DEERFIELD — A group of residents who have opposed the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter’s proposed new location off Plain Road East, voicing concerns about traffic and the siting of the facility on a quiet, dead-end road, have hired attorney John McLaughlin to represent their interests.

Plain Road East and Mill Village Road residents Kamala Bouche, Nicole Duprey and Linda Shea are listed as McLaughlin’s clients in an April 16 letter to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which met Thursday but opted to continue the public hearing on the project to May 15, as the ZBA awaits the final results of a Planning Board peer review. The ZBA is handling the special permit application, while the Planning Board is focused on a site plan review.

McLaughlin’s letter said the shelter’s proposed location is “an extremely poor choice” due to the size of Plain Road East and the lack of a separate application for an exemption from zoning bylaw 3710, which prohibits uses causing noise “perceptible without instruments more than 200 feet from the boundaries of the originating premises if in a non-residential district.”

“Most significantly, the applicant’s project violates [Section] 3710,” McLaughlin, who was successful in defeating the North Main Street park project in 2023, wrote. “This is an unusual lot [that] borders a residential area with only a small road leading into it. Especially with this particular use creating sounds emanating from the property, this is simply the wrong property for this proposed use in [sic] the application should be denied.”

The Friends of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter — the nonprofit formed to raise money for the shelter’s services — is proposing construction of a new building, as it has outgrown the deteriorating 1,570-square-foot facility on Sandy Lane in Turners Falls. The nonprofit purchased the Plain Road East parcel in March 2024 for $135,000.

The group is proposing a roughly 7,000-square-foot building with indoor and outdoor kennels, larger dog runs, and parking for staff, volunteers and visitors off the cul-de-sac at the end of Plain Road East. If the project moves forward, the shelter will also be able to take in cats.

While residents have been vocal about their concerns regarding noise, road safety and the changing nature of the neighborhood at each public hearing, engineering firm Tighe & Bond’s peer review with the Planning Board found no “fatal flaws” in the proposal, but some details needed to be addressed further.

“There’s nothing indicating this site can’t support this type of development,” Tighe & Bond Senior Engineer Tim Grace said at the April 7 Planning Board hearing, adding that much of what he found was “dotting i’s and crossing t’s.” “We didn’t really see anything with the layout, or like I said earlier, fatal flaws that will pose a risk to the general health and safety of the public.”

In a follow-up letter on April 15, Grace and fellow Senior Engineer Christopher Rokos said Berkshire Design Group, the designer for the project, has “provided additional materials for our review that illustrate how the design has been revised to address most of the review comments in our original letter.”

Other details not affected by design revisions, the engineers added, could be addressed by having Berkshire Design Group provide additional information to the town prior to construction.

“Our comments have been addressed to our satisfaction and we recommend that the board consider requiring the additional materials as a condition of approval,” Grace and Rokos’ letter states. “It is our understanding that the Berkshire Design Group will provide the board with a summary of the outstanding information prior to the next hearing.”

The shelter will come before the Planning Board on May 12. The ZBA will reconvene on May 15. Documents related to the project, including McLaughlin’s letter, can be found at bit.ly/42o3H9m.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.