At the upcoming Special Town Meeting in Athol, voters will be asked to decide on six articles, including a zoning amendment to clarify the definition of "family" in the bylaws, which has been called into question by a property owner who opened a sober house. The proposed amendment would require a group of five or more people to be related "by blood, marriage or adoption, including wards of the state." The meeting will also seek approval for equipment purchases, including IV pumps for the Advanced Life Support ambulances, and to transfer funds from the Ambulance Stabilization Fund.
ATHOL – A zoning amendment and equipment purchases are among the six articles to be decided on at next Monday’s Special Town Meeting.
A quorum of 97 voters is needed to dispense with the articles. The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in Memorial Hall at Town Hall.
“It’s important that people show up and vote and be heard. We do have an important zoning clarification on the agenda,” said Town Manager Shaun Suhoski. “Right now, the ambiguity in the zoning can allow a single-family home in a residential district to be opened up to a group of unrelated persons. In the most recent example under consideration, it’s being called a sober house. The proposed amendment is intended to provide predictability in similar and like uses within neighborhoods. It’s not to exclude anyone.”
Submitted by the Zoning Board of Appeals and Zoning Enforcement Officer Bob Legare, Article 6 calls for amending the definition of “family” in the bylaws. Currently, Section 4.1 of the bylaws describes a family as “(a)ny number of individuals living and cooking together on the premises as a single housekeeping unit.”
The amended bylaw would require a group of five or more people to be related “by blood, marriage or adoption, including wards of the state.”
The article also calls for an increase from three to five the number of unrelated individuals living together to meet the definition of a boarding house.
The issue arose when a property owner opened a sober house at 217 Spring St. in January. Legare found that the home more closely resembled a boarding house, but owner James Parmenter argued the site complies with the town’s current definition of family.
The ZBA upheld Legare’s decision while also denying reasonable accommodation to Parmenter to house five people on-site until he could bring the property into compliance with the requirements to operate a boarding house.
Suhoski is urging voters to pass the amendments.
“When you just allow anyone to live in a single-family home that isn’t built in compliance with public safety codes that protect multiple residents, it’s a hazard from a public safety perspective,” he added.
Article 5 seeks approval to transfer $36,650 from the Ambulance Stabilization Fund to equip the new ambulance and purchase two IV pumps for the Advanced Life Support ambulances.
“These are revenues from the ambulance we’ve already collected,” said Suhoski. “Those are funds we already have, but we need town meeting approval to transfer them.”
Articles 2 through 4 seek to pay three prior invoices totaling just under $21,500. Approval requires a nine-tenths majority vote on each article. Article 1 asks voters to amend the fiscal year 2026 transfer station enterprise fund budget and approve funding to pay the increased cost of disposal fees.
“Disposal costs have gone up,” said Suhoski. “Revenues have gone up as well. The people who use the transfer station, including the commercial haulers, are paying for it. So, it’s not applied against the tax levy.
“We’d like to transfer $30,000 from retained earnings in the transfer station budget and transfer that into the line item budget that was approved in June to increase that budget by $30,000,” he said. “That should cover us for the rest of the year.”
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.