The Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals began its January 12 meeting with a vote to recommend the Finance Committee raise the former’s annual budget from $300 to $1,000 for FY24.
The reason was made clear by the meeting itself. Without the help of Building Department Administrative Assistant Patrice Braz, who resigned on December 19 to take another job, ZBA Chairman David Arancio scrambled to make up for her absence. The forms required to thoroughly do the board’s business were hard to find or unavailable, not even in the portable file folder holder Arancio brought with him to the Town Hall meeting room.
“It’s because Patty did that much work for us,” Zoning Board member Richard Cutler said of the budget vote.
Arancio said he has been informed the town is now interviewing for the vacant assistant’s position. “The best-case scenario is we will have someone for our January 26 meeting,” he said.
The agenda’s first hearing opened and closed quickly. The petitioners for a plan at Quaker Lane to build a single-family house where the lot does not meet minimum frontage requirements were a no-show. The board continued the hearing to January 26, with the notation that the petitioner’s attorney needs to send correspondence requesting an official continuance.
The board then granted Chris Barton a variance to widen his garage at 3 Bennett Road, which will place it closer than Rochester’s 40-foot setback requirement. The vote, however, came after Arancio had to rifle through the file folders to find the project’s application and pass along a handwritten signature page to record board-member approvals.
Barton explained his current garage has one 9-foot door, and he cannot fit more than one vehicle inside it, let alone the generator that he would also like placed there. He wants his garage to be wider with two garage doors so he can also add a work bench. The board approved the variance for this plan with the condition that the widened garage be no more than 22 feet from setbacks.
But the board told Barton that the lack of an administrative assistant will delay when he can start building. Arancio told Barton he may start work 20 days after the Zoning panel files its decision with the town clerk to give time for parties to file an appeal. The problem is there is no administrative assistant in place to type up and file that decision.
Board members urged Barton to pester the Building Department to get his variance decision filed or to be patient.
Patience was also the board’s recommendation to JPF Development representative John Punitonio for his plan for a 47,568 square-foot, seven-building self-storage facility on 14.93 acres on Cranberry Highway that requires a special permit because the proposed use does not fit squarely within the uses allowed in the Industrial Zone under town bylaw.
Arancio apologized to Punitonio for what could have been a final approval meeting but was not because of a lack of paperwork. This hearing, too, was continued to January 26.
The next meeting of the Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals is scheduled for Thursday, January 26, at 7:15 pm at Town Hall, 1 Constitution Way, Rochester.
Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals
By Michael J. DeCicco