NEWBURYPORT — A familiar face will soon be retiring from the city as Mayor Sean Reardon announced that Building Commissioner and former City Councilor Greg Earls will depart once his successor is found.
“His retirement date is coming up, but he is also going to keep working with us in some capacity until we can get his successor lined up,” Reardon said during the Thursday edition of “Mayor’s Corner”. “But as far as I know, we’ve got some great candidates for that as well.”
Earls became the city’s building inspector in 2021. Before that, Earls spent 16 years on the City Council before resigning in 2019 to move to Hampton Falls, New Hampshire.
His was not the only retirement announced during Reardon’s updates, with other departures including what he called three “major retirements” at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
“That caused a little shuffling, we bumped up a few employees and we left a few openings,” Reardon said. “So we have three wastewater treatment plant operators positions. We’re in the process of interviewing now. We’ve got some good candidates, so hopefully we can fill those shortly.”
He also spoke about the impending retirement of Fire Chief Steve Bradbury, whose last day with the city will be Aug. 31.
“We had 18 people apply for it, which I was pleasantly surprised with,” Reardon said.
Capt. Stephen Hamilton is set to serve as interim fire chief as the search is completed.
“He’s just a perfect guy to keep the ship sailing,” Reardon said.
The retirement announcements came during an episode that saw Reardon joined by City Councilors Ben Harman and Beth Trach to discuss zoning and efforts to preserve the character of the city’s neighborhoods.
Multiple times a month, Reardon records informative guides as to what is happening inside City Hall and across the municipality at Port Media studios next to the Senior/Community Center.
“It’s probably not a stretch to say that zoning isn’t probably the most followed or maybe exciting topic that people take on,” Reardon joked on the Thursday edition of “Mayor’s Corner” as he introduced zoning.
Reardon’s guests were well-suited to discuss the topic as both have been heavily involved in recent zoning work.
Harman is the sponsor of a bill that was set to possibly be voted on during Monday night’s City Council meeting which would limit how tall developers can make their buildings in a large portion of the city.
Trach has been working with Ward 6 City Councilor Mary DeLai to more broadly look into zoning changes that would tackle “mansionization” as a whole.
Mansionization is the practice of tearing down older, smaller houses in a neighborhood and building larger homes that take up most of the available lot space.
“It is not for everyone, but it’s really important in terms of one of the key things that as a local city council or local body actually controls is the use of our land,” Harman said of zoning. “And so while it’s pretty dry on the substance, it’s critical to how we move our community forward.
Harman’s height restrictive zoning idea comes in response to the recent approval of the state’s fiscal 2027 budget, which includes language that allows developers to circumvent some local oversight related to lot size, height and shape on what are considered nonconforming lots.
The new budget’s language states that “pre-existing nonconforming structures or residential uses that do not conform to zoning because of lot size or shape, frontage, lot coverage or floor area ratio requirements may be extended or altered as of right, without the need for a finding by the special permit granting authority under this paragraph, if such extension or alteration complies with the current dimensional regulations regarding height, stories and setback.”
This eliminates the permit-granting powers of municipal panels such as the Newburyport Zoning Board of Appeals when it comes to buildings on nonconforming lots. A large portion of residents live on nonconforming lots.
Harman’s measure would see the creation of a R2A District and an R2B District.
The two districts would comprise current R2 neighborhoods that fall outside the city’s Demolition Control Overlay District. The default height allowance in both would drop from 35 feet to 25 feet.
After going through the Planning and Development Committee and a joint public hearing with the Planning Board, the proposed bill has been amended to reduce the height in the Demolition Control Overlay District to 27.5 feet.
A zoning map can be found in the City Council packet showing both proposed districts.
“We’ve been taking a look at this from the you know starting place of we’re seeing a lot of larger homes getting built in parts of the R2 district where the built environment is mostly smaller postwar homes ranches and capes and things,” Harman said.
Regarding her involvement, Trach said she and DeLai consistently heard concerns regarding teardowns and mansionization making neighborhoods unrecognizable.
“The concern there is twofold, one that you know these sort of XL houses being put in their place didn’t fit and they towered over the neighbors and we’ve heard that in public comment,” Trach said. “But also that they are much much more expensive than if you could just buy the little cave on the market.”
She said that while they cannot control the market and put price tags on houses, they can at least set up guardrails.
“What we can do with zoning is describe what we want our neighborhoods to look like for the future,” Trach said.
She said over a series of workshops, they heard some pushback with builders telling them they need some path to profitability.
“And we really took that to heart and we rolled up our sleeves and we sat down with architects and builders and Realtors and said, ‘Well, you tell us like what works here?’ and we found out a lot and we found out that there are things we can do,” Trach said.
She said one architect put it best, with his words becoming something of a “North Star” for their work.
“Make it easier to build what you want and make it harder to build what you don’t.”
One misconception she said exists is that a lot of times people tend to think it’s just builders coming in and knocking things down and maximizing profit, claiming that is not the reality of the economics.
“It’s actually far more razor thin with the price of materials and special permitting adds a lot of layers of time and uncertainty and cost onto these projects as well,” Trach said.
Other topics discussed during the 45-minute episode were city department updates from Reardon and some discussion of affordable housing.
The full episode can be found on the PortMedia Youtube channel.
Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com.