Williamstown Planning Board Discusses Work Plan for Year Ahead
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last month discussed its projects for 2022-23 and which members of the five-person panel will tackle specific topics.
Meeting for the first time since the annual town meeting voted to refer most of the board's proposed warrant articles back to committee, the planners decided that housing regulations again will be a priority for the year leading up to town meeting in April 2023.
But it did not make any decisions on whether the specific proposals embodied in this spring's amendments will make their way back to the meeting for a vote.
The board did authorize members Roger Lawrence and Kenneth Kuttner to explore the issue of housing and bring the full body suggestions about the kinds of bylaw revisions it should pursue.
During the June meeting's public comment period, Randal Fippinger asked the Planning Board directly whether proposals it spent a year developing would have a chance for an up-or-down vote after they were referred back at June's annual town meeting.
"Do you plan on coming back to each one, specifically?" Fippinger asked. "There was so much frustration around people not being able to vote on those things. … As a citizen, I'd like to be able to vote on them."
Peter Beck replied that he too wanted an up-or-down vote, if only to inform the board on what kind of change would or would not be acceptable to residents at the meeting.
"Some of them could have been voted down, and I'd know to stop working on them," Beck said. "Instead, it's like, 'Committee, keep working on them.' … Just vote that one down and tell me not to work on it anymore. I think there were some that had more support and, with more outreach, would get over the finish line, and there are some that won't get over the finish line.
"We have a sense what they are. I think a vote would have given us more of a sense."
The Planning Board on June 21 assigned the task of gathering information on the housing issue to Lawrence, who voted in the minority against several of the warrant articles that came out of committee in the spring, and Kuttner, who was elected to the board in May after campaigning against the articles that the board had proposed.
"I would like to suggest at our next meeting we go through [the 2022 proposals] and, maybe not have a formal vote, but say, 'This one looks like more of a possibility than that one,'" suggested Stephanie Boyd, who was elected chair earlier in the meeting.
"Let's not try to beat a dead horse, but let's remind ourselves of which ones would be more useful. It's just my opinion, Randy, but I'd be surprised if they came back [to town meeting] in the form that they are now."
Lawrence was the first member to volunteer when the board turned to its main piece of business for the meeting: determining a work plan for the year ahead.
"I would like to see us pursue the issue of affordability in housing," he said. "We've been working on this for some time. We've had some success and some less successful approaches. I'd like to see us take some fresh approaches.
"I think we could come up with something effective and could get some good public support, particularly if we presented it to our electorate in a skillful way."
Boyd suggested that that presentation piece be built around finalizing a draft warrant article by December and presenting it to the Select Board for inclusion on the town meeting warrant by January.
Lawrence agreed.
"Sometimes, in years past, we've seen things where we didn't really know what we were considering until March, and we didn't have much time before town meeting to assess it ourselves and get it out to the public," Lawrence said.
The framework behind the articles that last month's meeting chose not to put to a vote was discussed by the Planning Board in June 2021.
At the June 2022 kickoff meeting, Lawrence indicated that the board should be looking at more targeted changes to the zoning bylaw, like the creation of overlay districts, rather than proposing sweeping changes to the rules that apply to the entirety of the town's residential zones.
"We must achieve the goal of density without changing the nature of our beautiful town," Lawrence said. "And our voters have told us this over and over and over again. They do not want to see Williamstown turn into a completely different place.
"If we enact a policy universally, everywhere, there's a danger we could do that. I see the solution as creating density in carefully chosen and selected locations."
A vice president at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who moved to Williamstown about a year ago questioned that assertion.
"When I hear, 'We don't want Williamstown to change. We want it to stay the same,' I think of red lining," Jeannette Smith told the board. "I think of white flight and suburbia. And those don't feel very welcoming.
"But I understand wanting to preserve values and character, small-town charm, while also being responsive to the moment and understanding how you evolve as a community, which speaks to me about change management. So maybe the language was: how to do change management more compassionately versus, 'We don't want Williamstown to change.' "
In addition to zoning bylaw questions growing out of the 2021-22 town meeting cycle, the Planning Board agreed to look at a couple of other topics, including one tangential to the housing question: regulation of 5G cell towers and short-term rentals.
Dante Birch agreed to be the lead researcher on the 5G issue. Beck said he would begin gathering information on how other municipalities have chosen to regulate short-term rentals.
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