Planning Board Sizzles Over Sleight of Hand

The two main topics at Monday nights Planning Board meeting, were a proposal to convert a 60 acre section of the Maplegate golf course into a solar farm. As with the recent Conservation Commission hearing on the same project, decision makers were hampered by not having a "peer review" from the town's hired engineers, Beta Group. 

So, the developer and owner stuck to a general introduction of the project and the Board fired off a few general questions. Several had to do with whether more trees could be "saved," but issues of shading, among others, made that difficult if not impossible, according to the applicant.

However, Associate Member, Jay Mello, jumped in with  questions about water use on the existing golf course and got an estimate of 30,000 gallons per acre, per week from the owner. Mello seized on that number and said he felt eliminating that heavy water use would be a good thing for the town, thus he said he favored eventual approval of the solar project.

The Board also learned that a six-acre parcel, south of the proposed array, is currently being reserved for some kind of public use such as a dog park or connections to existing trails -- and that "only" 42 of the 60 plus acres will actually be covered by solar panels.

The board eventually voted to continue the hearing to a June date.

Then they tackled the Zoning By-Law Amendments:
23-894 – Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Definition
23-895R – ADU Use Regulation Schedule
23-896 – Accessory Dwelling Unit Setbacks

These had been the fruits of more than a year of meeting with the ad hoc EDC "plus" committees, which had voted on compromise language and forwarded it to the Town Council for approval and their forwarding on to the Planning Board.

Clerk Beth Wierling sounded the alarm early in the discussion, noting that the Zoning Amendments in front of them were not the ones EDC approved and, in fact, that a member of the Town Council, who had been outvoted on the EDC Plus group had managed to quickly pass an amendment to the measure during the last Town Council meeting, adding back in features that had not been approved by the whole EDC  Plus group.

Wierling's statements received support from the rest of the board, which also expressed frustration with the manner in which the EDC Plus vote had been negated.  Member Jennifer Williams expressed amazement. "I watched the whole Town Council meeting and I didn't even see that," she said.

The amended Amendment, as sent to the Planning Board, allows Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) by right in much of the town, eliminating oversight by the ZBA and preventing neighbors from objecting or having a say in the matters.

On a separate tack, Mello took issue with the allowance of ADUs of up to 900 square feet. "That's a three-bedroom house," he noted, emphasizing that properties with sufficiently large lots could easily end up sprouting what amounts to a second complete house.

"This regulation is a mess," he added.   In the end the board seemed to reject the amendment and sought to reexamine the matter.