Groton Open Space Association

WITH UPDATE: Zoning Meeting Canceled With ASH Halt Call Pending

GROTON — The Office of Planning Development Services said Jan. 31, 2007, that the planned Feb. 7 meeting of the Zoning Commission has been canceled. 

An e-mail to GOSA said that the “Zoning Commission may take up the GOSA ‘petition’ [for a temporary halt to Active Senior Housing] at its March 7 meeting.” 

The e-mail didn’t explain the use of quotation marks around the word petition. The petitions, bearing about 110 names, had been collected by the Friends of Fort Hill, rather than GOSA, and delivered by that group to the commission at its last meeting Jan. 3. 

The Commission had voted at the Jan. 3 meeting to consider the moratorium request Feb. 7. 

The e-mail indicated that the meeting had been canceled because no business other than the citizen requests for a moratorium would have been before the committee. 

Renewed calls for a moratorium on ASH had stemmed from an application, since temporarily withdrawn, by a Massachusetts developer to build 241 ASH units on 60 acres of a steeply sloped 105-acre tract on Fort Hill that is cut by Fort Hill Brook. The brook flows into Mumford Cove. For more detail, click on: background 

Opponents of the project expressed disappointment following cancellation of the Feb. 7 meeting that the commission is not dealing with the moratorium request in a timely manner despite the considerable citizen concern that the petitions demonstrate. 

They noted the OPDS does not guarantee that the issue will be weighed at the March 7 meeting. 

- – - -UPDATE: Matthew Davis, manager of planning services for the OPDS, said Feb. 2 that “use of the word ‘may’ in regard to the March 7 agenda” was based on a desire not to usurp the chairman’s prerogative to set the agenda. “I do believe it is the chair’s intent to have consideration of the petition on the March agenda…,” he said. 

Mr. Davis said use of quotation marks around the word “petition” was meant to limit meaning of the word to its original context. “I do not want anyone to misunderstand the procedures that apply to the review of an ‘application’ versus the consideration of this petition,” he said.