In a special meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 22, the Planning and Zoning Commission set in motion a process to create new lighting regulations for municipal recreational properties. The action comes after the Zoning Board of Appeals indicated it likely would not be able to support an application by the Wilton Parks and Recreation Department for a variance allowing 70-foot tall lights over Guy Whitten Field.
Instead, the Town will pursue a formal zoning regulation that would apply only to properties owned, leased or managed by the Town of Wilton or the Board of Education and would allow lighting up to 70-feet high for athletic fields and 25-feet high for sports courts. The draft regulation also allows P&Z to approve lighting higher than these limits if it is “necessary for play or operational safety.” Wilton’s current lighting regulations limit lights to 30-feet in height.
Town Planner Michael Wrinn noted that even once the new regulation is in place, the Town will need to apply for a special permit in order to avail of the new zoning rules for lighting. This means an application would be submitted with a photometric analysis, referrals would be sent to any relevant outside entities like WestCOG or nearby towns, and there would be a public hearing process. The regulation does not allow the Town to make these lighting changes at recreational properties as-of-right or automatically.
“You will have that debate and discussion, the public will weigh in,” Wrinn said.
The proposed regulation does not allow private property owners (homeowners or private businesses) to install lights of this size, because the regulation is limited to municipal facilities.
Wrinn agreed that he would bring an updated draft of the proposed regulation to Monday’s P&Z meeting. The proposed regulation would then enter the public review process, with referrals and a public hearing process to follow. Once that process has begun, he explained that Steve Pierce, director of Wilton’s Parks and Recreation Department, would submit an application for a special permit to install lighting at Guy Whitten Field in accordance with the proposed regulation. That application too will go through a public review process where P&Z will determine whether the lighting plan for Guy Whitten complies with the regulation.
Commissioner Eric Fanwick asked, “Why aren’t we treating this as a text amendment change as part of an application submitted by Parks and Rec? Why are we doing this outside the normal process?”
Vice Chair Melissa-Jean Rotini objected to Fanwick’s characterization that the process being used was unusual. “This is really taking one of the things that the POCD [Plan of Conservation and Development] said to do and doing it, which is what we’ve done multiple times with our master planning, with various things that we’ve done. So this really isn’t outside the normal process. Oftentimes we hear complaints from the public that we are waiting for people to bring us text changes so we are not waiting for this text change. We want to get it done and get the safety of the kids covered.”
Looking Ahead
Before concluding the meeting, the Commission debated the specifics of the regulation, including setback requirements, hours and days of operation, and whether higher lighting might be required in some cases. An updated set of requirements will be shared at Monday’s P&Z meeting with a public hearing expected at the Commission’s Monday, Nov. 17 meeting. Between those two meetings, Wrinn said he expected to receive an application for a special permit from Parks & Rec to apply these lighting standards at Guy Whitten Field.