[Hvcatskillcewg] Subdivisions

[Cari Watkins-Bates]

FYI, the Town of Red Hook (Dutchess County) planning board has invited
representatives from land trusts to discuss this issue.  I will let the
group know what/if any interesting items come from this.

 

Cari Watkins-Bates
Farmland Protection Project Manager
Scenic Hudson, Inc. 

 

  _____  

From: hvcatskillcewg-bounces at lists.ltanet.org
[mailto:hvcatskillcewg-bounces at lists.ltanet.org] On Behalf Of Carissa
Haberland
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:41 AM
To: hvcatskillcewg at lists.ltanet.org
Subject: [Hvcatskillcewg] Subdivisions

 

Hello Everyone-

 

Here is a topic for a little coffee talk...

 

Many of the Town Planning Boards are encouraging "conservation
subdivisions". To be over simplified, they grant a smaller lot sizes to the
developers (higher concentration of homes) if they leave a greater
percentage of the parcel undeveloped. In many cases the "open space" of the
subdivision is left as a separate parcel in the end of the process. The Land
Trust is frequently approached to accept a conservation easement on the
"open space", which usually ends up in the ownership of an HOA, or accept
the donation of the parcel fee simple. (As a completely unverified and
speculative observation, I have  noticed several of these up for tax sale.)

 

Anyway, the Land Trust has made it quite clear that we are not interested in
taking on responsibility of what is frequently the scraps of development. We
have expressed to Towns and the County that our involvement in any
development projects should be up front and our goal is to protect the
resources completely, not partially. As a result of the amount of these
requests, I am asking that our organization establish a separate set of
criteria for conservation subdivision projects that we will participate in
but I feel we need to do something more to help out the Towns.

 

I tend to lean toward NOT encouraging Towns to hold easements but with these
subdivision situations it does not make sense for us to hold them. I am
thinking of encouraging the inclusion of the conserved area into the
individual lots rather than keeping it a separate parcel. Is it something
you all feel the building departments or other departments of towns would be
better able to enforce and maintain if flagged properly?

 

Talk amongst yourselves...

 

Carissa

 

Carissa D. Haberland

Director of Stewardship Programs

Orange County Land Trust

P.O. Box 2442

Middletown, NY 10940

(845) 343-0840

(845) 341-0898 (fax)

carissa at oclt.org

www.oclt.org <http://www.oclt.org/> 

 

P  Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

 

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