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Commission debates hillside disturbance rules and tradeoffs between buildability and visual impacts
Summary
Commissioners and planning staff discussed clarifying Chapter 7 hillside provisions after staff flagged conflicts between lot-coverage caps and a separate disturbance allowance; options included a single disturbance envelope (up to 15%), credits for driveways or retaining walls, slope‑tiered limits, and keeping revegetation requirements.
Planning staff told the commission the hillside provisions in Chapter 7 create practical conflicts for applicants because the ordinance separately caps lot coverage and non‑lot‑coverage disturbance (for driveways, pools, cut/fill) and does not allow those calculations to be interchanged.
Using a DR‑190 example, staff demonstrated a lot with roughly 6% lot coverage and about 4.99% disturbance for non‑building areas; applicants currently often must revegetate and provide engineer-verified as‑built documentation to return to the allowed disturbance percentage. Staff said that process is workable but can be time-consuming and costly for applicants.
Staff proposed one possible remedy: allow a single maximum disturbance (for example, up to 15% of the lot) that could be allocated between building coverage and other disturbance, with applicants defining a development envelope. Commissioners raised a common concern: a blanket increase could enable contractors to “blade” or clear building envelopes in advance, producing visible scarring on hillsides and angering neighbors.
Commissioners and staff discussed alternatives to a single blanket cap. Suggested options included tiering allowed disturbance by slope percent, creating credits for necessary driveways or required retaining walls (for example, exclude the first X square feet of driveway from disturbance calculations), or giving town staff/engineers limited discretion to approve small increases without a formal variance. Staff noted the existing revegetation/restore‑to‑natural‑grade remedy is frequently used to meet thresholds.
Next steps: commissioners asked staff for comparative examples from nearby jurisdictions and for analysis of potential credit formulas or slope‑tier approaches. No text amendment was forwarded at the workshop; staff will return with refinements for additional review before any formal public hearing is scheduled.
