Council Committee Wants Design Board Meeting

The Town Council is taking a new tack with addressing concerns about the Design Review Board, agreeing with a council subcommittee’s idea this week to hold a meeting with the design board and other local officials to see if it can work out ongoing problems with the panel.

During its meeting Monday the council agreed to delay a vote on a proposal that would dissolve the board after hearing a report from its government operations committee on the review board’s status. The committee met prior to the council’s meeting on Monday and discussed the board. The committee agreed it should facilitate a meeting between the review board, the Planning and Zoning Commission and planning staff to hash out issues with the review board. The operations committee also discussed inviting to the meeting officials from Simsbury and Glastonbury, both of which have successful design review boards, to talk to officials here about how they made their boards work.

“We had very good intentions with the design review board, but something has gone wrong and we need to get our arms around what’s wrong,” said Majority Leader Philip J. Sylvestro, who serves on the council’s government operations committee.

The issue of the design review board has been pending before the council after it was proposed, about two months ago, to dissolve the board because of reports that its actions were coming into conflict with the PZC. Mayor Anthony LaRosa had said the board was “meddling” in areas where it has no authority and which come under the purview of the PZC.

“Problems have clearly developed between the design review board and planning and zoning,” Sylvestro said. “Things are just not running smoothly.”

The council had discussed the possibility of holding a public hearing to dissolve the board, but appears to have backed off that idea in favor of the proposed meeting to figure out how to improve the advisory board.

Town Manager Barbara Gilbert told the government operations committee that the design review board was created years ago to encourage developers to adhere to certain design standards that would give the town’s new buildings a more “consistent look.”

The idea, she said, was to avoid the “cookie-cutter” designs that national chains, such as Home Depot and Dunkin Donuts, use and require them to instead design their buildings so that they are more in keeping with the town’s character.

In Simsbury, for instance, the Dunkin Donuts restaurant looks like a colonial building, Gilbert said.

While some blame the design review board for taking up issues that fall under the authority of planning and zoning, Gilbert said review board members also have been frustrated by the PZC’s reluctance to follow the board’s advisory suggestions.

“The design review board (members) became somewhat discouraged and they ceased to have quorums” at their meetings, Gilbert said. “So you’d have quorums only once every 3rd of 4th meeting. There has to be a cohesive way to work together.”