Wilton, NH Planning Board

November 3, 2009

Virginia Davis
Hometown Cafe
10 Main Street Unit #18

Ms. Davis,

I received your letter and regret that you found the notice unnecessarily severe and threatening.  If, as you say, you were already working towards submitting an application for our November meeting, then the notice may indeed have been unnecessary.  I hope you’ll appreciate that, in the absence of any other correspondence from you informing us that you intended to submit an application, the purpose of the letter was to express the importance of getting the matter resolved, and was also necessary as a procedural formality to enable the Board to take further action if required.

The notice asked you to prepare for the December meeting, so this gives you a little more time.  Now that you have responded, I’m certain that we can work together cooperatively without things becoming adversarial.

It sounds like you may have some misconceptions about the relationship between the Planning Board and the Building Inspector (he is not in our department and does not work for us), and between your previous sign application and the Site Plan review application we are now asking you to submit.  Again, if you could call Steve Wagner per the previous letter, he should be able to explain everything to you.   Note that it may take some time to prepare a complete application, so please do not delay.

Members of the Planning Board are your neighbors, volunteer citizens of Wilton who all want to see small businesses succeed and are willing to work with you to make this as quick and painless and possible while still upholding our duty to enforce Wilton’s ordinance.

To answer your question, your requirement is to satisfy the Board that there are no problems with your site. This shouldn’t be too hard.  Although your change in use does cross the minimum threshold which requires us to do a Site Plan review, it is relatively minor and should be straightforward. Our goal is to get you through the process with an approved Site Plan so that we can uphold our responsibility under the ordinance, and so that you can pursue your business knowing you have met the town’s requirements.

As to whether it is mandatory that you attend, I would stress that it is generally very difficult for the Board to make an approval decision unless the applicant is present to answer questions, so I

do hope that you will attend. It is of course your right to bring counsel, but I truly hope you will not feel the need to go that expense.  I do appreciate how costly it can be to start a small business.

Another reason I am looking forward to seeing you at the December meeting is so that we can explore the various touch-points you had with various town personnel and determine whether you were misinformed along the way, whether opportunities to convey information may have been missed, and how we can improve our procedures and documentation to make this process smoother for the next small business owner.  I look forward to your help on that.

 
Sincerely,

Jeff Kandt, Chair
Wilton Planning Board

Click HERE for a PDF