2015-05-20-PB-min-2 - Laserfiche WebLink

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PLANNING BOARD MINUTES MEETING OF MAY 20, 2015 A meeting of the Lexington Planning Board, held in the Clarke Middle School Auditorium, was called to order 7:00 p.m. by Chairman Charles Hornig, with members Nancy Corcoran-Ronchetti, Tim Dunn, Richard Canale, Ginna Johnson, and planning staff Aaron Henry and Lori Kaufman present. *****************RESIDENTIAL POLICY LISTENING SESSION********************* Mr. Hornig explained the guidelines for the listening session before it began. Audience Comments:  Figure out a way to balance the pace of development so not to stress the Town’s infrastructure for example school over-crowding, increased traffic, accidents and fatalities on the road due to increased traffic.  There is a lack of housing for senior citizens. There are very few options for seniors who want to downsize. Most seniors have to move out of Town.  Create a system to monitor and maintain public access to open space during the development process.  The Planning Board should take a more active role in the variance process, which should only be granted based on the land, not other hardships.  There needs to be housing for older residents the cluster developments were created to address those needs, but were not used in that way. The Planning Board should look at mechanisms that could be used to achieve that goal.  Trees are a significant asset to the Town and are being removed unnecessarily in the development process. There should be a procedure in place that would trigger a required notification process if a resident wanted to remove a substantial number of trees.  There has been a significant reduction in the tree canopy in Town. If houses are built to the setback line it is hard for trees to flourish. Trees soften the impact of development, provide a degree of traffic calming and tree-lined streets soften hard infrastructure.  The Balanced Housing Developments (BHD) are not producing the types of units the Town was looking for and was putting more stress on the schools. This type of development should be fixed or gotten rid of.