Two members of the Dublin Planning Board, Chair Bruce Simpson and Vice Chair Steve Baldwin, have resigned from their positions.
During the Dublin Select Board meeting on Jan. 30, Selectman Chris Raymond announced that the Planning Board will appoint replacements to fill the open positions until 2024, when Simpson’s and Baldwin’s terms would be up for re-election. The appointments will be made after the Town Meeting in March when the Planning Board holds their next public hearing, currently scheduled for April. At this point, Simpson and Baldwin will have both officially stepped down.
Simpson had notified the board months ago that he planned to resign after he got a job out of town and planned to move. However, Baldwin said his resignation “is based on the fact that consistent Select Board interference has made it so uncomfortable. It has successfully fractured our board. I think it would be a real challenge for me to continue on.”
In particular, Baldwin said Select Board Chair Carole Monroe influenced Planning Board member Donna Garner’s actions regarding a petition warrant article that would reduce the minimum lot size in Dublin’s rural district from four acres to two acres. Baldwin and current Planning Board alternate Neil Sandford started the petition, and Baldwin said they got 117 signatures in a few days. The petition warrant article will appear on the ballot during the March 14 election.
Monroe responded, “There’s a contingent on the Planning Board that wants to blame the Select Board for this. We do not interfere with what the Planning Board is doing.”
At the Planning Board’s Jan. 12 meeting, Garner said she recommended a vote on whether or not members of the board who signed the petition should recuse themselves from the vote on whether to recommend the article because of a perceived conflict conflict of interest, as two regular members and one alternate had signed the petition. The board voted 4-3 to recommend that the members should recuse themselves. In an interview, Garner said it was ultimately the choice of those who signed the petition whether or not they stepped down on the matter.
Simpson argued that since the board was voting in its legislative capacity, not its judicial capacity, there was no need for members of the board who signed the petition to recuse themselves. Caleb Niemela recused himself from the vote, and Baldwin did not. The board voted to not recommend the petition warrant article, 4-3, and that recommendation will appear on the March 14 ballot.
The petition warrant article came at a time when the town was discussing options for creating affordable and workforce housing in Dublin, which has recently been awarded almost $28,000 in a Housing Opportunity Planning (HOP) grant from the state. New Hampshire has allocated $5 million to municipalities to give them the opportunity to research zoning and land-use regulations and reasons for lack of affordable housing. It includes a housing academy, which would offer community engagement and education opportunities to involve the public in conversations and planning.
Garner believes that the petition warrant article is jumping ahead of the HOP grant’s research stage.
“That’s why we want to do HOP grant process, have education sessions. We can talk about all the issues and what people want,” she said, adding that reducing rural lot sizes to two acres won’t create affordable housing. “Everything we do we have to have water and sewer and roads.”
Garner said she hopes to look into creating affordable housing in the village district where the town could build multifamily units, and Monroe said she doesn’t believe people are necessarily against changing zoning laws, but the grant starts the process of looking at zoning laws “in a very methodical, careful way.”
Simpson said the minimum lot size in the rural district was two acres until the early 2000s, when the town increased the lot size.
“In retrospect, we and a lot of other towns realized such a plan had adverse effects such as housing goes,” Simpson said. He believes it has contributed to the housing shortage the area is experiencing, and thinks there is agreement among the Planning Board that the town needs to do more to create housing opportunities, but there’s “some disagreement how to do that.”
Baldwin believes the petition warrant article would bring people into Dublin.
“Frankly, Dublin is dying,” he said, “People can’t afford to co me to Dublin.”
Two additional seats are up at the March 14 election, Niemel a and Rick MacMil lan.