Milford attorney seeks change to city’s site plan review process

MILFORD — Attorney Kevin Curseaden has shepherded numerous applicants interested in developing land through the city's zoning process. What he has learned is that it's time to change that process.

Curseaden has filed regulation changes to the Planning and Zoning Board to, he says, make the site plan review procedures more efficient. The P&Z board opened a public hearing on the proposal at its meeting Tuesday and has referred the revisions to its regulations subcommittee.

“I was looking at this from an organizational perspective, and what the organization could do to change,” Curseaden said at the hearing. “It's not directed in an individual.”

He added that the regulatory process was daunting.

“I think the bureaucratic, just the regulatory process, in general, wears you down,” he said. “In looking at this and representing clients who, for a lot of them, time is money. They submit an application, Mr. (David) Sulkis makes his review comments, and you don't hear the client for two or three months because something changed, they have to find funding, or their design professionals are busy.”

Many of the clients he works with would ask him why the review process is so lengthy, Curseaden said. State statutes specify a timeline for reviews, he said.

“It's 65 days on a site plan from the time the applications are filed until you are supposed to have a decision on it, otherwise, the application is automatically approved, as long as it is just a site plan, and it doesn't have a special permit or some other aspect attached to it,” he said.

Sulkis said he follows the facts where they go, and he does not discriminate against the applicants, but he demands they follow regulations.

“There are people who don't like that,” Sulkis said. “There are people who are used to submitting applications in a particular way before I was here, basically on a napkin, that got approved.”