Great Barrington — The Selectboard Monday night (March 30) unanimously approved the remaining warrant articles for May 4 town meeting, including a revision to the Conservation Commission’s wetlands protection bylaws, Housatonic zoning changes, and the 20-year term tax agreement with Housatonic 1 Solar LLC, for a solar array at the Rising Paper site off Park Street that will pump $67,593 per year into town coffers and save the town and Berkshire Hills Regional School District thousands in electricity costs.
Seven citizens’ petitions –– five of which are related to school district finances and its allocation method to the towns — are simply to remain on the warrant to be presented by citizens at town meeting, since that is Selectboard policy. The town’s attorney has reviewed the petitions and determined that their effect would be non-binding and advisory only, according to Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin.
Conservation Agent Shep Evans said that the commission has been thinking about making revisions to the wetlands protection bylaw for years, since bylaw was plagued with “errors and omissions.” Also, he said, state regulations have changed over time. “We all felt it was time to bring it to up to date and clean it up, make it user-friendly.” The commission incorporated town counsel’s changes and ideas into the revision.
The original bylaw was passed at town meeting in 1987.
The major changes include simplifying a “request for determination,” which is how one asks the commission a question and gets an answer. The current bylaw, he said, “turns it into a great big fully noticed public hearing event.” He said it was overkill, an expensive, formal process, much like a “notice of intent,” which is for larger, more complicated projects or those that have “a direct impact on wetlands resources.”
Evans added that request for determinations are “what we see most of, and most often in the buffer area, not the wetlands resource.”
Another bylaw change is to remove from the bylaw “what we see is a very overbearing and onerous treatment of agriculture intent,” Evans said. “The thought is that agriculture is agriculture and this is a small town and we all know what’s a farm and what isn’t.” He further stated that there are “ample” state regulations in this regard.
“We don’t’ need to turn the conservation commission into the agriculture police,” he noted wryly.
A public hearing on the revision will be held on Tuesday, April 7 at 4:30 p.m. at the Fire Station. Copies of the revised bylaw can be found at the town clerks office and will soon be available on the town website.
