Tonight (2017-08-30) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Steering Committee (or something like that).
As this meeting wasn’t publicized through the normal channels, I didn’t know the starting time. So I showed up 15 minutes late, instead of 15 minutes earlier. Nothing wrong here, this wasn’t the sort of meeting that went looking for an audience. But it also wasn’t ‘behind closed doors’, so no one kicked me out when I invited myself in.
The focus of this meeting was revising the villages zoning code. More of a general overview of the method to make those revisions, then a detailed look at what needs to be changed (even as some details did crop up). Their timeline hopes to have this project done by the end of ‘winter 2017’. It was acknowledged as an optimistic deadline. Either way, shouldn’t take that long.
While it is too soon to say if this will be a ‘good thing’, so far it looks promising. They are identifying many of the ‘flaws’ in the code that have come up over the years. The multiple undefined districts, the handful of one lot zones, the poor wording in setbacks, the inherent difficulties of updating multiple places, etc. As always, the devil is in the details, but identifying the problems is an important step towards fixing them.
The committee members were sent away with ‘homework’, and while I am not a member of the committee, I felt like answering some of the questions they were asked. Accordingly:
I think the most important part of the code to revise is 190-3, the part that says anything not allowed is denied. In other words, the failure state. Any legal system will have a failure state, for what happens when something that isn’t covered comes up. Per the Constitutions 10th Amendment, the issue goes to a lower level of government (and/or the people). Per the criminal system, ‘innocent until proven guilty‘. Per the Village zoning code, all is denied. Seems an appropriate failure state for an oppressive regime, but completely backwards for a free society. Having said that, I would be (pleasantly) shocked and amazed if this was changed.
An opportunity that this revision offers is decreasing the number of zones. There are currently 13 listed zones. 8 of them do not appear to be defined in code, 4 of them apply to one ‘spot’. My initial thought is we can prune down to seven or so districts. One for commercial, one for industrial, one for downtown business (village business), one for mixed business residential (traditional village), and three for various residential (single family, two family, apartments). The others get merged or tossed, depending.
While listening to the discussion I had the idea that past zoning variances could point to code sections to revise. If the same sort of variance is being granted repeatedly, that implies the code there should be changed. As the agendas for the last decade are available, it shouldn’t be too hard to find frequent issues.
Internet connectivity was mentioned as basic infrastructure, along with roads, water, power, etc. While some of those utilities are private, others are public. Maybe the village should look into running their own ISP. While I am generally in favor of small government, I have had bad experiences with the local ‘high speed’ internet provider. And have heard similar stories from other residents. Perhaps ‘competition’ in the form of a municipal ISP would be beneficial?
From here, the committee looks to be having a mix of discussion meetings among themselves and meetings where they seek public input. I may have miscounted, but it looks like three discussions, two public input, and at the very end, a public hearing to make changes to the code. Next one will probably be a public input meeting in October, but we’ll see.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the August 30th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Steering Committee (or whatever it is called).