Tonight (2020-01-06) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
Must be barn demolition time, as two requests were made tonight. But before those were discussed, the ‘Brain’ had to be removed from the minutes.
The chair of this Board has the name of ‘Brian’. The computer the minutes are produced on likes to auto-correct that to ‘Brain’. Thus having to remove the brains in the minutes. Does remind me of other boards that choose to refer to members by last names only. Might be worth trying here as well.
First demolition request was from the Episcopal church. Apparently they have a garage/barn that is collapsing and they want to demolish it, and then replace with a smaller one. Due to the proximity of buildings in the ‘Historic District‘, SEQR will be required, so the topic was tabled until next month. If the building is in fact collapsing it seems like a no-brainer to me. But I did walk by after the meeting, and I didn’t see any obvious signs of collapse. On the other hand, if the property owner wants to replace their structure, that should be a good enough reason.
The next demolition request was from Mathstone for a barn in the back of 61 W Main. Having walked by the place recently, I’ll agree it’s in bad shape. I can’t speak to the actual building code, but demolition seems to be prudent. Yet the discussion wandered a surprising amount before getting there. Or put differently, before deciding the Code Enforcement Officer needed to inspect it and (if appropriate) condemn the building, thus allowing Ryan to demolish it.
Considering the similarities to the cases, I can see trying to solve them the same way. But if another section of code (70-9.G) allows you to (in essence) bypasses all normal procedures if the building ‘involves imminent danger’? Go for the simple solutions when you can.
As an aside, tonight was also the Town of Mendon’s Annual Organizational Meeting. As the above shows, I was at the Village Zoning Board meeting instead. Shame the Town wasn’t meeting next week, oh well.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 6, 2020 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
Link to agenda on Village website, for whatever that is worth.