9_4_24 Planning Board Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Approved 12.4.24 Chris Johnston: That might be my confusion point then. "The dimensions of the buffer within the impacted area 1094 shall be increased by 50 percent," sounds like a size increase. Is that a misinterpretation? I 1095 apologize. Again, this isn't my forte here. 1096 1097 Cy Stober: I don't think it's a misinterpretation. It's not how it's being interpreted by staff today. I think there's 1098 ambiguity there. I could read it either way. 1099 1100 Chris Johnston: Okay. 1101 1102 Cy Stober: And, frankly, I welcome that ambiguity because it allows us to find different remedies to sticky 1103 situations. 1104 1105 Chris Johnston: Yeah, and I guess that was going to be my next point, at some level, we want to apply as quickly 1106 as possible the exact terminologies and the exact definitions or whatever, but in doing so, that 1107 does limit a little bit of the staff wiggle room in terms of interpreting X, Y, and Z. I always struggle 1108 with this balance of we want to nail it down so that there's not wiggle room on the things that we 1109 truly do care about, like the width or whatever the case may be. But at the same time, we want to 1110 not make it that everything has to be so prescriptive that it has to be listed out here. Not to pile on 1111 about pine straw and things of that nature. I'm just trying to thread that needle. 1112 1113 Statler Gilfillen: The third point would be that the law often can be written to promote helping people to know what 1114 the right way is to do it. 1115 1116 Chris Johnston: Right. 1117 1118 Statler Gilfillen: And I'm reading this, and that's a lot of what this is trying to give is guidelines. If somebody is a 1119 novice at this, if we give some good guidelines in here, then the staff has some flexibility to work 1120 with that person, we end up with a better solution for all of us. 1121 1122 Chris Johnston: And then so coming back to the splitting hairs thing, as much as possible, we're trying to make this 1123 consistent so that there's not the confusion or whatever the case may be. It's frustrating because 1124 then we go in and we're fine-tooth combing it or whatever the case is, but who the audience is for 1125 this document, you guys deal with the commercial side of things and all the big-time developers. 1126 And I think their Statler's point, it sounds like this is also a document for everybody and making 1127 sure that it's consistent and readable for people like me who go through and see extending area 1128 and think, oh, that means this or that. Just trying to nail that down. 1129 1130 Charity Kirk: So, what do we think about tree diameter? 1131 1132 Chris Johnston: I think we need to have a proposed vote on that, and then that'll shake it out. 1133 1134 Charity Kirk: What are we voting on, 1 foot, 18 inches, 24 inches? 1135 1136 Lamar Proctor: I would make a motion to keep it at a foot. Just based on my research and looking at different tree 1137 species, you're getting into at least 35-50-year-old trees at a foot, and then if it's 24 inches, then 1138 you're talking some trees are like 80, 90 years old at that point. 1139 1140 Charity Kirk: All right. I will add it to my amendment list. 1141 1142 Adam Beeman: Is everybody else on board with keeping it at 1 foot, I guess before we go ahead and put a motion 1143 on it, let's see if everybody is in agreement. Is there any objection to that? 1144 1145 Marilyn Carter: No objection. 1146 1147 Beth Bronson: No objection, as long as we're referring to these non-residential areas. 1148