SALEM — Landowners who want approval for a development, but don't want crowds of people traipsing across their land during the application process, might just get their wish.
That's because the town's Planning Board Tuesday rejected a strict new rule that would have given the board the right to reject applications from uncooperative landowners.
In a review of the Planning Board's bylaws, board member Linda Harvey had recommended language that would have given the panel authority to reject an application if a landowner refused to let members of the public tag along during a site visit.
The Planning Board's job is to review applications for new building projects, and the board sometimes conducts site visits to get a better sense of the application.
Because state law requires the Planning Board to conduct all its business in public, the site walks must be open to the public. But property owners are technically allowed to refuse anyone the right to visit their property.
And if the public can't go, neither can the Planning Board, according to Planning Director Ross Moldoff.
But panel members were reluctant about the idea of rejecting an application outright simply because a landowner refused to let members of the public onto a property.
"I am very nervous about the public going on someone's property," board member Ron Belanger said. "When you have a meeting on somebody's property, the liability is enormous."
Selectman Michael Lyons, who serves as a representative to the Planning Board, shared that reluctance.
"I'm kind of uneasy about this one — access to the site walk by the non-board public," he said.
The Planning Board Tuesday cut Harvey's language, which would have explicitly permitted the Planning Board to reject an application if the public is not invited to a site walk.
But Harvey stuck by her language.
"Basically, (a site walk is) a scheduled meeting, and meetings are open to the public," she said.
The whole question might be moot, anyway, according to Moldoff.
"We (hold site walks) very, very rarely. The Planning Board typically asks for me to go out to the site and tell them," Moldoff said.
The planning director said the board only goes on one or two site visits a year, at most.
Beyond that, it would be illegal for the board to go on a site visit if the public wasn't invited, Moldoff said. Although, he said, it's certainly possible to imagine a landowner trying to deny members of the general property access to his property.
"(I) can envision a situation where a landowner says, 'No, this neighbor has been nasty to me and I don't want them to go on the site walk,'" Moldoff said.
In that case, Moldoff said, the Planning Board wouldn't be able to hold the meeting.
Under current rules, the board would then have to decide whether to reject the application or to conduct its fact-finding in some other way.
Lawyers from the New Hampshire Local Government Center refused to comment on the subject of site visits, citing a rule that forbids them from giving legal advice to the general public.
A representative from the state Office of Energy and Planning, which advises local planning boards, could not be reached yesterday.
