WESTHAMPTON — After seven years of meticulous work by the Zoning Board of Appeals, the town has a new Zoning Bylaw after attendees at Monday night’s special Town Meeting voted to replace the existing bylaw with a new set of rules.
“Our criteria was to create bylaws that are good for Westhampton,” said John Shaw, chairman of the zoning board. “We looked at other towns, we looked at other municipalities, but we took those and only used the part that we thought Westhampton would want.”
Shaw said that board members put in “tremendous hours” at home and at bi-monthly meetings to examine the Zoning Bylaw for safety, for the state’s zoning bylaw, and for the state’s building codes.
Ultimately, Shaw said, major changes to the bylaw include, “number one, anything to do with land or buildings, only the building inspector is the first person you see,” as opposed to going to the Planning Board or other entities.
Administrative Assistant Douglas Finn said that the new document, generally speaking, cleans up and tightens the language from a legal standpoint, along with modernizing the bylaw.
“In spite of the process, the changes to it are relatively minor,” Finn said.
After a few questions from the public regarding definitions, the roughly 50 people in attendance voted with a two-thirds majority to replace the Zoning Bylaw.
“This is a living document,” said Shaw. “We waited 26 years to amend this document. That’s not the way to do it.”
“Things need to be tweaked all the time, and that should happen constantly that the bylaws should be looked at, because things are changing,” he added.
With little to no comments from the public, the six other articles on the warrant passed.
Attendees voted unanimously to accept an article relative to a Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) proposal to rebuild a bridge on Perry Hill Road Extension, at no expense to the town.
In order to do that work, MassDOT needed to create a layout of the road, which has existed as a town road since 1835 but had never officially been laid out in a plan.
Based on the current plan, a small portion of the road cuts through the front sitting room of a resident’s home.
Voters at Town Meeting allowed the town to give away around 16 to 20 square feet of town property to the residents of that home.
Also approved unanimously was Article 4, which requires that all articles be filed at least 45 days in advance of a scheduled Town Meeting, a requirement that the Select Board is able to waive if seen fit.
“It just gives the town the window it needs to do the business it needs to do in order to publish the warrant on time,” Finn said.
Articles 1, 2 and 3 were also approved unanimously with no discussion. Respectively, those allow the town to pay bills from the previous fiscal year; remove all gendered language from the town’s bylaws; and clarify the language of elected and municipal officials in the General Bylaw.
With one dissenting vote, Town Meeting participants also voted in approval of Article 5, which adds a “Treasurer” section to the “Municipal Officers” section of the General Bylaw.
While the town has had a treasurer since its establishment, approval of the article adds the job description of treasurer into the town’s general bylaws, while also authorizing the treasurer to enter into tax repayment agreements with delinquent taxpayers.
Maddie Fabian can be reached at mfabian@gazettenet.com.