Filling one of the vacancies created by recent resignations, the Planning Board voted to make Susan Phillips-Hungerford a full member of the board at its last meeting of 2025 Thursday.
A local architect with a degree in environmental design, Phillips-Hungerford has experience that board members lauded prior to their unanimous vote.
“She’s eminently qualified,” said Chris Raymond, the Select Board’s representative to the Planning Board.
One focus of the board’s work in the new year will be to clarify town regulations regarding driveway construction, according to discussion Thursday. Board member Neil Sandford noted what he called the inadequacy of the town’s regulations regarding this aspect of development.
“The procedures need to be changed dramatically. We should make things clearer, have a public hearing, then the Planning Board can vote,” said Sandford.
One potential warrant article would reduce the minimum size that a lot must be in the village to 35,000 square feet, down from one square acre, which is 43,560 square feet. It would also revise side and rear setback minimums to 15 feet. Background information on the article includes the board’s reasoning – “One consistently expressed desire was to focus housing opportunities in the Village District to encourage greater housing construction in the center of Town.”
A second draft warrant article addresses the matter of short-term rentals. The board stated in the draft that the proposed changes regarding such rentals are necessary because, “there has been little or no compliance with the Zoning Ordinance requirements by applicants wishing to provide short term rentals under the provisions of Other Transient Housing.”
Discussion of proposed changes included changing the term “transient housing” to “short-term rentals,” and an expressed desire to avoid “party houses” emerging from rental situations. To that end, proposed changes to short-term rental regulations include a requirement that owners notify abutters of plans to rent their property and that the Planning Board may revoke a permit to rent one’s property if the town receives multiple nuisance complaints regarding a short-term rental.
This article would also allow the Planning Board to review individual applications to insure compliance with the intent of the ordinance.
The draft articles may be found at townofdublin.org/planning-board/urgent-alerts/pb-warrant-articles-and-schedule. The first hearing on these warrant articles will be on Jan. 2 at 6 p.m. at the Town Hall with another scheduled for the same time on Jan. 16.