Tonight (2018-02-28) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Steering Committee (or something like that).
As this was a workshop/committee meeting, it wasn’t announced through the normal channels. But by paying attention at public meetings I knew when/where it would happen. And as expected, when I showed up and sat quietly in a corner, no one asked me to leave.
Molly (of the Steinmetz Planning Group) effectively ran the meeting. She started out with a quick summary of what has gone before and where to go next. It sounds like the bulk of the work has been done, and tonight was mostly about one last review before sharing the results with the public.
The first half of the meeting focused on the changes to the Special Use Permit process, and the impact of that. It does sound like it will result in a simpler process. I’ve been to too many meetings where one Board says it can’t act until the other does, and nothing actually happens. Hopefully the proposed changes will resolve those issues.
Although I don’t think the name change is a good idea. Previously, Special Use Permits were just that, SUP’s. Under the proposed changes they become Special Permits, SP. In contrast, we have (and will continue to have) Site Plan Reviews, SPR (or SP). I would expect the short hands sharing the SP to cause confusion down the road. Avoiding confusion in an already confusing process is of benefit to everyone involved.
It was stated that the Planning Board can choose to waive requirements when they receive applications, if they feel the particular requirement has no value in the details of the request. A nice idea in theory, but in practice it doesn’t work well. If you are handed a list of requirements and told ‘well some of these may not apply, but you won’t know until the meeting happens’, are you going to only do some of them? Or will you do all of them, because the Board is in a position of power over you and you need their approval to use your property as you want? Which then goes to ‘are each of the requirements reasonable’? Or can the ‘waiving’ process be moved sooner, so the whole process doesn’t take months on end for the smallest of changes (see previous meetings on Muffy’s subdivision).
Another nit to pick, I heard that the village attorney interprets the code at times for the Boards. I have observed this myself. Unfortunately, interpreting the code is a reserved function of the Zoning Board. Which only comes into play if someone (such as the applicant that just got turned down) actually argues the issue.
Concern was expressed in telling when a property containing an ‘in-law apartment’ was sold. I was surprised this was an issue. As property is taxed, I would expect the owner change to be quickly caught. Which creates an obvious trigger point for any ‘new owner’ checks, including a visit by the Code Enforcement Officer. Worse case scenario, make a list of all property owners each year and go through it looking for changes, as compared to last years list. Software should do the heavy lifting, but if it can’t, that’s what you have office staff for.
The second half of the meeting was discussing changes to the zoning map. A number of views on exactly what should be zoned what, with almost as many stories about changes over the years (stories are great to listen to, but don’t expect me to repeat them here). From my point of view the proposed map changes are good as they simplify the map, by decreasing the number of zones and cutting down on the number of ‘spot’ zones.
At the end there was discussion of where to go next. Sounds like there will be an ‘Open House’ meeting to share the almost finished code changes with the public. That will probably happen sometime in April. Likely followed a month or so later by the formal Public Hearing and adoption of the new/revised Zoning Code.
All in all, so far it looks good. I’ll need to review the code details once it is made available to the public, but I am hopeful of the direction it is headed.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the February 28, 2018 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Steering Committee (or whatever it is called).