A public hearing on extending a temporary moratorium highlighted the Baxter Estates Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday night.
Local Law 2 of 2022 proposes to extend a pause on the construction of residential property within the village’s Business A District until the end of the year. This would extend the original measure, which was passed last year and later extended until June 30, 2022.
Mayor Nora Haagenson noted the pandemic has affected properties that are used both commercially and residentially.
“In many instances what they’re trying to do is the mixed-use which we have presently. With the pandemic, so many of the businesses have closed, so the developers would like to maximize their investment and turn some of those buildings into all residential buildings and not have any commercial property on the ground floor,” she said. “And we are looking at if we want to allow that.”
Later, Village Attorney Christopher Prior explained the background of the law.
“There were some informal proposals to make some alterations to buildings on Main Street in the business district. The building inspector looked at our code and said there are certain provisions that are antiquated and don’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “The thrust of the proposals had been to go more to residential and the board and the building inspector wanted to make sure that the code makes sense in that context.”
Prior also said that the board had made recommendations for changing the code to allow for that type of building. He stated the moratorium would be extended until the end of the year for the sake of safety.
“We’re looking tonight to extend the moratorium on projects so that the board can then digest the proposals, finalize them into something that would then be presented to the public in a public hearing,” said Prior. “And those will be the substantive changes to the code that the public would then have an opportunity to consider providing feedback to the board.”
He added the board does not believe that resolving the issues at hand will take until the end of the year. But if certain factors continued to drag, they would have the time they needed.
Following that, another individual inquired which section of the codes had become obsolete. Prior included the board’s lack of conditional use permit jurisdiction and property size restrictions as examples.
When the board closed the public hearing, they voted to proceed with the process.
The next Baxter Estates Board of Trustees meeting will be held on July 6. The work session begins at 6:45 p.m. and the regular meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. It will be held in the meeting in the Village Office.
