CHESTER, Vt. – The Town of Chester received a bylaw modernization grant in 2022 and decided to use an incremental approach and implement the modernization of its zoning bylaw in phases over two years. The planning commission will hold a public hearing on the sixth and final phase of this bylaw amendment process on July 22, at 6:30 p.m., at the Chester Town Hall. If adopted by the selectboard, this final amendment will complete the modernization of Chester’s Unified Development Bylaw.
The previous five phases focused on the more densely settled portions of town. This sixth and final phase principally affects Chester’s rural districts. Changes include renaming districts to more closely match their purpose and allowed uses, creating wildlife habitat and travel corridors, replacing minimum lot sizes in rural districts with a maximum density standard, better defining uses including building and construction trades, heavy construction trades, tourist lodging, and to enable clustering of residential units as tiny house and cottage courts.
Why “modernize” zoning bylaws? Vermont’s villages and towns need a wider range of housing types to meet a changing population. While Chester’s population has seen little growth in the past decade, household size is decreasing. Single- and two-person households are now common, and families with children are less the norm and are smaller. Chester’s housing stock, on the other hand, consists mainly of larger houses that are old. These bylaw changes seek to make it easier to modify existing larger homes and to build smaller and more varied homes.
The planning commission has been assisted in this work by the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission (MARC), and is guided by the Zoning for Great Neighborhoods initiative of 2020 and the HOME Act of 2023.
Chester first adopted zoning regulations in 1975, and subdivision regulations in 1977. The zoning, subdivision, and flood hazard regulations were combined in 2014 into one unified development bylaw, with the last major update in 2017.
The goal of the public hearing is to solicit feedback from the community prior to submission to the selectboard for adoption. It is easier to make changes at the planning commission level before it goes to the selectboard. The planning commission encourages and welcomes all community feedback.