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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1986-08-07• n U • Town of Dryden August 791986 Planning Board Special Work Session Planning Board met Aug-7,1986 at B :OOPM for special work session with Gary Evans from County Planning on Zoning Ordinances -- Members present: R. Lampila, J. Lee, B. Lavine, Chr. B. Caldwell & Z. 0. S. Stewart. Absent: H. Slater, R. Chase, R. M. Bobnick. Also present: G. Evans, C.Brown, M.Creasy, and K.Beldon. M.Webb will be representing Town Board but was unable to attend this session. Meeting called to order. Gary Evans will be assisting Planning Board to revise Zoning Ordinances. Had already developed short out- line. B.Caldwell asked Gary to explain how expanding outline would work. G.Evans- Probably number of ways to work. I feel bare outline to show overall structure of total, including subdivision, flight hazard area, etc. Then there °s intermediate stage - that outline goes on for 4 - 5,pages indicating titles of sections to make overall structure clear and show options. of organizing. Once legality has been looked over care- fully, then start on individual parts, focusing on a part such as administrative section of actual regulations that apply, putting other sections out of mind$ for awhile. Whatever you prefer is perfectly alright with me. I could provide you with complete front to back text - -so you could work any way you wish. Question is how you want to organize. B.Caldwell -asked if Planning Board members had particular ways they felt most meaningful. J.Lee--- How much would be included in title section9 G.Evans- The code is outlined in article there is maybe or organized by general line merely has article have actual text. about 5 major articles - -for each 20 to 50 sections. They are grouped topic character--Intermediate out - headings,titles, & sections - doesn't B.Lavine-- You've given us brief outline & example what finished project might look like where you went thru similar pro- cess. Seems to me it would be more useful to us to have intermediate outline to look at & work from. That will give us meaty reference for all parts of large document & work from both. I think itos necessary to keep structure. in front of us, like a table of contents. G.Evans- Thatvs technique being used by Village of TBurg. Theytre using different colors for sections- -seems to help keep people focused on subject theytre working on. B.Caldwell -We have stacks of colored paper which we throw away -�we could use those. G. Evans- I could provide you text(master copy) & various sections as with intermediate outline & a full you could make copies yourself of you wished to work on them. i �. B.Caldwell- -Are there particular sections you feel should be settled first? Such as definitions? G.Evans--- In a limited sense. I prefer to leave definitions till • later. I've seen Boards agonize thruout an entire meeting defining a word not even used in ordinances.:i think it's better to let need for definition make itself evident as you work thru text. There was some question about what types of permits you wanted to use in admini- stration. You have zoning permit that applies to building where you're constructing something. Also building per- mit that applies to earthworks -- grading, paving, draining - that sort of thing & also have zoning permit that applies only to occupancy of building. It is conceivable that you would want to regulate some of those things and not the others, so this is a choice you need to make early on. Also question about whether you want to have certi- ficate of occupancy as a follow up where Z.O, inspects premises to see if its been built in compliance with the bldg.permit or to see if occupancy that has been re� quested is actually taking place ,etc,Not everyone does that - -also there's a certificate of zoning compliance which someone might request for purpose of establishing whether their property was in compliance with ordinance or not, prior to selling it. This is sometimes very useful to property owner because they can get document saying as of a certain date their property was in com- pliance with the zoning regulation. In a case where there are lots of changes in zoning laws taking place • this could be very valuable. It establishes their conformance with it if it becomes nonconforming later on. Not everyone wants to bother with that kind of thing. I consider it a very useful service to provide% to the community, You may not want to include'that, Those kinds of decisions need to be talked thru fairly well, before deciding what things you're going to regu- late. B,Caldwell- -We've talked a lot about zoning regulations, but in terms of using that material effectively. I think it was very difficult, We probably should have done more to contact you. I think we ran up against some questions & we're sharing some of that information with Town Board who had some of the material we had up to date. I think it would; be easier to go this route. G.Evans--- Anothew.�thing to think about early on is which Boards would be delegated to what responsibility. As it stands, as I understand,,it's the Town Board that issues all special permits. That's a very unusual arrangement. Usually that's delegated to Planning or Zoning Board of Appeals. This may be administrative device you'll want to review & make recommendations on. Also you may want to think about usefulness of Planning Unit Development position. I'm trying to remember just how • your ordinance is. A 6 -3- B.Caldwell It is minimum of 100 Acres I believe. It's really almost a new Town situation. G. Evans There are devices such as floating zones,defined in terms of what's allowed,not just a map. Where somebody meets certain criteria re- quests zoning,rezoning,zone for that particular use. There are a lot of administrative techniques you'd probably want to think about, whether Planning Board wants to take on those responsibilities.(Site Plan Review & actual issue of such things.) In most places ZBA has special permits. This causes a lot of problems because criteria for deciding on variance responsibility is quite different than criteria for issuing special permit. Board gets confused whether this is special permit or variance. It is for this reason that special per- mits or SPR is delegated to Planning Board, If ZBA has single fun- ction they can focus on and do properly. Subdivision regulations are another early decision of this revision effort. This can be put aside till later. Also enviromental xeview- -you may be perfectly satisfied the way it is or you may want to adopt one as part of this code, & to develop it along with these other issues. B. Lavine I3'- 'Mere something improper or illegal about our special permits and administration? G. Evans I think this puts Town Board in very peculiar situation. As I under- stand, it's the principle applying.to legislative bodies that prior decision cannot bind a current decision. If you're a legislator you write a law,adopt it and awhile later you have to deal with that same issue. You can adopt a completely different law. You're not bound by that prior law. Analogy here is that Town Board has adopted zoning regulations which have in them the provisions for issuing special permit. Then along comes a request for special per- mit and they're presumed to act as though they're bound by prior decision. They can in fact ignore it completely if they wish. It's just odd - -just strange. B. Lavine What do you mean they can ignore it completely? I'm not following what you are saying. G. Evans There are legislative bodies, when they a permit, and it doesn't meet all criteria it stands, they really aren't bound. They that might suit themselves. re reviewing special existing in ordinance as can write new criteria B. Lavine They can grant or deny special permit based on anything they want? G. Evans That s true. • B. Lavine Whhereas any that? They have legislative power to do that. other committee, Board, or Group are not allowed to do • 0 0 -4- G. Evans This right! See the distinction? The 3 Boards have the three general characteristics. One is legislative - -This Board(Planning) is advisory and administrative(special permits and subdivisions). ZBA is judicial. This is basis of division, so administrative body should be the one carrying out administrative functions. (Plan- ning). The Zoning Officer and Legislative body should not be(in my opinion)should not be carrying out administrative functions. B. Lavine Are you the wrong person to address about legality of that? Could Town be challenged? Do you have knowledge of any other cases where it's been set up this way? G. Evans "No- -this is unique." B. Lavine I think it might be appropriate to take up some issues you've mentioned and deal with them. B.Caldwell read from Groton's text - -land use regulations, admini- strative procedures & rules--Boards, & Zoning Officer duties. B. Lavine The May Suggestion was to take headings and see which issues we wanted to address from ordinance, if we wanted a section on some- thing at all, how we wanted to set up administratively, special permits etc. B. Caldwell Do you see any changes for instance with ZBA,SPR,Planning or Zoning Office? B. Lavine Should SPRB be another whole Board altogether? G. Evans That's sort of a cop -out. They hadn't really decided whether they wanted Planning Board or ZBA to take that function. I just gave it a title of separate Board. Actually it would be an additional responsibility of an existing Board, preferably the Planning Bd. I think somewhere later on it says SPR is not a separate Board. B. Caldwell Yes. In this case it's an additional power delegated to Planning Bd. R. lamp ila Our Town Board chose to retain that lot of time reviewing changing that, our liaison between us & Town Board, i function, & before we spend a we'd better speak to Mert Webb, B. Caldwell I agree !I think the Town Board has been referring more things to us for review & comment this past year, while they are in process of trying to make some decision - -I don't know if we want an ultimate decision type of thing, but having things referred to us for review is a big helplt -5.- R. Lampila- I agree, it's very helpful, educational and worthwhile. G. Evans • I may be able to prepare something like a flow chart that will show how different types of permits bounce from Board to Board until decision is reached. Some people take to them fairly well, and others hate them. B. Caldwell Ithink it may help applicant -- someone who is not used to working with Boards or different Township and so forth. G. Evans That's something I've been threatening to do several times, now with a little encouragement from you, I'll do it. B. Caldwell Please. R.Lampila(questioned possibility of incorporating a NO SMOKING ordinance.) G.Evans(stated there was a problem with that because zoning is limited to external effects of construction & not smoking outside is probably not what was referred to -- although he was very sympathetic Vith concern! B.Caldwell • Get ing back to 8PRB & where that function might be. Whether Town Bd. wishes to retain power or give it to us, could we have some input on certain types of things or possibly everything? G. Evans You could probably work out some arrangement with application of project- -maybe a certain size could be referred to Planning Board before decision was made -- possibly they would delegate smaller scale projects to Planning Board, B.Caldwell We'll put that down on list of things to discuss with Town Board, R. Lampila I think Linda should get all of this to Mert so he can address Town Board. B. Caldwell SShels already arranged to do that. G. Evans You have to be sympathetic with Town Board's feeling they want to keep their hands on pulse of things. It could be devised so that larger scale projects were allowable only to Planned Unit Develop - ment.(P.U.D.) Then it would be legislative action & they would have control they want. Smaller scale projects would be discussed by SPR (whoever was delegated to that) Have you ever had P.U.D. ? B.Caldwell We've talked about it, but never really used it. G. Evans If minimum were possibly) that special permit 0 0 I -6- brought down to something a lot smaller(3 -5 acres might be sufficient. You have frequently combined and variance requests for appeals. B. Caldwell I don't think mechanically it comes to Boards that way. Perhaps by nature of what is categorized is special permit now. If regu- lations for allowed uses were substantially different, it might come as a combined request. G. Evans If that occurs occasionally or frequently that's sort of a sign you may need PUD division that applies to those kinds of things. PUD is really a tailor made zoning district. If someone comes to you with project that doesn't seem to really fit into your existing zoning regulations. However, if it is something Town Board feels is appro� priate, they write a new district regulation for it. PUD provisions are the kind of thing you find in district regulations. Then you could number or name them however you preferred(PUD -18, PUD 86 -19 Mable,Charlie, or whatever.) B. Lavine Do you have to do that for every 3 acre proposal? G. Evans No, only the ones that don't fit the existing one. B. Lavine I find that a little hard to swallow. G. Evans I know a lot of people feel that way -- typical procedure PUD goes thru is a review of suitability by Planning Board, then recommenda- tion to Town Board on whether or not they should adopt it. In fact, produce a text in which you expect them to adopt. You graph text. Town Board then has authority to make any modification they wish or if you tell them you don't think it's a good idea, they can adopt it anyhow. You're just giving recommendation & graph text and they would adopt it then after a public hearing and refer administration of development of this project back to Planning Board as a SPR. This PUD is relatively complex mixture of different activities not antic- ipated. It may be a project that requires more than one phase, so they would refer this back to you for administration as SPR.. You could see that they actually did carry out the intent they expressed.; There are two places where conformants with the general plan is re� viewed. It is a legislative decision, so presumably the members of the Town Board allows things that are unforeseen to be dealt with in a forthright manner. Rather than chaotic fashion when something new comes along (like dishes -what do you do with them? and remember when drive -in movies came along ?) Unforeseen, unanticipated type of come mercial activity or development can simply be taken in stride. In planned unit development you take application, review it, decide whether or not you like it, and away you go. You do not have to go back and duly revise your zoning ordinance because the PUD procedure is itself a rewriting of zoning regulations, if they apply to project. B. Lavine I think we're things people need it. 0 -7- stretching the point a little to apply these to some may bring in for special how permit. You really don't G.Evans I think the thing to do then is review special permit that have been granted in the last few years'and see and see if they break into two categories, large -and B. Lavine Ill depends on multiple use, special permits. B. Caldwell Sib,would you have any break think you have to keep your special permits granted how so & so. You'd have to go I hate to put the burden on Would it be helpful to us? applications what they are small, down? Probably not, because I don't records statistically. Out of so many many for such and such and how many for back thru your records, wouldn't you--I know it's going to be a you? chore. B. Lavine Does anyone have any inkling that indeed there have been special permits considered and granted for multiple use or new & unusual uses not covered by ordinance? B.Caldwell What sort of things are going for special permits? • S.Stewart Garages,businesses,setbacks unless specifically listed under special permit is what I use. It goes to ZBA. B. Lavine Sib, are you saying that some of those situations have been given to ZBA even though they had special permit issues in them? S.Stewart Last year we had one that was directly a special permit. He was proposing a building and wanted to convert closer to road and requested set back. B. Lavine Is gist the kind of thing you had in mind, Gary, when you were saying that indication was a need? G. Evans When you start overlapping and getting confused I think that's the time to look into a few of these. If you look at decision criteria that Courts have decided to apply to zoning variances you "11 find the ZBA does not have clear authority to issue that permit or grant that variance. One of the things required is you have to demonstrate property can't be used for what it's zoned for and it has to be used for something that is not an allowed use. In 20 yrs, in looking at this book I've yet to see one that actually met that requirement. • On the other hand, if this were handled as PUD yard requirement set- back, uses of bldg.etc.would be dealt with in a legislative manner where decision criteria are subject to Planning Board powers of ZBA have been fairly clearly circumscribed by the Courts, and for different kinds of variances you have a list of criteria that have • I n L.I c .& to be met or considered puts you in a position where Board of Appeals know that particular development is perfectly all right, yet it doesn't really have the authority to grant it. What usually happens it's granted anyway and no one squawks about it, but if someone does squawk about it and you wind up in Court you lose- - you just lose!!! There's no question about itlt! The Board should at least have authority to grant variances. Again, this is a reason why PUD is a nice thing to have on books because it can be used in certain extraordinary situations. B.Caldwell I TFUnk that's the key word -- extraordinary -- because I think the Board in turn would not wish to have another layer of applications so to speak, merely by a different name. I'm not sure how that can be defined or set up. G. Evans It seems to me it's essential that you look at kind of special per- mit application you've been receiving- -look at them carefully and particularly the ones that involve variances and just see if they fall into groups of two or more categories to be treated differently. B. Caldwell Sib,how difficult would it be to do a 2 or 3 yr. list of what requests you've had and maybe something about size & who decided them - -which route they went? S.Stewart Yes, I could give you a list of all special permits and what they were for. B. Caldwell It would give us some idea of frequency. G. Evans I think that would be useful. I'm just trying to recall - -just the other day I looked at one sent to the Board for expansion of existing- non - residential facility in residential district. It was just an addition on building. That seems to be something that does not require attention of Town Board. A few months ago there was application for special permit for establishing mobile home park. I think that will go to Town Board. These are extremes, and where dividing line is in middle, only research could tell you. B. Caldwell It would help us if we could have the list and probably some input from you Sib, as to what scale of change actually was. B. Lavine Just a matter of scale in terms of size, and other kinds of criteria as well. I can see 3 or 5 acres with PUD in that range. I can see a situation in which that might occur. Not too likely around here, but it might occur. You certainly wouldn't want everything greater than 3 acres to go to PUD. 8 0 -9- G. Evans No, I wasn't suggesting that. Usually there is a minimum size -�It doesn't say anything over 3 acres, just such and such a size. Has to be over 3 acres to be PUD, and other criteria. That is something that is not allowable in any other districts in town by zoning per. mit or special permit. You don't have to go to legislature to do something that is allowed somewhere in the Town, The idea of PUD is to deal with the exceptional situation when opportunity comes along. Somhing the ordinance did not anticipate, either type or activity o tructure or whatever was unforeseen, or the mixture of elements that was unforeseen. This is important that it have this criteria. We don't know legislative route and loopholes. B. Lavine How will mobile home park fit then? Your acreage might be fine, uses may not be unique or mixture. G. Evans You can specify certain kinds of things as PUD only. For instance, Town of Danby lists all mobile home parks as PUD, no matter how small. B. Lavine ahi t are issues involved in deciding to go that route or setup a whole set of regulations for mobile home parks? G. Evans I think they were just They wanted to prohibit mobile home parks. Town handle on that kind of concerned there would be ample opportunity mobile homes Board simply zone, on individual lots, only wanted felt they wanted to have a B. Caldwell If you have a situation like that, where you say such and such, type of situation like mobile home park, or 200 unit apt* complex, anything that tends to have high impact. You say it is only allowable! with PUD, do you then get a legislative situation whereby they say "Oh, it's allowable PUD so therefore we might allow it if it meets checklist ?" G. Evans No, this is difference between administrative and legislative acts. Administrative act - -if you meet criteria you get permit by discretion! of Board- _exercises whether you meet criteria. They cannot say yes you meet criteria but we don-It think it's a good idea, so No. The Town Board on the other hand is a legislative body - -they can say Yes, you; have met the criteria that we specified, but we do not feel it is in public interest to allow that in this location. Administrative body such as Planning Board can administrate special permit just like the Zoning Officer. (His administrative function of Zoning Office carried out.) If someone comes in with application, and all criteria are met, he issues the permit. B. Caldwell • As a historial matter do you know case law has tended to support legislative bodies when they have made these decisions? -10- G. Evans Yes, the requirement that they usually lean on the hardest is -- "Is it in conformance with general public developitent plan ?" Mere fact of referral to Planning Board for reviewing comment satisfies • that criteria. To my knowledge there has never been any cases PUD Is overturned. The Courts are very careful to keep out of decisions. They do not judge a case on whether it is a good idea. They judge it on whether you have met requirements. Due process requires notification(advertising) (to allow input at a public hearing.) They do not get into character of decision itself. I think a Town Board which has established a procedure follows that procedure. B. Lavine II cues ion whether we would have very many applications that would go that route, or fall into that category. It seems to me, to my knowledge, a vast majority of special permit applications we've had arfi things that have been specified as special permits by their uses. That may or may not be a good idea. Town Board would like to have a handle on some of those but most they wouldn't. They are all in the same category and we have been cateyor; -tiryq here this evening. The concept of applying so many things to PUD and you've outlined the requirements and criteria makes senae to me. I just don't see that it would solve the special permit problem. G.Evans---- It only makes sense if Town Board feels it can let go Of small decisions and keep ,hold of larger ones. B. Lavine Let me bring up a case that brought a lot of this activity earlier. A proposal of a manufacturing facility at base of Yellow Barn Rd. & Route 13 which was agreed by special permit issued to answering Pertain questions. I don't see any legal way that could possibly come under criteria for PUD/ Trying to include more things for PUD in assigning those to Town Board while taking all other things to Town Board would like to have over to a special permit from Planning Board wouldn't solve a problem like this. Does anyone else have a feeling on this? R. Lam ila I i c hhat as Gary pointed out a project can be, PUD just by the fact a project of a specific size or nature such as "all trailer parks are PUD regardless of size." I think something like that could be PUD. Not just because of size but for nature of it. B. Lavine How do we define something like that proposal? "All proposals of such and such be PUD's ?" R. La la I understand what you are saying. I think it is not defining what is PUD rather based on size of it or nature of project. In a sense we are redefining what falls under a special permll, G. Evans i Again, I'm not sufficiently familiar with that project or ordinance but SPA, administrative procedure, should include a rather long list of decision criteria that administrative body looks at. If you- _..1 1 __ have a PUD I think that you would not feel the need ... to have it as exclusive -list of things allowed with special permit as you do now. I mean -- manufacturing activities in an area which is agricultural and residential primarily seems to be something that I would question whether appropriate for special permit. An area that is predominantly agriculture residential would allow manufacturing activities with special permit? If you had PUD provision in there you probably would not. B.Caldwell Would you have to have PUD'a because of their legislative nature worded so they could essentially be placed anywhere? G. Evans This is optional, You could just leave out location criteria. You could stipulate PUD which includes manufacturing be established. In other words you must have good access along State highways and criteria of that sort. It's also sometimes done that you allow PUD's to be established only in areas which at the present time have a certain type of zoning, You can allow manufacturing come. pletely PUD only in areas which are presently zoned commercial or agriculture. Something of that sort - -you have a great deal of flexibility. Think about how you want things to fall and write it the way you want it, B. Lavine There is another aspect to that, Certainly was concern of Town Board -- situations that have been special permit in the past have been bad at times. Such as developers who are proposing a certain kinel of development can have better set of guide lines to work with and knows if he can meet those quidelines he can paddle, It would seem to me going for PUD for such things you're exacerbating that concern, aren't you? G. Evans Well, you are providing a few more hoops for developers to leap thru, that's.f or sure. This is the thing that distinguishes SPA admini- strative decision from legislative decision. Something as you see as being allowable and desirable is allowed with special permit and you have PUD procedure in your ordinance so that If a subdivision doesn't fit it can be handled without taking to administrative structure and bending it beyond recognition, which is a fairly common thing to do. A special permit that realy isn't listed is allowed use special permit with few variance thrown in with no con- ceivable justification. So you get the project, you get things developed but you do it by violating your own regulations, PUD allows you to avoid that sort of embarrassment and deal with a legislative procedure. Town of Groton has a feature in theirs where the Planning Board does special permits, However, it has the option that if it's too big to handle with aspect and issues beyond their means, they can refuse to make a decision and refer it to the Town Board. I think that is a nifty provision. I don't know what the Courts would think about it, but it seems reasonable to me. B. Lavine I have a comment to Linda(Secretary.) I think it would be important • to have a detailed set of notes on this session, this evening. None of us have taken down any notes. Issues that have been brought up that we should discuss and issues with special permit and PUD issues that we have been discussing at length seem to me are things we would want to go over, We are obviously not going to come to a decision tonight, There is no use working in the dark because we -12- 61 6 forgot.something, or someone was absent. So I make a request we could -use a more detailed set of notes than we usually get. R. Lampila • I think that's a valid request. B.Caldwell I1 Sib could also dig out what special permits have been issued or' applied for, I think thats maybe even more interesting, for the past 2 or 3 years. B. Lavine I have one comment on that. Sounds like we would want to know not only Special permits, but some information on what content was so we would know which ones are fairly ZBA territory and which ones are under some new structure may be PUD or something else —maybe a Zoning Variance w /special permit or some other non - specific use or activity. I don't know if your records would show that easily, but it would certainly help me a lot, even if it was just from your recollection. I'm sure that's a hard request. B. Caldwell Nell, we at least know what inquiries we have to do on this one- - to use our time productively, what can we do so that our next session will be productive? B. Lavine When Gary first gave his review this evening on kinds of things that had been done, we might want to deal with those issues first. Do we want to have such and such a thing as an issue in our ordinance or don't we? How do we want to deal with one thing versus another? That list of things which I didn't take notes on hopefully we will be able to retain from the tape recorder. If we can have that in our notes that come to us each of us can do some thinking in preparation about those particular questions for next meeting. I think that would be very useful and combined with intermediate outline and completely flushed out suggestion ordinance to work from. At least if we have that outline in front of us before the next meeting and a full flushed out ordinance to refer to and be prepared with - -give top priority to first set of items and that is those questions Gary said were general things, and should be dealt with first. B. Caldwell Gary, any estimate on time getting a flushed out ordinance? G. Evans Probably the middle of next week. General Discussion when to hold another special working session since regular meeting on the 21st will be so busy with 3 subdivisions on agenda plus other routine things. Buzz unable to meet Aug 28th, Barb unable to meet Sept.4th. Will decide date at regular session the 21st. Hopefully Gary will be able to be present at next work session. a • is el l� Catherine Brown present -- requested an agenda time at next meeting. They had been to Town Board meeting as Planning Board had suggested to tell them what they were doing with petitions. Answer they got was "We really want the whole ordinance revamped and you all go and tell Planning Board to get cracking ". They were passing the buck back to you. B.Caldwell We want to receive your information because it will indication of what people in that area do or do not Meeting adjourned 9:30 PM A COMPLETE TAPE OF THIS MEETING IS ON FILE IN TOWN HALL VAULT Secretary, give us an want.