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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLWRP-02/22/2007 LWRP Coordinating Council Minutes Thursday, February 22, 2007 Attendance: Members: Ruth Oliva Michael Simons Peg Dickerson Jim King Heather Cusack Jamie Richter Jim McMahon Jeri Woodhouse Mark Terry John Sepenoski Tom Wickham Al Krupski Jack McGreevy Guests: Bob Ghosio (Trustees) Frank Wills (NFEC) 1. Update on violations and revoking Trustees’ permits: Memo was sent to the Town Attorney’s office requesting that they look into this. John Sep met with Kieran Corcoran to discuss. Kieran is looking into the concept. John Sep reported that this concept was also discussed during the Trustees moratorium. 2. Update on zoning underwater lands: John Sep met with Scott Russell to discuss this issue and item 3 below. Scott would like the LWRP CC to begin to prioritize its recommendations and suggest time frames for implementation. Scott believes that the Town will need to hire a consultant to work on the zoning. Mark Terry confirmed that this can be done with the LWRP grants the Town has received. The Council discussed the fact that the Department of State is also available to assist the Town with this project since they strongly recommended the Town proceed with zoning the underwater lands. 3. Update on department coordination issues: Scott Russell with be scheduling a meeting with departments to begin discussing these issues, some of which are not LWRP related. Council discussed various coordination issues, e.g. departments moving forward with approvals that may violate Planning Board Covenants and Restrictions and departments issuing approvals within Trustees’ jurisdiction without any action by the Trustees. It was suggested that at a minimum departments check for covenants and restrictions, easements and wetlands on properties upon receiving applications. In the past the Town had a listing of all parcels that had wetlands on them but this list was generally not used. John Sep pointed out that Mark Terry’s wetland map has been used to create this same information on the Town’s computer system and that this could be used to flag parcels that the Trustees should at least examine. Mark suggested that the Town do more ground truthing of his map. John Sep suggested that the potential new land use computer database that the Town is considering purchasing/implementing be set up to incorporate this type of data so that coordination issues can be minimized. The possibility of some restructuring of Town departments was discussed including the concept of having one entry point into the process where applicants found out what departments they would need to apply to in order to proceed. Tom Wickham stated that in theory this is supposed to be what the Building Department currently does. Several other Council members pointed out issues where applicants go around Building and directly apply to other departments which ends up causing problems and suggested that this be formalized in a way such that if Building is going to remain the entry point other departments know that they should not be accepting applications directly. Jack McGreevy suggested that a Town procedure manual be created and followed by all departments. 4. Update on BMP document: Information received from the volunteer ended up being a restatement of a section of the LWRP. This is not what the Council felt it needed. John Sep suggested that since we have used an intern and a volunteer for a full year and have received nothing usable that we hire someone to take on this project and create a document similar to documents produced by Shelter Island, East Hampton and Martha’s Vineyard that explain the benefits of the Town’s rules and regulations with a general idea of the process without going into great detail on the process. Tom Wickham still felt we needed something to get applicants through the process without the explanations of the requirements. It was decided that instead of a BMP document a simplified procedure document should be developed that helps explain what applicants need to do to get the approvals necessary for their project. Using the volunteer to handle this was discussed. Bob Ghosio suggested that this be assigned to Heather Cusack. Council agreed that this had advantages over a volunteer since Heather already has much of the knowledge needed compared to the volunteer who would be starting from scratch. It is also possible that the volunteer could assist Heather with this project. The Trustees will discuss this on their own in order to determine whether they feel Heather would have enough time to take on this project. 5. Update on new CAF: Mark Terry has not made any progress on this but will continue to work on it. However, he reported that issues with the form have decreased due to expediters and consultants becoming more familiar with the existing form and learning how to fill it out properly. 6. Update on listing of consistent/inconsistent determinations for review: Mark Terry reported that Carol Kalin is keeping a log of all determinations that is available for the Council to review. 7. Review public suggestions on Code updates: a. NFEC: not discussed due to time constraints. b. Rozakis: not discussed due to time constraints. c. McGreevy: discussed as part of item 3 above. 8. Bulkhead/jetty/groin “in kind in place” exemptions from LWRP: not discussed due to time constraints. 9. Trustees proposed Amendments to Chapter 275: John Sep read through his comments on the changes and the Council discussed. Most of the changes are minor in nature and obviously positive. Based on the discussions some changes are going to be discussed further by the Trustees. These are as follows: for the maximum increase in area and lot coverage more detail is needed in order to clarify the intent, e.g. definition of “original structure”, lot coverage being limited to the buildable portion only, maximum increase also being capped at a fixed amount rather than purely a percentage, adding lot size, etc. For the changes banning docks in certain areas it was questioned whether the Trustees intent was to ban docks from NYS Significant Habitats since some of these areas were not listed in the changes. It appears this was not the intent, the intent was to ban docks from areas where there are no docks but there are apparently some such areas not listed in the ban. For the deposit of dredge spoils section it was suggested that additional language be added to make sure the Trustees have control over where the spoils end up. Contaminated spoils should be disposed of properly, clean spoils that are suitable for local beach replenishment should not be allowed to end up elsewhere. Al Krupski suggested that the Trustees consider fixing the jurisdiction versus set back issue in the current code as part of this update. Council agreed that this was a good idea as having their jurisdiction be the same distance as their minimum set back does not make sense and causes too much confusion. Based on the fact that not all actions in front of the Trustees can be mitigated the Council also suggested that the Trustees determine a set back that is in fact a true set back that cannot be waived. Assuming that this set back is set to be less than their jurisdiction, which is in fact how it should be anyway, the Trustees will still have their discretionary powers between the set back distance and jurisdiction distance. 10. Bulkhead specs/final revisions: not discussed due to time constraints. 11. In-house Wetlands Code notes: not discussed due to time constraints. 12. Changing LWRP Coordinator response time: Council reviewed recent incident where Mark Terry was not able to complete some LWRP reviews for applications on the Trustees meeting agenda due to a personal emergency. This resulted in the Trustees canceling those items from their agenda and since they only meet once a month the applicants will now have to wait another month. Similar incidents have happened in the past. Under LWRP the Coordinator has 30 days to complete the reviews, in this case the 30 days had not expired which means the Trustees could not proceed so there was a suggestion to reduce the response time to 15 days so that the Trustees could move forward sooner. Due to the fact that there are many very complicated applications that require considerable research the Council felt that it was not feasible to reduce the response time to 15 days. However, in order to keep the Trustees on schedule the Council will reiterate it’s recommendation to the Town Board that an assistant coordinator be named and trained so that they can assist Mark Terry and at the very least be able to fill in for him when he is out of the office. Add on: Council discussed the fact that the Town Board still has not formally appointed the LWRP CC. Al Krupski and John Sep will follow up on this and request that the Town Board make the formal appointments. All items not discussed will be on the agenda for the next meeting.