News

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Big House Regs to Face RTM Challenge

By James Lomuscio

As expected, a controversial Westport Planning and Zoning Commission (PZ) amendment aimed at limiting house sizes will be challenged before the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) next month.

Town Clerk Patricia Straus said that her office has received a petition with more than the 20 signatures needed to place the item on an upcoming RTM agenda. Valerie Seiling Jacobs of Compo Parkway is the lead petitioner.

“We had 64 signatures on the petition, and people were lining up to sign it,” said Jacobs.

Passed Dec. 9 by a 5 to 1 vote (David Press, PZ secretary, dissenting,) Amendment 621 adjusts limits on house sizes in AA and AAA zones. While these zones will continue to have a 25 percent total coverage limit, they will also now have a 15 percent building coverage limit, down from the current 25 percent. 

The new amendment becomes effective Feb. 14 unless opponents are successful in an RTM appeal scheduled for Jan. 18. A two-thirds vote of the 36-member legislative body is necessary to overturn.

The amendment aims at protecting Westport’s watersheds and improving environmental protections to rivers and streams. It regulates how much a particular property may be covered with buildings, structures, parking spaces, patios and other impervious surfaces.

“There will be over 300 houses that will become nonconforming overnight simply because of he 15 percent coverage requirement,” said Jacobs. “It has a disproportionate impact on people with smaller lots.”

Jacobs also said that the environmental claims about improving water quality are false since new homes are required to have proper drainage and catch basins.

“They’re trying to claim it’s environmental, but it’s really not,” she said. “This is basically the same proposal they have been pushing for the past six or seven years. It’s about big houses. They don’t like them.”

When the amendment was passed, however, it received a sweeping endorsement from Alicia Mozian, director of the Department of Conservation. She said in the news release that the legislation addresses issues “that we have urged the PZ Commission to take on for a long time.”

“So, these changes should guide the redevelopment of the town in a way that will help protect our ground and surface water which ultimately drains into our aquifers and Long Island Sound,” she said.

Jacobs argued that the amendment’s conditions that make patios part of the overall house coverage, as well as its impact on properties that have wetlands, will result in as many as 600 more nonconforming properties.

“Ten houses on my road are nonconforming because of this,” she said, adding that when a property is listed as nonconforming, it has a negative effect on its value.

Comments:     Comment Policy

The RTM PZ;Committee will be meeting on this issue on January 5th and then again on January 12th at Town Hall room 309 at 7:30pm.

Residents interested in this issue are welcome to come, listen and speak.

The full RTM will then meet on January 18th.

Posted by Matthew Mandell on December 22, 2010 at 02:58 PM | #

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