UPDATED, Nov. 22: RKG Associates, a national planning consultancy with an office in Boston, has been hired to help the town modernize and rewrite its zoning bylaw, as recommended in the 2015 master plan.
RKG comes to the town with decades of experience in zoning and planning. Its principal, Judi Barrett, led workshops on, and helped shape, Arlington’s master plan, and numerous others, as well as zoning revisions for Northborough, Lenox and Tewksbury. The contract with the town is to pay $50,000.
The Department of Planning and Community Development announced the hiring in a Nov. 21 news release, noting that the existing zoning bylaw was written in 1975 and has been amended at almost every Town Meeting since then. The bylaw can be hard to understand and difficult to use in its present form. It does not conform to modern best practices in zoning.
Robert Mitchell, working as a subcontractor to RKG, also has a wealth of experience with communities. He is the former director of planning in Amherst and is an adjunct professor in the UMass/Amherst Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning.
Team members include Eric Halvorsen and Robert Ritchey, former director of the attorney general’s Municipal Law Unit. Mitchell and Robert Ritchey are coauthors of the soon-to-be-released “Guidebook to Massachusetts Land Use Planning and Zoning.”
Overseeing the zoning revision, sometimes called “recodification,” is the Zoning Recodification Working Group, a subcommittee of the Master Plan Implementation Committee. The committee includes Town Meeting members, the town manager, director of inspectional services, director of planning as well as representatives of the Master Plan Implementation Committee, Redevelopment Board, Zoning Board of Appeals and Conservation Commission.
The Zoning Recodification Working Group has been meeting since September, but the work of rewriting the zoning bylaw will begin in earnest at a kickoff meeting with the consultants in December.
There will be public meetings for community input and to review the work-in-progress in winter and early spring, and an interim report will be delivered to annual spring Town Meeting.
Drafts will be reviewed by the public in the summer and early fall. Adoption of the new zoning bylaw is anticipated for a Special Town Meeting in next fall.
For more information, go to the Zoning Recodification Working Group section under Master Plan Implementation Committee at arlingtonma.gov/planning.
Feb. 5, 2015: Board takes historic step, adopts first comprehensive master plan
Full draft of town’s master plan >>
Explanatory information and links about draft plan >>
Read about the plan as it is developing in various areas >>
Jan. 12, 2015: Draft master plan presented
In November 2013, the public had its first look at the draft plan
In October 2012, 150 residents began a communitywide conversation to determine the vision that will direct Arlington’s land use and physical development for the foreseeable future.
This announcement was published Monday, Nov. 21, 2016, and updated Niov. 22, to add contract amount.
