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APPROVED
Chilmark Planning Board Subcommittee Meeting
November 10, 2014
Present: Janet Weidner, Chair, Joan Malkin, Dan Greenbaum
Not Present:
Public: Alex Elvin, Jessica Roddy
Staff: Jennifer Christy, Administrative Asst.
Meeting called to order at 3:09PM:
- Accessory Apartment Bylaw:
- A letter was received by the Planning Board, from the Board of Selectmen, stating that the Board is to review and hold a public hearing for the Accessory Apartment bylaw. December 8, 2014 was proposed as the date for the public hearing. The subcommittee decided to recommend this date to the Board.
- Janet asked Jennifer to finish the editing of the flowchart for the November 24th meeting of the subcommittee. She also asked Jennifer to make sure that Jessica Roddy will be attending the public hearing on December 8th.
- Historical Building Draft Bylaw Amendment:
- Joan explained an issue that has arisen with the review of the draft Historical Building bylaw amendment. If a person has an historical house but wants to build something else, they may build another attached structure and the historical house’s square footage won’t be counted. In addition, if there is a guest house on the lot, it won’t affect the right of the owner building this additional space as long as the total living area limit is not reached. The problem that occurs is if the owner wants to build a separate structure and already has a guest house on the lot. In this case, the owner would not be able to build another structure because he or she already has a guest house and the historical house is the main residence. The only option would be to build a 400 sq. ft. detached bedroom, if living area
limits allowed it. Joan noted that a result could be two large houses on a lot. Joan wanted to know the extent of the possibility of this happening. Joan suggested requiring the additional square footage to be attached to the historical building. Dan expressed concern for two large houses on a lot. Janet noted a possible problem with historical houses and their condition, size and layout. Joan stated the solution may be, in the interest of avoiding the destruction of historical houses, allowing possibly larger historical houses to be reclassified as ‘guest houses.’ Janet asked if there was a way to quantify how many lots may present this problem and suggested a look at the spreadsheet that was developed by Dan for the review of the residential bylaw in 2013.
- Joan suggested looking at lot sizes and house sizes and see if there is a great likelihood of two large houses (with a historical house that is over 1000 sq. ft.) on smaller lots (under 6 acres, with or without a guest house) occurring. The idea would be to attempt to ‘see’ what the visual impact would be of this historical building bylaw amendment.
- Joan asked Jennifer to alert Pam to the meeting of the subcommittee on November 24th. Joan stated she would forward the documents she has worked on to the subcommittee in preparation for the meeting on the 24th.
- Janet introduced the subcommittee to the documents included in the packet from the previous Master Plan process:
- Master Plan Survey 2009
- Survey Data Summary 2009
- 2008 Survey Results
- Blank request for Updates
- 2007 Updates for the Master Plan from the Historical Commission & the Cemetery Commission
- 2008 Draft Update to the Master Plan from the Conservation Commission
- Joan asked to interrupt the topic to state that she investigated the issue of incremental Form As and found out, from a legal source, that incrementalism is a principal problem and the necessary fallout from the Form A procedure in the Subdivision Control Law. The other thing that may be done, Joan suggested, is possibly limiting the frequency of Form As. This is not confirmed, however. Joan also reported on her investigations into other small towns in ME that have done a master plan study. Joan agreed to send the documents to Jennifer and be ready to speak about it at the next subcommittee meeting. Joan did note that the communities she looked at restricted “spaghetti” lot subdivisions (divisions on beach or coastline such as is seen on the south shore.)
- In terms of Master Plan work, the subcommittee discussed communicating with the other Boards & committees in town to see what issues are important to tackle.
- Janet stated she would like to ultimately see an update to the Master Plan that is also very different looking in format. She wants to see a more clear statement of where the town wants to go and what the town wants to focus on in the future. It was discussed how this ‘mission statement’ and ‘list’ of priorities could be formulated and formatted. Joan suggested that a process using a consultant to facilitate the process would be valuable to focus the ideas in a disciplined way. Dan agreed that a facilitator would be valuable and helpful to the process. It was suggested to investigate the visioning that other towns have down and are doing and to ask a representative of the towns that have experienced visioning to come speak about the project.
- Dan expressed some dismay with the implementation of the Island Plan, the MV Commission’s result to a planning process. It was agreed that it is essential to find out what the problems are that the town would like solved.
- Accessory Apartment Bylaw, Cont’d:
- Discussion occurred regarding how the roll-out of the bylaw will go. Jessica agreed to attend the public hearing on the 8th of December.
- Minutes: Oct. 27, 2014 minutes were reviewed. Minutes were approved with one change.
- November 24, 2014, 3PM
- December 8, 2014, 3PM
Meeting adjourned at 4:20PM. Minutes respectfully submitted by Jennifer L. Christy
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