WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week discussed a number of proposals it hopes to bring forward to town meeting and acknowledged that at least one likely won't be ready in time for this May's annual meeting.

 

The latest in a series of Planning Board initiatives to allow a greater variety of housing options in town has them looking at an Open Space Residential Development bylaw.

 

Kenneth Kuttner, who is taking the lead on studying an OSRD proposal along with Roger Lawrence, told the board that initial concepts they pitched in the summer need to be considered in the context of the town's existing Major Residential Development bylaw, found in Section 7 of the town's zoning bylaw.

 

"Roger and I met with [Community Development Director Andrew Groff] last week to discuss the interaction between our thoughts on OSRD and the existing bylaw," Kuttner said. "There's a lot of overlap and, potentially, redundancy. If we do a whole new OSRD, we should think about how to rationalize Section 7.

 

"Roger and I need to work on two tracks: extend the Open Space Residential Development idea and figure out how to modify the existing Section 7 or transform the existing Section 7."

 

Not for the first time, Groff noted at last Tuesday's meeting that the Major Residential Development bylaw has not been used by a developer in town since he started at Town Hall nearly 18 years ago.

 

"The Major Residential Development Bylaw seems to have done its job by preventing more rural sprawl in rural parts of town but not doing its job in that it's not letting parts of town develop that are infill and could be developed," Groff said.

 

Groff said the bylaw was like an early version of OSRD before the latter term existed.

 

The planners did send town meeting an OSRD proposal in 2006. Groff said the proposal failed to get the two-thirds majority needed for passage but was favored by a majority of meeting attendees.

 

Lawrence said the mere length of the 2006 OSRD proposal may have exhausted the meeting members. At just over six pages in length, the proposed bylaw, which was included in last Tuesday's meeting packet, was "convoluted," Lawrence said.

 

"This is turning out to be a bigger assignment than the Cottage Court bylaw," Kuttner told his colleagues. "We'll keep working on it — maybe not for this year's town meeting but for the next year's."

 

Groff encouraged the board to stay with the topic.

 

"This is one of the biggest cleanup sections in our zoning that's been on my mind for a while," he said. "If [Major Residential Development] hasn't been used for 20 years, there's no reason to have it on the books anymore."

 

While an OSRD proposal would, to some extent, help clean up existing town code, two other Planning Board initiatives on the table would create entirely new bylaws. For one of the proposals, at least, the board has a proof of concept.

 

Last year, in an effort to inoculate its Cottage Housing proposal against objections that it would lead to tiny short-term rental properties popping up all over town, the board included a provision that the cottages built under the proposed subdivisions could be used as short-term rentals for 150 days in a calendar year. On the floor of town meeting, that number was changed to 90 days before the bylaw was passed, 194-56.

 

This year, the Planning Board is moving ahead with a townwide short-term rental bylaw proposal that it first discussed a couple of years ago before referring it to the Select Board. When the latter panel took no action, the planners took back the initiative.

 

Peter Beck presented the latest draft of a short-term rental bylaw he has been developing. This version includes language calling for the Board of Health to treat short-term rentals like other rental properties in town and require inspections to make sure they meet the state sanitary code, changes the maximum number of days a primary dwelling unit can be used as a short-term rental to 90 days to reflect the number favored by May's town meeting and lays out a regimen of fines for violating the bylaw.

 

The bylaw as drafted would apply to all of the town's residential districts. And it would allow unlimited short-term rentals of single bedrooms or accessory dwelling units when the owner is residing in the primary residence or to primary residences if the owner is living in an on-site ADU at the time of the rental.

 

Beck's version spelled out that a property owner who breached the cap on days rented would receive a warning on their first offense, be fined $100 for a second offense, $200 for a third offense and $300 for each subsequent offense (with each day rented counting as a separate offense).

 

"It's not saying Andrew has to go out and look for the 91st day [rented]," Beck said. "It would rely on the town realizing something or, more likely, a neighbor reporting.

 

"There are websites that scrape Airbnb and VRBO [for rental data]. If the town wanted to be more aggressive, it could use that, but it would have to pay for it."

 

Groff agreed.

 

"Voluntary compliance is the most likely path, but, you're right, we could," he said.

 

The board members discussed whether the fines in the draft bylaw were high enough to deter noncompliance and Cory Campbell asked if there could be a tiered system of fines with really high-end rentals facing steeper penalties if they violate the bylaw.

 

Beck said he thought that would be unprecedented in the commonwealth. He said he did think about a fine structure that linked the fine to the daily rental rate, "but that would require more oversight."

 

A third initiative the board is working on has to do not with houses but what lies beneath them. The town's director of public works this summer asked the body to look at drafting a bylaw regulating geothermal wells in the water resource district.

 

Craig Clough brought the issue to the board after he received a permit request for a system that would use a mixture of water and propylene glycol (antifreeze).

 

Groff told the board last week that there are a number of geothermal systems in town that use water only, and it was the first he heard of one that would use a toxic chemical in the closed-loop, underground system.

 

Campbell, who was assigned by the board to be the point person on the geothermal bylaw proposal, told the group that he thinks there are three main issues to be considered: the allowable depth of geothermal wells given what is known about the location and extent of the town's aquifer; what additives, if any, should be allowed; and life-cycle monitoring to make sure systems do not leak.

 

Groff said he thinks the town might be on its own in coming up with a bylaw to protect the aquifer, but he added it's important to get something on books.

 

"[The Wetlands Protection Act] covers lands under water," Groff said. "I don't know if it covers water under land.

 

"It's arguably Williamstown's greatest natural resource. We sit on top of this humongous aquifer with great purity. We should be careful in protecting it."

 

In other business on Tuesday, the Planning Board:

 

• Approved a division of property that will allow the creation of Four Dog Farm on Luce Road.

 

• And began a conversation about creating "campus zoning district" that would cover Williams College's campus and limit the number of times the Zoning Board of Appeals is compelled to find that strict application of the General Residence zoning bylaw would be a "practical prohibition" on the college's operation — a standard established in a series of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rulings.