Town’s puzzle: How to match zoning, reality

As Johnston continues to work toward updating its Comprehensive Plan, town officials must decide how to address decades worth of zoning inconsistencies, according to Town Planner Thomas Deller.

At a Planning Board meeting on Tuesday, Deller presented board members with a series of land-use maps to illustrate how space has been developed. The main issue, he said, is that “every lot that you see on these maps violates zoning.”

Most of the zoning violations involve undersize lots, smaller than the minimum size stipulated by the town’s regulations. Moving forward is a question of determining a vision for the town’s future. Officials will need to weigh the importance of adhering to zoning requirements against maintaining the current character of the town, and the discussion will continue throughout the summer.

Under state law, the town’s Comprehensive Plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2007, must identify existing development and planned land uses for each area of the town. Making recommendations for what to do about the zoning inconsistencies will be an important part of the update.

While most of the guidelines regarding property development that existed when the original Comprehensive Plan was drafted in 2007 are the same today, much of the zoning that has taken place since then hasn’t complied with them. For example, Deller said, some areas originally zoned to be low density have been developed in subsequent years as if they were medium-density zones.

“When the Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2007, it called for certain zoning designations across the town,” Deller said. “When the council adopted the zoning ordinance, they didn’t follow those designations. So we have a lot of inconsistencies in our zoning rules.”

Johnston’s zoning stipulations aren’t new; in fact, they’ve been around for decades. The problem, according to Planning Board Chair Joseph Lembo, is that “nobody paid attention to them.”

“It is a 20, 30-year problem,” he said, stating that the board had learned that the situation “wasn’t as buttoned-up as we thought it was.” Besides addressing the zoning issues, Lembo said finding a solution to stormwater management as one of the board’s top priorities when designing the next Comprehensive Plan.

Other considerations include determining how different areas of the town should be zoned for development based on density, as well as how the town’s commercial strips should be laid out.

Mike Lusi, a lifelong Johnston resident who attended the meeting, said he hopes leaders will work on “incorporating open space into all areas of the town.” 

Lusi, who lives in the town’s Thornton neighborhood, said he believes houses are “encroaching” on areas of the community previously available for outdoor recreation.

Deller said he hopes community members will show up to meetings to weigh in as town officials discuss the Comprehensive Plan and how to address conundrums like zoning inconsistencies. He anticipates being able to hold public forums for discussing any potential changes by September.

The Johnston Planning Board meets at the Johnston Senior Center on the first Tuesday of every month, with meetings, open to the public, starting at 6 p.m. The next meeting will be held July 1.