Planning board outlines CIP recruitment and continues work on subdivision regulations

The Plymouth Planning Board reviewed other business items including the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) committee makeup and next steps on long-running subdivision regulation edits.

Members proposed a CIP committee consisting of planning board members, a budget-committee representative, finance director, town manager, two public members and the select-board chair as an ex officio member. The board agreed to solicit public volunteers, ask the budget committee to appoint a representative, and aim to appoint citizen members by the Aug. 20 meeting so the committee can meet with department heads in October.

On subdivision regulations (Article 6), the board focused on application submission requirements and how to differentiate requirements for boundary-line adjustments, minor subdivisions and major subdivisions. Members flagged contour-line requirements as a frequent source of waiver requests and discussed producing a grid-style checklist that maps required materials to each application type. Staff (Avery) said she had compiled waiver instances from the past five years and offered to include that analysis in the next packet. The board also supported adding a standardized written waiver form and explicitly referencing the relevant RSA language so applicants better understand waiver standards.

Next steps: staff will prepare recruitment language for the website/newsletter, circulate a proposed waiver form and checklist mapping, and include Article 6 section b for a deeper review at the next work meeting.