The Planning Board started its February 14 meeting by approving the special permits for the construction of an in-ground swimming pool behind a multi-unit home at 7 Marion Road.
The board had to decide whether to permit the pool under both Scenic Highway and Groundwater District regulations.
The permits will allow building owner Kerri Souza to install an 18×36-foot pool with a steel wall vinyl liner that she alone will use behind her four-unit building. The project’s installer Gary Medeiros promised in his January meeting with the board that the pool won’t be visible from the road. An ornamental aluminum fence will surround it, and the entire fill created by the work will remain on-site. Souza assured the board this would be a private pool for her use only. It will be accessible from the back door of her unit. She rents out the other three units.
The Planning panel’s next action Tuesday was to release the subdivision covenant to allow construction at 253 Hartley Road, Lawrence Way, Gilmore Cranberry Company. The board then voted to recommend the selectmen not acquire land at 0 High Street that is being taken out of 61A agricultural land protective status. The property is being proposed for a wireless telecommunications tower.
Next, the board approved sending to the selectmen three zoning articles for the spring annual town meeting. Town Planner Nancy Durfee said that what’s needed will be language revisions to regulations regarding ‘orderly development’, marijuana retail and production regulations and correcting a typo: regulation 53C should read 53G.
Lastly, board chairman Arnold Johnson updated panel members on the Public Safety Facility Feasibility Committee that he also chairs.
That board, he explained, agreed to focus on a three-fold plan to renovate and expand the 26 Dexter Lane police station, build a new fire station headquarters at either 65 Pine St. or 0 Mendell Road and further down the timeline, build a fire sub-station at 0 High St., where a quicker emergency response will be needed when a proposed 60-unit senior housing development is built at Route 28.
Johnson said the police station’s existing sally port is being demolished and replaced by a larger port that will fit modern-size patrol cars and ambulances and will connect to the mail building through a corridor. He said it was agreed to not rush having a design proposal for the spring town meeting. For that purpose, there likely would be a summer special town meeting.
Planning Board member Ben Bailey asked how such a large project would be funded. Johnson said some town debt will soon be retired from other town capital projects, and now is the time for the Finance Committee to get involved in the planning process.
Town Planner Nancy Durfee announced that the board’s recording secretary Lori Walsh has left that position to become the new full-time administrative assistant in the Building Department. Planning panel administrative assistant Dawn DiMaggio has temporarily replaced her while the town interviews two applicants to permanently replace her.
The board’s next meeting will be February 28 at 7 pm in the town hall conference room, 1 Constitution Way.
Rochester Planning Board
By Michael J. DeCicco