AttachedDwellingIllust ZR1draft | Newton MA News and Politics Blog

For most people it’s been percolating along in the background, probably under the radar of 99% of residents, but the draft of the Zoning Reform Phase 1 Zoning Ordinance, which was intended to be a re-codification and clarification of current rules, is now complete.

The Public Hearing opens tonight at 7:45 pm in City Hall room 205, at the Zoning & Planning Committee. One hopes the Public Hearing won’t be closed tonight, however, because it’s a 180-page document that deserves to have more eyes take a look. It’s purpose was to make our current ordinance easier to understand, with any actual changes in the ordinance to occur in Phase 2. But even from the limited discussions I’ve heard while attending Zoning & Planning for other items like the demolition moratorium, it was clear there was pressure to let some potentially substantive changes get through in the process of trying to clean up inconsistencies. Alderman Baker was particularly vigilant that this not happen without discussion. How these instances were resolved is noted in the Planning Department’s April 10 Memorandum included in the Agenda for tonight.

CornerLotIllust ZRphase1draft | Newton MA News and Politics BlogCompared to the current ordinance, the ZR1 draft has many more illustrations such as a couple shown here, which will be a great improvement. Also helpful are the November 4, 2014 draft of the new Use Table, and a Look Up Table which tells you where to find a topic in the both the ZR1 draft and the current ordinance.

The Look Up Table was included in the Friday Packet three days ago, but I’m not sure how many people will have had a chance to take advantage of it, on our first nice spring weekend, just before April 15! And now, back to finishing up my taxes.