Mojalaki Holdings sought site plan approval from the Franklin Planning board for a solar panel array that required installing new utility poles and cutting down mature trees so the solar panels can receive sufficient sunlight. It would sit on about six and a half acres of the approximately 96 acres of land owned by Mojalaki. The City’s site plan review regulations had no ordinance language specifically addressing solar panel arrays. Neighbors to the project raised concerns about impacts to the local scenery and general distrust of solar projects due to prior bad experiences.
The Board denied site plan approval by concluding that the project conflicted with several of the purpose provisions in the City’s site plan review regulations and gave three reasons for its denial. First, it opined that installing new utility poles would “create an industrial look and character which is out of place in this neighborhood.” Second, it opined that the solar panel array “creates an endangerment, an adverse impact, to both the direct abutters to the project, and to the overall residents of the neighborhood.” And third, it opined that cutting down mature trees to plant new trees contradicts the purpose provisions. Mojalaki appealed the decision to the superior court where the court upheld the denial of the site plan application, relying on the first and third of the Board’s three reasons for denial.
The Supreme Court agreed with Mojalaki’s argument that it was illegal and unreasonable for the Board to deny solely in reliance on the purpose provisions of the site plan regulations. As the Court explained, purpose provisions outline the goals of site plan review regulations. Conversely, other provisions detail the specific technical requirements that applications must meet to achieve the goals of the purpose provisions. The purpose provisions do not detail specific requirements that an applicant must meet. Without specific requirements, the applicant is left without objective standards to guide the application and the proposed project is left to be judged by the subjective views of the Board through ad hoc decision making. Turning to its’ decision in Trustees of Dartmouth Coll. v. Town of Hanover,171 N.H. 497 (2018) the Court concluded that sole reliance on the purpose provisions of the site plan review regulations to deny the approval was an ad hoc decision motivated by vague concerns not founded on specific technical requirements of the site plan regulations. The Court then concluded that no further fact finding was necessary and granted Mojalaki a builder’s remedy requiring compliance with 14 conditions spelled out in the town planner’s draft decision in favor of approval.