In addition to the financial items already discussed at Hooksett’s deliberative session of Town Meeting and electing town officials, voters will also weigh in on several zoning amendments when the polls open on Tuesday, May 13.

While the majority of the amendments are what Planning Board Chairman *** Marshall termed “housekeeping items,” needed for clarity in the current ordinances, one is of particular importance to voters concerned about the town’s growth.

Amendment 13 asks voters to approve adding a development phasing requirement to the current zoning ordinance. The Planning Board has been working on developing a way to control Hooksett’s growth for several months now, having worked with planning consultant Phillip Herr on the town’s growth buildout.

Herr said at a presentation at the library on Jan. 29 that unchecked growth could bring Hooksett’s population up to as much as 44,000 over the next few years. Hooksett currently has a population of about 13,000, according to the 2007 Town Report.

If either a growth management or phasing ordinance were adopted, that population growth could be curbed to around 20,000 in the same time period, according to Herr.

Growth phasing regulates the rate at which individual developments are built. A growth management ordinance, on the other hand, determines how the entire town will be developed over the years.

Marshall said the Planning Board decided on phasing rather than a growth management ordinance to level the playing field among developers and distribute the growth more evenly over a longer period of time. Such a plan is also less likely to end up in court, he said.

The previous growth management ordinance Hooksett voters adopted in 2005 ended up coming before a Merrimack Superior Court judge, who ruled it was not legally binding.

A developer who went before the Planning Board shortly after the ordinance passed with an application to build on 20 lots in town took it to court.

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.

Budget Committee member Mike Sorel, who started the petition that got the ordinance on the 2005 ballot, said the result of that vote shows the town’s desire to have something in place to control growth.

Under the development phasing proposal, any development including more than 12 lots or units would require the developer to submit a gradual phasing plan that would restrict the construction to one-eighth of the total lots per year.

For high and medium residential districts, the cut-off number is 24 dwelling units per year.; for developments using sewer capacity, the cut-off is 18 units per year; and for all other types of developments only 12 units can be built each year.

Affordable housing and elderly housing, renovated units that don’t provide additional dwelling spaces, and those units already approved in the planning process would be exempt from the terms of the phasing ordinance.

“It’s very important. Failure to pass this puts us right back where we were, trying to find another way to do it,” Marshall said, saying the board would revisit the growth management issue.

Sorel said he supports the proposed development phasing amendment, calling it a step in the right direction for the town. “It’s more than what we have now, which is nothing,” Sorel said of the proposal. “The town needs to move ahead, and I think they will.