Skip to content
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
thehgwells thehgwells

comfortable and beautiful residence

Primary Menu
  • buildings land
  • cheapest housing
  • downtown housing
  • Property land
  • the highest apartment
  • News Real estate
  • About Us
    • Advertise Here
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Sitemap
  • Home
  • South Hero residents give themselves a vote on local land use issues
Property land

South Hero residents give themselves a vote on local land use issues

April 10, 2022
Catherine G. Pinion
Read Time : 12 Minutes

Table of Contents

  • New zoning districts
  • Industrial use?


The South Hero town office. Photo by Shaun Robinson/VTDigger

In the southernmost town on the Lake Champlain Islands, some residents’ yearslong frustrations with changes in local zoning bylaws have spurred a successful campaign to put any future bylaw changes to a townwide vote.

Two ballot articles, approved on Town Meeting Day, require that South Hero adopt and amend town plans by Australian ballot, and to adopt, amend and repeal bylaws. In recent years, those decisions have been made by the town Selectboard.

Related Posts:

  • Land in South Jerrabomberra to be auctioned in April

The articles passed 339-262 and 335-264, respectively, and were put on the ballot through a petition signed by 150 South Hero residents, about 10% of the town’s registered voters.

The petition effort was organized by South Hero Voters, which is an “informal group” of residents who are concerned about land use in town and are not affiliated with the local government, according to the group’s website. 

Several people involved in organizing the petition said they wanted all town residents — not just members of the Selectboard, the Planning Commission and Development Review Board — to have a say over land use in the Grand Isle County community.

The petition stemmed from opposition to two higher-density zones the town created in 2020 and a later revision allowing industrial uses in those districts.

“As things currently stand, only a handful of South Hero voters have effective, direct control over what development happens in South Hero,” the South Hero Voters website stated ahead of Town Meeting Day. “Just three people (a majority of the Selectboard) can exercise control over our Town Plan and the Town’s land use decisions.”

The articles drew criticism from some local officials leading up to the Town Meeting on March 1, who argued it was misleading to state that only a few people have control over land use, when any resident could volunteer to join a town body or, at least, attend a meeting of one of those bodies to share their thoughts on a given project.

Nate Hayward, a local developer who is also on the town’s Development Review Board, urged residents to vote against the articles in a Feb. 15 post on Front Porch Forum, saying it would be difficult to get any policy changes to pass via a vote.

“The Town Plan and Development Regulations collectively run into the hundreds of pages,” Hayward wrote. “Despite their best intentions, voters are not likely to read them and, if asked to vote on them, will be subject to influence campaigns and potentially misrepresentations by special interests.”

South Hero Selectboard Chair David Carter said he thought the town’s existing process for adopting and amending town plans and bylaws has worked, and the Selectboard believes the Planning Commission and Development Review Board do a good job.

He said the town will now need to put off bylaw changes until Town Meeting Day or Election Day — or call a special election, which could slow down proposed projects.

“If everybody wants to become informed and knowledgeable and vote on it, that’s the way democracy works,” Carter said.

Bridget Kerr, one resident who helped organize the petition, said the ballot articles are not — as some officials have said — an effort to prevent new development in town. She said members of South Hero Voters have been labeled as “NIMBYs,” for “not in my backyard,” a term that refers to people who do not support a given project in their local area but would support the same project if it were located somewhere else.

Rather, Kerr said, the articles will ensure that town officials give residents the information they need to be aware of new projects and their potential merits. Many people do not want to serve in local government, she said, and others do not have the time — whether due to work, families or other reasons — to attend public meetings, even on Zoom.

“Some people say, ‘Everybody will just vote no,’” Kerr said of future ballot questions related to land use. “Well, if (town officials) do some outreach and are more open to people’s ideas, then maybe we can all work together and get things done.”

Karen Horn, public policy and advocacy director for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said it’s not uncommon for Vermonters to have a vote on local bylaw changes, though she noted the organization does not consistently track where voters do and do not have that power.

Vermont law defines bylaws as “municipal regulations applicable to land development.”

“It does suggest that there’s going to be a lot more involvement and discussion around what is actually in the bylaws,” Horn said of the South Hero ballot article.

New zoning districts

Momentum for the group’s petition stemmed from changes in the past several years to South Hero’s development regulations, which spell out the town’s zoning policies.

South Hero also must update its town plan in 2023, and the process for developing the document is underway. Town plans serve as long-term guides for future decisions towns need to make around land use, infrastructure and other issues, according to the Northwest Regional Planning Commission, a St. Albans-based organization.

In 2020, the South Hero Selectboard approved new development regulations that created two “village zoning districts”: one surrounding the South Hero Village at the intersection of Route 2 and South Street and the other surrounding the Keeler Bay Village, which is less than 2 miles north at the intersection of Routes 2 and 314.

Since 2014, those intersections have been designated as “village centers” by the state, a label that comes with financial incentives, training and technical assistance for towns.

But while the village centers largely stick close to Route 2 — a state highway linking South Hero with the four other Champlain Islands towns and Chittenden County — the village zoning districts encompass significantly more land.

The South Hero Village Center is about 30 acres, while the corresponding zoning district is about 350 acres, according to calculations by South Hero Voters. The Keeler Bay Village Center is about 15 acres, they determined, while the zoning district is about 285 acres.

The village zoning districts do not have a minimum lot size requirement, unlike most of the town where it’s 1 acre. Their required setback from a property line is 10 feet, compared with 25 feet in other zoning districts, according to the regulations.

Most of South Hero is zoned as “rural residential,” which per the regulations, includes home and business uses that are “at lower densities than the village centers to preserve the traditional working landscape and to maintain South Hero’s rural character.”

Kerr, whose South Street home is less than half a mile south of Route 2 and falls within the village zoning district, said neighbors were surprised to learn their homes were in the new district. She has struggled to understand why the district is the size it is.

The South Hero Voters group has also pointed to a 2013 survey of town residents that found about 70% supported commercial development “concentrated along Route 2 in village centers.”

In response to a question, Carter has pointed to new development in the South Hero Village, as well as existing businesses along South Street, as reasons why the village zoning district there was made larger than the designated village center.

Two Heroes Brewery is currently building a new restaurant in the village along Route 2, and nearby, work got underway last fall on the South Burlington-based housing developer Cathedral Square’s new 30-unit senior housing complex, Bayview Crossing.

Carter also pointed to a property across the street off Lavin Lane, which he sees as “ripe and primed for growth” since it has access to a septic system. 

South Hero also is in the early stages of studying the feasibility of building a community wastewater system in the two village zoning districts. 

“You have some areas with businesses that have been around for a long time, but you’ve also got areas in between that are opportunities for business growth,” Carter said earlier this year. “So it made sense to expand the villages.”

Industrial use?

In September 2021, the South Hero Selectboard voted to amend the 2020 regulations to permit industrial use, with conditions and a site plan review, in both the South Hero and Keeler Bay village zoning districts. 

When it greenlit the changes earlier that year, the Planning Commission said its purpose was to rectify a “contradiction” in the regulations. The document made clear “small, low-impact industry is anticipated and encouraged within the village districts,” the commission said, but it later listed “industrial” use as not permitted there.

In August 2021, residents submitted a petition signed by about 130 residents — separate from the petition that got the articles on this year’s ballot — asking the town to put the industrial use amendment on the 2022 Town Meeting Day ballot, rather than have a decision made by the Selectboard.

One concern presented in the August petition was that the terms “light industry,” “low-impact industry” and “small industry” had been “used interchangeably” in planning documents, and Kerr and other residents thought there was no clear definition of what such uses actually mean.

Carter has acknowledged that the term “low-impact industry” is broad and could entail a number of different types of uses, though he said the role of town’s development review board is to determine what’s appropriate, or not, in specific situations. 

“The (board members) can impose the conditions they think would be necessary to retain the character of the community and promote public safety and promote a business that is compatible in the villages,” Carter said earlier this year.

Debate over the definition of “industrial” use came up in the neighboring town of Grand Isle last summer when some residents raised concerns with a proposal by Lake Champlain Transportation Co., the company that operates ferries between Vermont and New York State, to build a new maintenance, storage and repair facility there. 

In testimony last year stating her opposition to the 2020 development regulations, Kerr told the town’s planning commission — of which she is a former member — that “growth is not inevitable” in South Hero, and that in her eyes, low-impact industry should not be developed in the town’s villages.

“Let’s focus on enhancing South Hero’s residential and agricultural character, rather than bringing in industrial businesses,” she said.

Another South Street resident who helped organize this year’s petition, Sue Straight, echoed Kerr’s comments about preserving the character of South Hero.

“We don’t want to become Milton,” Straight said, citing denser development in some areas of that Chittenden County town.

The view looking south along South Street in South Hero. Photo by Shaun Robinson/VTDigger

Missing out on the latest scoop? Sign up here to get a weekly email with all of VTDigger’s reporting on politics. And in case you can’t get enough of the Statehouse, sign up for Final Reading for a rundown on the day’s news in the Legislature.





Source link

Tagged in : In Real Estate In Real Estate A Sales Associate Is Always In Real Estate License Lookup In Real Estate What Does Contingent Mean In Real Estate What Does Pending Mean In Real Estate What Does Under Contract Mean In Real Estate What Is A Short Sale In Real Estate What Is An Adu M Real Estate Group M Real Estate Group Albuquerque M Real Estate Hudson M Real Estate Logo M Real Estate Ltd M Real Estate Plan De La Tour M Real Estate Pointe Claire M Real Estate Reviews O Real Estate Etf O Real Estate Logo O Real Estate Meaning O'Brien Real Estate O'Connor Real Estate O'Dwyer Real Estate Management O'Neal Real Estate O'Neil Real Estate P Real Estate Agents P Real Estate Logo Real Estate Arlington Tn Real Estate Naics Code Real Estate Nashville Tn Real Estate Near Me Real Estate News Real Estate News Today Real Estate Nft Real Estate Offer Letter Real Estate Office Real Estate Office Jobs Real Estate Offices Near Me Real Estate Olive Branch Ms Real Estate Online Classes Real Estate Outlook 2022 Real Estate Oxford Ms Real Estate Panola County Ms Real Estate Photography Real Estate Photography Jobs Real Estate Practice Exam Real Estate Prices Real Estate Prices Nashville Real Estate Professional Real Estate Puerto Rico

Related Articles

April 2, 2022

Sarasota Orchestra buys land for new home on Fruitville Road | Business Observer

May 6, 2022

Future of Work special report: Across the Triangle, an ‘insatiable demand’ for land

November 3, 2020

Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes Helps make Newest Australian House Obtain

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: Dying Silicon Valley mall is bought, life sciences conversion beckons
Next Next post: Dwayne Haskins, Former Washington Commanders QB, Dead at 24

Recent Posts

  • Five cheap ways to burglar-proof your home :: WRAL.com
  • City of Chicago :: Chicago Construction Codes
  • Walton pursues new process for land purchases, considers 2 properties
  • Top Kitchen Remodeling Ideas To Try This Summer
  • Thursday Miami Dolphins Notebook: Tua Shines, OTA Week 1 in the Books, Lindsay Lands, and More

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • November 2020
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • January 2017

Categories

  • buildings land
  • cheapest housing
  • downtown housing
  • Home improvement
  • News Real estate
  • Property land
  • the highest apartment
<!-- 09c4b4c6a4381ca6a3af449163783335a47073bc -->

Visit Now

business license
Intellifluence Trusted Blogger

BL

LP

TL

toyota malang

thehgwells.co.uk All rights reserved Theme: News Base by Themematic
Sunday April 10, 2022
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT