During the August 7 meeting of the Mattapoisett Planning Board, the agenda was extremely lean. With no hearings or planned public discourse of any kind, the board members focused their attention on bylaw updates and changes that have been long in the making.
But after putting those aside and inquiring if there was any other business, Chairman Tom Tucker quickly became frustrated – the topic was Brandt Point Village.
Once again, Tucker asked Planning Administrator Mary Crain if the current development team had responded to the board’s request to meet with them vis-à-vis to discuss the list of incomplete projects at the large subdivision and to respond to why things weren’t moving along as agreed many months prior. “They still have ignored our request,” he said.
“This has been going on since 2008,” said Tucker, appearing to be addressing the board’s newest member Janice Robbins. “We’ve asked for a cease and desist…[and] we’ve been refused.” He said the Town did not have an appetite to shutdown construction in order to gain compliance.
The Planning Board, over the nearly ten years since the subdivision was permitted, has seen several development teams come and go.
Robbins asked if an agreement had been signed for certain activities at the site with the latest team, Marc Marcus and Armand Cotelleso of Omega Financial. Tucker responded ‘No,’ just verbal confirmation that specific things would be completed by last January 2017. Robbins remarked after the date on the current surety agreement was determined, January 2018, that “Technically, they are not out of compliance.”
It was explained to Robbins that, although legal documents governing the subdivision indicate that all Phase 1 items such as sidewalks, septic certifications, mail kiosk, stormwater management systems, and roadways must be up to independent peer review standards and were to have been completed by January 2017, it was basically a verbal contingency placed on the acceptance of their construction surety.
Tucker felt that since the verbal agreement had been written down and videotaping of that agreement archived, that was sufficient to get work at the site completed.
Tucker also believed that since occupancy permits were being withheld on Phase 2 pending completion of Phase 1 “they would get things done.” Now the Planning Board was again faced with how to gain Phase 1 compliance.
Tucker asked Crain to contact the Town’s legal counsel to ascertain what they could do at this juncture. Crain responded that counsel had said they could re-open the public hearing process and rescind the subdivision permit.
Robbins wondered aloud what would happen if that were to occur. Tucker said, “They either walk away or finish.”
Gail Carlson, also a new member of the board and resident of the beleaguered subdivision, added that gaining cooperation from other board members to collectively come up with a strategy that might assist in gaining cooperation from Marcus and Cotelleso was needed.
Crain and Tucker noted there had been a lack of response from the Conservation Commission and Board of Health when the Planning Board had previously reached out for assistance.
Tucker asked Crain to contact Town Administrator Michael Gagne, town counsel, Field Engineering (the Town’s peer review consultants), the Conservation Commission, and the Board of Health with an invitation to attend the next meeting of the Planning Board.
Earlier in the evening as Planning Board members reviewed the bylaw governing signs, it became apparent that a draft executed by Crain several years ago when she was a Planning Board member might not be robust enough when contrasted against the sign bylaw the Town of Rochester composed.
Crain had been employed by Rochester as the town planner when that document was written and accepted by the state’s Attorney General’s Office.
Tucker asked Crain to re-visit Mattapoisett’s draft, incorporating certain line items from the Rochester document and returning to the next meeting with a more fully fleshed out draft for their review.
The next meeting of the Mattapoisett Planning Board is scheduled for August 21 at 7:00 pm in the town hall conference room.
By Marilou Newell