Millis planning board hears 12–18 month plan to digitize town bylaws
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
The planning board received details on a vendor-led project to digitize zoning and other bylaws, a process expected to take 12–18 months and generate roughly 50–150 questions for local review; the tool will include a searchable database for officials, builders and residents.
At its December meeting the Town of Millis Planning Board reviewed a vendor-led project to digitize the town's bylaws and make them searchable online.
Unidentified Speaker 2 summarized the vendor’s scope: the effort will cover zoning bylaws, general bylaws, subdivision rules and regulations, and the town's home-rule charter. The vendor will prepare an initial draft, make grammatical and typographical corrections, and return a set of questions for local review; the vendor estimated between 50 and 150 questions and a deployment timeline of about 12–18 months.
Unidentified Speaker 2 demonstrated the search benefits, saying the tool would let staff or the public type a phrase—"chicken coop," for example—and retrieve every bylaw and related language across the vendor's database of participating municipalities. The board discussed that the town’s Select Board must complete contracting and administrative steps before the vendor work begins.
Board members described the project as a time-saving research tool for staff, builders and homeowners. The transcript records no formal motion or vote on the vendor work during this meeting.