Planning Board
and
Community Housing Council
Judge Welsh Hearing Room
Members Present: Ellen
Battaglini, Howard Burchman,
Joseph DeMartino, and Annie Howard.
Member Absent: Kevin Rich
Staff: Maxine
Notaro (arr 5:36 p)
The joint meeting was called
to order at 5:30 p.m. with Planning Board members listed above.
Meeting Agenda
Discussion on Bylaws
Joe Carleo opened the meeting
by saying that we’ve been a Council since the begin-ning of July – started with
Bissell – and we wanted to have a joint meeting with your Board to get on the
same page and to find out how we interact.
Howard B. said that his group
has an upcoming issue with sub-division and also with medium, middle, (income levels) and stuff
like that. He then asked if something came out of the Summit that we want
to look into?
Joe C. they had some specific
questions and then Bill interjected, “Why don’t we talk about sub-divisions for
awhile. Bill continued, “Whether the
Community Housing Plan should be the enabling legislation when you look at
applications. We’re using the Local
Comprehensive Plan as a basis of our decisions and we’d like to have some
reference on how our recommendations will be received. We’d like to have input and we do have an
official role. Bill finally arrived at
his specific question – the legal relationship between the Community Housing
Plan and a 40B – which will override what?”
Maxine arrived at this point.
What we have is the potential for developers to come with an application
and saying they want to do a 40B and they have 400 people on the waiting list
and we can’t access the list. Where are
the listed people located – and in that way we’ll have a better handle on the
Town’s need.
The discussion became cyclical
with final questions/comments being formulated, i.e.,
1.
The Planning Board would like to work with the
PCHC and vice-versa.
2.
Martha Hevenor will be asked to a future joint
meeting of the two entities.
3.
Can a list of potential people interested in
affordable housing be obtained
(no names – just locations)
4.
How to ensure local preference in the by-laws.
5.
Positive definitions of median, medium, etc.
income levels.
6.
How can either or both groups create
incentives for developers.
7.
How to plug perceived loopholes in the
by-laws.
8.
An overlay district for the downtown area.
9.
Seasonal housing vs. year-round.
10.
How to streamline the application process.
When questions were raised by
the PCHC about the Zoning Board of Appeals’ (ZBA’s) function, the Planning
Board said that Planning is the group who orchestrates by-laws and the ZBA
enforces them.
Joe DeMartino summarized the
discussion by saying that – what didn’t work last year was that we didn’t work
together. We all have the same goals but
because of all of the dissension - nothing seemed to work because a lot of the
pieces were left out.
David G. said that if we are
going to ask Martha to come in – we should refine our questions and she will
need to focus within the by-laws themselves.
Some of the other issues mentioned (sewer regs, etc.) are not going to
help her help us.
Elaine A. said that the focus
is in going through the by-laws in their entirety so that we can see how they
were dissected and how they were projected.
Thus it was
decided............... both groups will
plan another meeting with Martha H. and then we’ll get town counsel’s advice to
see if Chapter 40B supercedes John Ryan’s plan.
Adjournment happened at 6:50
p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Evelyn
Gaudiano
E. Rogers Gaudiano
Approved by
_____________________________ on ____________, 2007.
Howard Burchman, Chairman