Greenville looks to revise land use ordinance with motorsports definition

GREENVILLE — The Greenville Planning Board is looking to finalize a proposed revision to the town’s land use ordinance by including a new definition pertaining to motorsports businesses.

A motorsports sales, service and repair establishment is “A commercial use involving the retail sale, servicing, maintenance and mechanical repair of recreational and utility vehicles powered by internal combustion or electric engines. This use includes but is not limited to boats and electrical watercraft, snowmobile, all terrain vehicles, utility vehicles, small engine recreational vehicles, for example dirt bikes, go karts, and lawn and garden equipment, for example mowers, chainsaws and trimmers,” Planning Board Chair John Contreni read aloud during a Nov. 19 meeting.

“This, if it passes, would still have to go to the select board and if it passes would still have to go to the town,” Contreni said before the planning board gave its approval to the definition to be added to the land use ordinance. 

If the select board OKs the measure it would appear as a question on a special town meeting ballot.

In other business, Code Enforcement Officer Ron Sarol gave his report, citing that he has approved 19 permits in the past five weeks. 

The permits are for eight single family homes, two subdivisions, two for demolition — an old book store downtown and a former downtown store — four sheds/garages, a reconstruction permit for the bookstore, and for shoreland tree cutting and earth moving. 

Six of the eight single family homes are in the subdivision on Blair Hill that were permitted at the same time, Sarol said.

This year’s permit total is 120, surpassing the 110 of 2024.

In June, LD 1829, known as “An Act to Build Housing for Maine Families and Attract Workers to Maine Businesses by Amending the Laws Governing Housing Density,” was passed in Augusta.

“This updates our land use ordinance, it just plays off of what we did last summer with the accessory dwelling units and all that,” Sarol said.

The bill says subdivisions consist of five units instead of three and specifies some of the training that planning board officials need to have, the code enforcement officer said.

Some changes will need to be made to the land use ordinance to comply with LD 1829, and the planning board will discuss these more in the months to come.

The planning board is currently lacking one of its two alternate positions and interested residents can fill out an application that is available through the town website at greenvilleme.gov/boards/planning-board, Contreni said.