UPTON – This tiny town’s Planning Board has watched as neighboring Andover reviews a proposed 5,398-acre subdivision. To prepare for a similar possibility here, the board is proposing the town’s first site plan review ordinance.
A public hearing on the proposal is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20, at the Upton School Building.
“We want to put the facts on the table,” Planning Board Chairman James Kinney said. “There’s so much development going on (near the town).”
The proposed ordinance, if passed at the annual town meeting in March, will allow the Planning Board to review any commercial or industrial projects proposed for the town. Without the ordinance, planner John Maloney of the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments said the town would have no authority to ban or make recommendations for any proposed commercial development.
“They are concerned that they are left wide open and they have been seeing changes in land ownership,” he said Tuesday.
Maloney, who helped draft the document, will make the presentation at the public hearing.
Kinney said the document may never be used. But it might, too.
“Who knows what’s going to happen? It may just gather cobwebs, but at least we’ll have a say,” Kinney said Monday. “We’re not anti-anything.”
The proposed ordinance provides guidelines for such things as access, advertising and signs, noise and odor limits, waste disposal requirements, and environmental considerations.
The 18-page proposed document also allows the Planning Board to call for additional information on such things as soil tests, storm water management, landscaping and traffic generation. An outline for the application procedure and fees are also included.
Kinney said the proposed ordinance does not cover residential subdivisions. Those would be covered under state criteria, he said.
Copies of the proposal may be reviewed at the Upton Town Office.
Upton, a town of about 65 year-round residents, is just north of Grafton State Park in northwestern Oxford County. It borders New Hampshire, and a portion of Lake Umbagog lies within its borders.
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