With issues like smart growth and sprawl emerging as major issues in recent years, homebuilders in Connecticut are gearing up to advocate for legislation that would reorganize the local commissions responsible for writing all rules and regulations pertaining to development.
“We have a system that’s really ancient,” said Bill Ethier, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Connecticut, noting that the state’s disjointed land-use system is based on models produced in the 1920s.
“The system really doesn’t work in our view for most of the players in the system, including towns, applicants and developers,” he said.
Ethier said the homebuilders group has “devised a revolutionary system” that would solve the problem and preserve local control. Under the proposal by the homebuilders group, one commission would write all the rules while another board or agency would review all development applications.
The move would drastically change the way local boards operate. Currently, towns in Connecticut have planning commissions that write subdivision rules and zoning commissions that formulate zoning regulations. In addition, communities often have other commissions responsible for such issues as wetlands or land conservation.
Developers and others have argued that under the current system one body will often write rules without taking into account regulations and issues addressed by other boards within the community. “They all get pigeonholed,” Ethier said. “They don’t have a conception of what the other requirements are in town.”
‘Shuffling the Deck’
The proposed legislation would not only create a “one-stop shop for applicants,” but it would also ensure that the planning and implementation of regulations would be coordinated, according to Ethier. It would provide “a better approach to consistency between zoning regulations and the planning and conservation development,” he explained. At the same time, it would allow towns to maintain local control.
If passed, the legislation could lead to the elimination of some local boards. A more likely scenario is that commissions would be merged, according to Ethier. “It’s just shuffling the deck,” he said.
The homebuilders association drafted the legislation after discussions with land-use attorneys, municipal planners and regional planning agencies. The state Legislature’s Planning and Development Committee has agreed to hold a hearing on the proposed legislation, according to Ethier.
The idea has been floated before and a bill addressing the matter was filed last year. But the bill, said Ethier, was more of a “concept bill” that was “poorly drafted” and wasn’t completely “fleshed out.”
In addition to that legislation, the state’s homebuilders will be keeping an eye on issues such as excessive building permit fees, building restrictions and moratoriums, impact fees on new development, changes to the New Home Construction Contractor Registration Act and smart-growth proposals
The homebuilders’ association wants the state Legislature to limit development moratoriums to only those that are necessary to prevent threats to public health or safety, requiring communities to address such issues quickly in order to remove the moratorium.
Homebuilders also feel that building permit fees are increasing at rates that far exceed the cost to run building officials’ offices. The association maintains that such high fees constitute illegal taxes and would therefore support any legislation to limit fees to the administrative cost to run the permitting offices.
