The Newcastle Local Planning Committee held a public forum at the midway point of the review of the Newcastle comprehensive plan and its land use ordinance, known as the character code. Both planning documents are being developed together to give them a better chance of being used together and enforced.

About 50 people attended the April 11 meeting, held in the ATEC building at Lincoln Academy.

Ben Frey,  a selectman serving on the committee, led the presentation. “This is where we are at the moment,” he said. “We’re sending our edits back to Maine Design Workshop now, and they’ll have to send us the second draft. But it won’t be back or ready in time to be approved at town meeting.” Frey said the new documents would be voted on in November at the regular ballot vote. “We don’t have a lot of people come to town meeting unless there’s something really unusual going on. We usually have a better turnout in November, anyway.”

Before it will be voted on, there will be at least one public hearing, and probably more than one, Frey said. He also invited people to attend the NLPC meetings, which are held on Tuesday evenings.

The committee first reviewed the comprehensive plan, which offered broad outlines on what the town hoped to see in its future.

The first draft contained a lot of photos. There was a concern they could be misleading because they might be taken too literally. For example, one image showed a group of people at an outdoor band shell/amphitheater. The photo was clearly taken in an urban setting and looked nothing like Newcastle, but Frey said he’d like to see something smaller and more in tune with Newcastle’s outdoor spaces.

Another issue involved terminology. The first draft of the comprehensive plan had a lot of acronyms and phrases participants said might not mean much to a lot of people, and a lot of the terminology was fairly urban. Frey said one committee member referred to it as “hipster frou-frou” and thought it might turn many people off. Terms like “bootstrapping” and DIY were sprinkled liberally throughout the document, Frey said.

Beyond photos and terminology, there were other concerns. One was about rural character. Frey said while most people from Newcastle immediately understand what they mean by rural character, they don’t necessarily mean Newcastle is a bucolic, pastoral setting. Parts are farming areas, but some of the rural zone is more tied to land use that may or may not be. Perhaps a rural resident has a horse and goes riding on rural roads, or keeps chickens or ducks and a large garden. The resident may also want a small business at home, say, a small bakery, and in the first draft, such a use in the rural zone would not have been permitted. Frey said large parts of the comprehensive plan would have to change due to a fundamental misunderstanding by Maine Design Workshop.

Other issues involved the Business Everywhere directive. The town believed it was communicating that small businesses might exist in village houses, on small farms, in residential areas not immediately in the village, as well as in the Route One business district. Trying to balance the needs of each of the neighborhoods with business needs, in some clearly defined way, proved an elusive goal. Frey said that part of the section had been rewritten and that additional work was necessary.

Regarding a section on proposed growth Areas, Frey showed an image of Academy Hill at some future point with a great deal of growth, but retaining some open space, farming and other valuable features. Academy Hill is a place where proposed growth might be channeled, because it has public utilities already, unlike some of the rural areas. Frey said any development in the Academy Hill area or anywhere else would have to undergo the typical planning process for a development of its size and type. If a subdivision were planned, the Planning Board would require that it meet all state subdivision requirements, for example. The development would have to be designed in harmony with the existing community.

The character code, too, had some issues with photographs. Frey said perhaps having line drawings would be a better choice — and terminology. For instance, Maine Design Workshop referred to any small single-family home as a cottage. In Maine, however, a cottage may be a tiny house, a summertime vacation home, or a one and a half story, insulated Cape Cod house that is a year-round residence. When so many people had different interpretations of what a cottage is, the word needed to be changed to one whose definition most people can agree on, Frey said.

The zoning map was also changed, losing one zone and making it much simpler. Rules about minimum size of properties in the rural zone were eliminated, and the whole product was brought down from more than 300 pages to about 36. Frey said the document would be able to be used by a landowner to determine what use could be made of his land based on the character code of the area.

Frey expected revisions back by May.