WESTFIELD – The Planning Board voted Tuesday night to send two positive recommendations to the City Council, but only after making substantial changes to both a proposed ordinance amendment and a zone change for property on Russell Road.
The board and City Council have both been discussing a change to the city’s aquifer protection overlay zone ordinance, seeking to tighten language and increase protection of aquifers which provide about half of the city’s drinking water.
The Planning Board closed its public hearing Tuesday night. The City Council had voted at its Dec. 4th meeting to keep its hearing open in case the Planning Board made major changes to the proposed ordinance, which is what occurred.
The Planning Board did make a substantial change, voting 5-1 to eliminate an element of the proposed ordinance change which would have allowed commercial development on less than two acres with a special permit issued by the board. Several board members, as well as City Councilors, have had reservations about allowing commercial development of substandard lots in the overlay district.
Vice Chairman William Onyski and Carl Vincent pushed to remove the language which would have allowed commercial projects on less than two acres as not required.
“The two acre requirement is cleaner, easier to control and manage,” Vincent said.
“I’m also hung up on the two acre issue,” Onyski said. “It doesn’t seem clean.”
Onyski then made a motion to approve the ordinance change, but without the commercial exemption for less than two acres.
The City Council will resume its public hearing tonight. Robert A. Paul, Sr., raised the issue of the non-residential exemption during the first hearing session and said the impact of the exemption is unclear.
“We don’t know if there are six properties (with less than two acres which could be developed). We don’t know if there are twenty. Right now it’s a guess,” Paul said.
The Planning Board also made a change to a zoning change requested by Big Buck Builders, LLC, for property they own at 419 and 431 Russell Road. The two parcels are contiguous.
The Big Buck owners requested that the property, now zoned for rural residential (RR) use, be changed to business A (BA) usage. The company had proposed constructing a boarding home and was issued a special permit by the City Council last year, but said they abandoned that approach because of the high construction cost.
Big Buck Properties is now planning to build two duplex houses on each of the two parcels as an alternative to the 7,200-square-foot, 30-bed boarding house project.
The parcels had been split zoned with BA in the front portion and RR in the rear. That zoning was changed to RR to facilitate the boarding house project, but that zone would limit the number of residential units which could be constructed.
The Planning Board had reservations about allowing the change to Business A because of the uses allowed in that zoning and suggested that the change be to residence B (RB) instead.
“It would make more sense to change it to Residence B and restrict it to a residential use,” Board Chairman Philip McEwan said, “instead of Business A where you could have a dry cleaning business.”
Board member Peter Fiordalice agreed stating that “I’d like to see it more consistent with all of the residential uses in that area (of Russell Road) which are duplexes and condos.”
The board voted 6-0 to send a positive recommendation to the City Council to change the zoning to Residence B.
