The Planning Board will begin reviewing and updating town ordinances related to land use planning at a workshop at 6:30 p.m. April 3. The workshop will replace its regularly scheduled meeting.
The town has agreed to hire an outside contractor, who has yet to be chosen, to rewrite ordinances that no longer comply with state law and don’t reflect the town’s new draft comprehensive plan, Jennifer McCabe, town code enforcement officer, told the board last week.
The contractor also will propose options to the board for rewriting portions of the ordinance, said McCabe.
“We’ve had 14 projects come before you guys in the last two years, and sometimes when we are reviewing projects we say, oh that doesn’t make sense, we need to update that part of the ordinance,” said McCabe. “It’s come up a lot both inside and outside of the Planning Board,” she added, referring to ordinances that are outdated or inconsistent with another ordinance.
Hershey Hirschkop, vice chair of the board, said it would be preferable to do this work after the new comprehensive plan is finalized.
“I was under the impression we were waiting for the comp plan,” Hirschkop said. “I can’t really suggest things until I see the comp plan, and I’m worried that without it in front of us, the ordinance won’t reflect it.”
Board member Aaron Rouse suggested it would be worth starting the process ahead of the final plan.
“We can just go through and start getting the corrections that don’t make sense anymore,” Rouse said.
Comprehensive Plan Committee members, who attended the meeting online, indicated that the draft is close to complete.
“The whole draft is on the town website, and the GPS is on there too,” said Deb Ganster, vice chair of that committee. “It hasn’t gone in front of the Town Council for approval or been submitted to the state yet, [but] the draft is complete, pending approval and public amendment on April 11.”
Council member Jessica Cyr, who is also on the comp plan committee, said one individual at the state level reviews all plans so the review may take some time.
“They typically review it and send something back to the municipality for revisions,” Cyr said.
Hirschkop then suggested asking Planning Board members to review the draft comp plan and keep it in mind when they come in for the workshop to redline the ordinances. Since the board has no pending business, members agreed to work on the ordinances at the next meeting, starting with a review of ideas from McCabe.
