Confronted with zoning changes that would have encouraged development, Weathersfield residents turned out en masse to dissuade the Selectboard from approving the new bylaws.
Across hours of public hearings, dozens of residents showed up, most voicing opposition to changes. Many argued shrinking lot-size minimums would slowly ruin the rural character of the town, potentially increasing property taxes along the way.
“This is great having all these people here. Where are you at the planning commission when we’re working on this stuff?” Mike Todd, chair of the Selectboard and a planning commission member, said at a June 6 public hearing. “This isn’t fair, I’m telling you, and it ain’t right. It’s very disrespectful to the people who put their time in at the planning commission.”
“I’ve been doing this for six years; I’ve never seen so many people in one room,” Selectboard member Paul Tillman said at the board’s vote on June 20.
The board ultimately voted 4-1 to send the changes back to the town Planning Commission, seeking more clarity on what land in Weathersfield can and can’t be developed. So many meetings into the process, some board members still felt confused about what it was the town was deciding on.
“I’m still having trouble assembling what I’m even thinking about,” David Fuller, vice chair of the Selectboard, said the day of the board’s vote, a sentiment echoed by two of his colleagues. “I don’t have enough information to make a clear decision.”
Now, with the changes tabled, it might be a year until Weathersfield’s Selectboard votes again on zoning.
In Vermont, volunteer planning commission and selectboard members hash out the town’s zoning laws. Some towns have zoning administrators or town managers with experience in rural planning, but many smaller communities have elected officials and volunteers. And while residents can develop expertise after years of service, weeding through hundreds of pages of zoning documents proves difficult for most new to the field, leading to confusion, and — at times — misinformation.
Many of the proposed changes in Weathersfield’s zoning match suggestions spearheaded by the state’s Zoning for Great Neighborhoods program: reducing setback requirements, easing restrictions on duplexes, and allowing homes on half-acre — rather than 1-acre — lots in the town’s villages. Most controversially, the proposed changes involved changing much of Weathersfield’s “conservation 10” district, which has a 10-acre minimum lot size, to a “rural residential reserve” district with a 3-acre minimum.
“Zoning is pretty complicated, and it’s hard to read a 100-plus-page document and understand everything,” said Jason Rasmussen, executive director of the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission, which prepared Weathersfield’s proposed zoning maps.
Weathersfield’s Town Plan states that the town should “encourage forms of affordable housing that make sense,” noting that with 2,000 acres conserved by land trusts, the town has limited development options. To that effect, the town Planning Commission had hoped that decreasing the minimum lot-size requirements could make the town more affordable for prospective homebuyers.
Yet in public hearings, some of the loudest voices argued that, if the changes passed, 3-acre lots would become the cost of 10-acre plots, driving up taxes. Yet, according to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, Vermont and New England’s large lot size requirements drive up the cost of housing when compared to other states nationwide.
And though during public hearings some residents expressed concern that altering lot sizes would lead to negative environmental outcomes, according to Rasmussen, understanding the ecological effects of zoning changes is rarely so black and white.
“Generally speaking, you’re trying to encourage housing and things like that to happen in villages where you can have much smaller lots, and it’s so much cheaper,” he said.
Jens Hawkins-Hilke, a conservation planning biologist at the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, consults with towns, informing them of the potential ecological impacts of municipal policy decisions. Limiting development in high-priority forest blocks and connectors, he said, is crucial to protecting wildlife into the future. But doing so through so-called “conservation zoning districts” is not always the most effective means.
“The minimum lot size, in and of itself, it’s a fickle conservation tool,” Hawkins-Hilke said. While 10-acre minimums might be an effective way to limit the total number of developments, they can prove ineffective at creating denser, more conservation-minded development, he added.
“If you have to have ten houses on ten separate 10-acre lots, that is a recipe for sprawl. We call that ‘exurban’ sprawl. And I’d say from a forest fragmentation standpoint, sprawl is one of the biggest threats,” Hawkins-Hilke said.
Yet in Weathersfield, much of the C10 district includes forests crucial to the state’s conservation goals.
The Agency of Natural Resources, through its Conservation Design program, developed a statewide map of priority and highest priority waterways, forests and the connectors between the two. Much of Weathersfield’s north, west and east fall into the highest priority category.
Hawkins-Hilke’s job is to advocate for those high-priority resources, informing municipal volunteers about “smart growth” and conservation. At the end of the day, the actual decisions are out of his hands.
“There are always trade-offs, and ecological resources aren’t always going to take the front seat,” he said. “That’s part of the planning process.”
