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Hopkinton Planning Board approves moving application checklists to planning department
Summary
The Hopkinton Planning Board voted Dec. 2, 2024 to amend the town—s land development and subdivision regulations so application checklists and supporting forms are kept outside the regulation text and managed by the planning department, with a new clause requiring major changes to return to the board.
The Hopkinton Planning Board voted Dec. 2, 2024 to approve amendments to the town—s land development and subdivision regulations that remove application checklists and supporting forms from the body of the regulations and place them under the planning department's management.
Planning staff summarized the change as a housekeeping move intended to allow the department to update forms and checklists more quickly as state requirements or administrative practices change. "We've taken the checklist out of the body of the document ... they're just gonna live outside of the documents," planning staff said, explaining that the checklists remain associated with the regulations even though they will be maintained separately.
Counsel recommended—and the board adopted—language to make clear that major changes to checklists or forms will be brought back to the Planning Board for review. "The motion should be to approve the amended regulations as circulated with the amendment discussed this evening to add a paragraph, limiting the authority to make changes to the forms and checklists, to only minor changes and majors should be brought back to the planning board for their review," counsel said; a board member moved to adopt that amendment and the motion was seconded and approved.
Staff said the amendments also remove embedded sections of the zoning ordinance from the subdivision regulations to avoid duplication and potential inconsistencies, and that duplicate materials (for example, a repeated pavement-and-right-of-way table) were removed. Staff gave the example that removing the forms allows the department to add fields such as an applicant email address to the application form without needing to change the regulation text and hold another public hearing for each such edit.
The board also discussed adding explicit "authority and intent" language near the front of the regulations to codify the practice that major edits will be reported to the board. Planning staff said they will work with counsel to draft a short paragraph that will be added to the regulations and returned for the record. The vote to approve the amended regulations, as circulated and with the added paragraph limiting administrative authority, carried.
