Ogunquit News
Planning Board at odds with Board of Selectmen on warrant article format
By C. Ayn Douglass
OGUNQUIT - In a consensus vote Monday night, Sept. 11, the Ogunquit Planning Board opted in a six-one opinion to send a letter to the Board of Selectmen to request that the 14 items bringing the town's zoning ordinance into compliance with its Comprehensive Plan be placed on the ballot as one item.The selectmen, who met Tuesday, Sept. 5, with two of the five members absent, requested the Planning Board separate the items for the warrant, believing that the 14 articles posed such a diverse set of amendments that it was more democratic and less confusing to pose them to voters as individual amendments rather than one item.
J.T. Lockman of Southern Maine Regional Planning, who has been working with the Ogunquit Planning Board to bring zoning ordinances into agreement with the Comprehensive Plan as mandated by the State of Maine Growth Management Act, duly submitted the warrant articles to the Planning Board as the Board of Selectmen requested. The Planning Board members, however, believe that since the Comprehensive Plan was voted on as an entire package, amendments to the zoning ordinance that reflect changes to comply with it should be voted on as a single amendment as well.
"It was the intent of the Planning Board to implement the Comp Plan with one warrant article," said Vice Chairwoman Muriel Freedman. "The Comp Plan was voted on as one warrant article, so changes to the zoning ordinance should be one article as well."
Board members were concerned as to what the implications would be if one or more of the individual articles were rejected by the voters, and Lockman assured the board that it was not an all-or-nothing situation.
"The Growth Management Act says the Comp Plan must be (in sync) with zoning ordinances within two years, but very few communities can meet that deadline," he said. "It's not a terrible problem if some pass and some don't."
Lockman said of the 340 jurisdictions he knows of in Maine, approximately 160 haven't done a Comprehensive Plan yet. The town of Alfred may be also implementing their zoning ordinances to comply with their Comp Plan.
Meanwhile, York Town Planner Steve Burns said York is reasonably close to having its zoning ordinances in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan.
Of combining all 14 amendments in one warrant article, he said, "It's one subject, technically. It makes sense to package them up together."
York attempted to do that several years ago, he said, when they created a package of amendments commonly known as Zoning Ordinance Draft 10-B, which ultimately went down in defeat by the voters.
York is taking a different tactic this November as it has revised the Comprehensive Plan in addition to some zoning changes to bring the two elements together.
Lockman said revising the plan in Ogunquit is worth considering if the warrant article questions are brought before the voters and some of them fail to pass.
"It will stretch out the process," he said, "but we tried to word (the articles) so that if some of them fail, it won't adversely affect the others."
Contact Ogunquit reporter C. Ayn Douglass at cayndouglass@yorkindependent.net.
