Wayne planning board approves land-use rewrite folding campground and mobile-home park standards into zoning

The Town of Wayne Planning Board voted April 17 to accept a reworked draft that moves campground and mobile-home park performance standards into the town—s land use ordinance, creates a mobile-home park overlay zone, and leaves a separate campground licensing ordinance in place to manage annual licensing and policing functions. The board approved the amendments with edits discussed during the meeting and recommended them to the Select Board for finalization.

Attorney Jim (last name on the record: Katafikas) explained the reorganization: performance standards developed by the moratorium/advisory committee were moved from the earlier mobile-home/RV/campground ordinance into the land use ordinance—s general performance-standards section, and campground-specific operational items were left in a standalone licensing ordinance. "The biggest change is that those standards that the committee came up with for campgrounds and mobile home parks have been moved from that mobile home park campground RV ordinance to this and placed with all the other performance standards, and they are applied through the conditional use process," Jim said.

Key points discussed and incorporated in the approved draft include:

- Campgrounds will require planning-board conditional-use approval and will be permitted only in the R-3 and R-4 residential zones through that conditional-use process.

- The draft establishes a mobile-home park overlay zone to satisfy state requirements for locating and permitting mobile-home parks; the overlay is to be drawn on the zoning map at a future time if and when a mobile-home park is proposed.

- Definitions for campground types (including youth camps and wilderness campgrounds), camping density, interior roads and other terms were added to the zoning ordinance where definitions live.

- The draft sets a minimum prescribed area for a campsite of 5,000 square feet and proposes that the minimum be supplemented by an additional 500 square feet for vehicle accommodation (discussion participants described the combined effect as functionally 5,500 square feet). The draft also caps the maximum number of campsites at 80 for a campground.

- Operational items such as the campground—s opening date (previously stated as "not before the third Friday in May") and RV registration details were treated as licensing/ policing items to be retained in the standalone campground licensing ordinance, while land-use performance standards such as setbacks, buffering, water and sanitary requirements, and access-road standards were moved into the zoning/performance-standards section.

Board members and public commenters discussed language clarifications: committee members and board members sought to make clear that items listed under "operation and maintenance" were intended primarily as procedures or guidelines to be developed by campground operators (for example, rules on solid-waste collection, fire-protection procedures, noise management, potable water maintenance, and sanitary facilities), not operational rules the town would micromanage. The board voted to approve the rework with the edits discussed in the session to clarify that campgrounds shall "develop guidelines for the operation and maintenance of campground facilities that address" those items.

Public commenter Ted (first name on the record) supported the changes, saying he appreciated the work to incorporate the committee—s substantive recommendations into the zoning ordinance and called the result a "huge improvement" that would help the planning board—s work and protect health and safety. After closing the public hearing the board passed a motion to approve the amended land use and campground ordinances with the session edits and to forward the recommendation to the Select Board; the transcript shows the motion and a second and records the motion as carried.