The Rochester Planning Board has some upgrades it wants to add to the Town’s solar bylaw, and on April 24 board members discussed the best ways to go about bolstering the bylaw and making it a bit more restrictive.
At the top of the list, the board wants to impose a 300-foot setback from any roadway, public or private, unless existing topographical features would naturally screen the solar panels from view.
“That’s not unheard of,” said Planning Board Chairman Arnie Johnson. “I think this would help us try to preserve somewhat without being too invasive on property owners’ rights.”
But as board member Gary Florindo pointed out, being too close to the panels is just as important to abutting property owners as it is for people passing by on the roads, sending the conversation in another direction with the suggestion of imposing a setback on property lines.
The state and the ensuing bylaws are relatively accommodating to solar developers, Florindo pointed out, “But we should also be accommodating the taxpayers of Rochester.” After all, added board member Ben Bailey, people don’t move to Rochester so they can look out their windows and see a bunch of steel and glass. And with six or seven solar projects lining up for Planning Board approval, as Town Planner Steve Starrett pointed out, the board should get its proverbial ducks in a row.
Board member Chris Silveira suggested that within the residential/agricultural zone – pretty much most of Rochester – maybe current regulations surrounding those setbacks would already apply, and maybe the same 100-foot setback for a “major farm building” should apply to solar panels.
“They are structures,” Johnson pondered.
“Yeah they are,” said Bailey, “and they’re a major structure.”
The board agreed to pose the legal question to Town Counsel Blair Bailey, and if he did not see it that way then the board may pursue a 100-foot setback from abutting lot lines in the solar bylaw.
The board also seeks to reduce the threshold for defining “large-scale” solar farms from 250 kilowatts to 200 kilowatts.
Johnson said he would prefer to address large-scale tree clear-cutting in regards to solar projects as well, but town counsel advised not to try to make too many changes to the bylaw at one time, at the risk of Town Meeting voting down an article proposing numerous changes all at once – something that has happened in the past.
An article that was sponsored by the Board of Selectmen to extend the recreational marijuana establishment moratorium until July 2019 will be vetted during an imminent public hearing before the Planning Board, but according to Starrett, the Attorney General’s Office has declared that it would not be approving any further moratoriums beyond the December 31, 2018 date of expiration. Johnson was unsure how that would play out on the Town Meeting floor, but the board’s only concern is hosting the public hearing and making its own decision on whether to recommend, not recommend, or take no position on the article.
As Johnson pointed out, if the townspeople preferred to ban all recreational marijuana establishments in town, the article would have to be approved by Town Meeting and then a subsequent ballot question would have to pass.
Another article that will be vetted during a public hearing is an amendment to the Site Plan Review Bylaw specifying that an applicant who needs approval by both the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals shall appear before the ZBA before it must seek approval from the Planning Board – a “housekeeping” item, as Johnson put it. This amendment would simply save the applicant money on engineering costs and also time, since a project could not come to fruition without ZBA approval and the Site Plan Review is a lengthy process with the Planning Board.
This matter came up during the Rochester Farms appeal, with the appellant party arguing that the bylaw implies a project should go to the Planning Board first before the ZBA.
“So this clarifies it and closes that loophole,” said Johnson.
The public hearings for all these bylaw change articles will be during the board’s May 16 meeting.
In other matters, Johnson announced that the board’s approval of the Borrego Solar Systems solar farm slated for the corner of Rounseville Road at Mendell Road was appealed and will be heard during a public hearing before the Zoning Board of Appeals on May 24 at 7:00 pm at the Town Hall.
The next meeting of the Rochester Planning Board is scheduled for May 8 at 7:00 pm at the Rochester senior center on Dexter Lane.
Rochester Planning Board
By Jean Perry