At the Aug. 12 Londonderry Town Council meeting, Town Councilor, John Farrell, announced that he was nominated by the governor as the Chair of the NH State Water Council, saying he was recently confirmed to the position, and would be working with the Department of Environmental Service moving forward.
He said he will be learning more about it, and has been doing research.
“With that, I did a lot of research around where we’re going and started coming across a lot of information,” Farrell said, noting that the town is currently working on updating its master plan.
He said ultimately he wants to find out why they decided to go the route of updating the master plan instead of looking at different options.
“My end game is that I would like to see if we can get a briefing from the planning department and the planning board about why we chose to go down the path of the master plan which is going to take about 12 to 18 months to do that versus updating all our regulations,” he said.
Farrell explained that it’s been about 15 years since they have updated and refreshed their regulations, including site plan regulations, ordinances, and “various other pieces.”
He also made note to coming across a plaque in his office from when he was on the Open Space Task Force in 2002, which was critical for limiting growth.
“Right now with all the open space that we’ve purchased and all the development rights that we’ve gained control over as a town had we’d not done any of this our build out would have been 45,000 people,” Farrell said, noting that the full build out is around 33,000 to 34,000 people now and the town is currently at approximately 27,000 people.
Farrell said they have a number of issues that need to be addressed including issues with water and questioned why they were spending resources on a strategic plan when about 80% of the Town is already developed.
“We only have about 20% of build remaining,” he said.
Farrell said he also wants to work with the Planning Department to find out what actions they need to take to potentially change laws, saying, for example, building moratoriums are mostly illegal.
“Why can’t we ask for that to be changed,” Farrell said, noting that they have “zero authority to limit growth.”
Farrell said he thought it made sense to invite the Planning Board to a meeting to ask them “why did we choose the path… of a strategic vision when we really need to execute the plan that’s already in place and adjust our regulations accordingly and we’re not doing that.”
Council Vice Chair, Ted Combes, agreed.
“I think certainly it would be helpful to have probably the Chair and vice chair of the planning board and a representative from the planning department hopefully before budgeting really kicks off,” he said.
Combes said they could also meet with their land use attorney to talk about what they could do to help their community and other communities with development, water, “and other issues moving forward.”
It was ultimately agreed on by the Town Council to reach out to both the Planning Board and legal counsel to have a presentation set up.