Important Zoning Changes Debate Tuesday Jan 21

Dear Friends,

Fallsburg's Future wishes you a happy new year. It will be happier if we stay organized and keep informed.

In this spirit, please find our first Alert of 2025 regarding an important proposal to change our zoning laws that will affect us all. In the file attached below, you will see the Planning Board letter with its recommendations to the Town Board.

We hope you can attend, in person or by Zoom, the public hearing on the proposed zoning amendment with the Fallsburg Town Board this Tuesday January 21 at 6:00 p.m.

The precedent set by the Town Board’s response to these zoning changes can affect land use issues throughout all of the hamlets in Fallsburg district and in all of Sullivan County. It's an important hearing.

For those of you who are not familiar with the issue being tracked by members of the What the Hill group in Hurleyville among others, you can also attend the Hurleyville meeting when the zoning amendment hearing is finished. Jennifer Grossman, the well-known activist attorney, will speak on the issue. Jennifer will also meet with the Loch Sheldrake group of residents on Tuesday, February 11th at 7:00 p.m. Zoom/in person TBD.

It's very important to have a large presence at this Town Board Public hearing. The more people the more impact!  Please come and speak up.

You can attend the meeting in person in the meeting room 19 Railroad Plaza behind the Town Clerk's office in South Fallsburg. Walk around outside of the building to the back and you will see the walkway to the entrance.

You can also attend the meeting by Zoom.

For more information, contact Mary at 917-816-3551 and  

Email: Townmatters12759@gmail.com

SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION RELATED TO PROPOSED ZONING AMENDMENT  

The Public Hearing is this Tuesday, Jan 21st at 6:00 pm. There is one other public hearing that night which is first on the agenda and likely to take time. The zoning amendment is second on the agenda.

The Town received a letter from the Orthodox developers saying that the Town zoning code was in violation of RLUIPA. Being a Federal civil rights statute, it supersedes local laws or regulations. Some of you may have been at the TB meeting in the Fall, when a lawyer from Haverstraw, Steve Barshov, presented this point about our zoning code not being compliant with this particular federal law.

Attached is the Planning Board letter to the TB. You can get the gist of the recommendations being made to make our zoning code RLUIPA compliant.

Definitions were updated. Most significantly the definition of Houses of worship under Religious use -"A house of worship or other place regularly and primarily devoted to religious practice including accessory use that are customary and incidental and part of primary religious use."

With this broadening of this definition, there are a number of land uses that were not previously considered, but because they are religious land uses now, they are covered under house of worship. So a camp, Shul, school, synagogue gets covered under this umbrella definition of house of worship. So it basically gives another level of protection to have whatever is needed for their religious use.

Mainly all changes are to taking out any differences between considering religious land use vs secular land use. We have zoning that allows public assembly, community centers, performing arts, that require no special permits, but houses of worship required a special permit and had stricter regulations than these other secular uses.

There used to be a section in our Town code that dealt specifically with bungalow colonies. It basically stated that they were part of our history but not allowed any longer. The changes show that the bungalow colony category was removed and bungalows will not be treated any differently than any other non-conforming use.

The Planning Board has met and done their work and the attached letter to the Town Board from PB includes their proposal. 

Writing to Town Supervisor Mike Bensimon and the Town Board could be helpful (must be done by this Monday, Jan 20) if you can't be at the hearing in person. The letters are usually read out loud and can be quite effective. When we speak there is a three-minute limit.

SUGGESTIONS FOR POINTS TO BRING UP AT PUBLIC HEARING:

·       Suppprt the Planning Board recommendation letter to Town Board. 

·       Refer to the Town’s Comprehensive Plan (the Town Clerk should have copy). You can cite its recommendations that refer to maintaining the character of neighborhoods especially in Recreation and Agricultural districts.

(The Town’s Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2018, is a document created with the public’s input and accepted as the guiding document the development for our Town.) Even though it is not ‘legally binding’, it is the job of the TB and the Planning Board to honor its 100 recommendations. It is our job, as concerned residents, to cite it and refer to it continuously.

·       You can also talk to the point that increased density in AG and Rec districts would continue to stress the infrastructure and water and sewer systems which are already not functioning well.

·        The intense lighting, traffic, and noise disturb and threaten the wildlife and waterways that are protected by DEC, ACOE and DRBC.