Eastbayri.com

PORTSMOUTH – The town council voted Monday, Feb. 13, to amend the town zoning ordinance to fix a mistake that had included parking areas as lot coverage for all zoning districts, which has created unintended consequences for homeowners.

The ordinance was meant to apply only to commercial properties as part of the town’s ‘big box’ regulations, but as written applies to all types of properties, said Assistant Town Planner Gary Crosby.

With the council’s 4-2 vote, Councilors Judi Staven and Elizabeth Pedro opposed and Councilor James Seveney recused, the regulation was amended to no longer apply to residential properties. It will still affect commercial properties.

When the council approved the regulation, it was not its intention for it to apply to residential buildings, said Solicitor Donato D’Andrea. The building official has gone by that intention and not applied the ordinance to residential lots when granting building permits.

But this encourages neighbor feuds, he said.

A resident can (and has on several occasions) found out that there is a building permit for his neighbor’s property, hired a lawyer, and the lawyer nitpicked the wording and determined that the driveway should apply as coverage, he said.

Residential properties are allowed 20 percent building lot coverage, and can apply for a variance if going a few percentage points higher than that, said Zoning Board of Review chair Kevin Aguiar. The coverage is meant to cover homes, decks, sheds, and other outbuildings.

Including driveways as lot coverage creates many non-conforming lots because the square footage of the driveway ,added to that of the buildings, can create lot coverage over the 20 percent limit, he said. This creates more variance requests by residents wishing to build.

In some cases the driveway is large enough to put the coverage over 30 percent, making it difficult for the board to approve projects that what would normally be within regulations, he said.

Another unintended consequence, he said, was people taking non-conforming lots and figuring out that, with the driveway being considered building lot coverage, they can get rid of a portion of driveway and build a structure instead.