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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPC Minutes 2019-09-19Town of Ithaca Planning Committee Thursday, September 19, 2019 Committee members: Rich DePaolo, Chair; Rod Howe, Pat Leary Board/Staff members present: Bill Goodman, Town Supervisor; Sue Ritter; Bruce Bates; Mike Smith Others: None 1. Persons to be heard: None 2. Committee announcements and concerns: None 3. Consider August meeting minutes: Rich moved; Rod seconded. Minutes approved with minor corrections. 4. Discuss and consider recommendations for the 8-yr review of Tompkins County Agricultural District #1: Mike Smith explained that there are two agricultural districts in the county, divided by east/west halves of the county. These districts are reviewed and updated every eight years and are on different review schedules. There are no specific criteria for determining whether land should be added or subtracted from the district, and it is not necessary to remove land just because it is not actively farmed. A recent change to the Ag & Markets Law allows properties to be added once a year to an ag district (in February), but for removal, it is only every eight years. Ag District #1 in the Town of Ithaca is a relatively small area and includes the Six Mile Creek Winery, an area along Burns Road, and the southern portion of Coddington Road, on the east side of the road. Mike presented a map showing the boundary and a recommendation for removing several parcels from the Ag District, including: 3 small residential parcels divided by the Ithaca/Danby town line, where the Danby portion of the parcel is not included in the Ag District. 3 small parcels that are portions of the old railroad line owned by NYSEG and potentially future portions of the South Hill Recreation Way trail. 2 parcels along Burns Road that contain residences, are heavily wooded, are not being farmed and have a stream/gorge with a required 50’ setback running through the middle of each property. Rich felt comfortable with the removals from the Ag District as long as property owners have some sort of participation in, or knowledge of, the action. The committee agreed with the staff recommendations and requested that it be brought to the Town Board for consideration. Discussion of the Six Mike Creek area led to discussion of the City of Ithaca Police Department’s shooting range and the desire to address the nuisance aspects (noise from frequent use of automatic weapons) and potential water contamination (lead bullets). Rich suggested putting this on a future committee agenda and to possibly ask Susan Brock for counsel on the matter. Maybe talk to the new police chief too. 5. Discuss and consider potential modifications to rental registry law: Bill explained that there are two issues pertaining to cooperatives, one is that when you buy into a cooperative you don’t buy real estate, you buy shares of the corporation and get a proprietary, long-term lease to a unit. In previous committee discussions, it was decided that this situation would not be subject to the rental registry. The second issue is when someone with proprietary lease sublets their unit. If subject to the rental registry law, who would be responsible, given that it is the cooperative that owns the building. The person with proprietary lease doesn’t really own the unit and they still need to get approval from the cooperative for the sublease. Given the oversight already in place by the cooperative, the committee determined previously that a sublet situation would also not be subject to a rental registry. The amendment to the rental registry law, drafted by Susan Brock, only addressed the primary leaseholder, not the sublet situation, so Bill suggested modifying the proposed language for new provision “D” in Section 207-1 (Applicability) to just state: “Residential dwelling units owned by cooperative corporations”. Also, given that cooperatives do not really have accessory dwelling units (ADUs), he didn’t think the added ADU language proposed for 270-219.6.B was necessary. Another amendment considered was for house-sitting/pet-sitting. In these situations, typically no rent is paid, but the sitter may be asked to pay utilities. Discussion of exempting these from the rental registry included whether this might pose a loophole to the law. Ultimately the committee agreed to exempt pet-sitting and house-sitting from the rental registry. Bruce reported that Susan suggested addressing this by adding a definition of “rent” to Section 207. The committee recommended a definition of rent as: “Money paid by a tenant to a property owner in exchange for the use of land, a building, or a part of a building”. Additional ideas and discussion included: Rather than adding a definition of “rent”, consider adding another exemption to §207-1 (new “E”, after new “D” for cooperatives, described above) for house-sitting and pet- sitting, where it is the primary residence of the property owner. Use only the term “house-sitting” and leave out pet-sitting. The pet-sitting part is extraneous to house-sitting. A “house-sitter” in the case of a year-long sabbatical, where rent is exchanged, is not exempted. Exempt house-sitting by adding language that no “money” is exchanged. This may eliminate the need for a definition of “rent”. Add the following language to the end of 207-1, separate from the list of exemptions, “For purposes of this article, a dwelling shall not be considered a residential rental unit when house sitting of an owner’s principal residence occurs in exchange for accommodations, provided that no money or other financial consideration is paid to owner.” The above language would require the need to define “house-sitting” and “principal residence”. As defined in ADU law, Section 270-219.6(B)3(b), under the owner occupancy provision, the term ”principal” is used and defined as a dwelling unit that is resided in for a minimum of 185 days. This is the only place in the Code where “principal residence” is used and needs to be incorporated into the rental registry. The committee asked Bruce to discuss these ideas with Susan. Particularly whether language in bullet #5 is acceptable, and if so, would the definition of rent still be needed. If the definition is still needed, would the proposed definition listed further above be acceptable. Staff updates and reports: None 6. Discuss next meeting date and upcoming agenda items: Next meeting is Thursday, October 24th. Changed from regular scheduled date of October 17th.