In a wide ranging interview with the Southern Ulster Times, Lloyd Supervisor Dave Plavchak first touched upon the process of the Short Term Rental law that he felt was negatively reported in the local media.

“When I read the first couple of articles on Short Term Rentals [STR], it’s almost like whatever anybody said we kind of took as fact, and in a lot of cases it wasn’t,” he said.

Plavchak was referencing recent comments that were made by neighbors at public hearings before the Planning Board who live near STR homes. He said the Planning Board checked to see if there were complaints filed with the police, “and found that a lot of that stuff was unfounded, so my point is that we can’t take what somebody brings up or what somebody says is fact and run with it.”

Plavchak said after the news stories broke he was fielding phone calls about these issues.

“I explained to them why we put the [STR] law in place and what it was designed to do and the majority of them said OK, that is a good idea, I’m glad were doing it and some of the people who came to the Planning Board meetings said the exact same thing,” Plavchak added that, “I felt it was my obligation to make sure, in some public forum, that people got the other side of the story.”

Plavchak believes there was a disconnect, “in the way this thing [STR law] is being portrayed, the way I think it was designed and the way it seems to be playing out.” He acknowledged that some of the wording in the law may need to be clarified, such as what constitutes a bedroom, what the definition is of one unit and only one STR per owner.

“We’ll make those changes, that’s fine...but to me there have been some minor issues, not big issues and I don’t get that in the articles I read in the first few weeks,” he said.

Plavchak elaborated on why the STR law does not require a rental home to be owner occupied.

“That is not what the market is looking for [and] that’s why we limited it to you could only have one of them. You can’t be like a LLC having a bunch of them, but you can have only one Special Use Permit in our town. So instead of doing owner/occupied, we did it that way.” He said the town benefits with people coming into town who spend money and the county collects occupancy taxes on the rentals.

However, on the issue of not being “like a LLC,” the town code in chapter 100-42.1 H(1), states that, “Properties must be owned by an individual, individuals, sole proprietorship, general partnership, limited liability partnership or a limited liability company. No property owned by a corporation or other business shall qualify for a permit.”

The codes also states in chapter 100-42.1 H(3), that “No owner entity composed of similar individuals, partners, and/or members [ie LLCs] may hold permits for more than two properties at any given time, one owner-occupied and one non-owner occupied STR in order to allow equitable distribution of short term rental special use permits.” The section also tags the following, “Only one permit per property is allowed at one time.”

Plavchak said a number of meetings on owner/occupied were held that included members of the Town, Zoning and Planning Boards, and with the input of the Association of Towns, “who all thought that owner/occupied was not the right way to go.”

Plavchak said they made the applicants for a STR apply for a Special use Permit so that public hearings could be held on each one.

“That way all the comments get documented and we can always go back to it. We put in there that if you have so many violations we can revoke the Special Use Permit and we can reject when you come back for renewal in two years,” he said.

Villages Granted Zoning Change

Last week the Town Board approved a zoning change for the Villages project from Residential ½ acre to a Planned Residential Retirement Development [PRRD]. The vote of 3-2 was along party lines, with Republicans John Fraino, Lenny Auchmoody and Dave Plavchak voting in favor of the zoning change and Democrats Joe Mazzetti and Mike Guerriero voting against the change.

When asked why the board did not ask for any modifications of the project, Supervisor Plavchak disagreed with that characterization. He said that the developer [Marc Sanderson] did not get everything he asked for, as the Planning Board made a number of changes in a document they sent to the Town Board prior to the zoning change vote.

“I’m satisfied with the changes that they made to date, and I was also satisfied that the Villages has to go back through a site plan review and have another public hearing,” he said. “The modification that I did make on it is to have the soil remediation done first.”

Initially, there was a lengthy discussion with the developer on carting away identified contaminated soil because the site was a former orchard, but now plans call for burying the soil on the site. Plavchak said if they have to cart away contaminated soil, he believes the total will be a small amount.

“Per the Department of Environmental Conservation [DEC], the type of stuff that was detected, you’re allowed to bury it, with some being 18 inches deep and then compacted on top of it or have impervious surface on top of it,” he said. “The DEC will be monitoring that whole thing.”

Plavchak said he is not concerned about the density of the proposed project, with the Assisted Living Facility [ALF] at 340 feet in length and the number of senior living cottages at 197.

The code on coverage for a PRRD states in chapter 100-23.2 G(4) that the maximum permitted coverage of gross site area on a PRRD site shall be 40% for buildings and other impervious surfaces.” Plavchak pointed out that before the PRRD law the coverage was at 60% instead of 40% and the height of the [ALF] building was higher.

“Somebody brought up that the houses are too close together, but if you don’t want the houses that close together then you can’t restrict the impervious surface coverage area that much. That was kind of a trade off in my mind when the [PRRD] law was made.”

Plavchak voted for zone change because the Villages is a $50 million project, no kids will be going into the school district, no town responsibility to maintain the roads or the utilities, “and they are contributing big time to the tax base. I understand there are some cons with the project with traffic and some people don’t like what it looks like, but if you want to get the tax base to grow a bit there are only certain places you want it to grow,” with the Route 9W a prime area for development.