The regulations subcommittee of the Clinton Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC) will, again, discuss what, if any, changes should be made to the regulations that govern contractor storage yards after the commission decided at a meeting on Sept. 14 the issue was worth further debate. The next regulations meeting had not yet been scheduled at press time.

A previous meeting of the regulations subcommittee earlier this summer failed to reach a consensus about what changes were needed to the regulations and the subcommittee opted to bring the issue to the full commission at the Sept. 14 meeting.

The topics of setbacks, fence heights, and buffers dominated the short discussion at the meeting. The current regulations require a 50-foot buffer from residential districts and residential properties and a 14-foot-high fence that encloses outside storage.

Commission member Ellen Dahlgren agreed that changing the fence height requirement to something shorter that may be easier for the contractors to install and be less likely to blow over was something she’d support, but changing the setback requirements was a nonstarter for her.

“I would support modification to the fence height, but I’m not in support of reducing setbacks,” said Dahlgren.

Besides the setbacks and fences, the hours of operation of the properties is another sticking point. The transport of materials in and out of the storage yards is currently confined to between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Commission member Adam Moore said that may be changed because garbage trucks and construction companies sometimes operate outside those hours.

Following the discussion, the PZC decided to send the issue back to the regulations subcommittee. The difficult task before that subcommittee will be to balance regulations to that they are fair both to the businesses and to the people who live in residential neighborhoods nearby the businesses.

Earlier in 2020, a PZC-initiated application regarding the contractor storage yard regulations that would relax some of the requirements on setbacks and fencing for contractors’ businesses and storage yards, as well as allow for expanded hours of operation, was withdrawn at a public hearing after it was pointed out that the hearing was improperly noticed. The noticed hearing listed the wrong section for the amendments being discussed, and thus could have led to amendments being overturned if challenged in court.

The potential changes to the regulations are controversial because the same proposed changes have already been overturned in court. The same proposed regulations that the PZC proposed in 2020 were passed in 2016 by a party-line vote with five Republicans voting in favor and four Democrats voting against the proposals.

However, during a contentious public hearing held in August 2016, a then-PZC alternate who also owned a construction company improperly participated in the discussion of the proposal. Following the PZC passing the proposed changes in 2016 the Clinton Taxpayers Association (CTA) sued the PZC. In spring 2019, a judge in Middleton Superior Court ended three years of litigation when he ruled in favor of the CTA due to the failure of the PZC alternate to recuse himself. The judge’s ruling negated the amendments passed by the PZC in 2016.

In July 2020, the PZC regulations committee opted to resubmit the proposed changes from 2016. The reasoning was that the judge overturned the amendments based on the recusal issue, not the actual language of the amendment. The CTA has disputed that interpretation of events and contends that the judge ruled against the proposed amendments themselves.

At a public hearing of the PZC on Aug. 3, CTA President Pam Fritz warned the PZC that if it further pursued the proposed regulation amendments, the CTA could again sue the PZC. The first lawsuit against the town cost Clinton taxpayers nearly $12,000 fighting the case. Fritz told the Harbor News on Sept. 17 that the CTA would submit their feelings in writing to the regulation committee ahead of that committee’s next meeting. Fritz said the CTA is closely following the matter and is very concerned with any changes the regulation that could have a negative effect on the residential neighborhoods that are near contractor storage yards.