House-Size Limits Approved
With little fanfare, the Sag Harbor Village Board approved long-discussed, highly controversial revisions to the village’s residential zone code last Thursday. The move follows a moratorium on major building in the village instituted last year after the board put the brakes on a trend toward larger houses on relatively small lots, particularly in the historic district.
Mayor Sandra Schroeder said she had received more than 100 letters or emails in support of the amendments, which include the introduction of maximum gross square footage laws in the village.
The size of a house in the village will now be tied to the size of the property, though the new law will only affect lots 6,250 square feet or more. When the amendments were first proposed in December, properties over 5,000 square feet would have been impacted, but after feedback from the community, the board decided to scale back the proposal and allow houses to be about 400 square feet larger than the initial legislation allowed.
Now, smaller properties will be governed by the existing 20-percent-coverage rule, and houses on properties 6,250 square feet or less are capped at 2,500 square feet. The maximum house size on a 25,000-square-foot lot will be 4,000 square feet. A house any bigger would require a special permit.
Allowable house sizes on properties between 6,250 square feet and 25,000 square feet will be determined on a sliding scale. On a property that is 12,906 square feet, the median lot size in the village, a house can now be no larger than 3,032 square feet. Under former laws, the house could have been as big as 5,164 square feet.
Other amendments were also made to the residential zoning code. After a wave of small-house tear-downs in favor of larger houses, the code will now include a clearer definition of what constitutes a demolition. It will also prohibit solar and alternative energy systems from being visible from an adjacent street or property. In a separate resolution, the board approved changes that affect pools, one of which will require drywells and chlorine-reduction systems.
A hearing was held on the amendments on April 12, with few raising concerns, a stark contrast to a January meeting in which many expressed outrage over the proposals. The hearing was held open for written comment, and only one was received during that time frame, the mayor said. A scaled-back moratorium expires on Saturday.
Ed Deyermond, a village board member who had been away during the hearings, thanked the mayor for waiting for him before taking a vote. A former mayor himself, he said he understood the amount of work that had gone into the effort, particularly by Rich Warren of Inter-Science Research Associates, the village consultant, and Fred W. Thiele Jr., who was the village attorney until earlier this month. “I really regret that as a result of these we’ve lost two really outstanding people,” Mr. Deyermond said.
Mr. Thiele and Mr. Warren had come under fire for some of the amendments as they were originally proposed.
Mr. Thiele, who is also a state assemblyman, resigned hastily on April 11, just one day before the village board held a hearing on the amendments; a week earlier Mr. Warren announced he would be leaving at the end of the fiscal year next month. Mr. Warren, who has worked for the village for 11 years, cited health concerns. Mr. Thiele said he had intended to resign after the completion of the revisions, but decided to do so earlier for personal reasons and the legislative session.
Mr. Thiele said Tuesday that he appreciated Mr. Deyermond’s kind words, but declined to comment further.
Mayor Schroeder said that the board was “just trying to do something really good for our village.”
Correction: The village board approved the revisions on April 21, a Thursday, not a Friday, as was originally reported.