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Brockton ordinance committee weighs sweeping stormwater rewrite, postpones decision
Summary
DPW officials and consultant Apex proposed aligning the city's stormwater ordinance with state standards and moving technical rules into regulations to speed reviews; committee members raised governance and citizen‑input concerns and postponed the item for more work.
DPW officials and an outside engineering consultant presented broad proposed edits May 5 to Brockton's stormwater management ordinance aimed at reducing backlog and aligning the city standard with Massachusetts state stormwater requirements. Councilors asked for more time and the committee postponed the item.
DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill said the city's current ordinance and stormwater manual are more stringent than the state standard and have generated repeated developer frustration, extended reviews and project withdrawals. He described a backlog of permit reviews and cited cases where reviews took "6, 7 months". Hill said the goal is to streamline review by adopting the state standard in ordinance text, moving technical detail into rules and regulations (so changes would not require repeated ordinance updates), and using consultants such as Apex for timely peer review.
Darren Stairs, a professional engineer with Apex, told the committee that article 5 (implementing ordinance) needs reorganizing, article 6 (the stormwater manual) should be removed from ordinance and administered via rules, and that moving technical specifics to a regulation would align Brockton's practice with neighboring communities and shorten review times. He said peer review by an outside firm would be substantially faster for projects already designed to state standards.
Several councilors expressed concern about removing citizen representation and the stormwater authority's role. Councilor Constance Castro and others said they prefer an authority that includes citizen voices and worried about concentrating decision‑making with the DPW commissioner or consultants. Commissioner Hill acknowledged those concerns but said the existing structure had been ineffective and that adopting state standards and rule‑making would reduce delays without sacrificing water‑quality protections.
The committee voted to postpone the stormwater ordinance changes to the next ordinance committee meeting and asked staff to schedule briefings with the consultant and provide comparisons to other communities' approaches before returning for a final vote.
