After a brief presentation by Planning Board Chairman Arnold Johnson, the Rochester Board of Selectmen have referred five proposed zoning bylaw amendments back to the Planning Board for a public hearing before they appear as five separate articles on the June 13 Annual Town Meeting warrant.
Johnson told selectmen on May 2 that most of the bylaw changes are holdovers from a fall special town meeting that never happened, but before they could move forward onto the warrant, the process mandates that selectmen review the articles, refer them back to the Planning Board for a public hearing, and return them to selectmen to add onto the warrant for Town Meeting voters to adopt.
Three of the proposed changes pertain to the solar bylaw regulating large-scale solar voltaic installations in town.
The first, Johnson said, was in the original solar bylaw, but the sentence was omitted the last town meeting when the bylaw was amended. Johnson said, as a result of the solar project currently under site plan review for the center of Rochester off New Bedford Road, he wants language requiring a fence at least 6-feet high around solar projects within the limited commercial district.
The second would add language that would mitigate the removal of trees 12 inches or greater in diameter within the buffer zone of the proposed project, which Johnson said, again, results from the Planning Board’s experience with the solar farm application off New Bedford Road. Johnson said it gives the board more control over the buffer.
A third amendment would prohibit any large-scale solar farms within the limited commercial and historic and would require any ground-mounted solar array project applications for these two districts to undergo site plan review.
None of these solar bylaw amendments, however, said Johnson, will affect current solar projects “already in the pipeline.”
Another bylaw amendment seeks to consolidate all bylaws pertaining to sign regulations, simplifying the process for both applicant and the office processing it.
“We are amending Planning Board rules and regulations to eliminate redundancy,” said Johnson, referring to ZBA and Planning Board regulations that currently contradict one another or do not coalesce.
A fifth bylaw change will re-zone eight agricultural residential zone lots off County Road Extension near the A.D. Makepeace development to general commercial.
The next meeting of the Rochester Board of Selectmen is scheduled for May 9 at 6:30 pm at the Rochester Town Hall.
By Jean Perry