Morristown changes zoning laws to meet state requirements

Like every year, Morristown plans to improve its town and village zoning regulations. Unlike other years, the pressure to do this comes from the House of Representatives, not City Hall.

The city planning board adopted amendments on May 22 changing about 30 sections or subsections of the consolidated bylaw, many of them forced under Vermont’s Housing Opportunities Made for Everyone HOME Act, or S.100, signed into law last year.

The aim of the act is to create new housing by encouraging the density of zones, not only in the centers of villages and cities. This all but ends the ability of municipalities to allow single-family zoning, effectively doubling it, allowing duplexes wherever year-round residential development is permitted — and tripling or quadrupling it in areas served by water and sewer infrastructure.

City Zoning Administrator and Planning Director Todd Thomas has often condemned the Legislature for interfering with local zoning, but said he was “pretty happy” with the results of the changes.

“I was really annoyed going into this because it takes several years and I felt like we had really good zoning and we weren’t making any more changes,” Thomas said at the May 22 hearing. “The Legislature came in and turned it all upside down, and not just in Morristown; that’s all of Vermont.

One of the most important topics of discussion during the planning board hearing on May 22 concerned a new bylaw change increasing the minimum lot size for residential development, which could have the opposite effect of what the HOME Act requires.

Council President Etienne Hancock said Morristown already has smaller minimum lot size requirements, about 1.8 acres, than other nearby towns such as Stowe, Hyde Park and Waterbury.

The new zoning change increases the minimum lot size to 2.75 acres, which Hancock acknowledged will likely be met with resistance from the selection committee and trustees, who will decide on the final bylaws next month.

A motion by planning board members Jamie Morris and Josh Goldstein to waive the increase and maintain the current minimum lot size was defeated 3-2. Morris said 2 acres is “more than enough” for many apartments and is concerned that larger minimum lots will create problems with housing development in the future.

Goldstein said the current minimum size is fine and jokes that he recently had to mow 2 acres that had one house on it, “and it sucks.”

He said: “It’s a big area. You can definitely build another house on it.”

Grant Wieler, a Morristown resident and president of the Lamoille Area Board of Realtors, also opposed the increase.

“I don’t know that these reactionary policies are necessarily in the best interest of all taxpayers and property owners in this city,” Wieler said.

The planning board denied an application by All Saints Academy – formerly Bishop Marshall School – for an exemption from changes to a low-density residential district. Thomas said school-related projects are already excluded from the local zoning plan, and Morristown will likely see many more zoning bylaw changes in the coming years before the academy even begins the permitting process for non-school-related developments.

Next steps

Since 2009, all but one year, the town and village have amended their consolidated bylaws at least once – there were no changes in 2012, but the town adopted two sets of amendments in 2010, 2011 and 2014.

The planning board has met at least once a month for the past several months to discuss the proposals and passed the latest round at its May 22 meeting. The selection board and village trustees are scheduled to hold their own public hearings on June 17 and 19, respectively.

The final say on changes to the zoning plan rests with the selection committee and village councilors, but the mission of the zoning board is to make proposals.

According to Thomas, with the May 22 adoption of the resolution, any new zoning applications will be adjudicated under both the current and new bylaws, with the more stringent of the two zoning regulations being applied where appropriate. Once the selection committee and trustees are satisfied with the new rules, the old ones will be discarded.

Other changes

As in previous years, many of the changes introduced in the latest version of the regulations are minor changes to order, and some would change the landscape of the city itself. Some small changes can have major impacts, such as removing homeless shelters or emergency shelters from the list of permitted or prohibited spaces in some neighborhoods, which Thomas called “unfortunate” and an example of the state taking away zoning rights from cities.

Thomas said the previous planning board held more than 100 meetings to find space for homeless shelters.

“I think we have come up with a good definition of shelter and its regulatory rubric,” he said. “Unfortunately, the Legislature has made our homeless shelter zone illegal, so we can’t stop homeless shelters from coming in either.”

Another related requirement of the HOME Act – which also aims to support more affordable housing and shelters – means Morristown will have to allow recovery homes, places where people recovering from substance use disorders can do so with other sober people.

“Cities really can’t say no to them anymore,” Thomas said.

Another change discussed was a proposal to reduce the city’s maximum building height by one story, to 40 feet, to counteract the HOME Act’s allowance for affordable housing developments to be one story higher than city zoning regulations allow.

Thomas said the city’s maximum building height code was written with the fire department in mind so it wouldn’t have to buy a new ladder truck, an investment that could be as much as $1.9 million. The new regulations state that building heights above the maximum can only be permitted with written confirmation from the fire marshal that “adequate access exists” to structures exceeding 40 feet in height.

Wieler, however, said that while this makes sense from a practical standpoint, it is inconsistent with smart growth practices, especially infill development.

“I don’t think preventing the future purchase of a ladder truck should be our priority,” Wieler said.