Pepperell Selectmen Deny Doggy Daycare Permit 2-1 on Noise, Property Value Grounds

PEPPERELL — February 13, 2012 — Pepperell selectmen denied a doggy daycare special permit 2-1 and unanimously placed an ambulance debt exclusion on the April 23 ballot. The board voted down Special Permit SSP-1101 for a proposed doggy daycare at 80 South Road after finding, by a 2-1 margin, that competing noise studies and competing property-value appraisals weighed against the application under the town's six-criteria bylaw framework; one dissenting member concluded that a dog officer's testimony about quieter daycare dogs and hedged language in the neighbors' appraisals did not support a finding of substantial detriment. In other action, the board accepted an $8,500 state DHCD grant to update Pepperell's lapsed affordable housing production plan and appointed Stephen Thamelis to the reconstituted Affordable Housing Committee, warning that without a current plan Chapter 40B developers could override local conditions entirely. The chairman briefed the public on a joint select board meeting held earlier that evening at which preliminary figures for a potential new North Middlesex Regional high school were put at roughly $35 million across member towns, with an $800,000 feasibility study the immediate next step — and separately warned that an unexpected $111,000 jump in the Nashoba Valley Technical High School assessment had pushed the town's general government budget back out of balance after it had been brought to within $27,000 of flat.