The Essex Zoning Commission plans to take action at its Monday, Oct. 19 meeting on a proposed text amendment that would offer a solution to property owners along Main Street in Essex who face divided zoning requirements on individual lots.

At the commission’s September meeting, there was lengthy discussion on the proposed amendment, which deals with properties that are zoned both as Essex Village District (EV) and Village Residence District (VR).

The split zoning has presented challenges for property owners like Ruthann Paulin and Peter Glyman of 20 Main Street, who want to build an in-law apartment above the garage on their property. Their house is in the EV district and the garage is in the VR district.

Current regulations state that the more stringent requirements for setbacks and coverage applies to the entire property.

For EV, the front setback is zero feet, with the side and rear as five feet. Building coverage is 25 percent. For VR, the front setback is 30 feet, with the side being 25 feet and the rear being 30 feet. The maximum building coverage is 10 percent.

Paulin and Glyman have spent months submitting requests to the town to move forward with plans to modify the buildings on their property.

The couple most recently submitted an application asking for a zone change, which was denied by the Zoning Commission at its June 15 meeting. At that meeting, the commission expressed a desire to help residents who have faced similar challenges due to the split zoning.

“We’re the poster child for this 10-month process. We went to [Zoning Board of Appeals] ZBA; we couldn’t prove hardship. The recommendation was to go to zoning. We went to planning, who unanimously approved our approach. We came back to zoning,” Glyman said at the September meeting.

That Zoning Commission application “was not approved, but at the same time I think you all saw that there were some gaps here that were making things very challenging for us to do some fairly minor things to our property,” Glyman continued.

Tom Evans of 26 Main Street is another applicant, represented by Attorney Christopher Smith, who petitioned the Zoning Commission in 2018 to relocate his entire property within the EV district. That petition was later withdrawn.

A proposal by Smith, which aimed to create a solution for the small group of Essex residents afflicted with the more restrictive zoning, was discussed at the Zoning Commission’s August meeting. That proposal was reviewed and discussed by Town Attorney David Royston and Essex Zoning Enforcement Officer Joesph “Joe” Budrow.

At the Zoning Commission’s September meeting, Budrow presented a draft of the text amendment for the Zoning Commission, which took into consideration the conceptual language supplied by Smith.

Budrow said that the text amendment was drafted so that it would only apply to properties in the EV and VR districts. It would take the sum of the setbacks and coverage for EV and VR districts and apply the average of the setbacks and coverage for the property in the VR. There would be no change to the setbacks and coverage for the part of the property in the EV.

The proposed text amendment had some commission members worried about overdevelopment in the area.

“I just think we could be opening the door to some serious harm,” said Zoning Commission Secretary William “Bill” Reichenbach. “I think one result of doing this, of course, would be the ability to construct a lot of new stuff in the residential area and I think the lawns, the open space, the trees, and so forth add to this sort of harmonious whole that we have down there and that really troubles me.”

Robert Day III, an alternate on the Zoning Commission, noted that, under the proposed change, property owners in the VR district who acquired a small portion of the EV district “could really up their coverage percentage if we’re not doing a weighted-average-type approach,” he said.

Attorney Smith addressed this concern later in the meeting. He proposed that “20 percent of the property at minimum has to be located in the Essex Village District when this occurs so that somebody just can’t acquire a 20 foot strip along the property line of Essex Village and then try to take advantage of it,” he said.

Smith also expressed appreciation for the proposed text amendment.

“This specific formula would provide the needed relief that my client would need, and if you remember, we came in with a zone change to rezone the property trying to get some relief from these requirements with the Village Residence, which is literally right next to the Essex Village,” he said.

Budrow was directed by Zoning Commission Chair Larry Shipman to draft another version of the amendment, identify how many properties this language would apply to, and “how it would increase potential maximum lot coverages and show where the new setbacks would be,” he said.

The commission plans to review the items from Budrow and reach a decision on the text amendment at its Oct. 19 meeting.

They may also continue public hearings on three other applications. The first involves relocating definitions relative to floodplains within a certain section of the regulations. The second deals with the expiration of zoning permits and requiring a permit for accessory uses such as swimming pools, fences, patios, and terraces.

The third would require the Zoning Board of Appeals to receive comments from the Essex Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Commission for variance requests within the gateway conservation buffer zone.

Among the four text amendments, they may also open a public hearing on an application asking for self-storage facilities within the limited industrial district.