Morristown town plan updated after public hearings

A second round of initial public hearings on the town plan are scheduled for the first week in January. The current edition of the town plan, which is three years in the making, is available on the town’s website, morristownvt.org.

Some of the changes made following the first round of hearings include:

• Changing some language in the section about the town’s gravel pit on Duhamel Road, which is currently going through Act 250 for the town to be able to start digging into another part of the property for more road materials. Mountain bikers and other outdoors enthusiasts balked at the way the plan relegated recreational activities to “incidental” use of the 370-acre parcel.

New wording in that section now reads: “The town will continue to work with recreational users to ensure safe access to the trail system.”

• Also dealing with recreation, the new draft calls for the “extensive, beautiful, relatively accessible, and underappreciated” trail network behind Peoples Academy to be mapped, with new connector trails to Elmore and Park streets.

• Language regarding development on steep slopes — large areas with grades exceeding 25 percent — was added back into the town plan after being removed in an earlier revision.

Development on steep slopes can adversely impact the town’s scenic landscape,” the plan now reads. “Such development, especially at higher elevations, tends to stand out from many vantage points in town, diminishing the backdrop of our town’s scenic vistas.”

• Also spurred by a conservation comment, the plan revises a proposal for more businesses and homes to use more wood for heating purposes to specify that newer woodstove models are more efficient and “air-quality” friendly.

• In the housing chapter, following a suggestion by developer Graham Mink, the plan strikes the word “affordable” from a proposal to create an affordable housing committee, favoring instead a committee “charged with promoting the creation of all housing, including affordable housing.”

• Also struck from the town plan is an entire section regarding mobile home parks. Previous drafts of the plan were opposed to the creation of a new park, saying the only other mobile home park in town, Pinecrest, “provides low quality housing that is not affordable enough to offset the substandard living situation that the majority of the trailers in the park provides.”

The struck section also said the police department and health officer — Todd Thomas, also the town zoning administrator and planning director — “spend a grossly disproportionate amount of their time dealing with problems or complaints” at Pinecrest.