DUMMERSTON — Almost 30 years has elapsed since zoning and planning bylaws have been re-examined in town.
Selectboard Chair Ezekiel “Zeke” Goodband said that passage of time was at the heart of a mediation between landowners, their lawyers, and three town boards last month.
At issue was a pool, deck, and fence on the Schoolhouse Road property of John and Lori Thibault.
The Thibaults and town officials entered into a successful mediation. The site plan and variance were granted to the couple on May 13 from the Environmental Court, requiring no adjustments be made to their installations.
Fences and neighbors
Town Planning and Zoning Administrator Charlotte Neer Annis saw a problem with compliance of a bylaw of a “40-foot setback on side boundaries” that cannot be built upon.
A site plan and variance was granted by the Vermont Environmental Court, approving the Thibaults' swimming pool, deck plans, and the eight-foot fence already constructed on their property within the 40 foot setback from the side property line they share with John and Karen Abel.
“In the case of a bylaw, where people can't build anything within the 40 feet of boundary with neighbors, for someone with several acres, a 40-foot setback isn't a problem,” Goodband explained, “and in some densely settled areas, some of the lots aren't 80 feet wide, so it seems unfair to those residents.”
With several locations in and around town like “Slab Hollow,” at the intersection of Schoolhouse and East-West roads, where houses are built on smaller lots and closer together, some town officials believe it no longer seems fair or make sense to enforce this bylaw.
The Thibaults “had put up a fence and installed a swimming pool in their backyard. The Zoning Administrator felt that it was in violation of the setbacks and height of fence and they might need a variance,” Goodband said.
The Development Review Board (DRB), which is charged with interpreting the town's bylaws), evaluated the issue and in September 2012 denied the variance.
The Thibaults appealed the ruling to the state Environmental Court.
Meanwhile, town officials were questioning the ruling from their own perspectives.
“The DRB's hands are pretty well tied when interpreting the bylaws,” Goodband said, noting that when the same conflicts come up “over and over again,” it means the town ordinance probably needs some adjustment.
Goodband said the Selectboard became involved at the urging of townspeople who felt it was the board's “responsibility to get involved” in changing what he termed a “clunker of a bylaw.”
Goodband said he spoke with the court, “trying to get info on this whole process,” and was told “we could either proceed, or we had the option of entering into mediation.”
Goodband said the result was “fair” and that was the Selectboard's intention during mediation.
He said “all three boards” - the Selectboard, the DRB, and the zoning and planning board - will meeting as soon as next week to start going over the bylaws together and decide their goals for the process.
Learning Center lawsuit
At the other end of the “feel good” spectrum is an interaction between the town, the state, and the Southeast Vermont Learning Collaborative (SVLC) regarding the old library building at 471 Route 5 in a facility that was originally owned and operated by the state.
The nonprofit, “built upon several earlier cooperative efforts serving education in southeast Vermont,” provides programming for teachers to meet their continuing eduction requirements, Goodband said.
According to the SVLC's website, state and federal grants helped the organization establish a service area that covers 12 Southeast Vermont school supervisory unions, reaching more than 2,000 Vermont teachers, with many programs open to New Hampshire teachers as well. The Vermont Department of Education has designated SVLC as one of six such Educational Service Agencies in the state.
Goodband explained that when the state no longer wanted to pay the upkeep on the building and wanted to sell it, the town had first dibs on the property.
“The Learning Collaborative was the tenant and had been for several years,” he said, adding that the SVLC had been “such a good tenant and neighbor and [was] interested in staying so we tried to work out a deal with the state to purchase the building through the town from the state for the SVLC.”
The town would not only “get a nice building at a very low price and keep it from going to auction,” he said, but also “know who was the tenant.”
The purchase of the building was approved at a Special Town Meeting in 2010.
Goodband said that, at that meeting, “There was a feeling, and SVLC did not stand up and correct this impression, that the organization would pay the full taxes of the appraised value of this property [$456,000, with an approximate yearly tax rate of $7,000 a year]. The townspeople, thinking that the collaborative was going to pay full taxes, overwhelmingly approved the sale to SVLC.”
Goodband said that though it took a long time, the town worked with the state and SVLC to finish the deal.
“But then,” Goodband said, “the SVLC asked for tax exemption - which took us by surprise.”
In a complicated legal dance between the town, state, and SVLC, both the state's and town's respective attorneys found the SVLC “not wholly tax exempt” because “it serves a very narrow group of people which are teachers,” Goodband said.
When the listers subsequently denied the SVLC tax exemption, they appealed to the Board of Civil Authority (BOCA) and upheld the listers, according to Goodband's recollection, as he was not on the board when this occurred.
He said the Selectboard got involved and tried to come up with a payment or gift to the town in lieu of taxes that the SVLC would agree to make that would be lower than the tax bill would have been.
“It was a nice compromise,” he said, saying it amounted to “$3,000 and some change.”
Then, after a number of sessions of negotiating,“We thought we were all set and they would do that, the state came in and said, 'You can't do it that way,' and we had to start all over again.”
“For this to proceed,” Goodband continued, “the SVLC had to make the request for tax exemption, and the lister had to stick to the original advice, and denied it, and Board of Civil Authorities upheld the listers decision.”
He said the “SVLC is appealing the BOCA decision to the Superior Court.”
“At this point,” he added, “it would be legal and proper to come to a negotiated settlement,” before pursuing legal recourse.
When asked what might have changed when an agreement had already been reached regarding the previously negotiated terms with SVLC, Goodband replied he was not privy to what representatives of the organization were thinking.
At this point, however, “We have been served,” Goodband confirmed.
“We feel we have a good legal case that would hold up in court,” Goodband concluded. “They apparently feel they have a pretty good one, too, but either party could lose and we'd still all have to pay the lawyers, so there is an incentive to negotiate.”
Fletcher Proctor, the attorney representing SVLC, did not return calls for a comment.