Robert D. King [02/26/2004]

To the editor: I invite the attention of Madison voters to zoning amendment article two as it will appear on the official ballot at the polls on March 9. The only significant change proposed in this amendment is to make a lot on a Class VI road ineligible for a building permit unless the road meets the town's Class V road design and construction standards per section six of the subdivision regulations. These standards include a 50-foot overall width and at least an 18-foot width of asphalt paving. The underlying motivation is obviously to stifle development on Class VI roads. This being the case, the planning board need not and should not be so absurdly sketchy and indirect about it. Instead, it should lay out a clear policy for the voters to approve. New Hampshire law does not favor development on Class VI roads and towns have a wide latitude to allow or prohibit it as they see fit. As an example of such a policy, the town could disallow building permits or subdivisions on Class VI roads, period. Alternatively, it could prohibit subdivisions while allowing individual building permits only under specific conditions. For instance, a dwelling might be allowed if it were within "driveway distance" (maybe 400 feet) from the nearest maintained road. An existing example would be Dr. Brown's residence on Lead Mine Road. This would allow limited use of Class VI roads as a "driveway," but not as a full-fledged residential road. A further policy option would be to allow only rustic camps to be built beyond the "driveway distance" limit. These would be of limited valuation, without utilities, like Loren Shackford's camp on Thomas Harmon Road and like the several camps at Ledge Pond. Under this policy, you wouldn't be allowing people to build pricey "castles" in the back woods where the town can't possibly service them if there's a fire. The courts have recognized that towns have a right to stifle "premature development." What this term means is development in parts of town where there's little or no infrastructure in place, even while there's plenty of buildable land in other parts of town where the infrastructure is well developed. Preventing premature development is in our master plan. It is a violation of this principle to allow upscale residences and subdivisions to be built in the town's "back lands," allowing them to be accessed by boulevards that are Class VI in name only and necessitating new utility lines to serve them. Such misplaced improvements encourage runaway development at great expense to taxpayers. Far from being adequate as a policy, the proposed amendment raises more questions than it answers. Since there are no Class VI roads that already meet the town's very demanding Class V standards, we need to know whether a homeowner or developer would be allowed to bring a Class VI road up to full Class V standards. No clue to this crucial policy question is provided. In this regard, it is unreasonable (even absurd) to expect someone to build a road to the town's highest standard just to serve a single dwelling in the back woods. The town has many Class V roads that fall far short of this standard including some that bear considerable traffic. How could one explain to a court that a Class VI road to a single house in the back woods must meet the highest Class V road standards, even while the heavily traveled Winter Road is being deliberately kept far below the town's road standards in deference to a few militant tree-huggers? I hope voters will reject this foolish amendment on the ballot. Then at town meeting I hope they will demand that the planning board bring forward as soon as possible a real policy covering all aspects of development on Class VI roads.