Two weeks after more than a hundred Wolfeboro residents and homeowners took time to attend a Planning Board forum on the proposed rezoning of Route 28 north, planners took up the discussion at their August 6, meeting. The results of the discussion were mixed at best.

The session began with board member Christine Franson complaining that she was “insulted” by comments from those in attendance and that speakers had failed to give the board credit for what she said was its review of how other communities manage their gateways. Then, referring to criticism of the draft article’s slim maintenance requirements for stormwater control structures, she insisted that the town’s attorney has ruled such requirements illegal. In fact, the opinion from town counsel focused on the town’s authority to take over non-functioning stormwater structures — a provision long removed from the draft.

She was followed by John Thurston, who suggested that participants at the forum had misbehaved by applauding individual speakers when they had been asked not to. Thurston also claimed that he had spoken to Wolfeboro merchants who had been intimidated into silence by the predominance of anti-zoning speakers. He didn’t explain how that should have been remedied.

After other members of the board provided more neutral appraisals, the panel got down to evaluating the various land uses that the draft version of the rezoning article allows. In the end, the board agreed to remove retail uses from the ordinance. It also lifted photofinishing establishments (allowed under business services), and it designated movie theater as a use by special exception.

Restaurants, including take-out restaurants, remained in the list of allowed uses, as did inns of up to 50 rooms.

While speakers at the forum had repeatedly urged the board to remove uses that would impact nearby residences with light and noise from high-traffic activities, most board members gave little indication that they had heard. Discussion returned again and again to the potential for specific land uses to impact Lake Wentworth, but each concern was quickly dismissed on the argument that it is adequately addressed by the board’s proposed stormwater regulations.

Planning Board chair Kathy Barnard provided a striking contrast to a number of her fellow board members. She pointed out that the forum had been intended as an opportunity for the public to provide feedback after months of silent watching while the most recent draft article took shape. She also repeated her frequently expressed misgivings about a number of proposed uses in the article, saying that they would run counter to the town’s Master Plan — a point also emphasized by speakers at the forum.

It now remains to be seen how effectively the board will handle some of the more technical aspects of the proposed ordinance, such as limits on the amount of impervious surface (for example, roofs and parking lots) allowed on a site. While the ordinance sets the limit at 40 percent of a lot’s area, the town’s definition of impervious surfaces seems to open a loophole for much larger extents of building and asphalt.

The lack of robust requirements for an operation and maintenance plan also presents an obstacle to endorsement of the draft stormwater regulations. Without maintenance requirements, stormwater mitigation structures could be expected to deteriorate and fail over time, leaving surface waters vulnerable to damage from untreated runoff.

The Planning Board cancelled its usual second meeting for the month of August and so will likely need to take up these issues again in September.