Surge in Building Permits has Charlestown Officials Scrambling
By CYNTHIA DRUMMOND/ecoRI News contributor
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| New beach home construction in the village of Quonochontaug. Charlestown officials say they have been dealing with a swell in building permits that began before the pandemic and has since intensified. (Cynthia Drummond/for ecoRI News) |
CHARLESTOWN, R.I. —
Asked how much his department’s workload has increased in recent years, the
town’s building and zoning official, Joe Warner, laughed.
“It’s got to be
tenfold,” he said. “Not just because of us being busier, but just all the
additional regulations and things that have come into effect.”
The Planning Commission
is also grappling with an increased workload. Commission chairwoman Ruth
Platner has described development proposals in the past year as being at a
“20-year high,” and in a July 5 blog post, she warned,
“We may reach a level of
residential applications that will be impossible for the Planning Department
and Planning Commission to review. Impossible or not, state law requires that
we review and make decisions within a set number of days.”
Warner’s department has
six employees, four full time and two part time. The last three years, he said,
have been challenging.
“We’ve been slammed-busy with the construction side of it for the last three years, maybe even three and a half, and even when the pandemic came out, we didn’t slow down, but the nature of the jobs changed,” Warner said.
“We went from a lot of bigger
developments down to tons and tons of deck permits, basement finishes, swimming
pools, a lot of homeowner permits for people who were trying to make their home
place more livable because they were spending so much time at home.”
U.S. Census Bureau
figures show that in 2019 Charlestown’s population was holding steady at 7,826.
But the coastal town also has a large number of residences that are second
homes owned by people from out of state. Last year there was an influx of those
homeowners escaping urban areas and moving to their vacation homes full time,
where they believed they would be better protected from COVID-19.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The new 2020 US Census figures show that Charlestown's population grew by 170 people over the past 10 years. That's 2.2%. We still have not surpassed 8,000 with the official population count for Charlestown now sitting at 7,997. - Will Collette
However, figures recorded by the town show a steady increase in building permits that began years before the pandemic. From January 2016 to December 2020, the number of permits issued rose from 1,257 to 1,674, an increase of 417. Most of the permits, 574 in 2020 alone, were for “residential alterations and additions.”
“We’ve been busy since
2018,” Warner said. “It was a jump of like 25 percent. The thing is, it’s not
just plan reviews. So, if your increase in permits is by that amount, that’s an
increase in all your phone calls, it’s an increase in all your inspections. It
trickles right down the whole line, so you’ve got to figure, if the permits are
up by 25 percent, you know, everything’s up 25 percent.”
Permit fees paid to the
town increased sharply, from just over $251,000 in 2016 to more than $354,000
last year.
The Rhode Island
Builders Association has also been noticing changes in the housing market. The
organization’s chief executive officer, John Marcantonio, said a number of
factors have contributed to an increase in people renovating their homes. Those
include the pandemic lockdown, adult children moving back home and people
working from home.
“All that behavior, with
low interest rates and most folks who owned homes keeping their job, and they
weren’t spending their extra money on anything else, they decided to put it
into their homes … there was a massive increase in renovation/alteration to
existing homes,” he said.
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| Building materials sit next to a newly dug foundation on East Beach Road in Charlestown. (Cynthia Drummond/for ecoRI News) |
Development proposals, for both residential and commercial projects, have necessitated some prolonged Charlestown Planning Commission meetings. That has left the five volunteer commission members with little or no time to do much actual planning work, such as amending regulations to comply with the town’s comprehensive plan, which was recently updated and approved by the state.
“We’re having a lot of
growth that’s sort of coming out of old regulations and old planning,” Platner
said. “We have new planning in place, but we don’t have regulations that match
it. … After a meeting that goes to midnight, you’re wiped out for the next
couple of days. It takes too much out of you, so what we’re doing this month
and next month, we’re having extra meetings.”
A quota limiting new
construction expired in 2009, but Platner said she intended to explore ways to
control development.
“We’ll ask again from
our solicitors and Town Council support, to find ways to either pace
development, which would be what a quota is, or just to explore what other
tools there are, and I honestly don’t know what that might be,” she said.
Former Town Council
president Virginia Lee said more pressure is also being placed on the town’s
open spaces. She noted protecting groundwater and preserving open space is a
necessity, because everyone relies on private wells.
“This town, more than
most, relies on the quality of the environment, not only for the tourism
dollars, but for the health of the water,” she said.
Among those waters being stressed are the town’s popular salt ponds. The salt pond region of southern Rhode Island extends from Maschaug Pond in Westerly to Point Judith Pond in Narragansett and Charlestown falls in the middle.
This
watershed is so built up that vital ecosystems are under enormous pressure,
most notably from failing and substandard septic systems and stormwater runoff
containing fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, oil and grease.
Not everyone, however,
is concerned about the pace of development proposals. Town Council President
Deborah Carney agreed that there has been an increase in the number of
residential renovation permits, but she does not see a need to curtail
development.
“The number of permits issued for residential alterations and additions appears to be up which is likely attributed to people spending more time at home over the past year due to the pandemic,” she wrote in an email response.
“I don't see the need to
reinstate a quota on new development. The quotas were put in place to deal
with the potential impact to the schools. Charlestown's enrollment in the
Chariho Regional School District has steadily declined over the past several
years and there is no indication that trend will change.”
The monetary
contributions of Charlestown, Richmond and Hopkinton to the Chariho Regional
School District are based on school enrollment statistics.
Carney also noted there
had not been an increase in commercial applications.
“The Town also has two
pending proposals for storage facilities, neither of which will have an impact
on the schools,” she wrote. “I have not noticed an increase in commercial
development applications. In the past several months only two new commercial
permits were issued. Unfortunately, over the past several years, Charlestown
has developed a reputation for being unfriendly towards business.”
Rhode Island’s hot
housing market is expected to continue in the short term, according to
Marcantonio, who predicted demand for housing would remain high and affordable
housing stocks would remain low.
“Couple that with the shortage you already had, now you’re starting to see the housing issue being looked at as more of a crisis,” he said.
“What may be occurring in Charlestown,
and I don’t have specific data there, it has a large beachfront community, a lot
of folks having that as their second homes. I know there’s been a lot of
outside the state influx from New York and other areas coming into Rhode Island
and building larger, substantial homes on the waterfront or renovating their
old existing homes on the waterfront. So that’s the boom that’s happening in
Charlestown and I would assume it’s mostly high end. … It’s not the workforce
housing boom in development. It’s not the middle-class housing and it’s
certainly not the affordable.”