Boothbay's planning board met for the first time since receiving the zoning ordinance changes and recommendations from the board of appeals on Tuesday, September 25.

Chairman Kristina Ford and the board welcomed Dick Perkins from the board of appeals.

Ford began by addressing the appeals board's opinion that the revised ordinance contains many redundancies within the proposed ordinance - language repeated in multiple sections pertinent to just one section.

"We wanted to create a document that a person did not have to search the whole of to find what they were looking for," said Ford.

"To that end, the redundancy is intentional. This document is not written for the planning board or the board of appeals, it is written for the public," Ford said.

As an example, Ford said, "If someone disagreed with a planning board decision and wanted to appeal, we could just hand out section five. You shouldn't have to go back to section three (development and use), you should be able to just look in section five."

The planning board disagreed with the board of appeals' determination that the subsection on approved appeals was not appropriate in the appeals section.

The board of appeals' recommendation that the planning board do on-site visits even when it was obvious the plan would be denied did not meet with planning board approval.

Said Ford, "If something obvious, or that off-the-wall was proposed, Marion (Anderson, Code Enforcement Officer) would let them know and we would not see it."

Perkins said he understood why the planning board was rejecting some of the recommendations.

Ford said that the appeals process was back to de novo, but that both boards had to agree that any new evidence would send the case back to the planning board.

"Our (board of appeals) goal here was to make the ordinance as simplistic as possible," said Perkins. "Thanks for all of your hard work."

The planning board has reduced the setback requirement in Shoreland Overlay Zones around some (moderate) wetlands from 250 feet to 75 feet as per allowed in Section 438 of Title 38 of the standards.

As per a recommendation by Richard Baker of the Department of Environmental Protection, outlet streams from these wetlands must be designated, as part of the Stream Protection District. And, the streams and applicable wetlands would have to be mapped.

The planning board agreed to reduce the setback and map the moderate wetland areas and streams already known, and others as they are discovered.

An article regarding further particulars about the revised town zoning ordinance will appear in the October 18 edition of the Boothbay Register.