Village Trustees took an initial step toward curbing the construction of oversized homes at a meeting of the Law and Land Use meeting on December 9, 2015. At a previous meeting the committee had asked Village Planner Liz Marrinan to assess the visual impact of proposed changed to the FAR regulations to reduce the bulk of new and renovated homes.
On December 9 Marrinan reported that 3D models of a variety of FAR requirements had been simulated when the trustees considered the FAR regulations several years ago. She proposed that the architect who did those simulations be invited to a meeting of the committee where he could do a live demonstration of the models and answer trustees questions on the visual impact of possible changes to the requirements. The trustees agreed to set up this meeting.
In addition, Village staff will undertake a study of the impact of treating driveways as impervious surfaces for purposes of calculating lot coverage, as is done for storm water purposes.
However, since it assumed that any possible change to the regulations would take a minimum of 6 to 9 months to put into effect Trustee Brodsky proposed a moratorium on building homes with gravel driveways for the next six months as a way of curbing the construction of homes with maximum lot coverage.– Since gravel is considered a pervious surface the area of gravel driveways does not count as lot coverage, and therefore allows for the construction of larger homes.
Village Attorney Wayne Essanason recommended against the moratorium stating that it would impact individual property rights and that he did not believe it would have a big impact on reducing the size of new homes.
However Brodsky disagreed, saying that it will take many months to study the FAR and pass any amendments to Village Code. Trustee Stern agreed, saying " Many have come before this board expressing dismay about the large houses going up. If we do this, we can at least prevent some large houses from being built. And once these homes go up, it's irreversible. If we can do a small thing to have new homes conform to FAR, we should do it."
Trustee David Lee proposed that the moratorium only apply to applications where the installation of a gravel driveway would permit the builder to construct a larger home than if an asphalt driveway was built. In other words, he proposed that the moratorium apply to applications where the use of a gravel driveways puts the house over the lot coverage limit. Brodsky concurred, saying, "We will capture those that are using the disparity as a development tool."
Mayor Steves agreed, saying, "I do not find this requirement to be onerous. There is a general sense of concern from the community about the construction of new houses. If we have misread the community they need to let us know. We are trying to balance individual property rights with community concerns."
Despite reservations from Liz Marrinan and Wayne Essanason, the trustees asked Village Staff to come up with wording for the proposed moratorium and bring it to the committee in January.
The committee then turned to revisions to the Preservation Laws which will be refined and considered in 2015.
At the Village Board meeting that followed, the trustees discussed the following: