Board of Aldermen — 3/21/17 Page 15
Attorney Bolton
| think there may have been but not so that it would affect 122 Manchester Street. 122 Manchester Street will
only be affected by this new ordinance if that developer chooses to have this ordinance apply to it. Maybe he
or they would, but if they want to present their plan under the ordinance that exists as we speak, they have a
right to do that. They have started their process before this got introduced. | think it’s more correct to say that
that illustrated some of the potential problems that the original proposal was designed to clarify. Whether the
amended version makes things better or worse depends on your point of view | suppose.
Alderman Siegel
| do appreciate the idea of not having density blow up in the middle of our neighborhoods, but what concerns
me, and I’m just not clear on this which is why | am asking these questions, is whether or not a fundamental
right which was granted to a property owner to develop as they chose would be modified or taken away after
the commitment of potentially significant financial resources to realize that the development based on the laws
or the ordinances as they existed at the time. That! couldn’t? support because | don’t think that would be fair.
Again this has had so many twists and turns, I’m not sure where we are at if that has happened. | would
support this if we didn’t take away somebody’s rights.
President McCarthy
My understanding is that the Planning Department determined that because of the timing of the application that
site was not held to the provisions of the new ordinance.
Alderman Siegel
So everything is effectively grandfathered in until such point as something comes before after this is passed?
President McCarthy
Yes.
Attorney Bolton
Any application that’s been noticed of the Planning Board hearing has been published for is as you say
grandfathered. Anything the Planning Department doesn’t know about or the public doesn’t know about
because of that posting, is not grandfathered. If someone goes out and buys three acres in the middle of a
residential neighborhood and the city is not a party to that transaction, the expectation of that purchaser may
be frustrated or may not be frustrated by passage of some ordinance change. That would not be
grandfathered. You have to have a proposal, notice of which has been published.
Alderman Moriarty
I’m going to vote for this, but | support Alderman Deane’s decision to vote against it and he has a good reason
for it. His reasons make sense. One could say it was created to stop a certain development and that would be
a justifiable reason to vote against this. In the end what we have is no more restrictive than what was originally
there. There was a section that would have made things a little more restriction. That was eliminated. For
those of you who weren’t there to see Attorney Westgate, he did a great job of tutoring us all on land use
codes. If you vote for this, you’re not making the code significantly more restrictive one way or the other. Ina
bigger picture, in Concord they passed laws encouraging senior housing and making it easier to put higher
density units to take advantage of elderly housing which for politically correct reasons we changed it to housing
for older person. State law allows a developed landowner to put in high density units in a residential area that
normally wouldn’t support high density units, so | personally don’t like that idea at all. If you’re going to put ina
house, it should look like a house in the neighborhood. But I’m not in Concord and there’s nothing | can do
about it.
