Morristown zoning laws aim to tighten development

The town selectboard and village trustees will decide next month whether to accept the changes, but last week’s decision — plus a week to warn next month’s local legislative meetings — make the proposed rules the new guidebook for zoning in town.

Planning Director Todd Thomas said the proposed zoning changes represent “the biggest tightening of zoning regulations this town has ever seen, in my opinion.” Because of that, he said developers are scrambling to apply for projects under the less strict bylaws.

“I am buried in permit applications from developers trying to beat the zoning changes,” Thomas said.

One section that has been tightened up is a major overhaul of the bylaws’ historic preservation regulations. New rules, for example, would ban vinyl siding on new buildings built within the historic village center.

Thomas let people know the clock was ticking.

“All the developers in the room, if they (the planning council) vote this night you need to submit all applications to me by Wednesday, Oct. 5, or they’ll be under the new regulations,” he said.

As of press deadline, it was unclear how many permits had been issued in those waning days and hours.

The selectboard hosts its public hearing on the proposed changes Monday, Nov. 7. The village trustees hold their hearing on the changes the following week, on Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Short leash on short-term

Much of last Tuesday’s discussion revolved around short-term rentals. Specifically, the new rules seek to align the stricter regulations within the village with the laxer rules throughout the rest of town — the village requires short-term properties to be owner-occupied and the town does not.

Roger Marcoux, the county sheriff and a property owner in the Mud City area of town, said he and his family purchased a house earlier this year they intended on renting out on a short-term basis, but halted those efforts based on the new rules.

“My concern is that the rug was sort of pulled out from underneath us,” Marcoux said. “I think it’s government overreach to just keep dictating what we can do and what we can’t do with what we purchase.”

Moriah Stokes said when she and her husband, in 2017, bought a property in the Sterling Valley part of town to rent out, it drew the attention of their neighbors and town officials who were concerned about short-term rentals coming into rural and residential areas during a housing crisis. Now, Stokes and her husband live in the home full-time and rent it out only a few times a year, while seeing other homes in the neighborhood being turned over to Airbnb renters.

“My concern, while people should be allowed to do what they choose with the homes that they purchase, is, would we allow these homes to basically be 24/7 businesses?” Stokes said. “How can we kind of pull back the reins and shorten the leash while also protecting all our private homeowner rights to do what we’d like with arguably some of our biggest assets that we’re going to have?”

Thomas said any secondary home already being used as a short-term rental before the new selectboard approves the proposed zoning changes would be grandfathered.

He said zoning changes adopted and forwarded on last week by the planning council seek to align zoning bylaws both inside and outside the Morrisville village nucleus — everyone gets to do what they want with their first home, but they can’t buy subsequent properties and rent them out, essentially acting as a hotelier but without having to abide by the actual regulatory responsibilities of a lodging business.

“No one’s saying you can’t go to the Caribbean over the winter and short-term rent your house while you’re gone for a couple of weeks and, say, rent it to a guy from New York City for $10,000 over the holidays. Great. Knock yourself out,” Thomas said. “What we’re saying is, we’re trying to prevent people from buying second or third or fourth properties and running them as a business and have short-term rentals taking that needed housing out of the supply chain here, further exacerbating housing costs.”

Thomas said the planning council has tried to get similar zoning bylaw changes through in previous rounds of revisions, but the selectboard “shot it down.” As it stands now, he said, “in the town, you can be a mini hotel mogul” and buy a bunch of properties and rent them out.

But he said that’s all up to the selectboard, which hasn’t in recent years been willing to tighten the reins on property owners.

“We’re going to try again,” he said. “Every year, it gets harder to put the genie back in the bottle, though.”

Other developing concerns

One person asked about the bylaws’ stated need for developers to include shade trees as part of their projects, particularly the requirement for shade trees along any road frontage — at least one for every 60 feet of frontage — saying there aren’t enough trees amid the new compact development along Bridge Street. The person also said the rooflines there come right down to the sidewalk and expressed concern about clearing snow.

Thomas said those are questions for the development review board, which approved those projects, but added that landscaping is planned for next spring.

Regarding setbacks along Brooklyn Street that have had some people expressing concern on social media, Thomas said the new regulations would decrease the setback requirements by two feet. He said that is a barely discernible difference, but a key one, because it reduces the setback from the edge of the road from 10 feet to eight feet, thereby hindering the ability for developers to create “strip mall style” parking in front of the building and instead move parking to the sides.

Also on Brooklyn Street, some residents said they had not simply gone from opposing to supporting the proposal to turn the west side of the lower part of that street into a high-density residential zone, a characterization made earlier by Thomas.

Nancy Pritchard and Mary Lou Nichols both said it’s more nuanced, and they and their Brooklyn Heights neighbors agreed to “tweaks” to the law that would make their homes and others conform to new high-density requirements.

Some residents said it has been difficult to follow along and understand what parts of the zoning regulations new and what parts are already in force. Thomas said he stopped showing tracked changes — underlined, struck-through or differently colored text — to differentiate old language from new years ago because people found it confusing to read.

Kristin Fogdall said she has also had trouble determining the difference between old and proposed language but is in favor of protecting the town’s historic nature.

“Because as some people have noted, it comes down so much to how somebody actually designs their building, and the materials they use to build it,” Fogdall said. “Unfortunately, there really just has not been enough quality control, as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, to many of the new structures that are going up.”