Zoning (Archive)

June 30, 2010 – The Town Board enacted the final zoning draft into law in October, 2010.  The law contained many revisions from the draft produced by the Zoning Commission. The most critical change in the new zoning law is the addition of a New Neighborhood Development (NND) floating overlay zone that allows a developer of a very large project (over 750 acres) to increase density to one unit per three acres—a 60% increase in density from the density otherwise allowed in the rural district. Most of the critical comments made in the zoning hearings held in April, 2009 pertained to the NND (such as it appears to be tailored to appease Durst, it is inconsistent with the Comprehensive Town Plan and retaining rural character, the mechanics of implementation are unnecessarily complicated, etc.). In their initial meeting after the public comment period the Town Board dismissed those comments and most of the similar comments in nearly all the 170 letters that they received. They have increased the amount of dedicated open space in an NND to 60% from 50%, a suggestion made by the Dutchess Land Conservancy and Scenic Hudson as well as PPU.

The other major change they have decided to make in the law after closing the public comment period is to extend the district allowing commercial uses to include the flat land behind Stewart’s. They decided not to impose restrictions on the placement of one single family house, contrary to the request of many PPU members.

The Town Board also made many changes in the law prior to presenting their draft to the public. Chief among these (in addition to adding the NND section) are that instead of utilizing an environmental control formula for determining numbers of units that can be built on a parcel this draft excludes environmentally constrained acreage (i.e. land in steep slopes, open waters, flood plains and wetlands) prior to dividing the remaining rural district acreage by 5 in order to determine the numbers of units that can be built. Another difference is that while the agricultural overlay now includes much more land than it did in the Zoning Commission draft, the base density is changed from one unit per 10 acres to one unit per 5 buildable acres. The agricultural district now mainly imposes restrictions on the placement of the units, rather than reducing the number of units beyond what is allowed in the rural district. Another revision is that additional bonus density allowances are given to developers in exchange for inclusion of community benefits in their proposals. Also the new version dictates layout more rigidly than the Zoning Commission draft did.

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