E-Board Strikes Down Condition
Requiring Buried Service Lines
By M. D. Drysdale

The Vermont Environmental Court has again set aside a decision of the Randolph Development Review Board (DRB), this time with regards to conditions on a proposed 22-unit affordable housing development in East Randolph.

Environmental Judge Meredith Wright on Monday ruled that the DRB was wrong to require that electric and other utility lines be buried in the East Randolph Meadows development that has been proposed by Richard Dybvig of Tunbridge.

The DRB in mid-July gave Dyvbig site plan approval for the "planned unit development" (PUD), which allows grouping of the homes on the 19-acre lot, which is west of Route 14 on the outskirts of East Randolph village.

The Tunbridge man, who has developed successful housing projects in Chelsea and Williamstown, has also received Act 250 approval for the project, except for several engineering-related criteria involving water and sewer.

In its July ruling, the Randolph DRB said that under the zoning rules regarding a PUD, utility lines have to be buried. Dybvig protested, arguing that that rule pertains only to utilities along a public road. The road serving the East Randolph Meadows project is to be private, he pointed out, owned by an association of the homeowners.

Judge Wright’s ruling declared that Dybvig is correct that only public roads are covered in the zoning ordinance, not private ones. Accordingly, she wrote, the DRB’s decision granting site plan approval "remains in effect except that the condition requiring the service wiring to be underground is vacated and remanded for any further proceedings."

Judge Wright noted that the DRB decision confirmed that the PUD road "will be owned and maintained by a common ownership association."

However, she said, the DRB did not make a "formal decision" that town acquisition of the road "is not in the public interest."

In the absence of such a finding, she noted, the zoning ordinance provides a "rebuttable presumption" in favor of public ownership of the streets.

Summer Construction

Dybvig this week said, however, that he believes Judge Wright’s decision means that he will not have to bury the service lines—resulting in a substantial savings per unit in the cost of the eventual houses.

The DRB may not have made a formal "public interest" declaration, but the board has made it clear from the beginning that the town doesn’t want ownership of the roads, he said.

He is confident as well that the remaining Act 250 permissions will be received as soon as the systems are engineered, and he hopes to start in March or April to build the roads and housing sites. During the summer and fall, he hopes "to build as many as we can" of the actual homes.

If the development proceeds as envisioned, it would be the largest new housing project to be built in Randolph in decades. It has strong support from state government as providing the kind of moderate-income homes that the state needs.

Dybvig still hopes to bring the 1500-square-foot homes to market at about $150,000, he said.

In South Tunbridge, Dybvig has begun to build a prototype of the modular homes he will build in the Meadows development. He has planned the modules as basic units that can be enlarged or modified later by the homeowners.