MONTAGUE — However much Montague may have changed in half a century, the look and feel of its neighborhoods has remained largely the same. Ernie Brown should know, since he served on the Zoning Board of Appeals for 47 years.
Brown, who recently retired, said when he started on the board — March 27, 1972, he remembers — zoning was new in Montague. He and the other board members learned as they went along, and worked hard to keep up with changes, he said.
Somehow there were never any headline-worthy controversies, Brown said: no businesses trying to open where they shouldn’t have been, no large windmills or solar panels being built in inappropriate places.
The Zoning Board of Appeals mostly works on the more intimate scale of residential neighborhoods. A typical project involves a proposal by a homeowner to build an addition on a house — sometimes with objections from neighbors, Brown said. If the proposed addition technically violates the zoning rules of the neighborhood, the board gets involved to determine whether it should be allowed anyway.
“Once in a while you’ll get two people who will spar: the one that’s applying and the one that’s the neighbor. But that’s not often,” Brown said.
For example: different neighborhoods have different norms about how far back from the property line houses tend to be. Lake Pleasant, where houses are mostly small and close together, is treated differently than Montague Center, where lots are larger to accommodate farming and houses are generally farther apart. A proposal by a homeowner to build past the legally required setback will be read differently by the board depending on whether the closest neighbor is 50 feet away or a mile and a half away — that is, whether or not the neighbor will be bothered by it, Brown said.
But the norms of the neighborhood aren’t always clearly defined. A homeowner may be surprised to find that his or her proposed addition requires a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals, even though the design is just like all of their neighbors. The rub is that many Montague neighborhoods are much older than the town’s zoning rules. On the hill in Turners Falls, most houses are more than 100 years old, Brown said.
“Many of (the proposals) can be granted, and they’ll look just like everybody else — because everybody else built when there wasn’t any zoning,” Brown said.
When automobiles were new, the fashion was to keep them stored far from the house. No one wanted an attached garage — the garage was always put in a far corner of the lot, Brown said. Technically, these designs often violated the setback rule.
“Some of them were within a couple feet of the line,” Brown said. “But they didn’t care because the neighbor did the same thing.”
So the work of the Zoning Board of Appeals often comes down to maintaining the particular qualities of the town’s different neighborhoods. When board members are unsure about how to decide, they may take a walk around the neighborhood, paying attention to houses on both sides of the street, to judge whether the proposed design would stand out from the others, Brown said. In turn, Montague neighborhoods have barely changed in their overall feel in the 47 years that Brown has been paying attention, he said.
Brown, who is 82, has lived in Montague his whole life. He went to Turners Falls High School, and worked at a number of banks locally and in the greater Pioneer Valley region until he retired 10 years ago at 72.
After the length of time he spent on the Zoning Board of Appeals, Brown prefers to characterize his resignation as a retirement. He left the board Aug. 26. The Selectboard formally recognized his retirement at its meeting Monday.
“We wanted to take a moment to, first of all, present you with a token of our appreciation for your years of service,” said Selectboard Chair Rich Kuklewicz, handing Brown a certificate, “and chastise you a little bit for not serving out your whole term.”
After retiring, Brown went to the September meeting of Zoning Board of Appeals. For the first time, he sat in the back row and just watched the board work.
“Things went the same,” he said.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 261.