve that question so that when we have our peer reviewer here next and we're going to be picking a date. We're going to be picking a date pretty soon. Oh, it's actually going to be very soon at the next date in which we're going to have our peerreview consultant who's already reviewed just and this is on the website. If it's not, it will be on the website.

That that that's the civil that's the civil letter.

Excuse me.

That's the civil letter.

So, I picked up the wrong word. Sorry.

We don't have it yet.

No. Yeah, we don't got one.

Not the traffic.

No, you don't have it yet.

I don't have that one.

Which one was the other one?

This was the traffic report.

That's right. I saw that. I was dropped off at my office.

And just to add that, there's also the Nazarene Academy. So, when you're leaving my parents' property, you can either go left or right. As you're going left, that Nazarene school there, that creates a bit of a traffic jam there as well during the school hours as well.

So, what intersection was that you just said? Because I was trying to figure out both of these. They're correct. Both of these are civil. Excuse me.

[clears throat] So, Wilbur Avenue, it's basically the Oh, yeah. Will they did they did the analysis there for that one, but they didn't include Rockdale and uh and Hathaway. So, we'll see what our consultant says whether or not they should go back and actually do that analysis as to whether or not it has any significant impact.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Um, all right. We're getting close to winding up. I got a few people that want to speak. You've already spoken. Someone else has. This lady and I guess there's a lady in the back there. Both are going to come up before we break.

My My name is Susanlair and I live at 134 Haway Road. I have written to you already about another subject about water um availability. So I will skip that in because it's late. Um I I would ask that you include another question to your peerreview person um about about traffic because um I learned tonight that you're supposed to include plans that have already been submitted through

the process in your own planning. And I'm wondering um was the proposed oh some hundred more apartments on Tucker Road in Allen was that included in this in this traffic plan? Because yes, some of those people will go down Allen Street to New Bedford, but the vast majority of them will come up Tucker Road to guess where? Route Six and Haway Road. And so you would have to include all of that proposed traffic.

and they too like the Commonwealth average is two cars to an apartment.

So I I would just ask that that that be we'll address that you'll be at the next meeting and you can address that directly with the person. You're going to hear it right from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Okay. Okay.

And the the other short one is that somebody can can um do in in one of their reports is no one has mentioned noise pollution.

How many cars coming and going 24 hours a day are going to create such a noise pollution in the area of of Eisenhower that sleep will be degraded, that children will not be able to play outside, that the quality of life and the well um quality of living in that area is um the these people are going to want to leave. No one's going to want to buy their houses. Then there will be a

direct qual diminishment in the quality of life just by noise and you can't Yeah, I suppose you could ask people to be quiet and we all know how well that works in dorms and in large cities. Thank you.

You're next.

Hi. Uh Gloria Almea 11 Eisenhower Street Dartmouth. Um I have concerns mainly about the size of this unit the 300 units. Um my property was the is directly abiding this project. Um my backyard is directly facing this whole massive project. Um I will have a view of four to five story buildings with 55 ft in height um in right from my backyard with a part area between two of the buildings. There

will also be a road as they would talk and I would like to know more about that buffer because my property line is right where that buffer line should be. Um there'll be a road there. So vehicles will be owing up and down that road behind my property as well as sanitary trucks, uh, recycle trucks, um, and all the noise that's associated with the whole thing.

And I'm also concerned that um, you disrupt them all the the woodlands.

Right now I have a view. I we moved there basically for the property. We have a view of the woodlands. You know, there's wetlands. There's a lot of habitat, wildlife, you know, that we enjoy seeing and all that is now being taken away from us. Um, and as far as the parking, um, as everyone already explained, even with the 400 and something units that they'll be adding, most people today have two cars. You

know, they're saying with the 400 units, you have like 1.15 parking spaces. You know, if someone has a child and they're driving now, they have a third car. So there's a lot of upper part area. Um and they and people already explained about all the traffic here and there. Um when we first moved there, we we started to walk. We're walkers. We started to walk on halfway road and it is it's just

too dangerous. for bicycles, pedestrians, walkers. We actually drive in that hot and we own a buttonwood park to walk because it's just too dangerous a lot on that road. So with the increasing traffic um on that whole road is just adding to the whole um hazardous and um also they did when they did the traffic report um I was they didn't do any um weekend reports you know the the weekend traffic is a lot worse than

during the week sometimes you know as someone already pointed out during holidays to use those. So, they did have a report that broke that down, not but I don't know how I don't know how they did have some weekends and week night uh week nights.

I think I always saw weekdays.

Only weekdays, not week nights. Only weekdays. Okay, fair enough. So, you you have reason to believe that the week nights are busier than the weekdays?

Weekends.

The weekend the weekend nights.

Yeah. You can have a day.

I I've Yes. And I've I've exited I mean coming home I've seen the traffic from Route Six up half the way past the church all the way back up that church. Okay.

And the other part where it's mapped up is when I come home from work off of Route 6 now slop them where horses. I've seen traffic back up from Humble almost way down towards the wrong horse, too. So, yeah, I've seen that. So, all right. We're going to bring that up the next time we have the traffic consultant. Okay.

So, one of my questions, too, is why why are they building a 300 unit complex now? I mean, it's zoned for single family residents. That's why we bought a home there and now we will be affected by a a complex and it's supposed to be a single family resident zoning area and like like everyone's saying four to five stories, you know, I mean I think that that's just it's just too much too much building.

Well, you understand this is a 40B project, right? Because if it weren't a 40B, we would not be approving something like this. You understand that? Because we have bylaws. And what they're doing is the state has a has grants developers the ability to in essence circumvent our bylaws.

I understand that. But why are the other two developments of the town, they're only like 137 or something um units.

We have no control over that. They're asking for it. And I understand. I I have the same concern that I think that this is a lot for the size of the property that it is. It's a lot.

Okay.

Um but and their their justification is they think it's a good way to develop because it saves a lot of space, green space, and whatever else. That's their justification. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's sort of how it's been it's being explained to us.

Okay. I just hope the board takes all of that sort of way.

We're trying we're trying to juggle that. I'm sure that my uh my colleagues here are having a lot of difficulty with it. Um look, I I I can tell you this. I've been I've been losing a lot of sleep over these three projects. I really have because they're going to change the face of our town.

Yes. Yeah.

It's going to change the face of our town.

And on a personal note, I mean, I moved to this town on my husband's recommendation how Dartmouth is such a nice town to live in and we did own property somewhere else.

And this is the second time I'm before the town as a as a mother to a property.

You know, I went through this before at the other property and we moved to this one figuring that, oh, hey, we're all set now and here we are again. So, yes, we'll have Thank you.

So, this is just the end of public comment for tonight. We're going to pick up on this on next at the next hearing, but we're going to have the gentleman who does the traffic speak about that from the petitioner side if there's been any updates from him. Um, and then we're going to maybe we'll start with our own uh peerreview consultant specifically going over some of the questions that

you members have had. I' I've got some notes here, but I'm going to rely on some of you to rehash some of what was brought up. So, as far as the questions go to have them addressed. Okay. Um, so we need to pick a date that's going to work with the petitioner.

Mr. Chair, can I ask you a question just for the next hearing, I think, because he was trying to kind of limit the time Mr. Durk had to rush through the slides near the end, in particular, the ones that were the recommendations.

And I think it might be helpful to revisit those and also get information about what ability the town even has to effectuate them versus do you have to get state approval to do them. Those I think that there went a little bit fast and it might be helpful if he can revisit those.

That's fine. So we'll start with him.

So you're going to be you know on deck.

So we'll start with him again and then we'll we'll meet I haven't met our our traffic peer uh peerreview consultant.

Yeah. That's a new consultant for the town.

He or she.

It's It's a he.

It's a he. All right. I haven't haven't met with him yet. And hopefully we'll get to hear from him. Collectively, we'll all hear from him. Um and if there are some concerns at that point in time, we can raise those as well. Okay. So, I just lost our secretary.

I think she's trying to find out when the select board meets here because we both we can share the room, but not at the same time.

All right. So what do we have?

We don't have much.

We don't have much.

So our peerreview consultant, they've already received his report and they're putting together their own report and yes they would be ready.

No, there's a there's a draft but it's being reviewed by staff.

They already have a draft. Okay.

So what do we have for April?

April we have What's April 6 look like? Yep.

Nothing.

Nothing. Okay.

Oh, you can't do the sixth.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, April 6th.

We We're going to have issues with the other two. That's the only Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, we'll talk about the other two next week. Next meeting.

April.

Okay. So, April 6th.

April 6th. It's Mr. Calhoun, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How's How's April 6th work for you folks?

Just take a look.

You available.

Jeff, can you do the six, Jeff?

Just checking. Um, I would respectfully request a copy of the peer review that was provided to the town on Friday.

I think so.

When it's ready to send to you, the staff will provide it to you.

It would come up on the website or portal whenever I receive it.

You know what?

Hold on.

No, the traffic peer the traffic peer review report was provided draft to the town in case the town had any questions before it went to the applicant. It's completely standard and appropriate. It is will be getting delivered to you in the next couple of days and the next hearing is April 6th. So, you'll have plenty of time to review it before April 6th.

Okay.

You will have it this week.

Does that work?

Yes, Mr. Chair. But when we had our last meeting and we continued, we made specific guidelines and one of the things that we tried to address is the problems we're having right now with peer review that it comes in well in advance of the meeting so that you gentlemen see it at least a week before the hearing. We see it at least a couple weeks before so the professionals can

look at it. to say that a draft has to be reviewed in town hall when we clearly said he's allowed to talk to your engineer, our engineers allowed to talk to yours. They're supposed to communicate openly and share documents in real time, not send things to town hall for review and editing before they go forward. So, it's a if it's a draft, it should be in our hands because we can

correct errors at the same time and address things. It does not need to go to different departments. It's supposed to come to the engineers right away.

You know what I you know hold I treat that as work product there our consultants. However we discuss what needs to be presented will be with us in in in the legal profession that stuff is protected.

It's not protected because I don't think it's protected but I disagree.

It's working for us.

It's peer review. When the peer review comes in they're working for us. I treat it as work product.

every everybody is doing the best that they can at the snowtorm [clears throat] walloped for a week.

There was a uh vacation week. There was a snowstorm. Everyone including the peer reviewers are doing the best they can and they will the next hearing will be on traffic on April 6th and you will have three weeks to review their letter beforehand.

Okay.

Well, hold on. Hold on. That's you can't address questions. That's going to come through me, right? Otherwise, this all falls apart. I don't think there is a problem, okay? I really don't. Look, and we're not going to get into the bickering of this and that, right?

There's no reason to do that. It's okay.

We're going to work together on this to get to where we need to be.

Um we we may not like what we have to say in between all that, right? But we're civil. We respect one another. Exactly.

And I can understand your concern. Point is taken, but I still have my belief of what that work product how it relates to us. But that doesn't mean we can't move forward.

She's indicated that you're going to have it three weeks before. Hopefully, it'll be within three weeks prior to that you'll receive it.

It's going to be in a few days, like in the next couple of days, possibly, but it's beyond your control.

Someone else is producing it. True. So, we can only we can only relay what people tell us. All right? And that's if I'm going to say that I'm going to do something, it's because I have full control over it. I have very little things, very few things in my life I have full control over. But I can say this that when it's available, we'll get it to you and there'll be ample

opportunity for you to have it. Okay.

Does that make sense? All right.

Now, um, getting back to the date, does the April 6th date still work?

It works. Uh, what else would you like to complete that evening? You just want to do traffic?

I'd rather just do traffic. It seems to be one of the biggest of the issues. The other thing we could have, if you guys are willing to put it together, and it was suggested by council, and I think it was a good idea, is to get an elevation of what it's going to look like for the people that live on Eisenhower from their rear yards as it goes along from

the front of Hathaway Road and as the topography drops. What are their vantage points going to be? If we could have two or three of those elevation views, uh, so that they can get a sense of what this is going to look like because I am still bothered by the fact that this is four feet, four stories, and five stories high. I really am because I don't know I there this man has been

here longer than I've been. Um and we've never granted anything like that. And I understand that you guys under 40B, but there's still some testing. There's still there's still a balance test that goes on here. And it has to do with affordable housing versus local concerns. And these are local concerns that these people have. How this is going to impact them every day. When they wake up in the morning, look at

their backyard. They're going to look at this thing. And if you could provide that, if you're if you're willing to do that, that might shed some s some sense on this as to what the impact might be.

For the next meeting, we'll have sections done at three different locations going down Eisenhower that shows the buildings in comparison to the abutters.

Yes. Them standing at 55 ft. How what that would look like? because I've been told that at some point as you go down there's an offset of topography of about 10 feet because they're going to be retaining walls that are almost about 10 feet 10 feet in height. And she's indicated that there may be there may be some requirements that there be a certain amount of space because of the type of engineering that goes on to

building those retaining walls and how much buffer is going to be disturbed. I think that's what our our our peerreview consultant was sort of addressing. So, so for the next meeting, we'll have Jeff Durk. We'll have our civil engineer.

We'll also have our architect, Clay Smoo, and between Phil Cado and Clay Smoo.

They'll walk you through the elevations.

They'll walk you through a section that shows what the houses will see, what's the existing buffer or sight line, and where it sits because the retaining walls are not along that side of the property. They downgrade, but the thing But they can show us what that's going to look like.

Exactly. Not great. And the more the better. Um that certainly will address some concerns that our neighbors are having. Um and then the traffic, the traffic is the big one here, right? The traffic's the big one. And it's no secret. It's been a problem that area.

And this gentleman's astute enough to to say that the three of those are almost collective in essence. And there was a petition for a Kentucky Fried Chicken to be put at the corner of Tucker Road and Route Six. And um I I couldn't I couldn't vote for that. In good conscience, I could not vote for that because we're adding to a problem that already existed. They were telling us

back in 2023 that there were going to be improvements that were going to be made by DOT. It's 2026. I haven't seen a damn thing yet. So, these are things that we're concerned about. That's all.

And I'm not I'm just addressing what what we have as a community that we're dealing with. Okay.

Um [clears throat] and you've been nothing but a professional in in addressing us. Okay.

Mr. Chairman, just um on that same vein, um what is happening now through the governor's office is because housing is such a priority. You'll find that many of the projects that have been sitting and lingering, if there's a housing element that benefits from it, they're getting freed up and they're getting moving along much faster. Uh and they're actually happening, they're being made a priority that they should

can't we can't have that. You can't have It's okay. It's all right.

I was going to say from your lips to God's ears, okay, that that happens.

But um I'm not going to hold my breath.

Yeah.

Mr. Chair, can I can I ask you, Mr. Durk, do you know if they have 100% design plans approved by DOT yet?

My understanding, at least as it relates to the um improvements at the intersection with the installation of the traffic signal, that that's already it's gone out to bid. That's why they have a 2027 construction date. So the the money's already been set aside for the improvement.

Okay. I I'm just working on another project in another community where they're on the 2027 tip.

Where is specifically [snorts] that that's at the that's at the Haway Road intersection with Route 6 right there. That so there's a section between Font including F Corner to Haway Road.

That's a a project that is fully funded for the 2027 year uh right now. So that money's been allocated and already set aside.

There's a difference between being funded and having 100% design plans because I have a project that I'm working on that is funded but has no approvals.

Yes. And even if it's the case where there's 100% design plans, the state can pull the funding and put it someplace else. So it's that's what is known right now that designed fully funded but things they rejigger the deck very often.

Right. Okay. Thank you.

I promise. Okay.

All right. So, we're going to pick the because I always promise my board members we're done by 8. It's already 8:35.

Just Yes. You want to say something? Sure.

Yeah. Uh just for the applicant, I know we talked about sections, but if you can um ask your architect for maybe some rendering from the back because sections sometimes people can't understand sections, you know. If if you can get couple of renderings of the actual site with the landscape with the buffer and the building and the height so people can probably relate to that more.

You'd like us to generate a computer model?

Yeah, if you can absolutely. I mean I think we we looked at sections last time. I I believe you had sections but it's rendering is probably more indicative of what's going to happen.

You know what the full uh w with the buffer and all that. So if somebody's standing on on uh Eisenh Howard looking at the uh you know it might help him visualize what this would look his head.

I think he's in agreement with you.

All right. Um so at this point we're going to pick a date of April 6th at 6:00 p.m. here in this room.

All right, gentlemen. I'll uh I'll entertain a motion first to adjurnn. Oh, actually, no. I entertain a motion. We need to continue the matter first.

Um, I make a motion that we continue comprehensive permit ZCMP25-3 to April 6 at 6 p.m.

Second that motion.

All in favor?

I I the eyes have it. Now, I'll entertain unless there's anything else. Right.

There's nothing.

Mr. Chair, last time we here, we made an offer to the people in Eisenhower if they want to reach out to us. We're happy to meet with them off in nonpublic. Uh we have not heard from anyone. My phone number is there.

Somebody would like to call anyone.

All right. We'll make that known. We we'll we could also put that on the website if they want. Okay. Um gentlemen, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn.

Motion to adjurnn.

Second that motion.

All in favor? I I The eyes have it.