WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week discussed its strategy for educating voters about proposals it has been developing for months and adding a couple of new warrant articles for May's annual town meeting.

 

The board at its December meeting held brief discussions on each of the three main proposals it has spent the last half year developing, bylaw amendments that would: remove barriers to manufactured homes, remove barriers to three- and four-family dwellings and reduce the minimum frontage in the General Residence district from 100 feet to 66 feet.

 

Each proposal, in its own way, is meant to increase housing options and, in turn, add housing inventory and make Williamstown more accessible to a wider range of residents.

 

Two the initiatives (multi-unit homes and the frontage reduction) are modeled at least in part on articles that town meeting in June referred back to the planners.

 

At the time of that vote to take no action on those and numerous other proposals, one objection raised was that town meeting attendees did not have enough time to understand the articles.

 

The Planning Board this time around wants to make sure that cannot be said.

 

The planners spent nearly half their meeting talking about how they want to engage residents throughout the winter and spring in addition to their regular monthly meetings and, assuming the proposals continue to move forward, the public hearing required by statute.

 

The efforts will include a presentation to the Select Board in January, ahead of the statutory timeline for presenting finished warrant article language, outreach sessions at coffee shops and the town's transfer station and, as the planners have done in the past, a written FAQ document that addresses questions the board has heard about the proposals.

 

Ken Kuttner, who was elected to the board last May, cautioned his colleagues against making that FAQ too one-sided.

 

"The FAQs in the past were persuasive," Kuttner said in a meeting available on the town's community access television station, WilliNet. "It would be helpful to just kind of lay out the facts. Then after we lay out the facts, do the persuasion.

 

"What's been lacking in the past is laying out the facts first."

 

Peter Beck responded that the documents should absolutely present both sides of the issues involved but indicated it would be disingenuous for the Planning Board to pretend to be agnostic about those questions.

 

"The article wouldn't be on the warrant if a majority of the board didn't support it," Beck said.

 

The start of Tuesday's bylaw discussion was a review of the language in the current drafts to make sure they are ready to start putting before the public.

 

In one instance, the planners agreed one of its initiatives should be broken into two separate warrant articles: one allowing three-unit homes by right in the GR district and a second allowing four-unit homes by right. The planners feel that some residents may feel the jump to four units may be too much for some residents' taste, and they want to give town meeting attendees an option to pass a bylaw allowing triplexes even if "quads" are less favored in the town's most populated district.

 

Town Planner Andrew Groff told the board that he was able to clear up one question on manufactured homes that came up at a previous meeting. He clarified that the local bylaw does not need to address the issue of how such homes are anchored to the ground.

 

"I talked to the building commissioner," Groff said. "The state's Building Code requires that mobile homes and manufactured homes follow federal HUD guidelines. Those guidelines require, depending on your climate and conditions, several different ways you can attache these to the ground.

 

"We cannot control the foundation system on these units. We either allow them or not. In Williamstown, what the operator of our remaining mobile home park [Pines Lodge] generally does is pour the slab and anchor with cables."

 

The bylaw amendment developed by the Planning Board would essentially treat single-family manufactured homes the same as single family "stick built" homes in every residential district. Planners hope that the less costly manufactured homes will provide more opportunities for residents of varying incomes to live in town.

 

It also changes the language in the town code from "mobile home" to manufactured home, in line with how the federal government and industry refer to the mass produced residences that are delivered to a residential lot largely intact.

 

That provision prompted Roger Lawrence, not for the first time, to suggest the bylaw change could potentially disadvantage residents who currently are allowed to use, by town code, "mobile homes" as temporary housing during home renovations or even new home construction.

 

On Tuesday, his colleagues agreed that the manufactured home proposal may require an additional warrant article to make sure that there are no unintended consequences to other parts of the bylaw, perhaps by specifying that older mobile homes that predate current HUD regulations still are an acceptable temporary dwelling during construction.

 

And that might not be the only additional warrant article to the ones the board has been developing since July.

 

The Planning Board's newest member Tuesday brought forward an idea to begin enshrining in town code a principle that many residents have been embracing the last couple of years: acknowledgement that Williamstown resides on the ancestral homelands of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.

 

Specifically, Allison Guess pointed to section 70-8.2 of town code that addresses who should be notified of a permit application for a major development in the town.

 

"I think [the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians] should have the opportunity to review the plan in the same way that the Department of Public Works might or people on the Conservation Commission might," Guess said. "It's not as if it gives them the opportunity to stop anything that might be happening. But it is an initial step to allowing people to be made aware of what's going on as it gets further down the line."

 

Guess agreed that she would present the idea to the Stockbridge-Munsee representatives who staff an historic preservation office in town. Chair Stephanie Boyd said she hoped that bylaw language could be drafted by next month.

 

 "I'm excited that we can do this," Boyd said.

 

"It's just a first step," Guess replied. "There is more work to be done."