Durham PZC Approves 'Workforce' Housing Study Proposal

By a 4-3 vote, Durham's planning and zoning commission last week agreed to apply for a $20,000 grant from the state to study affordable housing options in the town.

If approved, the grant offered through the Office of Policy and Management’s Economic Growth Program would be used to pay a consultant to help the town identify housing incentive zones where so-called workforce housing could be built.

"Our youth can not afford to live in Durham," First Selectman Laura Francis told the commission at its March 20 meeting. "Will this be the silver bullet? No. Again I'm asking you, as your roles of our planners to help make it better."

Francis said the housing would also benefit Durham's seniors interested in downsizing, as well as middle aged workers.

Under state guidelines, at least 20 percent of the housing in an incentive zone must be affordable to households earning no more than 80 percent of the area's median income. In Durham's case that amount is $87,000.

"I don't think by any stretch of the imagination we're going to make a big impact with this but it's going to start that very, very important conversation that we need to have to make our community more sustainable and competitive in the future," Francis said. "Otherwise people are going to bypass Durham because our taxes are too high."

While the grant would be spent entirely on consulting services, according to officials, one of the main objectives of the grant is to encourage community consensus for the project.

"The application would be designed to try to facilitate this community discussion as to what kind of design, what kind of site plan, what kind of elements would be important in terms of developing these properties that would receive community support," said town planner Geoff Colegrove. 

"Obviously not everybody's going to agree but the idea was to try to develop a process where people have input," he said.

Colegrove told the commission that four properties had been identified as target areas for an overlay zone but said the town had not yet spoken to the owners of those sites.

The properties include the former proposed Price Chopper site on Route 17, the Merriam Manufacturing Superfund site on Main Street, a property on Trinity Hill Drive and a site on the southern most end of Main Street.

The application needs to be ratified by the town's Board of Selectman, which is scheduled to vote on the matter tonight.

Francis failed to get the commission to support the initiative in 2008 but said the current economic climate in Connecticut made the decision all that more important.

"We are, like a lot of small towns in the state of Connecticut, facing some fiscal challenges and until the state can find its way to solve its fiscal challenges I think our challenges are going to become more acute," she said.

"This has been six years since we've been cutting and finding efficiencies and combining and regionalizing. We now know we can't cut our way out of this. We have to find new revenues."

In addition to the $20,000 grant, the town plans to set aside $10,500 for services performed the town planner, sanitarian, engineer and legal counsel related to the study.

Commission member Joseph Pasquale said he believed in the process but voted against the proposal because he felt there were too many strings attached to the grant.

Specifically, Pasquale said he feared the process would undermine the commission's ability to use discretion while reviewing applicants.

"The special exception application gives us a tremendous amount of authority in what we approve, what we don't approve, modifications that can be made to applications that can be submitted to us. We lose all that," he said.

Instead, Pasquale suggested that the town pay for the study with its own money and for it to coincide with a review of the town's Plan of Conservation and Development.

As a point of clarity, commission member Frank DeFelice said if the grant were approved, the town would hold a public hearing and the commission would be required to vote on whether to move forward to phase two.

Francis estimated that less than half of the towns that accepted the grant actually created the overlay zone and only one had recently moved to phase two, she said.

"I see this as a great opportunity to get the ball rolling," commission member Lisa Davenport said.

The proposal passed on a 4 to 3 vote with commissioners Davenport, Steve DeMartino, Chris Flanagan and Bonnie Ryder in favor, and DeFelice, Norm Jason and Pasquale in opposition.

Following the vote, Pasquale asked whether a moratorium on development should be put in place during the length of the process. The idea was tabled until the commission's next meeting.