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Farmington planning director proposes updates to site plan and subdivision regulations
Summary
Planning director Kyle Pimental told the Farmington Planning Board the town's site plan and subdivision regulations (not updated in 10 years) should be revised; the board agreed on several thresholds, including a 5,000 sq ft commercial impervious-surface trigger and new expansion limits.
Kyle Pimental, Director of Planning and Community Development, told the Town of Farmington Planning Board on Feb. 4 that the town's site plan and subdivision regulations have not been updated in a decade and need targeted revisions.
The proposed changes focus first on General Provisions and Purpose and on Applicability. The board accepted editorial clarifications to the purpose statement after Vice Chairman Stephen Henry proposed switching the objectives language to say the regulations should protect a landowner's rights while also protecting the rights of abutting property owners; the board added "property owners" to the stakeholder list and reordered that list.
On applicability, board members debated what should trigger site plan review. The board agreed that a 5,000-square-foot impervious-surface threshold would trigger review for commercial uses and that non-commercial uses should be exempt from that impervious-surface trigger. Board members discussed land-disturbance thresholds and stormwater-management triggers but left numeric land-disturbance cutoffs for future meetings.
The board also revised how expansions and changes of use would be treated. The board amended multifamily language to require site plan review when a property would total three or more dwelling units (rather than when three new units are added). Members established a 1,500-square-foot threshold for gross-floor-area expansions and a 2,000-square-foot threshold for impervious-surface expansions.
Members briefly discussed thresholds for referral to the Technical Review Committee and agreed to return to TRC-process thresholds at a later meeting. Kyle said he would prepare a Word draft of the first three sections for board members to review before the next meeting; the design standards will be addressed in subsequent meetings.
No formal vote was recorded on the substantive regulation changes at this meeting; the board reached consensus on several draft thresholds and directed staff to circulate the written draft for review.
Next steps: staff will circulate the Word draft of the revised sections to board members ahead of the next meeting, where the board will continue work on design standards and TRC thresholds.
