Zoning Recodification Working Group - Sep 22nd, 2017

There was one attendee during the first open house, and no attendees for the second open house.

We've made progress on our recodification key, but it's not ready for the public yet. Judi sent a simplified key this morning -- it has a section map, but no explanation of changes. Laura will compare Judi's section mappings to the ones in our key.

David Watson found a few sentences in the parking standards that don't appear in our current ZBL. He also found a couple of small mistakes. These need to be conveyed to Judi and corrected before the next public forum.

We decide that our recodification key should have two explanatory columns: what changed, and why the change was made. The why column might say things like "readability", "formatting improvements", or "compatibility with current case law". DPCD will provide a list of categories.

Some changes were made for enforceability. For example, there's a requirement to have certain agreements recorded to ensure they are enforceable. (IIRC, this had to do with shared parking arrangements). We believe Judi recommended this change.

We decide to move the public forum from Oct 3rd to Oct 18th. That will give us more time to prepare material, like the recodification key. We also need to ensure that the key (and related materials) are made available to the public far enough in advance of the forum. People will need time to review the material. We should have material available by Oct 11th, so there's at least one week for review.

After further discussion, we conclude that our key needs three additional columns for internal use: what, why, and red flags. The red flag column is for noting mistakes, and things we need to resolve with Judi.

The current ZBL contains a section on inland wetlands districts, which conflicts with Conservation Commission regulations. For example, the ZBL specifically refers to 2002 FIRMs, which are now out of date. Also, the ZBL and ConCom regulations specify different areas of authority. The ZBL says that town authority ends at the border of the flood plain. The Conservation Commission says that authority extends 50' outside the flood plain boundary. The ZBL section is duplicative; there's no place where the ZBL is more restrictive than the conservation commission regulations. It would be helpful for the conservation commission to make a statement to this effect.

Aside from a section key, we'll need a separate document to show changes to definitions. We can get this by refining the definition matrix that Ralph and Christian put together.

We should review our sections in the recodification key, and have them ready to go by Friday Sep 29th.

We'll meet on Oct. 4th, to go over documents for the public forum.

We reviewed the Zoning Recodification FAQ. Please send any comments to Laura. In particular, is there anything missing from the FAQ?