Tuesday, May 6, 2008

(Almost) Nothing to See Here

Allow your pangs of guilt for not attending tonight's Planning Board meeting to absolve, because nothing really happened in the latest round of the Stroudwater Place debate. Or to paraphrase my Room 114 neighbor Laura Burden, there was a lot of talking about, well, talking.

To be fair to the Planning Board, the project is so meaty that it is difficult to figure out exactly where one should initially sink her teeth.

Nevertheless, the Board needs to spur the progress of the debate along. Expressing a willingness to increase their work rate by scheduling extra meetings devoted solely to this issue is a good start. But more action (such as scheduling a public hearing or at least substantive discussion) would've been more encouraging.

- John C.L. Morgan

P.S. The Planning Board wasn't entirely impotent tonight. They recommended the City Council stand pat on the issue of 5,000 square foot houselots, as well as an instruction for the City to explore design requirements that consider a prospective home's size and scale relative to the 50 x 100 lots. And the Board also tabled a housing development proposed for Austin Street. On the other hand, the latest round in the Pike/Idexx issue has been postponed, as it did not meet the Planning Board's 10p deadline for tackling new business.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Planning Board just needs to grandfather any split lot that is 50X100 and be done with it. Don't drag this on longer than it needs to. Clearly, the City Planner needs to come out and address what they think the city's direction is, cause no one else can tell where they are taking this thing.

Anonymous said...

Wow, it was painful on public access, I can imagine how much fun that was in person.