HALIFAX — On June 21, 2016, the Halifax Selectboard will hold a public hearing on whether to repeal all zoning.
This is the final step before the issue is put to a vote at a special town meeting sometime later this summer.
The process began with a public petition that was circulated before the March 1 Town Meeting Day. The petition, which was ultimately submitted to the Selectboard by Wayne Courser, garnered roughly 125 signatures. A copy of the petition is available at halifaxvermont.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Petition-for-Zoning-Repeal.pdf.
When the petition was first presented to the Selectboard on Jan. 5, the board explained that it would be decided by Australian ballot on Town Meeting Day.
This set up a curious juxtaposition: On that day, residents would be asked both whether to amend the zoning bylaws, following a multiyear, grant-funded project of the Planning Commission, and whether to repeal all of the town's zoning bylaws.
However, the board later learned that the question whether to adopt, amend, or repeal zoning must be subjected to a fuller public process and multiple public hearings before it can be presented to the town for a vote.
Thus the only zoning-related question that was put to voters on Town Meeting day was whether to adopt the amended bylaws, and those passed by a vote of 167 to 145.
Since then, and in accordance with the statutory requirements set out in 24 VSA c. 117, the Planning Commission drafted a report describing whether and how repealing zoning would “conform with or further the goals and policies contained in the [town] plan.”
The report, which was approved by the newly constituted Planning Commission on April 12, concludes that “The Planning Commission does not recommend that Zoning Bylaws be repealed. Zoning Bylaws are not immutable. Repealing the Zoning Bylaws altogether would sever the mechanism that allows Halifax to openly and fairly comply with the Town Plan.”
A copy of the report is available at halifaxvermont.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Planning-Commission-Zoning-Repeal-Report.pdf.
On May 10, the Planning Commission held the first public hearing on the matter.
About 35 people filled the town office. But while many members of the public spoke, it was, by Halifax standards, a short hearing, and one marked by passionately held views that were punctuated by notes of genuinely good humor.
Planning Commission Chair Sirrean LaFlamme invited Courser to open the discussion. Courser expressed his view that “we've gone way too far” with zoning regulations. He said that he is in favor of “simple zoning” and would like to see the town scrap the current bylaws and start over with an eye toward much “simpler zoning.”
He noted that 60 of Vermont's 250 towns don't have any zoning at all.
Don Pyskacek said that, as an architect, he had been involved with zoning around the country and that, in his experience, it's very difficult to reinstate any kind of zoning if all zoning is eliminated.
And, he said, zoning addresses many things other than buildings and development. By way of example, Pyskacek noted that zoning is the way that communities can address local concerns like preventing certain activities from being conducted near schools, or keeping out businesses that would be contrary to the community's values.
He warned that without zoning, someone “might start a house of prostitution on Main Street,” which prompted people to wonder good-naturedly about that being a way to bring jobs to Halifax.
Several people noted the relationship between the push to repeal zoning and the Zoning Board of Adjustment denial of a conditional-use permit for the schist quarry that has been proposed in the Conservation District, including the question whether the petition was “prompted by” disagreement about the quarry.
This prompted LaFlamme to declare that the quarry wasn't a topic for discussion.
Nevertheless, the quarry, and the Act 250 and ZBA hearings about the quarry, helped illuminate several residents' views about zoning in general.
For example, Matt Maranian, a resident of the Conservation District, noted his own frustration with the town's zoning bylaws.
He recounted his desire to sell an acre of his land to a friend who wished to build a one-room, off-the-grid cabin - a proposal, Maranian said, that would have served his family's financial interests and his friend's housing interests without being inconsistent with the nature and defined purpose of the Conservation District.
The zoning bylaws preclude such a sale, however. Maranian described how he bristled at the idea of land-use regulations preventing him from putting his property to what he considered its maximum potential.
But, he went on, he attended many of the Act 250 hearings on the quarry last year, and he was struck by the fact that both the proponents and opponents of the quarry agreed that the quarry could result in a roughly $5 million loss in property values - and this, in turn, would result in a significant loss in property tax revenue to the town.
His big takeaway: By preventing people from putting their own land to uses that might yield personal benefits but that have public consequences, zoning protects property values.
And former Planning Commission member Stephan Chait noted that property rights, like the right to free speech, aren't limitless: At some point, one person's unfettered exercise of his or her rights may start to limit or harm another person's exercise of those same rights.
The Halifax zoning bylaws, he said, provided a process and a framework for discussing where the line was between the competing property rights of the people involved with “the project we're not talking about.”
Lister Mary Brewster asked whether repealing zoning would affect the listers' ability to track improvements to homes, which is central to their determination of property values, which in turn drives property tax revenue.
Chait said that representatives of Windham Regional Commission had told him that in towns like Guilford, which don't have zoning, the listers “watch for concrete trucks to pass” and then follow them to find building projects.
Pyskacek and Courser pushed back on that a little, noting that driveway and wastewater permits would still need to be obtained from or filed with the town - although those requirements would hold only for new construction.