Pepperell Planning Board advances OSRD bylaw draft, flags legal review needed before Town Meeting

PEPPERELL — June 6, 2016 — Pepperell Planning Board moves its open-space residential development bylaw closer to Town Meeting while tabling a three-year commercial rezoning effort. Consultant Mark Asimbo walked members through the latest draft of the proposed OSRD bylaw overhaul at the June 6 meeting, a document that would replace the existing two-step special-permit-then-subdivision process with a single, by-right application mirroring a standard definitive subdivision. The draft raises the required open-space minimum from 40 percent of a parcel to 50 percent and uses a mathematical yield formula — tested against actual approved Pepperell subdivisions — to determine permissible lot counts. Members resolved several drafting issues, agreeing to remove the word "maximum" from yield-calculation sections to preserve future bonus-lot capacity, to replace "units" with "lots" throughout, and to substitute a cross-reference to underlying zoning requirements in place of an embedded lot-size chart that could become outdated. Unresolved legal questions about whether Article 97 of the state constitution or MGL Chapter 184 governs open space that contains shared utilities — wells, leaching fields, drainage — will be sent to town counsel and outside land-use experts before the bylaw advances. The board set a tentative July 18 meeting to begin reviewing the companion OSRD regulations. On commercial rezoning, members voted to table the Zoning Study Committee's work after acknowledging that written recommendations from the North Middlesex Council of Governments — reportedly completed but never delivered to the Planning Board — remain unlocatable and no funding or analytical support is available to continue.