ROCHESTER – Fall town meeting voters may decide whether to place a temporary ban on solar energy fields, the Rochester Planning Board discussed at their meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 9.

A solar moratorium would temporarily prohibit new solar fields in Rochester, allowing the town to re-examine their solar bylaws and “better situate themselves” for projects moving forward, Town Planner Nancy Durfee said.

Durfee stated that she had a meeting with “many department heads” in the spring that discussed the potential of bringing a solar moratorium to the fall town meeting.

“It’s like a moment where you yell at your kids, ‘Quiet, I gotta think,’” explained board member Chris Silveira about the purpose of moratoriums.

“We have the right scenario,” Durfee said, adding that many other communities in the area such as Wareham, Acushnet, and Carver have also “put a pause on it.”

Durfee says that this moratorium is now possible because the town has already committed to a number of solar projects. She suggested that if the town placed a moratorium, they should set it for a year.

“Other communities surrounding have been successful” in putting moratoriums in place, she said. “I don’t think it's as much of a hurdle as it was in the past.”

Durfee said that this would be an “opportunity to take a fresh look at the bylaw and see if there’s anything else that would help the community approach it in a better light for the town.”

Board chair Arnold Johnson spoke out against bringing a moratorium to the fall town meeting.

“There’s no doubt the bylaw could use tweaking, but by and large we’ve been pretty solid, more solid than other towns in our area. I’m not really sure whether we should put the effort into a solar moratorium,” said Johnson.

Board member John DiMaggio offered another perspective.“Right now we have a quiet time, this might be a missed opportunity if we don’t take advantage of it.”

Durfee suggested that the board members look at the bylaw again, and they could continue the discussion next meeting.

Johnson said that the board would have to decide by the first week of September for the article to make it in time for the fall town meeting.

Fall town meeting is currently scheduled for Oct. 17.