By Rebecca Goldfine,Staff Writer

PARIS – Selectmen voted Monday night following a public hearing to pause subdivision growth for six months while officials overhaul the town’s subdivision ordinance.

At a special election April 10, Residents will vote on the 180-day moratorium to temporarily halt subdivision applications.

The moratorium is designed to give officials a chance to revise the 30-year-old code that regulates the division of land into house lots. Town Manager Sharon Jackson said the ordinance needs to become compliant with state law and reflect changes made during the past decades.

Jackson said Paris has large tracts of undeveloped land and the town anticipates continued residential growth. “Until the town has implemented the new subdivision ordinance, the existing ordinance is inadequate to prevent serious public harm caused by rapid, uncontrolled development,” she read from a public notice.

Code Enforcement Officer Claude Rounds will work with the planning board to draft updated provisions for the subdivision code that could include traffic regulations, flood plain management, fire suppression regulations, as well as touch on a subdivision’s impact on pollution and the town’s resources and services.

Standards could also be adopted that address a subdivision’s potential impact on natural beauty, historic sites and wildlife habitat.

People packed the small meeting room at the Paris town office to attend the public hearing Monday night, Jackson said. All who spoke favored the moratorium.

Rev. Anne Stanley, who lives in Paris and went to the meeting, said Tuesday she is impressed by the officials’ thoughtful way of handling this growth issue. Stanley is the pastor for Christ Episcopal Church in Norway.

“It seemed very timely because of the pressures that are happening all over town, and not just our town, but in other areas as well,” she said.

Rounds said 62 house lots have been approved in town since last July.

Stanley continued, “This is a chance for a pause, the chance for the town to pause, to examine what we have and see where we go from here. Not that all development is bad, heavens no, but that we do good development that benefit us and our kids and future generations.”

Jackson said all subdivision applications approved before March 21 – the date of the last planning board meeting – would be unaffected by the moratorium.