HUDSON – The Select Board signed the warrant for the Special Town Meeting at its Sept. 25 meeting.
Director of Planning and Community Development Kristina Johnson outlined four zoning bylaw articles that will be on the warrant for the Town Meeting on Nov. 20. She said the zoning bylaws were in need of an update because many date back to 1957.
“Obviously, a lot has changed since then,” she said.
The bylaws tell the story of how a community has developed over time, she said.
“It’s time to think about modernizing,” she added.
History
Updating the zoning bylaws was a directive of the 2014 Master Plan, which is approaching its 10-year anniversary. They will be embarking on the plan to modernize both the structure and content of the bylaws, Johnson said.
“This has actually been going on for quite a while,” Johnson said.
One of the first projects she worked on in 2016 was updating the downtown zoning regulations regarding residential property per the recommendation of the master plan.
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There was an article on the 2015 Annual Town meeting requesting $100,000 to complete a comprehensive update. They went through a procurement process and hired Mark Bobrowski, a zoning consultant who is an expert on the subject.
Bobrowski worked with town officials to put together a package of zoning updates in 2021, which were rejected by voters at Town Meeting. Johnson said they tried to “tackle too much” at the time. She said it was a learning process.
“It’s better to do things incrementally over time,” Johnson said.
What will be before Town Meeting
At the November Town Meeting, there will be four articles brought forward, which the Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously to sponsor.
Article 12 is a reorganization of the zoning bylaws, essentially sorting sections to locations that make more sense. Town Clerk Joan Wordell was involved in the technical editing process, and Johnson said she was “really proud of the work she has done.”
Article 9 will add a table for land use by the zoning district category. They will take all of the existing regulations for use and put them in an easy-to-read table.
It will also include a zoning map instead of metes and bounds to describe real estate zoning district boundaries. She said that 98% of municipalities use a zoning map to describe their zoning boundaries.
“What that means is every time you amend your district boundaries, whether you expand them, contract them or move them around, it requires a whole depth survey by the land surveyor,” Johnson said.
Article 10 will update the names for the zoning districts to make them easier to understand. C1, for example, will be called downtown business instead to help the members of the public who access the bylaws.
“So we consolidated them to make them more user friendly,” she added. “Downtown business sounds more intuitive.”
Article 11 proposes to update language for nonconforming uses and structures. For properties that have structures that predate their existing zoning, they may have special status to change that use as established with state statute.
Johnson said the language that they are working with can be difficult to interpret. Bobrowski proposed updated language that will help the board to clarify findings they need to make. The updates will also bring the bylaws into compliance with amendments over the last 10 years to the current state statutes.
She added, “It does not by any means expand their jurisdiction at all or create new nonconforming [structures]. It’s just providing good, solid language for the Board of Appeals.”
“Looked like you put a lot of work into this, and I’m hoping this year that when it does go to the Town Meeting that everybody will be informed of exactly what you are doing,” Select Board member Michael Burks said.
Hudson’s Town Meeting is Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m. at Hudson High School. The warrant can be found at https://www.townofhudson.org/home/news/november-2023-special-town-meeting-warrant.
