The evening of 2023-11-06 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
Application for the evening was on the location of housing for bees and chickens. Long story short, it couldn’t meet the required setback. I heard wanting 95 feet, instead of the 100 required by code.
It was said that, from a code point of view, the question is location of the structure, not what will go in the structure. Although, the Board would be blind to ignore the stated usage. But it gets to that key point of Zoning. It’s not a question of if X is allowed. It’s a question of is the change (or variance) from what is allowed big enough to make a difference.
As was explained, the chickens and bees have been there for about three years. Due to scale and the way the code is written, this only becomes an issue if complaints are raised. And they were by one neighbor, hence the meeting.
On the other hand, a number of neighbors are in favor of the usage. Which I think makes this a great illustration of the core function of a Zoning Board. They weigh the benefit to the applicant against the detriment to the community. And act on however that balance ends up. Sometimes it’s pretty cut and dry, being all benefit or all detriment. But things get interesting when there is both benefit and detriment. As is this case.
In the end, no decision was made tonight. Due to the presence of a State road, the County has to weigh in. So decision is being left for next meeting, which will have given the County time to respond (or the timer will have elapsed, allowing the Village to act without County input). As such the comment period is still open, and anyone interested is welcome to send their comments on this topic to the Village.
After that discussion, there was a short concept review for a potential cannabis dispensary. As concept, no action taken. And still a number of State hoops to jump through before the Village could act here. But the potential business owner wanted to at least get on the radar with the Village, as she attempts to setup a dispensary in the village business area. The old Oppedisano Bootery was her current target, but there are other vacant storefronts that could potentially be used if that one doesn’t work out.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the November 06, 2023 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
Online copy of Agenda was not available anywhere I could find. Perhaps it will be on the Village’s website in the future, perhaps not. But there was a notice of public hearing, which for this situation functions well enough as an agenda.
In the interests of full disclosure, and as I was speaking to the function of Zoning Boards, I sit on a different Zoning Board.