SOUTH HADLEY — Town Meeting members voted down all four zoning bylaw amendments at a special Town Meeting on Wednesday, with a majority of residents expressing dissatisfaction about the lack of mandated affordable housing and natural resource conservation in the bylaws.

“What this seems to do is increase the probability that affordable housing will be built,” Town Meeting member Rudolf Ternbach said. “There’s no guarantees in it, and I can tell you, as somebody who’s been in real estate for decades, the foxes will come in and you won’t get the affordable housing.”

At the two-and-a-half hour meeting at Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School, the body of 115 members also voted down an impoundment bylaw that would have allowed the town to impound a dog for various infractions, claiming that the language was “overly-broad.”

The remaining three bylaws — the enforcement section of the nuisance bylaw, a measure to strike the lawn care section of the nuisance bylaw and an unhitched trailer bylaw — were approved, as well as capital purchases for a new wastewater vac truck, electric school van, Buttery Brook Park renovations and funds for trash and recycling carts.

Zoning bylaws

The four zoning bylaws aimed to update the town’s existing flexible development bylaw passed in 2004, which dedicates a percentage of a parcel for conservation and the remaining portion for residential housing.

One proposal called for changes to the flexible development bylaw itself by allowing flexible developments to be approved under site plan review, increasing density incentives through two tiers of conservation, shrinking minimum parcel size from 5 acres to 3 acres and adding extra density bonuses for affordable housing units and units under 800 square feet.

The other three bylaws apply to the roads and open space of flexible developments. One bylaw allows developers to create a common driveway rather than a subdivision road, the second bylaw unifies the definition of common open space and the final bylaw removes the open space requirement for large multifamily developments.

Town Meeting members, however, raised several concerns about the amendments, ranging from increased density to the lack of town control over the projects under site plan review.

The Sustainability and Energy Commission issued a letter on Nov. 9 that claimed the Planning Board did not request the commission’s input on the bylaw, and that flexible development could result in loss of mature trees and wildlife habitat fragmentation. Objectors to the bylaw point to Skinner Woods, a flexible development in town, as an exam ple.

“The Planning Board gave permission to the contractor for Skinner Woods and was expected to follow their conditions,” Town Meeting member Lori Souder said. “He ignored many of them, only asking for forgiveness afterwards. One was removing 30 mature trees.”

The most prevalent comment of the evening, however, was that the new bylaw incentivized deed-restricted affordable housing but did not require it despite it’s demand in town.

“The fact is, is that South Hadley is changing, whether we like it or not. But the way it’s changing is that it’s becoming unaffordable,” Charles Miles said. “We’ve got five kids. We’d like at least some of them to live in South Hadley, and none of them can afford it.”

Planning Board Chair Diane Supczak-Mulvaney said a goal of the Housing Production Plan and Master Plan was to update this underused bylaw in hopes of developers opting for flexible development over a typical subdivision, where there is no conservation or affordable housing incentives built in.

“What is the alternative to this incentivizing plan? Is the town going to start buying property or raising money to buy property and then hiring developers themselves?” Planning Board member Nate Therien asked.

Planning Board member Rob Watchilla explained that site plan review requires developers to explain every decision on a project and how it meets strict zoning regulations and design requirements set by the board. He calls the process “rigorous” and requires two or three meetings to complete.

“New England as a region would need 350,000 new housing units to meet current and future demand in order to address the housing shortage,” he added. “We’re trying to implement change to allow for affordability to become a thing in this town, and the best way to address any sort of housing affordability is to create more housing.”

Joanna Brown, the only Planning Board member who voted against bringing the bylaws to Town Meeting, explained her objections to three of the four bylaws. She said the common driveway bylaw does not prohibit the town from adopting these long driveways into roads, creating future financial issues. She echoed the concerns with lack of affordable housing requirement, and added that the common open space bylaw does not have a conservation focus.

Planning Board members did their best to address residents concerns, but it did not sway voters. Zoning bylaws require a 2/3 majority to pass. Changes to the flexible development bylaw failed 39 in favor to 51 opposed. 51 people voted against the common open space, compared to 38. The common drive bylaw was split down the middle, with both sides having 43 votes. After the previous three bylaws failed to pass, changes to multifamily housing lost as well.

Other matters

Voters also rejected the impoundment bylaw that would allow the town to impound a dog for various infractions, from attacking another animal or person to failing to pay dog license, saying the wording was very general and overly-broad.

Lily Newman noted that there is no escalation of punishments, so theoretically the town could impound a dog on the first offense of barking too loud. Audrey Maney-Hernandez commented that a dog found unleashed should not be in the same category as a dangerous dog.

“The reasons why this could lead to an impoundment of a dog seem quite really broad and impoundment I think, would be quite dramatic of our dog for a lot of these reasons and quite unnecessary,” Jodi Miller said.

Residents also raised issue with removing lawn care regulations from the nuisance bylaw, as it will remove any jurisdiction the town has over upkeep of property.

“If you strike out the entire bylaw, you don’t have a leg to stand on, and your neighbor can clutter his yard and make it as nasty looking as he wants, and you have no grounds to complain about it,” Ken Kostek said.

Town Meeting approved this measure.

 

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.