Zoning code amendments go to Village Council

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Mem­bers of the Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion have been meet­ing early over the past sev­eral months to hold work ses­sions. The work ses­sions were used to amend sec­tions of the vil­lage zon­ing code that were either out of date, or did not address con­tem­po­rary issues.

Dur­ing the final work ses­sion, held prior to the Mon­day, June 25, zon­ing meet­ing, com­mis­sion mem­bers added three final amend­ments to the zon­ing code – using pods for stor­age at a res­i­dence or busi­ness, mak­ing minor lot adjust­ments an admin­is­tra­tive func­tion, and the occu­pancy of motor homes as liv­ing quarters.

The use of pods for stor­age space will be allowed for up to six months. Pods will not be per­mit­ted as per­ma­nent stor­age solu­tions, but were allowed for the six-month period in case a home or office is being remod­eled or repaired.

Minor lot adjust­ments will now be allowed with admin­is­tra­tive approvals from Vil­lage of Sun­bury Zon­ing Inspec­tor Phil Stith, vil­lage solic­i­tor David Brehm and vil­lage con­sult­ing engi­neer Wes Hall. The admin­is­tra­tive approval will not require a zon­ing fee and zon­ing com­mis­sion approval if the lot line adjust­ment does not result in any new lot or a sub­stan­dard lot.

The issue that resulted in the most dis­cus­sion was res­i­dents using a motor home parked at their home as per­ma­nent liv­ing space.

Com­mis­sion mem­bers agreed that a motor home (a.k.a. RV) stored on somebody’s prop­erty could only be occu­pied as a liv­ing space for 14 out of 365 days, with occu­pancy defined as used for sleep­ing pur­poses. Hall said the code’s enforce­ment is going to be com­plaint dri­ven; if a com­plaint is filed with the vil­lage zon­ing office that would estab­lish a start date.

Com­mis­sion mem­ber Joe Gochenour asked about motor homes and RV’s used for a busi­ness office; Hall replied that code spec­i­fies such vehi­cles are not to be used for com­mer­cial purposes.

There was a pub­lic hear­ing for all 2012 zon­ing code amend­ments imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the Mon­day, July 23, zon­ing com­mis­sion meet­ing, with no pub­lic com­ment for or against the changes.

Dur­ing the reg­u­lar zon­ing com­mis­sion meet­ing there was a motion to approve the zon­ing code amend­ments; the motion was approved.

At Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil there will be a sec­ond pub­lic hear­ing about the zon­ing code amend­ments, three read­ings of an ordi­nance approv­ing the amend­ments, a vote fol­low­ing the third read­ing, and a 30-day ref­er­en­dum period before the amend­ments become effective.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.