By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
“When we approve the comprehensive plan, we’re not approving something that’s going to happen overnight.”
Cape Elizabeth Town Council Chairman Paul McKenney’s comment to the council prior to Monday’s workshop to discuss public input on the draft comprehensive plan, was surely meant to provide some perspective to the council, but it could also serve as a response to residents who feel revisions to the plan move the town in a pro-development direction.
Much of the discussion focused on the areas that seemed to elicit the most public response including open space, preserving the town’s rural character, land use and growth and density issues.
Roughly 70 residents attended a Sept. 10 public hearing on the comprehensive plan committee’s proposed 88 recommendations. Council members said they also received roughly three dozen letters from residents.
Among the more controversial recommendations in the plan’s land use chapter (page 152) are eliminating a cap on the number of units allowed in multiplex developments in the RC (existing neighborhoods) and RB (growth areas outside existing neighborhoods) districts and increasing density and reducing lot sizes in the RB district where public sewer is available.
 The towns RB and RC districts together represent 16 percent of town land and have absorbed roughly 92 percent of the town’s growth from 1998-2006, said Town Planner Maureen O’Meara. According to the plan, the intent of increasing density and reducing lot sizes in the RB zone, which constitutes 7 percent of town land, is to absorb the projected 330 units to be built between 2007 and 2020 in existing growth areas instead of designating new growth areas.
“That’s a slower rate of development than what we’ve been seeing in the last 15 years or so,” said Mary Ann Lynch, a member of the comprehensive plan implementation committee.
Town Planner Maureen O’Meara said 11 houses have been built in town since June 2006.
Lynch said, judging by public comment, some residents think the RB zone is a new growth area, but it is the same growth area designated in the 1993 comprehensive plan.
“This comprehensive plan committee tried very hard not to change things,” Lynch said.
One of the provisions of increasing density in the RB zone is requiring developers to increase open space from 40 percent to 45 percent of the subdivision.
“In the longer term – compact development has much greater support for preserving our natural areas than spreading it further,” said Town Planner Maureen O’Meara.
O’Meara also said the open space zoning or clustering limits the temptation to sell private land that constitutes the town’s “rural character.” When the 40 percent open space requirement was implemented, O’Meara said it wasn’t met by public outcry because residents understood the provision preserved the value of their land.
The council addressed four recommendations from the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust (CELT), presented in a memo from Vice-President Ted Darling to Town Manager Michael McGovern.
Councilor Jim Rowe said he did not understand CELT’s recommendation to “commission a study of the total cost of both commercial and residential development to determine their impact on the tax base as compared to the impact of preserving land permanently.”
Although not opposed to the study, which would be funded by CELT, Rowe questioned what purpose it would have other than “inflaming rhetoric.”
“I would hate to see [CELT] get into the anti-development debate,” he said.
Other councilors were in support of a study that would draw on information gathered by surrounding communities to put some numbers to what it costs to bring new families to town.
Although the council didn’t intend to discuss the Trout Brook watershed, Cynthia Dill and Sara Lennon said they had concerns about designating growth areas within an environmentally sensitive area.
The tributary forms part of the border between South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has designated Trout Brook an “urban impaired stream,” which ties developers to restrictions such as paying a compensation fee or completing an off-site mitigation project.
In November, the council will discuss two new development fees: the Trout Brook Watershed Community Fee Utilization Plan and the Stormwater Improvement fee. According to a July memo from O’Meara to the council, the stormwater fee would be used to fund stormwater improvement projects such as stormwater drainage improvements or street sweeping.
Although RC and RB zoned land is located within the Trout Brook Watershed, O’Meara said even if the watershed was excluded from the designated growth areas, the land can still be developed. Including Trout Brook in the growth area allows the planning board some authority to pressure developers to connect their projects to public sewers, she said. Without that pressure from the planning board, she said the area could be developed into single family homes with septic systems, which she said is potentially more harmful to the environment.
While the council agreed most of the pollution is a result of the heavy development on the South Portland side of the watershed, Dill countered a statement by McKenney that the area is not going to worsen because of development on public sewer.
“The whole city of South Portland is on public sewer,” she said.
Lennon said the argument for allowing a condominium building with parking to be developed in an impaired watershed doesn’t hold up in a town with such modest growth patterns.
O’Meara said there is no easy solution, as preventing development may stop pollution in one area, only to push it out to another area. The result is “more green field development, paving more [and] people driving cars further.”
By encouraging multiplex developments, O’Meara said the town can promote growth in the form of four or five-story buildings with design standards and smaller footprints. Overall she said this type of development will likely only happen once or twice, if at all.
While affordable housing areas do not currently exist on town maps, O’Meara said if she had to create them tomorrow, she would construct them similarly to telecommunication tower areas: floating zones with standards.
On Tuesday, the Cape Elizabeth Planning Board got a look at Eastman Meadows, a 47-unit condominium project proposed for 64 Eastman Road by Wyley Enterprises, LLC.
Owens McCullough, of Sebago Technics, said the housing project for people 55 and older would represent a unique opportunity to integrate development with open space. The 40-acre site will incorporate open space purchased from the Sprague Corporation and will abut a land trust property, town owned easements and Winnick Woods, a town-owned park. He said the project will preserve 60 percent open space, which exceeds the 40 percent currently required by town ordinance.
The project will operate on public utilities including sewer and the developer, Joel Fitzpatrick, will be reimbursed to stub out service to abutting houses to create future opportunities for residents to connect to public sewer.
Due to wetlands on the site, Fitzpatrick is requesting a Resource Protection Permit in order to reconstruct existing roads, modify two existing manmade ponds and construct two trails with boardwalks to connect the houses to Winnock Woods.
The board recommended an independent traffic study and requested a community impact statement, which would demonstrate, among other things, how the development would affect the tax base.
The planning board will conduct a public hearing on the project next month. The council is scheduled to discuss the comprehensive plan further at its Oct. 10 meeting.