Marblehead board to remain silent on zoning fight

MARBLEHEAD – The Planning Board will make no recommendation on a zoning bylaw amendment that could save the Bubier Road home of Wayne Johnson when it comes up for a Town Meeting vote this evening.That was the outcome of a 30-minute meeting in front of the Marblehead Veterans Middle School auditorium Monday evening, attended by Johnson, his neighbor Dr. John Schey and their lawyers.Johnson has proposed two zoning bylaw changes in hopes of nullifying his defeat so far in a 15-year court case and save his $1 million home from being torn down or moved.Johnson and his lawyer, Attorney Charles LeRay, will request indefinite postponement of Article 37, which would reduce the required frontage for a house lot from 100 to 75 feet. The Planning Board voted Monday night to recommend indefinite postponement of Johnson?s original proposal for Article 36, which would measure the legal width of a house lot as the width of the front yard.However, Johnson filed an amendment to Article 36 to change the legal lot width from 75 percent of the required frontage to 60 percent of the required frontage, a change that Board Chairman Phil Helmes said would affect only eight properties in town. “It?s almost neutral,” he said.Board member James Bishop pointed out that the change would still affect the neighbors of eight properties.Attorney Frank McElroy, representing the Scheys, said considerable study went into the 75 percent figure in the 1980s and called Johnson?s proposal “arbitrary.” He called on the planners to either reject it or send it out for study.Schey told the board, “This is very unusual. This is all targeted at me, it?s against one family, just to please our neighbor.”?We look at the impact of these proposals, not the history,” Town Planner Becky Curran told him.Board member Ed Nilsson reminded his colleagues that this is “a citizen?s article.”In the end the board voted 4-1, with Bishop opposed, to have Helmes give a statement of facts on the article to Town Meeting and make no recommendation.