Planners, select board to try again after false start on interim downtown zoning
March 6, 2021 | By Emmett Gartner
Waterbury is one step closer to tackling its comprehensive zoning reforms after a contentious meeting between the town select board and planning commission recently concluded with agreement on a path forward.
Chairman Ken Belliveau promised that he and the planning commission will develop a fresh zoning bylaws that focuses on the economic vibrancy of Waterbury’s downtown by May 1.
Along the way, the select board agreed to put more time into considering the regulations to offer suggestions for the planning commission to consider before they present a revised draft for public review. The zoning update is looking to increase housing density and facilitate a wider range of commercial and light industrial uses in the downtown area mostly along Main Street from just west of Stowe Street to Warren Court, and bounded by the railroad tracks.
The move to revise the draft document comes after an hours-long clash between the two boards at the Feb. 22 public hearing on proposed interim zoning regulations. Marked by moments of division, confusion, and accusations of betrayal, board members and commissioners alike aired their grievances about the sluggish rate of the rewrite process and the lapse in communication between the two boards.
The town has updated portions of its zoning bylaws since the mid-1990s, but it hasn’t done a comprehensive rewrite. The planning commission has been working on an overall revision for the past three years.
In conjunction with the rewrite’s delay, the decision to pursue interim zoning sprouted from developers Aaron Flint and Jason Wulff’s denied application to sign a brew-pub as a tenant at their new mixed-use commercial building at 28 Stowe Street.
In her denial, town Zoning Administrator Dina Bookmyer-Baker stated that the Stowe Street property was not zoned for the brewing and packaging of craft beer, exposing inconsistencies in the town’s land-use definitions, which allowed for a similar brew-pub operation at Prohibition Pig just two blocks away at the corner of South Main and Elm Streets.
“I continue to be frustrated by the whole process,” Wulff said. “I know that some, if not all, on the planning commission believe that a brewpub should/could have been allowed under the existing regulations. They, like I, am frustrated with the uneven application of zoning rules that many see happening around town.” The developers have appealed their permit denial to the state Environmental Court where it awaits action.
In early January, the select board advised the municipal manager and community planner to draft a set of interim bylaws that would serve as a two year stop-gap measure while the commission continued to fulfill its goal of updating the overall zoning regulations for the entire town.
Some members of the planning commission said they felt this decision was a way to bypass the commission’s authority and would derail their progress towards more long-term reform. “Interim zoning, by definition, circumvents the planning commission process,” Belliveau said.
Additionally, because minutes of the Jan. 4 meeting stated that the select board advised staff to develop the interim bylaws “as expeditiously as possible,” commissioners said they were caught off guard and felt rushed.
The select board directive came a month after it invited members of the planning commission to a meeting to discuss slow progress on the zoning rewrite. Planners then then spent their next two meetings at the start of the new year hashing out a draft for the interim bylaws with Community Planner Steve Lotspeich.
“The perceived urgency of the [interim zoning bylaws] was certainly not shared with the planning commission. There’s some hard feelings there,” Belliveau said. “Suffice to say, we felt blind-sided. We felt slighted. And it really felt like a slap in the face to us,” he said at the recent public hearing.
These feelings contributed to the planning commission’s decision not to endorse the interim bylaws ahead of the public hearing. In a written statement, the commission described the interim bylaws as incomplete and containing a number of unresolved issues. Under state law, interim zoning regulations are to be adopted by the municipality’s legislative body, in Waterbury’s case the select board. The permanent updated zoning bylaw will follow a planning commission process when that is ready for adoption.
The first half of the Feb. 22 meeting attempted to address some of the specifics in the proposed interim bylaw where there is disagreement on details such as details regarding conditional uses, dimensional tables, and parking requirements. But little progress was made.
“As the statement says, we feel the document is unfinished. A lot of the questions that I heard tonight deal with a lot of things the planning commission was trying to wrestle with,” Belliveau said.
Commissioner Martha Staskus echoed Belliveau’s sentiments. “I hope you appreciate that we are doing the best job we can for the economic benefit of the town. We felt like we were stripped of any ability to finish anything,” she said.
In response, members of the select board and town staff apologized for the abrupt nature of the request to draft and move ahead with interim bylaws and the miscommunication between the parties. They were hesitant, however, to scale back the urgency of zoning reform entirely.
“I felt like we did a disservice to them, by forcing them to look at this right now, even though this has been in the works for a couple of years,” board member Katie Martin said.
Board Chair Mark Frier voiced both an appreciation for the unfinished work and the importance of getting new regulations in place. “I do have a concern that time is passing,” Frier said. “I’d support months of continuing working on this. I’m not going to support years of working on this.”
Municipal Manager Bill Shepeluk also expressed discontent with the delay of the zoning rewrite. “I appreciate Ken’s comments before, but it just seems that this bylaw -- whether we’re talking about doing it one district at a time or doing it all at once -- just goes on forever. And I’m not sure that we can wait forever,” Shepeluk said.
He was referring to how, at times in the zoning rewrite process, the planning commission has looked at updating the details for many areas of the town at once. It has looked at sections of the regulations dealing with more rural areas, and sections along Vermont Route 100, for example, although no section has been completed yet.
Belliveau noted that the commission knows its work will need approval from the select board to go into effect, but it’s not been easy to understand the board’s priorities.
“We’ve been working hard, trying to do a good job, and you know, quite frankly, it’s not always easy to reach a consensus amongst the five members of the commission. But to try to come up with something that we think is going to work with you folks because you guys are a tough audience,” Belliveau told the select board.
Towards the meeting’s end Belliveau asked what the select board thinks is most important for the planning commission to include in the new bylaws, hoping to avoid future disagreement.
Frier replied that economic vitality and increased density are at the top of his list. “Take the time you need to do it the way it should be done. Of course I always get concerned about too much but regulation, but I think there needs to be a solid rulebook with very clear definitions of uses,” he said.
Belliveau agreed, ending with a pledge of good faith on behalf of the planning commission. “We want to feel like we’re all on the same team. We want to work together. All of us on the planning commission, we volunteer our time because we want to make a positive contribution to the town. We want to do something that helps the town invest in its future,” Belliveau said.
He added, “A lot of tough things were talked about tonight, I appreciate you listening to us, and I personally will do everything I can to help the planning commission process to get a good product out of this in as fast of a time as possible.”
Both groups followed up on the interim zoning issue this past week in back-to-back meetings on March 1. The select board met early in order to advise the planning commission on how to move forward with an updated draft. Their discussions ran long but board members agreed on submitting annotations of the Feb. 22 proposed interim zoning bylaw to directly address many of the issues including details on building footprint limitations and building densities that planning commissioners remain undecided about.
Meanwhile, the planning commission made some progress, agreeing on changes to the dimensional tables of the Downtown Zoning District. They said they will continue considering other aspects of the zoning bylaw over their next several meetings with a goal of completing a new draft by early May. It’s not clear yet whether the commission will structure the next version as an interim bylaw or if they will complete it to the extent that they propose it as the newly updated bylaw that would be part of the comprehensive rewrite.
Recordings of the select board and planning commission meetings are available online at orcamedia.net.