To the editor:
After many months, the Egremont Planning Board (or more accurately the consultant hired by the Planning Board) has produced the text of changes to the town’s Zoning Bylaw. The “final” version is comprised of nine separate warrant items, up from the original seven. I have already published an analysis of Articles 1 and 3. I have skipped Article 2 because it is a mind-boggling mess that is beyond repair. It is not a bylaw; it is an aspirational wish list that empowers the Planning Board to dictate every detail of projects, running roughshod over applicants, including their professional experts, and sometimes usurping the authority of the Board of Health and the building inspector. It must be defeated.
The Planning Board’s proposals are lengthy, complicated, and hard to understand. Townspeople should be given more time to consider them. As many townspeople have suggested, this special town meeting should be postponed. Does the Select Board have the gumption to do that?
Analysis of Article 4:
Article 4 is blissfully short. But danger lurks therein.
The first part of Article 4 adds a new three-sentence section to the site plan review section. The first sentence states that the Planning Board may hold a pre-submission conference with an applicant. Well, duh! Any citizen can go to a Planning Board meeting and discuss a possible project, and that happens often. We do not need this sentence, and its wording implies that the board could refuse to meet with a citizen. The second sentence limits the scope of the conference, which makes no sense. And the third sentence is not a bylaw provision; it is just a throwaway line that is not always true.
This section should be replaced with a simple “The Planning Board will hold a conference with a potential applicant at the applicant’s request.”
The intent of the second part of Article 4 is to make certain that the “Design Guidelines” are complied with when a special permit is sought. Those Design Guidelines are requirements additional to the Development Standards being proposed in Article 2 of the warrant—we would not want any facet of any building or structure to escape the micromanagement of the Planning Board, now would we? And the Design Guidelines are not even specified in the zoning bylaw but rather are whatever the Planning Board comes up with from time to time. There is no limitation on what they cover nor on how often they can change or how arbitrary they might be.
But rather than simply clarifying that the Design Guidelines apply to special permit situations—which they do without any need for clarification—this article proposes to add compliance with them to section 7.3.4 of the zoning bylaw. That is the section that contains general criteria for granting special permits. Those general criteria are loosey-goosey standards such as being in harmony with the general intent of the zoning bylaw and not detrimental to the character of the neighborhood. They come into play at the end of the process, after all the details and restrictions of the special permit have been worked out. To add conformity with the Design Guidelines to those general criteria would turn the process backwards: Many of the design requirements may have been modified or waived or deemed inapplicable in the special permit process, and now they would come full circle and be back in play.
Furthermore, the general criteria of section 7.3.4 apply to special permits granted by boards other than the Planning Board, such as the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Select Board. Types of special permits being considered by those other boards may have no connection to the Design Guidelines, and/or those boards might not want to comply with the Planning Board’s requirements. But if this passes, they would have to.
So this article is largely unnecessary, parts of it are misplaced, and parts of it are wrong. Does anyone read, understand, and consider these proposals?
Richard Allen
North Egremont
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