Tonight (2020-08-03) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
As with the last meeting, still at the Community Center (former Legion Hall). But we had a different chair tonight, as Brian was absent. Don’t know the details, but I got the sense it was expected.
In any case Mark stepped up and did the job. One of the advantages of having experienced members. Even if they haven’t run the meetings before, they’ve been through it even times they know the steps. And since this Board setup has alternate members, they were able to fill the empty seat, and thus maintained a full Board for the meeting. Good job all around, both in the planning when the Board’s were merged and in the actual running of tonight’s meeting.
To continue the skillful improvisation, there wasn’t a copy of the zoning code in the building. As it’s not the normal location, this is somewhat understandable. Thanks to some quick thinking, and the modern technology of smartphones, they were able to look up the relevant section of code and the meeting could continue (was a setback question).
First applicant was the owner of the Valero gas station, didn’t catch his name. Unfortunately, between his accent and mask, I couldn’t make out most of what he said. Considering the requests for verification from the Board, I don’t think it was just me. But from those verifications I can say that he was looking to enlarge the footprint of the gas station, so as to offer more products inside.
No approval was granted (or denied) as this was a concept review. Biggest complication sounds like it will be the setbacks, as this is a preexisting conforming property, and thus already in violation of the code. So it will need a variance for any footprint changes. We’ll see how that turns out.
Second applicant was Ryan from Mathstone. He is renovating his property at 65 West Main and required approval for the staircase. The existing stairs don’t comply with the code, but they are also preexisting conforming due to age. But as he is working on them, he must bring them into compliance. So he wanted to build an addition for the new stairs.
And he received approval. Seemed straightforward enough, I would have been surprised if he hadn’t.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the August 3, 2020 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
Agenda was not available anywhere I could find. Perhaps it will be on the Village’s website in the future, perhaps not…