By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — In the works for months, the town has adopted a five-year affordable housing plan mandated by the state.

After an hour-long discussion Monday, the Planning and Zoning Commission voted 5-0 , with two abstentions, to approve the housing plan, which is now required of every municipality under a statute known as 8-30j. 

The state law requires municipalities, every five years, to “prepare or amend and adopt an affordable housing plan for the municipality. Such plan shall specify how the municipality intends to increase the number of affordable housing developments in the municipality.”

The state’s deadline was June 1, but many towns, including Westport, requested an extension. When there was discussion of delaying the vote Monday, Planning and Zoning Director Mary Young cautioned against requesting a second extension.

Highlights of plan

Westport prepared its five-year plan after a months-long series of public forums, with the Planning and Zoning Commission leading the effort. A 47-page draft was posted on the town’s website May 17.

Westport’s plan details several ways to achieve more affordable housing, the years each might take and what public bodies would be responsible:

• Deed-restricting town-owned rental properties.

• Creating a new community of affordable units on a portion of state-owned land off West Parish Road.

• Establishing an Affordable Housing Trust.

• Issuing permits for 225 multi-family units, 70 of them deemed affordable, on projects brought under the state’s 8-30g legislation, which gives developers leeway in towns such as Westport that have less than 10 percent of their housing stock deemed affordable.

• Acquiring land for future affordable housing development.

• Eliminating zoning barriers in the Inclusionary Housing Zone.

• Adopting a new district for existing affordable housing with flexible parking requirements.

• Exploring the process to “buy down” market rate units.

• Exploring opportunities for greater density in residential districts.

• Encouraging sustainably designed modular and prefabricated housing.

“I would specifically like to thank everybody who wrote in, including the commissioners, for having taken so much care with a deliberative and collaborative tone,” commission Chairwoman Danielle Dobin said.

“I think that the intent to work together and to have difficult and challenging conversations about issues and language that can be sensitive, it makes such a difference when all of us are thoughtful in terms of how we address each other and have a starting point of we’re all approaching this with good intentions,” she said.

Sparks fly over last-minute update

While the original draft of the plan had been posted online more than a month, there was some concern Monday that the latest draft of the plan was posted publicly about a half-hour before the 7 p.m. start of the P&Z’s online meeting.

“It’s such a good start, and it’s so important and I’m so glad we’re having this conversation,” said commission member Amie Tesler. “It’s critical and time is of the essence.”

“I didn’t read the latest iteration at 6:22, I was just leaving New York and flew here,” she said. “I would rather have the time to kind of process it than talk it out in a public forum.”

Member Patrizia Zucaro also had an issue with the timing of the updated draft.

“I understand that we had a deadline of June 1, I understand we’ve had an extension, I understand we can get an extension, I understand that we need something,” Zucaro said. “For me, it feels rushed, and with something so important, I don’t understand why we need to rush it.”

“I just wanted to note for the record that the state required the plan to posted for a minimum of 30 days online, so it was distributed amongst the commissioners, it was posted online,” Dobin told Zucaro.

“At our last meeting I specifically implored, begged, asked for everybody to please take the time to review the plan because your thoughts, your opinions, matter to me personally, to be reflected,” she added.

“It has been posted, it has been available,” Dobin said of the document. “We’ve taken in a lot of comments and really worked hard to ensure that the document reflected a lot of that. So, I don’t see a point to prolonging the conversation …” 

“We’ve had adequate time, and it’s time to move forward,” Dobin said. 

“I agree we’ve had 30 days to review, but the revised draft plan we’ve had 30 minutes,” Zucaro said. 

Zucaro and Tesler, along with alternate John Bolton, all Republicans, who comprise a minority on the P&Z, on Thursday sent a “written supplement” to five-year plan, to the Planning and Zoning Department.

A motion to close the hearing was made and it passed, with Zucaro and Tesler voting against. A motion to go into work session was opposed by Tesler. Zucaro abstained.

A vote on the five-year affordable housing plan was called, and Dobin, Paul Lebowitz, Neil Cohn, Marsha Falk and Jon Olefson voted to adopt. Olefson was the sole Republican to vote in favor of the plan.

Zucaro and Telser abstained.

Another zoning group weighs in

Another political party, the Coalition for Westport, also had weighed in — June 15, before last-minute changes were made public — with a statement generally supportive of the plan as developed by the P&Z’s Affordable Housing Subcommittee.

The subcommittee “…has done an admirable job of soliciting and responding to public comment and focusing on the task at hand,” the coalition said in the statement.

The group, however, did offer a few suggestions that include spreading affordable units “throughout town” rather than setting them apart, and encouraging “adaptive reuse” of vacant commercial structures and developing mixed-use projects with commercial and affordable residential elements.