Good evening, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed members of the planning board and valued community representatives.

I welcome you all to this evening's assembly of the SACO Planning Board.

As chairman, it is my privilege to convene this gathering dedicated to the thoughtful planning and development of our community.

Today we come together with a shared commitment to shaping the future of our city in a manner that reflects our values, respects our heritage, and fulfills the needs of our residents both now and in the future.

As our our agenda tonight contains important matters, each requiring our careful consideration expertise and collaboration.

As we engage in our deliberations, let us remember the profound impact these decisions will have on the lives of all, keeping in mind we are residents like you.

It is our duty to maintain transparency, fairness, and inclusivity in our proceedings, ensuring that the voices of all are heard and respected.

Together, we must embrace the responsibility entrusted to us by our community, working diligently and thoughtfully that charter course that fosters growth, prosperity, and harmony.

And with that, I would like to call the Tuesday, January 13th, 2026, Soccle Planning Board to order.

I look forward to the productive discussions and meaningful outcomes that lie ahead.

Thank you.

With us this evening, we have myself, Matt Provencel, the chair of the board, and to my left, planning board members Jeff Brochou and Catherine Pelini, along with board member Jim Mollier to my right.

Our board members Joyce Louis Clark and Carolyn Lane are absent this evening.

And those are excused absences this evening.

With us, our staff members this evening, we have our city planner, Charles Tettleman, our assistant city planner Lauren Forte, our compliance coordinator, Lisa Harman, and with us for the first time, our city engineer Adam Bliss, along with our city council liaison from Ward 7, Nate Johnson.

And we also see Emily Cole Prescott, our deputy city administrator, with us this evening.

With that, uh approval of minutes, I believe we have that at our next agenda for the 20th.

So we'll review those at that time.

Our next item on our agenda this evening is our excuse me, I lost my list here.

Our Planning Board public hearing guidelines.

This is a document developed by the board and city staff outlining the procedure in place that our public hearings are held.

This explains the purpose of the public hearings and the outline of reviewing an application, public comment presentation, and our meeting duration.

And this is a document published online and usually in hard copy at the back of the auditorium.

If anyone has any questions, um please let us know.

Our next item on our agenda this evening is our public comment period.

This is where we'll open up our public comment to hear from members of the public.

This comment period is limited to a total of 15 minutes to items not under planning board review.

The planning board appreciates public comments and knows what the public comment about matters before it can help the board understand neighborhood concerns, review an application or help address an outstanding item.

Excuse me.

Those wishing to make statements about an application under planning board review or asked to provide those statements during the public during an applicable, excuse me, applicable public hearing period.

Comments during this period are limited to three minutes.

If there are multiple members of the public looking to speak, we may reduce that three-minute period per person to accommodate all speakers.

So if anyone is with us this evening that would like to participate, please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record, and we will collect comments and address them accordingly.

All right, seeing no participation, we will continue with our agenda.

Our next item is our site location of development presentation.

And I believe we have some staff members that are gonna give us a little presentation this evening on that.

So I'm here to fulfill the SLOTA training that I asked I offered to the board months ago when asked.

So as usual, we have a lot of staff at the table today to talk uh with you all how this works.

So I'm just gonna give a very high-level overview and then I'm gonna hand it off to uh Adam and Charles to say a couple words and then you'll hear from Lauren on the compliance end of things.

So the site location of development review really is triggered when an application is going to have three acres of what the DEP terms a structure.

I'm really focused on site plan right now, so I'll just um that is really usually the trigger for staff.

So if we see something that's gonna be three acres total, that includes driveways, it's a little more expansive than the zoning definition of what a structure is.

Um we would follow the state law of what a structure, how a structure is defined, and if that meets three acres, we're looking at a usually a site location of development.

There are certain exceptions or exemptions to that, so you have to be aware of that.

And if there are some options for exemptions or we think that something might be accepted EXCEPT, then we would reach out to the state contact we have at the main DEP and we would coordinate how that would work.

And we would get advice from them if it if we're unsure if it meets a slow to what we call a slow to review, site location of development.

So I'm gonna ask our city planner if he can pull up on the web page.

There's actually a helpful DEP, pull up on the screens a helpful DEP web page, which gives everyone um access to the links, the statutory sections we use.

What you won't see on here is some of the other things that I think the board had questions about, which is really how sorry, Emily, this the screen's not working.

Are we supposed to be looking at the screens?

Yes.

So while Charles works on that, I'll just go over uh basically what we do as staff.

So if something does trigger the three acres or we believe it may trigger the three acres, we will ask the um developers or the applicants um project engineer or project manager to clearly identify those areas that are gonna trigger that threshold so we have a clear understanding, especially if they're close to that three-acre amount.

A lot of project managers will have this requirement already on their list.

They know it's something that they have to go through and they'll know the city has delegated review authority.

So what will happen next is if it is something that we will take on as a review.

That's a SACO-specific process that I worked out with the DEP a few years ago for tracking purposes.

It's not a requirement by um delegated review that I'm aware of.

And then we don't make the applicant give us two different application packets, although sometimes you'll see that.