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First Draft of Putnam Valley's Revised Comprehensive Master Plan Presented to Town Board
by Edward Paul Greiff
At a special work session of the Putnam Valley Town Board held on Wednesday, October 11, 2006, PV Planning Board attorney Bill Zutt and Chazen's Town Planner Jan Johansen presented an overview of their first draft of the Town's revised Comprehensive Master Plan.
Attorney Bill Zutt called it a "work in process." He said, "Chazen was commissioned to begin a revision of the Zoning Code and their primary purpose was to eliminate the numerous ambiguities, contradictions and excess verbiage that was throughout the code. They were to fill in the blanks where necessary, to make mandatory those things that should have been made mandatory in the eyes of some under the original code and to address issues not covered under the original code... the basic heart of the ordinance was not going to be changed in any way."
Attorney Zutt said, "Chazen began preparing an amendment to the code starting at page one and continuing to the end covering each and every topic. I think it would be fair to say that Chazen is the primary architect of the document that we have finally come up with and I think my role can possibly be described as that of an editor. Although I went at it initially with a chain saw, then a jig saw, I knocked it down from 125 pages to probably about 105 right now."
One of the key items completed was the redrawing of the Town's Zoning District map. Mr. Zutt said that the Planning Board uses one map and the Zoning Board uses another map, both of which are wrong.
Attorney Zutt explained the highlights of the changes made - "Today we have a multifamily provision in our Code. It is there since the inception of the Code, I think in 1994. Last year's draft of the Code suggested removing it from the Zoning Code, this draft removes it."
"We have also followed the recommendation to liberalize the Accessory Apartment Special Permit provision of the Code and have introduced ECHO housing, an acronym that basically stands for free- standing small housing units which are accessory to principle dwellings and are designed to be occupied by seniors and others, either single people or senior single combinations thereof."
One of the problems the boards have had in administering the code successfully said Mr. Zutt "is that although there is a minimum buildable area requirement built into the code, there is nothing that explicitly requires that new construction take place within that buildable area. There is a provision for subtracting out of a buildable area of a lot the wetlands area, but not the wetlands buffers. We now subtract out wetlands and wetland buffers. That will have the affect of reducing density."
"The Wireless Telecommunication Tower section, which is a special permit and site plan portion of the code, is a divided jurisdiction right now both between the Planning Board and the Town Board making for an awkward and very duplicative process. Many of the considerations looked at by the Planning Board are also looked at by the Town Board. We've unified the jurisdiction and put it in the Planning Board so it will be a site plan and special permit use jurisdiction vested solely in the Planning Board."
"Under SEQRA we've created our own additional Type 1 Uses," explained Mr. Zutt. He explained the differences between Type 1, Type 2, and unlisted actions under SEQRA.
Type 1 is a large action which is presumed to carry an adverse environmental impact. In most cases a Type 1 action is usually followed by a full draft Environmental Impact Statement.
Type 2 is the other end of that spectrum which are relatively minor actions such as setbacks and things of that nature which are considered not to require full Environmental Impact Statements or any further environmental review at all.
Between these two extremes is the big middle which is everything else and is called "Unlisted." "What we have done here is take what would otherwise be certain unlisted types of actions and put them in the Type 1 category. Towns, Cities, and Villages are empowered to do that by local law under SEQRA and that list can be added to or subtracted as the process moves forward."
Mr. Zutt continued, "Our current code has a site plan review process for residential users and commercial uses. For reasons I've never understood, we have an entire section dealing with site plan requirements associated with residential and a completely different distinct section dealing with commercial. The submission requirements are virtually identical. Why? Because the concerns are virtually identical: lot coverage, topographical change, drainage, parking, traffic all these considerations are applicable to both residential and commercial uses and it makes no sense to retain a distinction. So we now have one site plan section dealing with both residential and commercial uses, probably shrunk the code by about ten pages as a result of that alone."
"We have relaxed the standard applicable to clustered sub-division. What I mean by that is when you have a clustered sub-division you take a plot of land and you calculate the maximum potential sub-division yield of that property if it were divided as a conventional sub-division. So you would take the total area lay out a sub-division with conforming roads, conforming lots, avoiding wetlands, steep slopes, wetland buffers and so forth and the number of lots that sub-division layout yields is the allowable density for the site.
"Under our current code," says Mr. Zutt, "and under this proposed new code, the Planning Board has the authority to require a developer to submit a cluster sub-division proposal and that's a very significant authority that is not found in all communities but Putnam Valley has had it in the code since 1994 and it remains there."
A multifamily structure under state law has six or more dwelling units. "Clustering does not change density," says Zutt. "What clustering does is allow you to take the density that would be permitted under a conventional subdivision and bring it close together. The current code would only allow you to condense that development down to lots no less than one acre in size. There are certain instances where it may be beneficial to the environment to allow you to cluster down, condense down to one-half or one-quarter acre, or possibly even allow a two-family on a lot. Clustering would give the Planning Board flexibility without increasing density so the design element is liberalized greatly and the goal being environmental protection and preservation and reducing the amount of impervious surface area which increases the aquifer recharge area."
Attorney Zutt explained that he is not asking the Board to agree with what he was saying, he just wanted to get the concept across. This is a work in process. It is not complete.
The next public meeting of the Comprehensive Plan Committee is Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 5:30pm at Town Hall.
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