The evening of 2023-05-08 was a meeting of the Mendon Town Board.
Judging my the number of people using it in their comments, the word of the meeting was “bucolic“. From context, they seemed to be implying ‘short term rentals would disturb the bucolic character of Mendon’. In light of the previous Public Hearings, this did not surprise me.
What did surprise me was that the Board did not act on those local laws, I would have expected them to. But I like to be wrong here, as it means they are doing their due diligence to properly look things over.
There was a decent amount of discussion on the draft short term rental code. My take aware was it illustrated the trouble with zoning in general. Which is that you can’t cover everything, and the reasonable exceptions can quickly grow into an unreasonable mess. Which seems to be where they are having difficulty nailing down how to avoid a business in a residential district, without unduly inconveniencing home owners who have the occasional paying guest.
I’m sure whatever they end up with will lead to variances, as was pointed out during tonight’s discussion. Such is the role of the Zoning Board of Appeals (of which I am a member), serving as the ‘relief valve’ for the local zoning code. Of course, when there are many applications on a particular topic, that suggests the code in question is in need of review. Feeding back into the Town Board performing a process similar to the one they are currently engaged in. An imperfect system, but we are imperfect people.
Progress on the Splash Park and adjacent Military Memorial is nearing completion. An opening day was set for the Splash Park of May 29 at 2PM. And rules were adopted for the parks use. A dedication event for the Memorial was scheduled for June 11 at 11AM. Apparently there was difficulty lining up the schedules of all the involved families, hence that date and time. Never really a good time to say goodbye to a husband/father, but I hope it all goes well enough for them.
There were also a pair of Public Hearings tonight. Both seemed pretty simple and straightforward to me, and as no one commented, the public as well. Having said that, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out both add to restrictions in various ways, as they increase governments power by producing more huddles. To be fair, if you were going to go through the relevant processes anyways, you would likely be clearing these particular hurdles without even noticing. Which is likely why no one commented.
And for those of you planning to go to this Board’s July meeting, that was rescheduled to be on July 17 instead.
Once again, in the interests of full disclosure, tonight’s vouchers totaling ~$138k included one from me, for a rounding error percentage of that total. Unless math fails me, which is certainly possible. Having pointed out my ability to make mistakes above, it would be amusing (and a bit sad) if I made another one here.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 08, 2023 meeting of the Mendon Town Board.