DUMMERSTON — The Planning Commission invites voters to weigh in on the first major update to town zoning districts and bylaws since zoning was established here in 1971.
According to Planning Commission Chairman Sam Farwell, the changes will help guide development here in keeping with Vermont smart growth principles, and conform to what the Selectboard approved in Dummerston's Town Plan and Town Plan Map updates of 2010.
Farwell told The Commons three zoning districts are eliminated and three are created. Changes are in store for area, dimensional, and coverage requirements, and uses both allowed and conditional.
Two initial forums on the matter are set: Tuesday, April 22, at the Dummerston Community Center, and Tuesday, May 6, in the Dummerston Congregational Church basement. Both sessions start at 7 p.m.
The town's zoning bylaws and zoning district maps will be reviewed at these initial meetings, and are available for download at www.dummerston.org. Article II of the bylaws is the section that reflects the changes under discussion.
Final say on the matter is up to the Selectboard, which will schedule its own hearings after the Planning Commission submits its final proposal.
According to the draft bylaw revision, in keeping with the Town Plan update, Forest Reserve, Reserve, and Village are cut. Farwell explained Village is renamed Settlement Area, as proposed changes take in West Dummerston Village as well as Slab Hollow, and the idea is to eliminate the possibility of confusion.
Three new districts are created: Resource, Rural, and Residential, “the thinking being that this reflects the type of uses and development that exists there,” Farwell said.
Forum attendees will see a revised zoning map, which strikingly rethinks the Rural Residential district, for example.
In current zoning, Farwell explained, Rural Residential “is almost everywhere. It follows all the roads; it's just a setback from the roads. That's what everyone's used to, with minimum lot size of two acres.”
In the draft update, that's no longer the case, he said. Planners tried to get away from just following the roads. The East-West Road - the main road through town - used to be zoned all one district along its length, regardless of its passage through dense areas or over Black Mountain.
Now, Farwell said, the road consists of five different districts with five different minimum lot sizes and permissible uses.
“It doesn't make sense to zone them all the same just because they're following the road,” he said.
As part of the sweeping update, the map reflects work residents and town planners have put into the Route 5 and Route 30 corridors, which have changed to Rural Commercial.
“We've been through that process. All we've done for zoning is replicate what we did in that same area for the Town Plan. We're not changing it. Anyone who has been following the corridors process through the Town Plan will see that it's very familiar,” Farwell said.
“However, in many places around town there are changes to zoning. […] The new Residential district is smaller than Rural Residential but also allows new uses, as it's intended for more dense development and mixed use,” Farwell said.
He explained there is now room in that district for the likes of auto service and repair shops, restaurants, and retail.
“That's an attempt to say, 'OK, there are certain parts of town where we don't think development is a good idea, and we're going to change the zoning to inhibit more development, but there are other places here we want to encourage more development.”
Asked whether any of these proposed changes might affect taxes or property values, Farwell was quick to say no on taxes, and that he didn't see “a cut and dried case that this would affect property values.”
He did say some residents and business owners might take an interest in the kind of uses their proposed district would allow, and suggested overall the update will simply help people decide where to build, buy, invest, and live.
He said in addition to improving a sense of a compact village center, which would keep people from traveling outside of Dummerston for goods and services, the work under review was designed to help prevent rural sprawl.
“Now, it's been this way for 40 years, and before that we had no zoning, and we have no sprawl. But what we have is not very much development,” he said.
The work of a planner, he said, is to ask, “How can we try to turn this into not the potential for six miles of sprawl from Putney Road in Brattleboro to Putney, and instead [turn it into] certain areas where you might have some activity? This is an attempt.”
The Planning Commission's members are Farwell, Annamarie Pluhar, Andrew MacFarland, Bev Tier, Cindy Wilcox, Rich Cogliano, Deb Forett, and Maria Glabach.
The commission's next regular meeting is Tuesday, May 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the Town Office.