York Town News
State committee, town compromise on growth law
By Jennifer L. Saunders
YORK - Local residents and officials who have spent months working to find out just what the state's new growth law will mean for the town are now much closer to an answer.Last week, the Legislature's Natural Resources Committee approved an amended version of Legislative Document 1108, a bill submitted by the town for clarification of the state's growth cap law, known as Legislative Document 1535, which goes into effect on July 1. It will now be up to the Legislature to vote on the amendment.
"We will need to put our growth ordinance back on the ballot in November with the correct number in it," explained Town Manager Rob Yandow after the committee agreed to the compromise last Wednesday, April 18. "We obviously need to be in compliance with state law, so whatever number we arrive at, based on the amendment to LD 1108, will be what we will use as of July 1, 2007. The November vote will be retroactive to July 1, when LD 1535 takes effect."
Local residents Ted Little, Cliff Estes and Dave Emery were part of ongoing efforts to clarify the law and its impact on York's long-standing growth ordinance, Yandow explained at the Board of Selectmen's meeting on Monday, April 23.
Last week, Little described the experience of attending the Natural Resources Committee's work session and a prior public hearing. He praised the town's legislators for their support of the bill.
Overall, Little said, it seemed the committee members were not aware of York's development pressure.
"I believe that we were able to show them that York's growth over the past 10 years has far exceeded our ability to keep up with infrastructure," he said. "We challenged them to show that York's growth ordinance created sprawl to other towns, citing that there is absolutely no evidence to support it."
Little pointed to the decade between 1990 and 2000 when, he said, York was a close second in the entire state in terms of the total number of housing units built. At that time, he said, York had twice as many residences built as Bangor and Sanford and more than Portland, outpacing the state's average by 61 percent.
"I further stated that the latest figures I had, 2000 to 2004, which were all under our growth ordinance, showed that we still grew at almost twice the rate of Sanford, more than Kittery and virtually the same as Eliot, South Berwick, Kennebunk and Saco - all neighbors in York County," Little said. "My point was that we have been absorbing more than our share of population growth in our region, and that we could not possibly be accused of creating sprawl."
While the local growth cap as approved by residents has been 84 residential permits per year, with exemptions for such uses as affordable housing, York's proposed legislation identified 96 permits per year to bring the town into compliance with the state mandate.
Yandow explained the committee's action amended that number to a base calculation of all permits granted within the past 10 years, with those that qualify as affordable housing extracted from the number.
"It appears that we will have a base of somewhere around 105," he said, adding, "We all feel it is a compromise that we can live with, and if the bill is passed by the Legislature, we will be prepared to amend our growth ordinance."
The goal, Little and Yandow have both said, has been to clarify ambiguous language regarding the formula establishing the minimum number of permits each municipality must grant.
"We presently exempt up to 25 affordable houses to be built per year and through our amendment have successfully kept them from being in the base calculations, while allowing the exemptions to continue as they have," Little said of York's ordinance. "That is very important to the town. More clarity is still needed in the overall formula, and we will be working on it."
Little, just like the town's selectmen in their discussions of recent education plans coming down from Augusta and the growth law, pointed to the issue of home rule and whether the state should have the right to override a municipality's home rule charter.
Little said he told the Natural Resources Committee, "the state wants York to be a prime donor town for taxes to the state, while receiving virtually no money in return for schools, etc., from the state."
