Groton Open Space Association

Mr. Davis added that the “assessment report,” of which he has seen a draft, should be available for public inspection on the town website and at the library by mid-month.

Mr. Davis’s remarks at the Zoning Commission meeting complemented his Aug. 26 announcement of the overall schedule for the project and were intended as an interim report to the commission, he said. A similar interim report is scheduled for the Sept. 9 meeting of the Planning Commission.

Zoning Commission Chairman Stephen Hudecek had asked in an August e-mail for information on KKC’s progress. And Commissioner Susan Sutherland went on record at the Sept 3 meeting with worries that commissions were being excluded from the report-writing process.

The Aug. 26 announcement said that “internal Commission/Agency work sessions” are to be held with the KKC consultants Sept. 23 (Planning) and Sept. 24 (Inland Wetlands and Zoning). It said the public is welcome to attend these sessions but won’t be permitted to participate. A session for the public and interest groups is to be held Oct. 29.

The assessment report is designed to provide the town with results of stakeholder meetings in the project’s first phase in May, evaluate the strengths and weakness of the town’s existing regulations, and make general recommendations. The final phase of KKC’s work would be to suggest specific changes in the texts of regulations. The land use commissions would then decide whether to amend the regulations in line with the suggestions. Amendments would require public hearings, and some would need referrals to other bodies, such as the Department of Health and other towns. While the OPDS is cautious about predicting the timing for the completion of the text revision, a tentative timeframe of June 2009 currently is the working assumption.

Mr. Davis said the Zoning Commission rewrite would be the most complicated piece of the update, involving such matters as a revision of the open space subdivision and possible changes to the regulations’ definitions section and land use table, among other things. Consolidation of districts also could be recommended, he said. The KKC role in Inland Wetland Agency regulations would be secondary, with the OPDS taking the primary responsibility in that area, as well as in a stormwater ordinance and in an architectural design manual, the Aug. 26 announcement said.

Commissioner Sutherland entered into the record Sept. 3 a memo expressing concern that the assessment report was written without specific input from commission members. She added that “we now know that the Commissioners will not have input until the review stage, and, the extent of that input is not clearly defined. The clear implication, to my mind, is that the Commissioners have nothing of value to contribute and should not collaborate on major issues such as water sources and open space, or major new zoning concepts like mixed use zoning, which touch all of our regulations and commissions and would logically be part of the initial planning.”

Mr. Davis said he planned to review Ms. Sutherland’s statement with the OPDS director, Michael J. Murphy, and prepare an answer.

In response to questions from GOSA, Mr. Davis later provided additional information in an e-mail on the planned course of the regulation update process. These were among his points:

–The Oct. 29 public meeting will be a platform for the public comment, but efforts will be made to eliminate what he termed redundant and irrelevant comment so that all participants will be allowed to speak within the available time. He said that some participants in the initial public meeting in May had discussed matters that he regarded as peripheral–overall policy matters, criticisms of the tax system and “academic discussions of Portland’s growth management.”

–“The project the community is undertaking with KKC involves how to implement specific goals and objectives of adopted policy documents (like the 2002 POCD). It is NOT an effort to modify, re-interpret or change those adopted policies.”

–“The project work program has been specifically and purposely designed to try to avoid, or at least resolve, potential conflicts and/or to provide clear direction at the earliest possible stage in the process, so the Town can be as efficient as possible with the limited funds available. This is what the ‘assessment’ stage is fundamentally about. Most towns do not do this, and suffer for it. Most towns simply take an incremental ‘piecemeal’ approach, focusing on a very limited part of one particular regulation, with very little consideration of how that relates to the greater whole. They then (absent any assessment phase) spend weeks and months arguing with various constituents about the draft text, until (usually) everyone throws up their hands in disgust and aborts the effort altogether.”

–(In response to a question about the timing and nature of the completion of the process): “As required by State law, at some point in the third phase of the process, each agency having subject matter jurisdiction…will… formally propose changes to their regulations, make statutory and other referrals, hold one or more hearings, and take some action on that specific proposal. Due to the limited budget [$96,000 has been allotted], some of the drafting will be done by OPDS, and some will be done by KKC, but…it is virtually impossible at this point in the process to establish anything more than a general timeframe for the three basic project components.”