The Exeter Town Council voted Wednesday, July 8, to put off a broad rewrite of the town's zoning ordinance and to extend an existing moratorium by 60 days, following weeks of resident objections to proposed rules touching wood-cutting operations, home businesses, and other property uses, according to the Exeter Town Council's published meeting recording.
At the start of the meeting, a member of the council told colleagues that residents, business owners, and property owners had asked the town to "slow down" and be more deliberate about changes to the zoning ordinance, which sets what property owners can and cannot do with their land. The member proposed setting up a town council workshop process, in which the town planner, the planning board, the town solicitor, staff, business owners, and residents would work together on a rewrite. The proposal called for sorting every land use into one of three categories: allowed automatically, allowed only with a special use permit (a more detailed town approval), or prohibited outright.
On a roll-call vote, the council agreed to treat the pending amendments as major changes requiring fuller review rather than adopting them all at one meeting. Town Council Member Calvin A. Ellis and Town Council Member Diane B. Allen both voted in favor, along with the rest of the council, based on the roll call recorded on the video.
The council then took up a second motion to extend a moratorium tied to the zoning changes by 60 days, noting that the current moratorium was due to expire the following Tuesday. On that roll call, Ellis voted yes and Allen voted no; the presiding officer announced the motion passed. The recording does not make clear the exact scope of the underlying moratorium beyond its connection to the pending ordinance changes.
The council then opened, after some on-the-record uncertainty about whether it still should, a public hearing for residents who had come to speak. One resident urged neighbors to calm the debate, saying much of the conflict traced back to a single property dispute on the other side of town and that "misinformation" had inflamed tensions; the speaker was not identified by name on the recording. A longtime volunteer emergency responder who said he has lived in Exeter for more than 40 years thanked the council for slowing down and asked that any future proposals be advertised individually so residents most affected by a specific change, such as rules on daycares, could weigh in without needing hundreds of people to turn out at once.
Another resident described a long-running dispute with a neighboring wood-processing operation, saying she had documented erosion, blocked access to her property, noise above state-allowed limits, and air-quality problems she said affected two cancer patients in her household. She said she had worked for years with Karen R. Ellsworth, a deputy zoning inspector, on the issue and objected to blame being placed on the town's current zoning inspector, whom she said she had never contacted.
A third resident, who said she had reviewed the proposed ordinance closely, argued portions of it could conflict with state law, including Rhode Island's Right to Farm Act, and raised concerns that leaving certain activities unlisted could effectively prohibit them. She urged the council to take up individual zoning topics one at a time rather than all at once and questioned why the initial draft was, in her characterization, difficult to follow.
The hearing ended early. Council members said two attendees were taken to the hospital by ambulance because of heat inside the meeting room, and a third felt light-headed. Citing the town's inability to handle further medical calls, the council called off the remainder of the meeting and floated moving future sessions to an air-conditioned building, such as the high school.
The recording did not include a specific date for the promised workshops. Residents who want to weigh in on the zoning rewrite should watch for a future meeting notice from the Exeter Town Council, since the broader amendments remain pending rather than decided.