In a bold move to halt residential growth, the town of Barnstable is seeking a special designation to put a temporary moratorium on new development while it puts into place permanent development restrictions.

Last week, the Cape Cod Commission voted 12-1 to accept Barnstable’s application that the entire town be designated a District of Critical Planning Concern, giving the town time to address its affordable housing and growth management concerns.

The Cape Cod Commission, a regional regulatory and planning agency, recommends DCPC designations for areas of particular significance, allowing towns to adopt special rules and regulations to govern all future development in the district.

Now that the commission has agreed to consider Barnstable’s nomination, a CCC subcommittee has up to 60 days to decide whether to recommend or reject the nomination. If recommended, the nomination goes to the county’s Assembly of Delegates for approval.

So far, only four DCPCs have been established in the CCC’s 10-year history, having been established in portions of West Falmouth, Bourne, Sandwich and Harwich.

“The DCPC is a rigorous, yet highly flexible tool designed to address a range of concerns,” said John Lipman, chief planner and deputy director of the CCC.

As such, DCPC applications may become more common. Following on the heels of Barnstable’s application, the town of Wellfleet also has applied to the CCC to place the entire town under a DCPC designation.

And Sen. Robert O’Leary, Rep. Demetrius Atsalis and Rep. Eric Turkington have announced their joint support of Barnstable’s proposal as a way to sensibly manage its future growth.

The entire designation process takes about 100 days, according to Joellen Daley, Barnstable’s assistant town manager. During those 100 days, a temporary, limited moratorium on new building permits is in effect. If nominated, the town has one year to adopt permanent building regulations to accomplish the goals set out in the proposal. The temporary moratorium created during the DCPC designation period expires once the town adopts permanent regulations.

“Yes, this moratorium hammer comes down, but it kicks off a public hearing process that’s very long and very elaborate at a number of different levels of government, to make sure no one power is going down the wrong track,” Lipman said.

For the limited temporary moratorium, Barnstable originally intended that all residential development permits should be capped at nine per month, with affordable housing eligible for all nine. Five of those permits were to be set aside for affordable housing only, with the other four eligible for market-rate housing with preference given to cluster developments.

However, in a compromise with the building community, the town recently revised its application to increase the building cap from nine residential building permits a month to 10, with all 10 eligible for market-rate development and no cap on affordable housing.

The town generally issues about 20 building permits a month. If allowed to continue at its present pace, Barnstable would face complete build-out in about 12 years according to estimates, said Daley.

Agreement to Disagree
Southeastern Massachusetts is the fastest-growing region in the commonwealth. The rapid rate of growth in Barnstable has had a major impact on ground and surface water as well as other infrastructure issues such as road maintenance and the school system, said Daley.

Barnstable’s high rate of growth is inextricably linked to the community’s need for affordable housing. The state has set a goal that 10 percent of every community’s housing stock be affordable; Barnstable is currently at 4.35 percent, said Daley.

“We only have 2,000 to 3,000 available lots left before build-out in Barnstable. A high percentage of these lots will have to have affordable housing to ever achieve the 10 percent goal,” Daley said.

Now the town will use the DCPC process to buy time in which to identify ways to require or encourage affordable housing.

“One positive thing about the DCPC, and hopefully the designation, is that all parties have participated, and developers not in the affordable housing market are considering it now,” she said. “We’ve been having really good conversations about the future of our community. I think, in the long run, it will be a very positive experience.”

If the town had undertaken traditional growth-management tools such as zoning changes, there might have been a run on permits during the sometimes drawn-out public hearing process, said Daley.

“When we started really looking into all the tools available, the DCPC nomination really ended up looking like the best tool. It allows a timeout to put a stop on things and avoid a run on building permits. Now we have a little time to figure out what we want to do,” said Daley. “It seems drastic but, knowing the alternative, it’s the best way.

“And we’ve taken a lot of heat for it,” she added. “A lot of people felt it was done behind closed doors.”

“People were really very upset with it at first,” Lipman affirmed. “So the town held public hearings, that were not required, and met directly with homebuilders and affordable housing advocates.”

From those meetings came an amended nomination, including the changed monthly permit cap, he said.

“The revision very much changed the stringency of the cap and the fairness of the process,” said Lipman, who praised the revisions and said the CCC has advised Wellfleet to follow Barnstable’s lead.

In general, builders are against the use of DCPCs, viewing them as yet another hurdle to overcome in the already tangled Massachusetts permitting system.

“The new DCPCs caused a stir, but we had already begun an extremely productive dialogue with the Cape and Islands Homebuilders Association,” said Lipman. In fact, he recently had lunch with members of the Home Builders Association of Cape Cod and said they shared a laugh about the irony of meeting during the consideration of two new DCPCs.

However, the two sides have in effect agreed to disagree. An article posted on the homebuilders association’s Web site last week states, “The HBA of Cape Cod is opposed to town-wide DCPCs. We believe that the District of Critical Planning Concern application procedure violates the ‘grandfathering’ protection of property guaranteed by several state laws. It also subverts the regular process of zoning changes, which require town meeting approval.”

And a March 1 letter posted on the Web site by the association’s leadership warns that “such political no-growth rhetoric is not only wrong and counterproductive, but it polarizes the very people who should sit down together and work out solutions …

“The best way to deal with growth … is to embrace the ‘Smart Growth’ approach and for Barnstable to immediately implement its own ‘Local Comprehensive Plan’ which was created to address all of the concerns of the town including how, where and what kinds of growth should occur,” the letter concludes.

Barnstable already has put into place some growth-management measures, including a two-acre zoning mandate and a housing amnesty ordinance addressing illegal apartments, requiring that they be brought up to code and rented at affordable rates, or not be rented at all.

In addition to the building cap, the town would also like to implement zoning ordinances encouraging or mandating cluster and village-style residential development, and develop a land acquisition strategy for affordable housing and conservation.

As far as the effect on developers, the designation application asserts that “the proposed growth management district will schedule the rate of development; it will not significantly change the magnitude of allowable development.”

“We try to put as many conditions that are fair and equitable to the building community as possible, and try to get those suggestions built into the regulations,” Lipman said. “The bottom line is fairness.”