Bedford Town Board delays development moratorium

By JEFF MORRIS 

A proposed six-month moratorium on development for parcels over 20 acres was itself subjected to a one-month delay on Tuesday.

The Town Board held a public hearing on the proposal at its July 14 meeting. It ended up adjourning the hearing after deciding to revise the draft legislation to avoid unintended impacts on smaller projects. The hearing will be reopened on Aug. 11.

Town Supervisor Ellen Calves explained the impetus for the moratorium. She said it came about as a result of the work of the Conservation Board, which applied for a grant five and a half years ago to map wildlife corridors throughout the town, which they have been working on along with Mianus River Gorge and a consultant. The grant required that they move forward to consider legislation to propose to the Town Board regarding the use of conservation subdivisions on large parcels of land.

Conservation considered

Calves said the use of conservation subdivisions both to protect land and to achieve housing was also mentioned as a consideration in the new comprehensive plan, which recommends a variety of housing types. She said they are expecting to hear from the Conservation Board in August regarding the five years of work they have put into a recommendation to update town code. 

“If we hear that presentation and want to take up some of that legislation or start to consider it, it would take a couple of meetings to consider any change to the law, to have public hearings, to engage the community around the concept of conservation development,” Calves said. She said it seemed that any potential big development might be dramatically impacted by an update to the conservation development law — possibly needing to reconsider how to lay out an entire site plan.

So, said Calves, “instead of going into potentially updating the conservation subdivision law with people moving forward with any potential plans, we proposed that we put a moratorium on development on large parcels so that they didn’t waste their time, and they didn’t waste our time either.”

Affordability concerns

In addition, the town has a housing task force that is delivering a report in September, with evaluations of town code with respect to housing and affordability. Some of those recommendations, Calves said, may also impact any development that is considering making a percentage of housing affordable. She said the current laws, which require that a certain amount of housing be affordable, sometimes make the applications “not fit what we want as a community. They have to be too big or too tall or squeeze in the affordable units in awkward ways.”

Calves said they want to take a holistic look at those regulations, “and how we might update them to better get the whole variety of housing that we are interested in having in our community.” 

Middle income squeeze

She said the current law forces the low end and the high end, to the exclusion of middle income. The housing task force report is literally being written right now, and is almost done, Calves said — another reason why they thought a six-month moratorium would be advisable. 

“So this proposed moratorium is not to just freeze development forever,” Calves said. “It’s to really look at the things that are already well underway, well in the pipeline, and that have already really been teed up to be on our agenda over the next two or three months.” 

She said if there needed to be time to adopt legislation and hear from the public, it would take a couple of more months, so six months seemed reasonable. 

The problem, Calves said, is that the town attorney drafted something that she didn’t realize was going to be too broad.

“And upon looking at it, our planning director brought to my attention the other day that even if someone wants to put in an application to build a pool house on their property, if their property is over 20 acres, what’s been drafted would not allow that application to come in,” she said.

The proposal had been intended to be aimed at much larger, broader potential changes to a conservation subdivision that would be over 10 or 20 acres and involve five or six or more parcels, said Calves, but the unintended consequences may mean that people doing much smaller projects, even a two-property subdivision or a new house being built on a 20-acre parcel, would be affected. 

As a result, she said, “we will not be adopting the current moratorium as it’s been drafted this evening.” 

She proposed that the draft moratorium be updated to add: “Development of properties over 20 acres in size, which involve the development of five or more residential homes or units.” 

New hearing planned

The draft legislation will be reposted, and they will have another public hearing. 

“I’m glad we caught that issue,” Calves said. “But otherwise, I think this is a good plan — a good way for us to proceed as we consider all the moving parts.” 

There was one more moving part. As Calves moved to close the public hearing, Town Attorney Eric Gordon advised it would be better to leave it open and adjourn it. He said that way, it will be part of the same public hearing, with a single record about the new law; they can republish the notice and make sure the new local law is presented to the town board and presented to the public as well.

The public hearing was adjourned until 6 p.m. Aug. 11.