North Kingstown Planning Commission Reviews Hazard Mitigation Plan Update on January 7, 2025
North Kingstown Planning Commission Meeting – January 7, 2025
The North Kingstown Planning Commission met on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, at 7:00 PM at Town Hall, 80 Boston Neck Road, North Kingstown, Rhode Island. The main agenda item was a discussion of the updated North Kingstown Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan. Staff reported that the latest draft is a second version and that the town will complete the remaining revisions in-house before state and federal review. The commission also received an administrative actions report and approved the December 3, 2024 minutes.
Consent Calendar
- The December 3, 2024 meeting minutes were approved unanimously by voice vote, subject to editorial corrections.
Administrative Actions Report
- Staff gave a brief administrative report. A solar-related appeal remains pending and was described as being under the Zoning Board’s jurisdiction.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No formal public comment period was held. Staff described the public outreach for the hazard mitigation plan as a resident survey that drew about 123 responses and two Local Hazard Mitigation Committee meetings. Commissioner Meg said her volunteer Climate Conversations group provided much of the public participation, called 123 survey responses “kind of pathetic,” and urged more public engagement. Staff noted the survey deadline was extended several times and outreach included social media and direct emails to boards and commissions.
Discussion Items
- Hazard Mitigation Plan update: Town planning staff explained that after the first consultant draft, the town and Local Hazard Mitigation Committee submitted extensive comments, but many requested edits did not appear in the second draft from consultants GZA. Staff is now making the plan revisions in-house, including formatting, pagination, and editorial fixes.
- Comprehensive Plan linkage: Staff said the draft is deficient in its required FEMA “crosswalk” demonstrating how the hazard mitigation plan links to the town’s Comprehensive Plan. Staff will add language from the existing plan, and future Comprehensive Plan updates will carry hazard mitigation actions forward. The plan is now a reference document, not an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan.
- Community Rating System: Staff noted the draft gives little attention to North Kingstown’s participation in the Community Rating System, which gives flood insurance premium discounts and requires annual action updates to the Town Council. Staff will restore relevant language.
- Development trends: The draft only lists recent developments, but FEMA requires a discussion of where development is occurring and how hazards could affect those areas. Staff is drafting that section.
- Goals and actions: Staff is merging existing actions with new recommended actions. The existing plan’s action-status table was moved to an appendix to avoid confusion. Commissioners noted that many actions lack concrete cost estimates and have vague timeframes; staff may assign more discrete timeframes and add cost-range definitions.
- Flood-risk and road-flooding lists: Commissioner Meg noted that the flood-risk facility list omitted schools, saying Hamilton Elementary and Fishing Cove are likely in flood zones, and that the flood-prone road list omitted Post Road and Phillips Street, possibly because only local roads were listed. Staff will verify all schools and roads using GIS and the CRMC sea level rise study.
- Local content and duplication: Commissioners said the draft felt like a template, included duplicated community profiles, and devoted too much space to Quonset, an area the town does not control. Staff responded that Quonset is within North Kingstown’s corporate boundaries and must be included in the plan.
- Training requirements: After the administrative report, commissioners discussed state-required planning training and possible exemptions. Staff agreed to research the requirements and send information to the commission.
Key Outcomes
- The Planning Commission took no vote on the Hazard Mitigation Plan; it was a discussion item.
- Staff will incorporate the requested substantive and editorial changes, then send the revised plan to the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency for a compliance review, followed by FEMA review and, finally, Town Council adoption. Staff intends to avoid sending the plan to the Town Council before state and federal comments are resolved.
- The commission approved the December 3, 2024 minutes subject to editorial corrections.
- Staff will follow up on commissioner requests regarding schools, roads, cost/timeframe tables, public engagement, and training requirements.
Meeting Transcript
Item on the agenda item 3A discussion, North Kingstown Hazard Mitigation Plan update. Hi. Hi. How are you? Welcome. No, it's just the latest draft of the hazard mitigation plan. So the consultants were here a couple months ago at this point. And you guys had a discussion very early in the process. I think it was mostly on what is hazard mitigation, some of the vulnerabilities and risks at that time. And since then, we got an initial first draft back of the this is actually a second draft, believe it or not. You would not be able to tell that. But we sent that to the local hazard mitigation committee. We got some feedback back from the members. Meg is your representative on that board. We got some comments back from her and a couple of other members. And staff also had extensive comments that were going back to them. So we sent them a long list of edits. We got this version back. We're actually going to do them in-house at this point for expediency because it's just going to be quicker for us to make those changes. So as we speak, Elle's working on more of the like editorial things, even if it's a spelling mistake, if we think the formatting is weird, pagination has been driving us absolutely crazy. So we're trying to fix the pagination on it. The formatting is funky, so we're trying to like erase their formatting and get better one in. So it's stuff like that. But also substantively, there were things that we had requested that they do that they didn't that were in our initial comments to them on the first draft, and it was actually in the RFQ that we sent out that are not in there. Namely, there's very little discussion about the comprehensive plan. If you look at the existing hazard mitigation plan, there's a whole section related to how this plan ties to the comp plan. And in the comp plan, there are specific actions taken from the hazard mitigation plan that are then reflected in the comprehensive plan. So they are very linked. There's almost nothing in this plan besides the actions that were from the old plan. And so that is something that's not only we asked for in the RFQ, but it's a crosswalk FEMA requirement that you show how this plan can be integrated and linked to other planning documents. So that's completely deficient. So I'm working on that. Even if we take language from the existing plan and literally copy and paste it, like the a lot of that language should be carried over, and none of that was done. So we're going to be adding that documentation. Um the one thing I have to look at is how some of the new actions that are in there might be implemented by some of the actions in the comp plan or not. Certainly when we do the comprehensive plan rewrite or update in five more years, it's required every 10 years now. We'll have to carry some of those actions into the hazards element from this plan. So that's eventually those actions will be adopted into the comprehensive plan rewrite in five more years when the update is due. Yeah, and this one will this one will be updated in five years again. So it's kind of on, you know, it's a catching up game all the time between the two documents. This is not an amendment to the comp plan. It used to be an amendment to the comp plan. Now it's a reference document. So if you look in the beginning of the comp plan, it's listed as like resources or a reference, or it's not an amendment, so you don't have to adopt this as an amendment to the comp plan. So in the past we had done that. Um it will go to the town council eventually. It's not nearly ready to go there yet. So that was the big one of the bigger substantive items that was missing. The other was, and it's near and dearer to me because I work on this is the community rating system. That is something the town participates in.
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