09/11/03
Fort Williams Master Plan update
set for second public hearing
The Town Council will hold a public hearing Wednesday, Oct. 15, on a draft
update to the Fort Williams Master Plan.
The draft includes revisions recommended by the Planning Board that would
clarify uses of the "Southwest Preserve" area of the park. The revisions
add wording that reserves the area primarily for informal, non-intensive
recreation; and, specifically allows retention of an existing area for
maintenance activities.
The Planning Board held a public hearing last month on the update and voted
unanimously to recommend it, with proposed revisions, to the Town Council
for adoption. It is the first major revision of the document since it was
first adopted in 1990.
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The council voted to set the draft master plan to public hearing at their
Sept. 8 meeting.
At the same time, the council voted to refer a set of miscellaneous amendments
to the town's roads, sewer, subdivision and zoning ordinances to the council's
ordinance subcommittee.
The Planning Board had also held a public hearing on the proposed amendments
and voted to recommend them to the council. The amendments range from minor
technical changes to more substantive issues such as sewer connections, cluster
development and affordable housing. They include a correction to town maps
excluding property at 1220 Shore Road from the Town Center Zone.
The council is considering the amendments all at once to save the cost
of repeatedly re-printing updated ordinances. The members of the ordinance
subcommittee -- David Backer, John McGinty and Anne Swift-Kayatta, plan to
weed through the proposals and to identify those that might need more discussion.
Voting against the referral to committee was Councilor Carol Fritz, who
said she was particularly concerned about proposed changes to the sewer ordinance
that would expand the area eligible for connections. "I think there are some
major issues surrounding the sewer ordinance and what is being proposed that
we should discuss first as a council," she said.
Councilor Michael Mowles voted with the 6-1 majority to send the amendments
to committee, but said he that a proposal to change number of days and affordable
housing is on the market from two years to 120 days was unacceptable. "That
is much too short a time," Mowles said.
The subcommittee is slated to discuss the amendment proposals at 8 a.m. meetings
Sept. 23 and Sept. 30, in the Assessing/Codes/Planning conference room, second
floor Town Hall, 320 Ocean House Road.
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