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Date: 3/2/2021
SOUTHWICK – During the Southwick Planning Board’s Feb. 23 meeting, the board discussed four bylaws for review ahead of the Town Meeting in May, including a new solar bylaw and revisions to the sign bylaw, a revision to the hiring consultant bylaw and removing the term grandfathering from all bylaws.
To start the solar bylaw discussion, Planning Board Chair Michael Doherty said he researched other towns about their solar bylaws for ground-mounted solar arrays, including Concord, Massachusetts.
“I looked at Concord and it wasn’t uncommon for towns out there to not really have much of a restriction, I think they had 5 acres with 50-foot setbacks. They have that in every single district, and residential was included in that list. It seemed odd to me that you would allow something large on 5 acres of residential area, I think we have to kick those limits up,” he said.
Planning Board member Dave Spina agreed with Doherty and said the 5 acre and 50 foot setback requirements were too small.
“I agree that 5 acres and 50-foot setbacks are too small for me, I don’t have a problem if we do it by the actual size of the array, if anything that allows for more flexibility as technology matures. From a planning perspective we care more about how big it is and how visible it is to the neighbors,” he said.
Town Planner Alan Slessler cautioned the board about allowing the ground-mounted solar arrays as people in Residential 40 zones were against the arrays in the past.
“One thing we will be faced with, having been on the bylaw committee for the solar, all of the R40 people were pretty loud about not wanting to have it in the R40 zone. You have to consider if you are going to be doing something, you don’t want to put time and effort in just for the people to throw it out because they don’t want it,” he said.
When it came to the bylaw for hiring outside consultants, Doherty explained that it was as simple as establishing an escrow account.
“All it requires from the town is that the town set up an escrow account for these funds. That’s really the only obligation on the town and it gives the board decent leeway to do this,” he said.
For the grandfathering term, Doherty said it was a simple change to just remove the term from the definitions page because it did not appear in any specific bylaw.
“There is an appeals court case that said they were not going to use the term anymore, if a court’s not going to use the term you probably should not use it. It is a simple solution for us because the only place it is used is in the definitions section. So, it is a pretty easy fix because it is not used in any substantive way in any of the bylaws, so you just have to take it out of the definitions section,” he said.
With the sign bylaw revision, Planning Board Vice Chair Marcus Phelps drafted changes to the bylaw ahead of the meeting and recommended allowing a sign to change every 15 seconds.
“Originally, we used 60 minutes because we expected it to mostly be used for gas stations, not at other places of business. There is quite a formula that is used to calculate the minimum time the message would be on, that 15 seconds is a calculation for a 35 mile per hour zone and you are seeing the sign from 500 feet away,” he said.
Among the other changes Phelps brought forward, he said it was important to include restrictions against overly distracting signs.
“Section D is about distracting effects the signs can use. A lot of the bylaws I have looked at do not allow some of these weird things that can go on to distract people’s attention,” he said.
Ultimately, the board agreed to send each bylaw to the Select Board for review before hosting each public hearing at the next meeting. The Southwick Planning Board next meets on March 16 and will host public hearings for all four bylaw revisions.