As the country teeters on the edge of what many economists are predicting will be an exceptionally difficult recession, Hooksett town officials and residents are contemplating adopting a growth ordinance that will manage the town’s growth when the housing market flourishes.

Voters passed a growth management ordinance that came through a petitioned warrant article with about 230 signatures in May 2005, but a year later a Merrimack County Superior Court judge ruled it was not legally binding.

There was not sufficient data about how growth ordinances worked in surrounding towns and on how the municipal costs would balance with taxes, according to the April 2006 ruling.

The court’s decision came in response to a developer’s lawsuit against the town after the Planning Board told the development company at a June 2005 application hearing that a petitioned ordinance would prevent them from building on 20 lots.

Budget Committee member Michael Sorel, who started the petition, said the town-wide vote for the ordinance shows the town wants something in place to curb growth, an issue that will become important when the housing market perks up again after the predicted recession.

According to Sorel, the Planning Board did not embrace the ordinance voters passed and knew it would not stand up in court, adding he feels the Planning Board waited for the ordinance to fail.

The ordinance included a limit on building permits issued each year to 2 percent of the total dwelling units in town, a quarter of those being reserved for people building their own homes, and a limit of five for any one individual or entity.

At a public meeting at Hooksett Public Library on Jan. 29, planning consultant Philip Herr presented information through a PowerPoint presentation that explored the town’s options for controlling growth over the coming years.

The easiest and most discussed solution, it seemed, was to employ growth phasing rather than a specific ordinance.

Growth phasing, Herr said, regulates the rate at which individual developments are built out. A growth management ordinance, he said, determines how the entire town will be builtover the years.

In his presentation, Herr said unchecked growth in Hooksett could bring the population to 44,000 over the next several years. With some sort of ordinance in place, be it phasing or a hard growth-management ordinance, the town could contain that growth to about 22,000 in the same amount of time.

Hooksett’s current population stands at about 13,000.

Manchester Sand and Gravel is using a concept similar to growth phasing for their Head’s Pond development, a residential project that will be completed in eight phases over a decade or more.

“Personally, I would be in favor of the development phasing.

It’s easier to maintain, and it accomplishes the same thing in the long run,” said Planning Board Chairman Richard Marshall, adding a growth management ordinance would be difficult to implement and would eat up a lot of staff efforts.

If phasing were adopted, Herr said, the town would most likely have to use conservation deeds, change lot sizes and increase density in some areas to allow for open space requirements.

Having a long-term growth plan, said Sorel, will allow the town to more vigorously pursue some of the goals set in the town’s 2004 Master Plan.

“You can’t stop growth. You want growth, you need growth ... but you can control growth and you can stop sprawl,” Sorel said. “The community has to decide, and in my opinion, the community spoke at the ballot box,” he added, referring to the ordinance Hooksett voters passed in 2005.