Parts of Eddington plan may cause stir

EDDINGTON – The proposed land use section of the town’s preliminary comprehensive plan is expected to cause contention after residents hear that zoning and development rules may change, town officials said.

“That will make some landowners happy,” Joan Brooks, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen, said Tuesday.

“And some unhappy,” Selectman Charles Baker Jr. said.

The town’s comprehensive plan committee has proposed the creation of four land use districts – commercial, conservation, mixed use and rural.

Under the plan, growth in town would be concentrated along Route 9, especially at its junction with Route 178, which would be designated as the town’s commercial district.

Once leaving the commercial district, heading east on Route 9, the first mile or so would be designated as a mixed use district and the rest of Route 9, to the town line, would be a rural residential district.

All three districts are identified in the comprehensive plan as a growth area.

“It made sense to put our growth area there since most people would go through that area” to get to work, planning board member Gary Poisson, who sits on the comprehensive plan committee, said Tuesday.

Most of Route 46 and about a mile of Route 178, before leaving Eddington to the north, would be designated as rural districts. The plan’s conservation district would be located near Chemo Pond and is approximately 1,836 acres owned by the University of Maine forestry department.

“We wanted to keep [Eddington] a bedroom town,” planning board member Katherine Leavitt, who sits on the comprehensive plan committee, said during the public hearing.

The committee has been meeting on the plan for the last couple of years and has held an informational meeting on each of the 12 subsections once they were complete, Leavitt said.

“I’m awfully glad that it’s done,” she said. “It’s the best that we could do.”

Under the comprehensive plan each district would have its own regulations on minimum lot sizes and developments. The basic goal of the comprehensive plan is to allow for growth in areas designated by the community.

For example, in the commercial district, landowners would be allowed to divide their land into 1-acre lots, and in the rural areas, minimum lots would need to be 4 acres.

The minimum lot size for Eddington now is 2 acres.

Communities across the state are required to write comprehensive plans, usually every decade, in order to qualify and receive federally and state-funded grants. Poisson said he didn’t like this requirement because it’s “like putting a gun to our heads” for funding.

Town officials wanted residents to know that the comprehensive plan is not set in concrete, and, even after adoption, it can be amended.

“If in two years this isn’t working, you can rewrite [a] portion and resubmit it,” Connie Marin, planner for the Penobscot Valley Council of Governments, said. “The comprehensive plan tells you where you’ve been, where you are and where you want to be.”

Residents can pick up a copy of the plan at the town office. A special town meeting is set for 6 p.m. Nov. 16 at Comins Hall to vote on adopting the plan.