Somervillians will find it easier to understand zoning issues up for discussion after a resolution approved Thursday by the City Council.
The resolution by councilor Ben Ewen-Campen asks the city’s director of planning to submit plain-language explanations and fact sheets for each proposed zoning amendment to be discussed in hearings.
“I’ve already discussed this with planning staff and and they’re all on board with it,” said Ewen-Campen, the councilor for Ward 3 until he departs in the new year to become state representative for the 27th Middlesex District.
Ewen-Campen is chair of the Land Use Committee, which is talking through changes now to zoning involving such things as parking maximums and backyard homes called accessory dwelling units (more colloquially, “in-law apartments”).
Until this point, meeting notices have noted what zoning will be discussed, but not the nature of proposed changes or what’s at stake.
To Ewen-Campen and the state’s Office of the Attorney General, that’s not enough.
“Zoning documents are very difficult to understand for councilors, let alone the public – it’s often like a list of numbers and amending an existing thing that’s 100 pages long,” Ewen-Campen told fellow councilors. “They’re always explained at the public hearing. But for asking people to come to a public hearing to share their views, they should have a chance before they come to actually understand what’s being proposed.”
Open Meeting Law underpins Ewen-Campen’s change. It requires that notices describe topics with “sufficient specificity so that the public can make an informed decision whether to attend the meeting to observe the discussion regarding a topic of interest,” said Matthew Lindberg, an assistant district attorney with the Division of Open Government, in a Sept. 16 finding on a case in Cambridge.
The council approved the motion, with councilor Emily Hardt signing on to what she called a “straightforward and useful resolution.”
