As Champlain Valley Union School District anticipates fundraising to begin for a controversial artificial turf field at its high school in Hinesburg, one local resident is suggesting the town hit the pause button on permitting.
Joe Iadanza, who formerly served on Hinesburg’s planning commission, has come before the selectboard twice to urge the town to consider interim zoning. The measure, as outlined in state law, allows a municipality to hold off on development while it performs a study or reworks pieces of its bylaws. In the two-year interim period, the legislative body — in this case, the selectboard — controls permitting rather than a development review board.
“It’s a timeout,” Iadanza said. “The selectboard gets the last word on what is allowed during an interim period so the planning commission can catch up and understand the larger issues.”
A contingent of residents havsfrequently voiced concerns over the proposed synthetic turf field related to microplastics and chemicals reaching the town’s well — although there is disagreement about whether the field would impact the water supply. This would be a period where Hinesburg could consider zoning related to issues like water quality or the kinds of development allowed in the village growth area, Iadanza said.
If the Hinesburg Selectboard takes up the suggestions, it would not be the first legislative body to do so in order to ward off different kinds of unwanted developments.
“Examples I know of in Vermont where municipalities have at least thought about or actually implemented interim bylaws have typically revolved around a Walmart-type, large big-box development being proposed in town, and not having the right tools to guide the siting of that on a particular property,” Taylor Newton, the deputy director at Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission said.
Interim bylaws are an emergency measure, Newton said. If a municipality expects a kind of development it has never considered before, interim bylaws allow time for it to create appropriate regulations. It isn’t clear what the state may or may not consider an emergency — that is not defined in the law.
Shelburne instituted interim bylaws during pandemic lockdowns to allow increased outdoor seating at restaurants and more sidewalk sales, keeping businesses open during social-distancing measures.
In 2018, South Burlington put interim bylaws in place that restricted development in the southeast quadrant of the city for three years — extending the initial two-year period — in order to revise environmental standards.
More recently, Morristown adopted an interim bylaw that placed a moratorium on data centers and other high-impact use facilities.
While the artificial turf project may be the inspiration for the push to adopt interim bylaws, Iadanza said any regulations the town adopts would not be considered spot zoning — an illegal practice in which towns single out a specific parcel or set of parcels for special zoning, often to prevent or encourage specific developments that might be at odds with a town plan or a neighborhood zone.
“There are a lot of other things that that I think about: We already have some gas stations around this well protection area and near where the wells are. Is that wise? Would we want more?” he said.
He acknowledged that even if the town spends a couple of years reconsidering its zoning or conducting a study, those new regulations may still allow for the synthetic turf field to be built.
Additionally, Hinesburg’s zoning may not be the last word on what’s allowed in the school district. While CVU sits within Hinesburg’s boundaries, state law has special provisions for schools and other institutions that municipal regulations can be imposed to the extent that they “do not have the effect of interfering with the intended functional use.” It is unclear whether or not this could be applied to the proposed field.
“I think that interim zoning would allow the opportunity to take a look at things that we really hadn’t looked at before — be they public, private, municipal, whatever — and look at them in the larger frame of: ‘are they endangering other things we need to keep a community together?’” Iadanze said.
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