York Planning Board Reviews State Housing Law Ordinance Changes

The York Planning Board spent its Oct. 8 meeting reviewing draft ordinance amendments meant to bring the town into compliance with state housing law LD 1829, including changes to the affordable housing overlay district, density rules, and dimensional standards. The board settled on a "go slow" approach, opting to change only the minimum lot size for now rather than also loosening setbacks. Members also heard public comment on a tree removal and flood zone concerns, and reviewed new state-required child care definitions.

Key points

• Resident James Kansas announced a juice-only hunger strike starting Oct. 17 through Nov. 2 to protest the planned removal of a tree at the Monument, criticizing development pressures on the town's environment.
• Shore Road resident Tim Takoto urged the town to ask its attorney whether the growth area map could be amended to exclude shoreland, flood zones, and storm surge areas from new density rules.
• The board reached consensus on "option A" for dimensional standards: change only the minimum lot size to comply with LD 1829 and leave existing setbacks in place, rather than adopting a staff-proposed 30% setback reduction and lot coverage increase for small lots.
• Members raised concerns that removing the prior "5,000 square feet per additional unit" language could allow very high density, with one hypothetical calculation reaching roughly 600 units; staff will check with the town attorney.
• The board reviewed a proposed name change from "workforce affordable housing overlay district" to "affordable housing development overlay district," a 51% affordable unit threshold, and new architectural, buffering, and pedestrian access standards.
• Members questioned a provision requiring ownership units to be affordable to very low or low income households, saying it could make for-profit ownership projects unworkable; staff will consult York Housing.

Next steps

• Staff will check with the town attorney on whether supplemental density language can be added and report back to the board.
• Staff will consult York Housing about the ownership affordability percentages and report back.
• Staff will prepare the minimum lot size change for the board before the next Future Land Use meeting.
• Staff will work on removing quotation marks around terms like "visually related" and "paste on," and clarify definitions and acronyms such as HUD and FMR.
• The board plans to invite the Select Board to a future meeting to review the amendments.

Read the full transcript