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Commission discusses planning and zoning: planners favor combining; local commissioners favor keeping separate and streamlining process
Summary
Town planners from several neighboring municipalities recommended combining planning and zoning; Simsbury volunteers and commissioners argued separation better fits local volunteer capacity and meeting demands. Commissioners asked staff to recommend process improvements rather than immediate charter change.
Town planners who submitted written comments to the Simsbury Charter Revision Commission recommended combining the town’s planning and zoning functions into a single body. Commissioners and local planning and zoning members who spoke at the meeting pushed back, saying separate commissions better match volunteer capacity and the complexity of planning responsibilities.
Why it matters: Whether planning and zoning are combined affects review timelines for subdivisions, site plans and reuse proposals, and it changes workload for volunteer commissioners and staff.
Commission members reviewed comment packets that included input from Simsbury’s town planner, George McGregor, and planners from neighboring towns. Commissioners noted a pattern: external planners tended to favor consolidation for staff-efficiency reasons, while current Simsbury commissioners raised concerns about lengthening meetings and increasing burdens on volunteers.
Commissioners cited town-planner comments that only two to four applications a year require simultaneous review by both boards — a quantity some commissioners said does not justify wholesale consolidation. Several commissioners proposed process solutions instead: better staff scheduling to reduce duplicate appearances by developers, use of combined public sessions for initial presentations followed by separate commission deliberations, and creation of short-term subcommittees for the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD).
No charter language change was adopted. Multiple commissioners favored recommending process improvements (ordinances or internal policies) rather than a charter amendment, and asked staff to collect the planners’ written submissions for the commission’s draft report.
