DUMMERSTON — Selectboard Chair Andrew MacFarland, writing to the town's Planning Commission, recently noted an “inevitable tension.”
The planning process, which seeks the common good but might well not accommodate the wishes of particular individuals and groups, must coexist with the political process, which “must take into account the personal, interpersonal, social and emotional responses to the plan,” MacFarland wrote.
Even with broadly shared goals among affected parties, the difference between a town plan's vision and the means of its realization can be considerable.
Such is Dummerston's conundrum, with its revised town plan stuck in draft form as a result. Its current town plan expired last August.
The Planning Commission has held a number of meetings to inform citizens about the evolving plan, hoping to incorporate suggestions and have a draft that, once submitted to the Selectboard, would be in a form that would be largely acceptable.
“We tried really hard this time,” Planning Commission Chair Steve Mindel said.
But despite efforts to gather reactions in earlier stages of the process, some objections have been raised only since the submission of the completed draft. But in November, following a public hearing on the draft plan, the Selectboard returned the plan to the planning commission with their comments.
The Planning Commission expects to have a series of meetings to review the Selectboard members' suggestions and revise the draft. To be adopted, the plan must be approved by a majority of the board.
Under Vermont law, a town plan must be revised every five years. Such plans are advisory: they do not in themselves regulate or require anything, but serve as a framework for zoning and other bylaws and ordinances.
Lot sizes, conservation, and fragmentation
As the draft plan states, an important function is to “avoid the adverse and sometimes irreversible effects often associated with purely random development” by anticipating and guiding change.
Some elements of the plan concerning zoning districts have met with public resistance, namely the proposal that conservation districts have a minimum lot size of 27 acres and that rural and resource districts have minimum lot sizes of 10 acres, up from the current 2 acres.
The 27-acre figure is the sum of a 2-acre homestead lot plus the 25 acres required for a parcel to be enrolled in the Current Use program that offers landowners a reduced property tax rate for keeping agricultural or forested land in productive use.
More generally, the Planning Commission has been interested in finding ways to reduce habitat fragmentation, and sees relatively large lot requirements in certain zoning districts as a way to accomplish that.
Tom Johnson, who owns 100 acres on the East-West Road which would be classed as conservation land, has been vocal in his opposition to this part of the plan.
“They're talking about taking all our land away from us,” he said. “If my land is 'future conservation,' that means that I can do nothing with it.”
Johnson, who helped circulate a petition to reduce the minimum lot size in conservation districts to 10 acres, remains skeptical about including his land in a conservation district.
“I really question whether property on one of the busiest roads in town can be conservation land,” he said.
Mindel said that historically “conservation land” in Dummerston has been so designated merely on the basis of being undeveloped. The draft plan is informed by an attempt to bring a scientific basis to this class of land by identifying what areas have particular ecological importance and most contribute to maintaining large, contiguous undeveloped tracts and wildlife corridors connecting such tracts.
The section of the draft plan that addresses energy is strikingly ambitious, but has not been controversial because it does not seek to regulate energy use but only to educate townspeople and encourage steps that would reduce the consumption of non-renewable energy.
Noting that per-capita energy use rose about 30 percent between 1990 and 2004, and that energy costs to the town rose almost 100 percent from fiscal year 2003 to fiscal year 2008, the plan includes the goal of cutting per-capita use of non-renewable energy 40 percent from a 2009 baseline by 2030.
The draft plan also promotes the concept of “passive survivability,” the capacity of very efficient buildings to remain livable even in the event of extended unavailability of energy for heating and cooling. Passive survivability requires much higher levels of insulation and air-tightness than is usual, but provides the security of habitable conditions even in extreme circumstances.
The plan also suggests using zoning regulations to promote cluster development to minimize the disturbance of currently undeveloped land and also proposes allowing accessory dwellings to be created in accessory buildings on single-family lots, as one step to diversify the town's housing stock (which is almost all owner-occupied single-family dwellings).
Board's response
“We cannot support, and do not believe Dummerston residents will accept, a 27-acre minimum lot size in the Conservation District,” the Selectboard wrote to the Planning Commission in their return of the draft for further revision.
Nonetheless, the Selectboard members affirmed their support for the goal of preserving large undeveloped tracts, and asked the Planning Commission to consider whether that can be done without relying on minimum lot sizes.
Most other requested changes suggested softening the draft's language to “encourage” or “promote” rather than “require.” MacFarland said his board would like to see a more flexible, less authoritarian plan.
Although he believes the town will not be eligible for municipal planning grants until the new plan is adopted, MacFarland does not see a great deal of urgency to completing the plan process.
Act 250 implications
April Hensel, coordinator of the state environmental district that includes Dummerston, says the main consequence is that, while the town can participate in hearings under Act 250, the state's Land Use and Development Act, without a valid plan in place, it cannot have an impact in such hearings under Criterion 10 of the law, which requires affected projects to conform to local plans.
“I do think that it's good for towns to have town plans in place that include mandatory, specific language because then they can address specific issues under [Act] 250 that they'd like to,” Hensel said.
Few towns currently have such firm language, without which their plans cannot be applied in Act 250 hearings, according to a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling in a zoning case.
According to a 2001 issue of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns newsletter, the court “raised the bar for towns in terms of the level of specificity town plans must have to be effective in Act 250,” the organization wrote.
“The difficulty with the Court's decision is that it seems to penalize municipalities for not writing town plans as if they were actual zoning bylaws. Town plans are planning documents that express the vision for growth in a municipality. Accordingly, town plans are not intended to be as specific as zoning bylaws.
“The Court seems to blur the distinction between adopting and applying zoning bylaws to a project through the local permitting process and ensuring that a project large enough to trigger Act 250 jurisdiction conforms to the vision for growth expressed by a municipality in a town plan.”
Mindel is disappointed but not surprised at the controversy surrounding the plan.
“This is the usual way of things,” he said.