2023 General Bylaw Recodification

Under Article 8 of the October 2017 Special Town Meeting, the Town Clerk was authorized "to make up-to-date, accurately indexed, print and digital copies of the Town's General Bylaws conveniently available to the public; to separately format and index Chapter 10, known as the Zoning Bylaws, and make up-to-date, accurately indexed, print and digital copies of the Town's Zoning Bylaws conveniently available to the public; to promptly incorporate and index future amendments to the Bylaws in up-to-date print and digital copies of the General Bylaws and the Zoning Bylaws which shall be conveniently available to the public." The Town engaged the services of General Code, a firm specializing in the digitization of local bylaws, to reorganize the Town's bylaws so the Town Clerk could implement Article 8.

At the 2023 Annual Town Meeting, Town Meeting members will be asked to adopt recodified versions of the General and Zoning Bylaws. Recodification does the following:

• Reorganizes the bylaws to be consistent in terms of numbering, labeling, and formatting
• Creates a document that works well in a searchable, web-based format
• Brings the General and Zoning Bylaws up to date as of the most recent amendments
• Allows the bylaws to be immediately and seamlessly updated as soon as Town Meeting takes action and upon the approval of the Attorney General

The recodified General and Zoning Bylaws include the existing text of these bylaws verbatim. There have been no changes to the content of the General bylaws; the only exception is for internal references to another section or subsection within the bylaw. Internal references have been updated so that they refer to the new numbering of the bylaw. In the General Bylaws (Chapters 1 - 260), some minor style changes have been made: "Town" is uppercased whenever it refers to the Town of Milton; numbers are cited in a consistent format, with "one" through "nine" spelled out and 10 and above, fractions, dates, etc. in numeric format. It is possible and likely that there are provisions in this Draft that are outdated and/or in need of revision. However, the goal is to provide the Town with a Code, particularly one that is easily accessible to the public and officials online. Once adopted and published, the Town can amend its Code following its usual bylaw adoption procedures to clean up any provisions that are in need of revision.

The documents below will help Town Meeting members, Town officials, and residents to evaluate the changes that are being proposed to the General Bylaws.

• Review the Zoning Bylaws