The Rochester Planning Board accepted the inevitable notice on Tuesday night that Industrial Tower and Wireless LLC is withdrawing its site-plan review application for its proposed 190-feet monopole-style telecommunications tower facility on High Street.
The Zoning Board of Appeals last week unanimously denied a special permit for the tower project’s request to reduce the facility’s required setback distance of 200 feet from other property lines by 50 percent or to 100 feet on the High Street lot.
This week, the Planning Board accepted the letter from Industrial Tower and Wireless LLC, asking that it be allowed to withdraw its application with the Planning Board “without prejudice.”
Town Planner Nancy Durfee explained later that this means the petitioner will be able to reapply for a site-plan review without the obstacle of receiving a Planning Board denial first. She said the petitioner would need to redesign the plan anyway, and the petitioner could possibly be planning to appeal the ZBA decision first. She added quickly that she has not heard whether that will be the petitioner’s next move.
Turning to the May 23 Town Meeting warrant, the Planning Board voted on Tuesday to recommend one zoning bylaw article but recommend against another.
The new solar bylaw provision on the warrant that the board is recommending strengthens the requirements for visually screening a solar-panel field from public view to “protect scenic vistas from residential uses, public ways and any waterway or water bodies.” The recommended minimum depth of the vegetative screen will be 50 feet.
The board, however, decided to withdraw on Town Meeting floor and not recommend a change in the town’s “Arbor Fund Bylaw.”
The original bylaw required solar facility operations to estimate the value of the trees they are clear cutting on their property and submit to the town a payment that will then be used for arborist-related purposes in town. The change on the warrant would also require any subdivision or a commercial-industrial use to calculate its tree cutting.
Planning Board Chairman Arnold Johnson called this change “too cumbersome, too onerous. We want this fund confined to solar projects,” he said. “The townspeople won’t like it. I don’t like to lose the town. They’ve grown to trust us. I don’t want to lose that.”
The vote to withdraw the article was unanimous.
The Rochester Planning Board’s next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 24, at 7:00 pm at Old Colony Regional Vocational-Technical High School library.
Rochester Planning Board
By Michael J. DeCicco