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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-1-16 Ulysses Ag Committee Meeting with appendixUlysses Ag Committee Meeting January 16, 2018 7:00 p.m. Call to Order: 7:03 p.m. Members Present: Krys Kail, Mark Ochs, John Gates, Chaw Chang, ZUSC Liaison: Michael Boggs Guests: Debbie Teeter, CCE-Tompkins Announcements: • Debbie shared information about an upcoming Ag District Law workshop for elected and appointed municipal officials on Saturday, March 17th – 9:00 a.m. at the Ramada Inn on Triphammer Road. • Chaw reported he was interviewed for the Ithaca Voice, and he’s been having people he doesn’t know (non -farmers) stop by the farm for yard signs. • Design regulations are overbearing, sign regulations for R2 zone (Chaw is in this zone) are so restrictive as to be unworkable. • Solar zoning request: Supervisor wants two members of each committee to attend a planning board meeting to discuss solar law. • Krys announced there are now yard signs in support of the affordable housing project. Minutes: Chaw moved, Mark second, approved without dissent. Open Issues: 1. Solar Zoning: Tabled until Krys’ memo available for review. Krys and Mark will represent this committee at the planning board meeting. 2. ZUSC comments: The two biggest issues are: 1) How minor and major subdivisions are handled. Krys suggested there may be a difference between what the law actually says and what has actually been done. 2) There are a lot of comments suggesting these recommendations come from the Ag Plan, which the ag committee disagrees with. Many ideas were discussed and suggested for possible needs far into the future, and this one particular has been picked out from among many. Chaw recommended this must be addressed head on by the committee. Mark suggested perhaps a letter signed by ag plan committee members as well. New Business: 1. Ag Committee Land Compilation: Krys pointed out that not only is there little housing development increase in the town, there is very little housing development increase in the Village of Trumansburg. Concerning residential development, once you remove what is not in the proposed RA zone, the total is 53 buildings over 17 years, on 367 acres total (most are on 1.5 to 2 acre lots). She was able to find the houses (using satellite imagery) that are located in mature forestland, and also identified at least two farmer-owned new home constructions. Other homes have been constructed on bedrock. Out of 53, 28 are either in the woods or are farmers’ homes, leaving 25 sites and 143 acres – which may or may not have been productive farm land. Chaw added he received satellite information from the Supervisor showing there are 1000 more acres in agriculture since 2008. 2. ZUSC 1/18 Meeting: Talking points: a. Krys’ housing data b. The increase in ag land c. The misconstrued ag plan information d. Ag committee should have been formed before the grant was applied for, before the consultant was hired, and before ZUSC was formed. Also, ZUSC should be reporting to the Planning Board, rather than the other way around; ZUSC should not be reporting directly to the Town Board. e. Attitude of document is unfriendly to business, especially to farms. Michael suggested this committee not comment first at this meeting. Chaw shared John Wertis’ notes from the last Sustainability Committee, and there is some overlap in areas of concern. There was extended discussion about the state of agriculture and residential development, including specific examples. Adjourn 9:35 p.m. APPENDIX Baseline Data and Preliminary Analysis for Housing Increase, Town of Ulysses, 2001-2017 Prepared by Krys Cail, for the Ulysses Agriculture Committee, January 14, 2018 In the course of considering work done by the Town’s appointed advisory committee, the “Zoning Update Steering Committee,” (referred to as ZUSC throughout the rest of this document), there has been some disagreement in the community about the base data on increase in housing stock in the town. This very preliminary look at some baseline data is intended to bring more clarity to the discussion, and, perhaps, allow for a better focus on what planning issues the Town actually faces in moving forward to consider the need for changes in zoning, and in what manner it might be best to address them. Because neither the author or the Agriculture Committee has any commitment to the zoning objectives of the Cleaner, Greener Communities program sponsored by NYSERDA, goals established by that program are not included in this analysis. It should be noted that those statewide zoning goals have been established on the basis of generalized data, not data specific to our Town. The simplest approach to counting new residential development units within the portion of the Town for which the Town has land use and building code enforcement responsibility would seem to be to simply count how many Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) were issued by the Town over the study period. Unfortunately, records were not available in an easy-to-use format, however, by using the Tompkins County Assessment property database, and, as needed, requesting additional information on particular homes from the Code Enforcement Official, it was possible to compile an accurate list of the properties that had received a C of O in each of the study years. This information is available in detailed form in the Appendix. Aggregated data is presented here, for the entire Town (sans Village). In the graph below, C of Os for residential buildings are plotted by year. It should be noted that a few (very few) of these buildings are duplexes, and, as such, contain more than one dwelling unit. Mobile homes replacing other mobile homes in mobile home parks have been omitted, although they are granted Certificates of Occupancy under some conditions, as they do not represent new building or the use of a new site. No effort was made to determine if new buildings occupied the same site as a previous building that was demolished. Also shown on the graph are the ZUSC working estimate, as well as the average annual number of C of Os granted for residential buildings over the entire study period, as well as over the most recent ten years and the most recent six years. Overall, 108 C of Os were issued for these structures over the 17- year period. The most recent year, 2017, is equal to the mean over the most recent six-year period (at 8), while the previous year, 2016, was less than half the mean (at 3). In order to check this information, which seemed important to do, given that the records in the Town Building Department were not found to be meticulous and could conceivably include errors, information was cross-checked with both County Assessment and Census Bureau data. Census Bureau data used is also included, in full detail, in the Appendix, and excerpts are presented here. Data for the years 2000 and 2010 are from the Decennial Census full-count records; data for 2016 is from the American Community Survey administered by the Department of Census, and is a statistically-accurate sample size estimate of numbers. As an estimate, there is somewhat more room for error in the 2016 figures. However, the numbers generally corroborated the C of O records. For the 2011-2016 period, for instance, the Department of Census shows an additional 56 housing units were added in the portion of the Town of Ulysses outside of Village of Trumansburg. Housing Units Ulysses Town Trumansburg Village Ulysses Town sans Village Increase from previous, Ulysses Increase from previous, Trumansburg Increase from previous, Ulysses 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 New Residential Buildings Granted Certificates of Occupancy Year New Residential Development, Town of Ulysses 2001-2017, Without Village of Trumansburg Certificates of Occupancy Granted by Building Department for Residential Buildings ZUSC Estimate 17-year Average of Certificates of Occupancy Granted for Residential Buildings 10 Year Average of Certificates of Occupancy Granted for Residential Buildings 6 Year Average of Certificates of Occupancy Granted for Residential Buildings Town Village Town sans Village Housing Units, 2000 2198 715 1483 Occupied Housing Units 1986 682 1304 Vacant Housing Units 212 33 179 Housing Units,2010 2383 883 1500 185 168 17 Occupied Housing Units 2,138 816 1322 152 134 18 Vacant Housing Units 245 67 178 33 34 -1 Housing Units, 2016 2352 796 1556 -31 -87 56 Occupied Housing Units 2083 731 1352 -55 -85 30 Vacant Housing Units 269 65 204 24 -2 26 Note that the Department of Census counts housing units, not buildings- each apartment counts separately, even if in one building. For the same time period, the C of O record shows an increase of 48 buildings, two of which were duplexes, making a total of 50 units. The discrepancy of 6 units can easily be attributed to the creation of apartments within existing single-family homes or the addition of a few new lots at existing mobile home park tax parcels, and/or the range of error of the 2016 estimate. For the entire period, a total increase of 73 units is noted. This compares to 108 C of Os. There is something of a larger discrepancy there, with an additional 35 buildings in the C of O record; this is easily explained by the fact that the Census figures subtract housing that is removed from the housing stock. Taking note of the increasing vacancy rate, it is possible that the later period reflected lax enforcement of the requirement to demolish and remove housing that had been long vacant and fallen into disrepair. Using the C of O record to reflect housing increase may over-estimate the additional number of buildings, as no subtractions from the total stock of housing for fires, falling into disrepair, or tearing down a small cottage to build a larger home are taken into account. Despite the relatively low number of buildings added over the period (108 for the C of O record—with no subtraction for housing demolished—or 73 dwelling units for the Census data—with demolished housing accounted for, but, likely some duplexes and apartments added in or on to existing single family homes), it is still necessary to reduce this number further in order to have a solid understanding of residential development pressure in the area that the ZUSC is concerned with—the proposed Agriculture/Rural Zone. To do this, the list of Certificate of Occupancy buildings was gone through, parcel by parcel, in the Department of Assessment database, where it is possible to plot the parcel on Google Maps, from which the location can be compared visually to the Proposed Zoning Map. The parcels outside the Agriculture/Rural Zone were removed from the dataset. This left a total of only 64 residential buildings, on 975 acres. However, 11 of those properties were known to be, or appeared to be from the Google Map inspection, “farmer’s home” properties—large, clearly in active agriculture tracts that included a house (or, in one case, a small acreage associated with a large farmed parcel under the same ownership). If we subtract these parcels, the total is 53 buildings, and 367 acres used for residential building. Remember, this is still likely an over-estimate, as no allowance is made for the replacement of houses demolished and then rebuilt on the same site. Of these remaining residential building sites, 25 over a 17-year period were, based on visual inspection of satellite photos on Google Maps, were found to be not located in areas of mature forest, and, so, may have displaced agricultural or open-space (non-wooded) use. The total for acreage loss to agriculture on all of those 25 sites is 143 acres. This is, of course, not meant to imply that there has not been more acreage lost to agriculture in the period—there definitely has been. However, as the Agriculture Committee, as well as the Town’s Agriculture and Farmland Preservation Plan, has noted, that is predominantly a loss due to disuse, and growing up in brush. While residential development has been responsible for little more than one medium-sized farm’s acreage lost, over a 17-year period, there is one 65-acre solar farm already completed this year, with, as I understand it, another two of similar size planned in the not-too-distant future. While some grazing may continue under the panels, it is also the case that some of the residential properties in the 25 building sites noted above also had some evidence of agriculture as a secondary use. Quite likely, solar farm construction represents a much larger development threat to the Agriculture/Rural Zone than residential construction. To conclude, one is left with the clear perception that assumptions and suppositions generalized from other places may have crowded out specific, place-based information about our community. Worth further exploration and discussion is the possibility that what is, in fact, at work here is quite similar to the current controversy in the Village of Trumansburg: an impetus to thwart building generally, out of an underinformed fear of new residents who might move in, and/or a desire to gentrify the area, and allow only wealthy individuals who can afford all the governmental hoops thrown in the way to build. This is regrettable, as the County has clearly documented that the County as a whole is suffering a severe housing affordability crisis. It is assuredly the case that denser, more walkable communities are needed for the provision of affordable housing, and members of the Agriculture Committee have great interest in ensuring that these kinds of affordable housing be made available in our community. Now that there is no impediment to signing up additional homes and apartment buildings to the municipal water system in Trumansburg, it makes the most sense to remedy the disproportion in new housing unit production in the Village as compared to the Town. The Village is a walkable community, with significant resources in terms of schools, restaurants, grocery stores, medical offices, liquor stores, recreational locations, bus service, sidewalks and other amenities. Trying to “densify” rural residential building in the town makes little sense, while the current practice of placing new homes in the agricultural areas on or in wooded areas that are not of use for farming is practical, both from the perspective of what market forces show an interest in, and what relieves tax burdens on farmers without decreasing their tillable acreage. One additional note regarding record-keeping should be added, which was made clear by the process of doing this research and analysis. Records of building over the past 17 years were not kept in a clear or error-free manner, and it was difficult to access and use the records that were available, despite cooperation from staff. The proposed density-based averaging zoning system will require very accurate and accessible record-keeping to operationalize. This would seem to require a greatly-increased staff effort, as well as much more stringent and exacting supervision by the Supervisor and Board. Given the Town’s budget, it is no small matter to consider that the costliness of implementing such a system may not be worth any perceived advantage it may confer.