1976-11-18 - Laserfiche WebLink

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November 18, 1976 (continued) Page 2 ' Other action (continued) The Board voted unanimously to send the following letter to Mr. Zabin. (This letter is in response to his letter of October 13, a copy of which may be seen in the October 28 minutes.) Mr. Albert P. Zabin Lexington Planning Board Lexington, Massachusetts Dear Mr. Zabin: The Board of Appeals spent some time after the hearings at their last session discussing your letter of October 13, 1976. Most of us were surprised at the letter in that we were unaware that a committee had been appointed to study Chapter 808 and its relation to Lexington. I guess we expected that the Board would be invited to testify as a group before this study committee if and when it was appointed because of the final paragraph in. Mr. Cohen's letter of January 19, 1976. "I suggest that it will be necessary to set up a committee to review the existing by-law. I assume that the lead will be taken by the Planning Board, but it is obvious that other boards, especially the Board of Appeals should be included in any planning." ' The consensus of opinion of the Board of Appeals leaned in the direction that the present setup of handling permits through the Board seemed a very ade- quate and workable solution. As you know, the load on the Board (total hearings) has decreased in the last year so that relief from the work load is nt essential for a viable operation. The number of petitions or permits which might be allocated to other than the Board of Appeals as suggested by Chapter 808 would be small and only introduce a jurisdictional problem needlessly without any particular gain in handling the work load with dispatch. One of the strengths of delegating to an appointed Board the handling of this type of official Town operation is the fact that they are not elected and therefore are coapletely uncommitted to work toward the adoption by any Board or Town Meeting of a particular policy or program. The present system, therefore, has the advant- age of an appointed Board reviewing decisions and policy of elected Town Boards, which seems to be a very valuable check and balance. When making its decisions the Board of Appeals gives serious consideration to the advice and counsel given to it by other Boards. We look forward to their input. The Board feels, however, that it would be more helpful if the other Town Boards would, more often than at present, give us their opinions before the hearings on those petitions for which they have a particular concern. It is to be noted that the Town need not accept Chapter 808 until June of 1978. Also, even after it is accepted by Lexington, the Town can change its own Zoning ' By -lava any time in the indefinite future to accept some of the "may" provisions in the lav which your committee is studying. We respectfully suggest that any decision on these possible provisions of Chapter 808 be postponed for a few years. In the meantime a study could be made of each case coming before the Board of Appeals to see if it could be more adequately handled by some other Board. This would give an opportunity of studying data under present temporal conditions as to the number and