Board recommends town skip Perry Street land claim

Planning Board · Meeting of September 9, 2026

Douglas Planning Board presses fire safety questions on solar battery storage sites. Member Michael Zwicker argued snow-removal rules for the Wallum Lake Solar facility should mirror the town's own plowing operations: "If you have two or three feet of snow, you're not doing it with a pickup truck, that's for sure." The discussion followed a recent battery storage fire elsewhere in town, which members said an operator, Blue Wave, blamed on a blocked drainage pipe; one member called limited access to Town Counsel "a silly excuse" given the safety stakes. The board voted unanimously to recommend the Select Board not exercise its right of first refusal on a Chapter 61A parcel owned by Chris Betancourt on Perry Street.

Vice Chair Meghan Schlesman, presenting as applicant for her own Hawk Hill Farms subdivision, won informal support for a six-foot fence in place of required arborvitae plantings, citing under $1,000 in back taxes also pausing a separate bond-taking letter for White and Reservoir Estates.

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Source: the Planning Board meeting of September 9, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.