Tonight (2017-07-10) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Planning Board.
The meeting was relatively long, both in number of items on the agenda (7) and time taken (~2 hours). Two items caused most of the discussion, the rest were pretty straightforward. The quick ones were all approved, longer ones were deferred to future meetings. Despite how that sounds, I don’t think there was a pattern.
A house on Ontario Street was in for approval to build a shed. Which they had already built, one of those approvals after the fact. Amusingly enough, one of the board members lives just across the street. Either way, they got their approval.
The Methodist church wanted approval for an addition to house an elevator for wheelchairs (and similar). They were before the Zoning Board a few weeks ago for that side of this project. I’m generally in favor of giving the property owners what they want, double so when it’s a church. That it was to provide handicap access is the icing on the cake. So I was not surprised it was approved. They talked about it a little longer then I would have expected, but still pretty quick.
A house on York street is building an addition and was surprised by the requirement for approval. While they haven’t finished, the foundation is already in the ground. Turns out the parents want some space a little farther away from their kids. Regardless, they received their approval.
Honeoye Falls Distillery got approval for outdoor seating. Nice to see Scott again, as it’s always nice to see people I knew from way back when. I also find it amusing whenever alcohol comes up at this sort of thing, especially in light of what it can say about different political ideologies. One of those things that certainly has it’s exceptions, but can also have amusing trends.
So those were the four approvals, all relatively quick. Which leaves the two long discussions that didn’t reach a decision.
The first of those was actually the first hearing of the night, subdividing a property on Rittenhouse Drive. It’s a corner lot, which would make the ‘new’ lot a Peer street property. Lots of back and forth on not being in keeping with the neighborhood character and such. Also some comments on not wanting to create a precedent for flag lots. Brought to mind an article I had read recently on where rights come from. I will give Muffy credit, she does know the things to say to encourage the board. Although in the end, they wanted more time to do additional research on their part. We’ll see what happens at the next meeting (August 7th).
The other long discussion was the last one of the night, Mathstone concept review. By the nature of these no decision would have been made tonight. The intent is to show Mathstone what issues might prevent a future favorable decision. Considering this is at least the fourth concept for this property I have sat through (and there were at least two before I started Observing), I think the odds are decent nothing will come of this. Which is a bit of a shame, as much as I like the property as it is. It’s essentially unused as is, might as well get some value out of it. If that value also creates some ‘official’ trails (instead of the ‘unofficial’ ones that are currently there), all the better. Again, we will see what happens in time.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the July 10th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Planning Board.
Link to agenda on Village website.
Link to agenda stored on this site, should the village lose their copy.