Hubbardston Planning Board Corrects Article 4 Draft, Sets April 23 Review Before Public Hearing

HUBBARDSTON -- April 14, 2026, Hubbardston Planning Board identifies cascading errors in Article 4 zoning table ahead of April 30 public hearing. Working without their planner, who was absent, the five-member board spent nearly two hours reviewing a draft conversion of Article 4 from narrative zoning text to a table of uses, finding duplicate entries with conflicting zone designations, omitted accessory dwelling unit references, and misaligned footnotes throughout. Chair Kristofer Munroe framed the effort as a clarity exercise rather than a policy change, telling the board "the purpose of this table is not to make substantive changes." Associate Member Mark Kresge flagged that battery energy storage systems had been caught in a prior Attorney General ruling that expanded their allowance beyond what voters intended, and the board agreed to break the category into tiers in the corrected draft. The board scheduled an additional working session for April 23 to review the planner's corrected version before the public hearing, and confirmed it is deferring an aquifer protection overlay article, Article 15, from the Annual Town Meeting warrant. Member Alan Carpenter volunteered to assist Clerk Leeanne Moses with e-codification bylaw questions due by the end of May.