In the days leading up to the vote, residents participated in a flurry of debate about the rules online. And then voters rejected the new zoning 493-485 in a special election. The vote means that the rules, which the selectboard adopted in November, are voided and the town reverts back to its former zoning regulations.
That’s a good thing, according to critics of the changes who saw them as nanny-type meddling with land use.
“I don’t like people telling me I can’t have a clothesline, that sort of thing,” said Patrick McCarthy, who said he voted no. He said he also worried that the zoning would make the town less affordable for newcomers and stifle developments such as senior housing.
He spoke Tuesday night in the lobby of Mount Mansfield Union High School, where voting took place, and where the town’s planning commission held a workshop on commercial zoning as the polls closed at 7 p.m.
The selectboard had voted to adopt the changes November 3. No public vote was required. But critics wanted the whole town to weigh in, and gathered signatures of 10 percent of registered voters in order to force Tuesday’s vote.
One zoning change reduced the allowable maximum size of buildings in the town’s commercial district from 60,000 to 30,000 square feet, and to 12,000 feet outside the district. Another amendment forbade most parking in front of commercial buildings, pushing it to the side of and behind buildings to avoid strip development.
Jericho, population 5,000, sits in the shadow of Mt. Mansfield and has maintained a rural flavor even though it’s a commuter town. It has so far not sprouted the big box stores of neighboring Williston but has begun to feel pressure from chain stores with a smaller footprint.
Bill Schulte said he voted yes on the zoning amendments out of concern about strip development. “I wasn’t very happy when the Dollar General store went in,” he said.
The ubiquitous chain discount store opened a 9,000-square-foot store on Route 15 in Jericho in 2015.
“I hate it; I will not go in there,” said Elena Bray, who also said the Dollar General contributed to her vote in support of the new regulations.
Few people attended the many public meetings about the zoning changes while the planning commission and then the selectboard discussed them for months. Debate over the changes blew up on Front Porch Forum after the selectboard approved them, though, and the many posts were a reminder that online forums play an increasingly important role in public policy discussions.
“We’re hearing a lot more debate now than we’ve heard along the way,” said Katherine Sonnick, town planning and development coordinator. “That’s one of the frustrations that the town has,” she added.
Selectboard chair Catherine McMains said the board will discuss what’s next at its upcoming meeting on January 26.
The close vote means people are divided, and it’s important to come up with new rules that everyone can live with, she said.
Residents are interested, too. About 40 people showed up for the planning workshop after the polls closed Tuesday.
And nearly 1,000 people cast ballots in the special election. “This was a huge turnout, absolutely phenomenal,” said McMains. “People really care about their community and we need to work off of that.”
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“Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’,… keep them strip malls rollin’…”
Vermont historian Charlie Morrissey made a sage observation about our pretensions to being different in his book “Vermont: A History”, written in 1984:
“This is modern Vermont, just as it is modern America. It is the Vermont spewing out the Shelburne Road and the Williston Road from Burlington, and extending along Route 7 approaching Rutland and Bennington, and captivating even tiny Morrisville, where a shopping center on the outskirts of town makes the village center look forlorn. Surely this heart of darkness deserves a destiny different from neon-lighted drive-ins along slurpy strips of highways which lead to huge shopping centers and acres of asphalt for parking lots. Vermont is different? The question is asked sardonically. The trouble with Vermont is that Vermont is not different enough.”
The small towns and some of the land owners who border the main roads, who may have in the past protected the sanctity of their towns enclosed nature are starting to get wide eyes about the coins that can be collected in the one time exchange for small town integrity. If our small towns give up their local – Vermont Makes it Special sweet down home, maple flavor that is directly connected to an unspoiled aesthetic beauty of a working landscape – they will soon be passed by as a destination for the recurring tourist dollar for the next small town who has recognized the increasing value to all the town residents. One chain store in the middle of a corn field is all it takes to loose what our parents and grandparents worked to preserve. We can still grow but with an open eye to the increasing value of aesthetics and respect for Vermont’s Wild Beauty that attracts our many seasonal visitors as well as the weekend visits from Vermonters living inside the beltline.
When our politicians have proven to be such sell-outs and put whatever they define as economic progress above all else (no matter how much it comes at the expense of existing residents and constituents), you cannot expect the people of Jericho or anywhere else to do anything but also maximize their own economic progress (including zoning that maximizes land values). These are principles that the entire Democratic establishment in Vermont has shown over and over again, such as their total embrace of basing the budget-busting F-35 fighter jet here with its expanded noise zone & continuing demolition of existing neighborhoods. This is the lesson of Leahy, Sanders, Shumlin and Welch.
Bruce Post’s quote from Charlie Morrissey is apt (in below comment). From the mayor of Burlington to even the state representatives in South Burlington like Ann Pugh, the Democrats F-35 worship has shown again and again there is nothing special or different about Vermont. I hate to be cynical because there are always exceptions and still good people out there. But for too many of our politicians, the old values of caring for your neighbor and preserving what is there are long gone. So in light of this, Jericho resident Patrick McCarthy is absolutely right to have voted no. And, BTW, there’s nothing wrong with Dollar General. Let more Dollar Generals sprout, be they next to Sanders new home on the lake or Leahy’s 300 acres in Middlesex and let them be the economic progress memorials to these politicians.