Planning Commission

Meets 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month at 7 PM.

The Planning Commission serves as leaders of the community on planning matters. Based on the input the public provides, the Planning Commission conducts its primary responsibilities of preparing and amending the Town Plan and the town’s land-use regulations (zoning and subdivision). The commission holds discussion sessions and public hearings to determine whether our current regulations are meeting our present and future needs, and whether they align with new state regulations concerning land use.  

We meet 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month at 7 to 9 PM. Meetings may be fully remote on Zoom or may be hybrid, with an in-person presence in the Town Center Meeting Room as well as on Zoom.  Please check the meeting date and the agenda to see what type of meeting will be held and what is to be discussed. This information will be posted 5 days prior to the meeting, and often there will be additional materials for you to look at before the meeting. The public is invited to attend any of our meetings and provide comments at any stage of our deliberations. You may also view the video recordings of our meetings (at MMCTV) and email us your comments. Important note:  we currently have two vacancies on our 7-member board. This sometimes makes it difficult to hold a meeting due to a lack of quorum. Please consider volunteering for this important board if you are interested in planning for Richmond’s future and working out the details of neighborly living  with a shared set of rules.

Update forEnd-of-year  2024

As we work through the remaining details of our zoning projects from 2024, we are looking forward to our 2025 focus on updating our Town Plan. This document, approved by the voters in 2018, will be due for re-approval in 2026,  and so will need to be reviewed and reassessed in light of what has transpired over the last 8 years, and what we expect for the next 8 years. The Plan was entirely rewritten in 2018, and we are hoping that not many big changes will now be needed.

The program for this work looks something like this:  we’d like to start by making everyone aware that the plan is under review. Maybe folks can dig their hard copy out of that pile of documents saved for later reading, or figure out where they saved the digital version  on the computer they had back then. An easier thing to do would be to visit the Town of Richmond website, click on “Ordinances and Policies,”  then click on “2018 Town Plan.”   The Plan is divided into various sections, and some will be of more interest to you than others. Under each section you will find “Goals” and “Actions.”

 At the end of the Plan (before the Almanac) you will find an “Implementation” spreadsheet that assigns all these actions to various Town committees, groups, or personnel. We are asking each one of the Town committees to review these actions, and report what has been accomplished, what has been difficult, what is being worked on, and what other goals or actions might  be needed now to meet our current and future needs. The Planning Commission will be reviewing statutory changes – there have been quite a number – to assess how state-level goals should be addressed in our Plan. Changes in housing, stormwater and flood management, farm and forestry protection, the future of brick-and-mortar commercial real estate, renewable energy production and how accelerating climate change is involved in all these land use issues will be among the issues we will be looking at. 

At the same time, we will be seeking input from residents as to what they would like to see discussed in the Plan. We will have more details on the where and when of becoming involved in this effort in the early part of 2025. You can also contact me or our Director of Planning and Zoning, Keith Oborne, at any time to get involved. We hope you will engage early and often in this work, so that the Planning Commission can develop a Plan that reflects the current thinking of a wide variety of our residents.

Now for a quick update on our other ongoing zoning amendments work:  The new districts – Village Residential Neighborhoods North and South – are on their way back to the Selectboard after the revisions they (the Selectboard) required in order to align the district parameters with two new state statutes, Acts 47 and  181. We hope to see these adopted soon, although there is controversy about the impact of the state mandates. Secondly, alterations to the Flood Hazard Overlay District  that would allow for the movement of structures  such as the playground equipment and the restrooms up onto the plateau at Volunteers Green, are being worked out in collaboration with the “Three Parks Committee.” This group was formed to look at the issue of the costly damage that repeated flooding was causing to these structures.   We are hoping to send these amendments to the Selectboard for their public hearing process by the end of the year.

Our third ongoing project is working on amendments to the Jolina Court Zoning District that would  enable the second building of the Creamery project to move forward and create additional needed housing. This involves recognizing the reality of the current housing and building crises, while ensuring that Richmond’s needs are met. It has been a complicated and challenging project, but we hope to hold our own public hearing on these revisions by early next year. In addition to these three, we have a number of other projects in the pipeline, but I think that’s enough to think about for now!

Thanks for being interested,

Virginia Clarke

Chair, Richmond Planning Commission

P.S. As of this writing, we still have two vacancies on the Planning Commission. PLEASE JOIN US  to help us figure out how to live harmoniously together by developing a set of shared rules.

ZONING AMENDMENTS - To view the current amendments being considered check the “meeting materials” for recent or upcoming meetings listed under the date of the meeting.

7 members – 4-year term