York Town News
Planning Department Monthly Report:
What's on the horizon for the York Planning Department this month
By Town Planner Steve Burns
Town Planner Steve Burns
People are lined up again to get to the board. There is easily a two-month wait at this time.
Applications on the April Agenda:
- Highland Farm Phase 2. Still in consideration of the preliminary application and in a holding pattern while the applicant negotiates possible property sales to Land for Maine's Future or the Kittery Water District.
- PHN Subdivision Amendment. Very minor boundary line adjustments.
- Sparhawk Subdivision Amendments. Finishing off the final details of these amendments.
- Fazio/Woodbridge Square. Coming in for final approval of a new office building.
- Wild Willy's Burgers. Minor application for an outdoor walk-in cooler.
- American Legion Function Hall. Sketch review of a new plan for their site adjacent to Hannaford. It is scaled back from the earlier plans, which received preliminary approval before being abandoned, but it's still a big proposal.
- Amendments to the York Village Business Center. The owners are proposing two significant amendments. One would relocate the hotel so it will better face Route 1. The other would replace two small mixed-use buildings with one larger retail building for a new Rite-Aid.
- Fazio/Woodbridge Square. Continued discussion, but no final decision yet. Should be finished in April.
- Scudiere Non-Conforming Lot Split. Continued discussion, but no final decision yet.
- Jefferds' Tavern. Direction provided, but no formal action taken.
- Union Bluff Function Hall Parking Lot Amendments. Amendments approved.
- Ledgewood Park. Approval granted.
- Highland Farm Phase 2. Still in a holding pattern.
- Ocean View Village Parking Lot Expansion. Changes to correct past deficiencies.
- Campagna Subdivision Amendment. Boundary line adjustment not yet resolved because of a sight distance problem at the driveway. May be addressed as re-dividing of combined non-conforming lots.
- Marketplace. I found out this month that the owner has a new engineer working on this plan. We're still, however, waiting for the results of a meeting between their engineer and Maine DEP.
- Bell Marsh Road. The Planning Board referred this issue to the Board of Selectmen in April 2006 without accepting the application.
- Twin Lights Subdivision Amendment. Minor lot line change considered, but on hold pending evaluation of violation complaints.
- Cottage Place Lighting Amendment. Awaiting follow-up by the applicant.
- Borkowski. Subdivision in Kittery which would have sole access through York off the end of Woodside Meadow Road. I expect to receive a formal application the first week in April. Kittery and York planning boards have agreed to each meet separately, but approval of both will be required for the subdivision to be approved.
- Scott & Barbara Perkins. A three-lot subdivision of a 10-acre lot off Pine Hill Road.
- Camp Eaton Master Plan. Board discussed long-range plans for changes at Camp Eaton.
- Tony Valdez (Fiona's Porch property) received conceptual direction in March about a minor expansion on the back of the building. Review held up pending CEO evaluation of possible outdoor display violations.
- Bob Cutts/Rumsey Road. There is a long-standing problem regarding road construction on this property, and Bob Cutts is proposing an option to permanently resolve this matter.
- York Community Service Association. They're working on plans to expand the building and improve the site layout.
- Public Works Department. I have received the application for a minor expansion of the public works barn but haven't yet had the time to review it.
- A CVS-like pharmacy? I've now met with a developer who wants to develop a pharmacy at the corner of York Street and Route 1 - but who now assures me this is his project, not CVS's project. Their initial plans were very heavy on pavement right up to the edge of the street, so I reviewed our requirements for buffering and for setting pavement back from the edge of the property. I also explained the extremely low probability of variances to circumvent zoning standards. If this comes back, I suspect it will be greatly scaled back.
- Atlantic House Amendments. I've received an application for several amendments, but haven't yet had the time to review them.
- Danis Cluster Subdivision. Nothing new in March about this one. It's a rumor about a cluster subdivision in the vicinity of Josiah Norton and Berwick roads.
- Spur Road and Route 1. I haven't heard a thing about this one recently.
- Cragin/Currier Logging Road Subdivision. This popped up again on the radar screen this month. It's now being evaluated by the York Housing Authority.
- Peter Weare. Office development of land in the Route 1-5 zone. We have received application materials for this site, but it wasn't yet complete. To date the applicant still hasn't provided follow-up information, but in February I did hear from the applicant's engineer so I expect it will become active again very soon.
- Peter Weare. Six-unit residential development of land in the Route 1-6 zone. I haven't received an application yet.
- Doug Gray. It's been a long time since I've heard anything about this one.
- York's Wild Kingdom. Nothing new from Berkshire Development.
- Cliff House. They are considering minor amendments to their approved expansion plans. Perhaps another pool and some minor changes to the buildings. No contact from them in many months.
- Maine DOT. Barrie Hobbins, Esq., met with me on June 12 about a new tower on the MDOT maintenance garage on Route One across from Wild Willy's, for an MDOT communications antennas and possible commercial co-location. Nothing has come of this since last summer.
- Small Commercial Site on Route 1. 908 Route 1, just south of Whippoorwill. New owner has moved the old blue cape farther back on the lot and plans to eventually open a series of small businesses.
A new state law requires every community in Maine to make major revisions to their shoreland zoning before May 2008. For York, we need the voters to approve our amendments this coming November. Brett and I started work on the map amendments last fall, and we developed a pretty good understanding of what is now required for maps. I was reasonably comfortable that the text changes required of us wouldn't be too controversial or difficult. Having now drafted the bulk of required ordinance changes and seen the changes to the shoreland map, my reaction is, "Wholly Cow!" This one amendment has about 45 pages of text, and our one shoreland map has grown into a two-page map. Although most of the changes are relatively simple, there are so many that it will be a difficult amendment to explain. To complicate matters, the state is mandating that a series of wetlands around town be designated as resource protection, meaning much more restrictive development controls will be applied in the areas around the wetlands. From a point of view of protecting resources this makes some sense, but it could be a tough sell for affected property owners that the state is forcing these new controls on them. I hope everyone is patient with us as we work these amendments through the adoption process this spring and summer.
Other Ordinance Amendments
The amendments I'm bringing forward to the Planning Board this year are substantial. Aside from the shoreland amendment, there are still many complex and important amendments. I've cut out a few of the less important amendments because I expect the public hearings to be overwhelming, but we've still got our work cut out for us this year. Here's what coming:
- Public Road Acceptance Ordinance - major revisions to the standards for the town to accept ownership of private roads.
- Road and Right-of-Way Standards - revising the standards for private roads created outside of the Planning Board review process.
- Control New Construction Below Elevation 12 in the Beach - creation of locally-designated flood prone areas, based on recommendations in the Storm Water Management Plan.
- Density and Use Standards With Respect to Public Utilities - implementing growth management policies relating to our designated rural and growth areas.
- Watershed Protection Overlay District - adding more protection measures to safeguard York and Kittery's public water supplies.
- Shoreland Amendments - huge!
- York Beach Zoning - implementing the Comprehensive Plan by creating new zones in the Short Sands area.
- Vehicle Parking Limits in the RES-4 Zoning District - tighten the standards to control excessive vehicle parking in the Eastern Point neighborhood.
- Special Exceptions - fix some vague and inconsistent language at the request of the Board of Appeals.
- Fix a glitch in the non-conforming lots language which we amended last year.
- Storm Water Management Standards - implement policy changes recommended in the Storm Water Management Plan.
- Supplemental Subsurface Waste Water Disposal Rules - update the town's septic design standards.
- Building Codes - the CEOs will probably request that the building codes the town adopts by reference be updated (CABO to IRC 2003, and IBC 2003 to IBC 2006).
- Historic Landmark Designation of Town Farm - currently being contemplated by the HDC.
These amendments (except for the Municipal Capacity Chapter) are pretty much ready to go right now. Some very minor clean-up will be required.
- Municipal Capacity Chapter. Because of competing demands on my time, I have dropped this chapter for this year.
- Historic and Archeological Resources Chapter. This chapter is almost ready to send forward to the voters I'm waiting for final comments back from the HDC and Tad Baker, at which time I'll finalize the draft.
- Natural Resources Chapter Update. This amendment is a series of minor amendments to the chapter, which we adopted about a year ago. Four new maps would be added to the chapter, and the Stream Corridors Report which Jon Discher wrote would be incorporated into the Chapter by reference. We still need to finalize two of the maps.
- Watersheds Management Policies. This is a policy that recommends that land use controls utilize natural boundaries where possible, and that the town will need to work with other communities when the resources cross political boundaries.
- Storm Water Management Policies. This is a series of policy recommendations to help guide the town to deal with storm water management and flooding. It addresses the town's participation in the National Flood Insurance Program, incorporates by reference the Storm Water Management Plan and calls for careful analysis of its recommendations, encourages Low Impact Development standards, and recommends logical control of impervious surfaces.
- Unfragmented Blocks Policies. I worked with Roger Cole of the Mount Agamenticus to the Sea and Doreen MacGillis of the York Land Trust to draft this policy, which calls for consideration of large open space blocks remaining in York. These areas are already identified as important natural resource areas, and this policy language calls for action to conserve the more important of these areas.
If you look closely at many of our GIS maps you'll see something funny along the border with the town of Kittery. There are two lines. You can see this very clearly on the startup map of our online mapping (go to www.yorkmaine.org, and under "quick links" select "GIS", then "Show me the maps"). Perhaps it's a flaw of this new technology, but anything that doesn't seem quite right really stands out when we start putting map layers one on top of the other. I was puzzling over this boundary a few weeks ago when I remembered Ron Nowell saying something a few years ago about the Kittery-York border being incorrect. I spoke with him and he indicated the answer could be found on the Daniel Sewall survey of York prepared in 1794. We happened to have a copy of that survey for the Historic and Archeological Resources Chapter we're writing for our Comp Plan. Sure enough, that 213-year-old survey shows both lines, matching exactly what we have on our GIS today. It indicates that York claimed the border was straight while Kittery claimed it was bowed slightly into York. Mystery solved. Still, I wonder why the discrepancy still exists more than two hundred years later.
Site Plan and Subdivision Regulations Amended
The Planning Board adopted a series of amendments to the Site Plan and Subdivision Regulations on March 22. Two of the changes made were written specifically to implement policies of the Comprehensive Plan. One requires the phasing of larger subdivisions in the designated rural area to help slow the pace of growth in the outlying parts of town. The other creates a new option for smaller-scale roads to be constructed in residential subdivisions to help protect the town's rural character. Another change integrates the town's regulations with the state's Beginning with Habitat program to improve our ability to assess development impacts on wildlife habitat. The remaining changes were more administrative in nature, helping to clarify requirements.
