“I guess it’s time to go home again,” Planning Board Chair Arnold Johnson said. With that recommendation on Tuesday, the board approved moving its regular meetings back to town hall starting in February.
The panel had been meeting in the Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School library since the COVID pandemic began in the spring of 2020. But town planner Nancy Durfee on January 10 urged the move back to the town office building because, she said, the equipment used for airing each meeting on Cable and Zoom and the files the panel needs for each meeting are already there. Gone will be the need to lug files and set up the equipment at Old Colony.
Durfee said the change will be made for the February 14 meeting because the location of the January 24 meeting has already been posted.
The second to the last Planning Board meeting before the venue change approved Edgewood Development’s modification to its definitive subdivision and flexible development plan after reviewing the panel’s draft decision. It is a proposal to eliminate a subdivision road and convert/downgrade 10 approved lots to three lots at Connet Woods and Box Turtle Drive.
The board then approved the draft decision to allow Rockland Trust Company to build a drive-up/walk-up kiosk at Plumb Corner. The company’s plan is to build a seven by 13-foot drive-up/walk-up kiosk on an eight by 19-foot concrete foundation in the Plumb Corner plaza parking lot to the westerly end of one of the landscaped islands.
The board also endorsed a Notice of Intent to allow leasing and converting a 10,000 square-foot portion of Chapter 61A land totaling 115.12 acres off of High Street owned by the Makepeace Company, the plan being to place a cellular tower there.
The panel then approved the Scenic Highway permit application of Ken Elliot of Elliot Farms, who plans to place an eight-foot tall deer-exclusionary fence 1100 feet along his farmland property on Marion Road. Elliot had to change his original plan after board members said that his neighbors might complain about the fence if it is placed in front of trees there. Elliot agreed to place the fence further back behind the trees to receive an approval in time to farm the land starting in February.
The board continued until January 24 its hearing into the special permit and site plan review for a large-scale photovaltic canopy system being proposed in the rear parking lot of the Rochester Memorial School. Durfee said the petitioners need more time to compile information.
Lastly, the board approved issuing a letter noting that the Old Middleboro Road solar facility project ‘substantially complete.’ The project’s technical consultant Thomas Gadowski said this letter will allow them to proceed to further, final steps.
The board set its next meeting for January 24 at 7 pm in the Old Colony Regional Vocational-Technical High School, 476 North Avenue.
Rochester Planning Board
By Michael J. DeCicco