Bethel zoning battle

Smallwood golf course is ground zero

By FRITZ MAYER

KAUNEONGA LAKE, NY — The lawyer for the developer told the Bethel town board during its April 15 meeting that the zoning changes it had been working on for two years were seriously flawed. He said that the board had bought into the “fallacy” that large lots would protect the town’s environmental resources and rural character, when actually they would do the opposite.

The lawyer was Larry Wolinsky, and he was representing developer Robert Van Zandt, who owns about 200 acres of land known as the old Smallwood golf course. The land is currently zoned to allow houses to be built on one-acre lots. As part of a sweeping town-wide zoning update, the board has proposed changing the zoning to allow houses on five-acre lots, which would seriously restrict the number of homes that could be built on the property, more than half of which is comprised of protected wetlands.

The Delaware Riverkeeper and the community group Preserve Smallwood Country Life (PSCL) have advocated for the more restrictive zoning for the past two years.

In a letter submitted to the board during the public hearing on zoning changes on April 15, Wolinsky rejected the proposition that larger lots were better than smaller ones. The letter said larger lots increase impermeable surface areas because of larger driveways and larger homes. Larger lots also make environmentally sound central water and sewer systems cost prohibitive and they fragment habitat. The letter urged the board to return the entire parcel to one-acre zoning.

On the other side of the issue, Jonathan Hyman, a member of PSCL, urged the board to retain the five-acre zoning on the parcel, which would better protect its environmentally sensitive nature. As a means of demonstrating just how much water wends its way through it, he used a series of maps and photographs, which board members viewed with rapt attention.

The maps showed that waters from White Lake Brook, Lybolt Brook and an unnamed stream converge on the property, before the water continues on, ultimately flowing into the Upper Delaware River. He read from a Riverkeeper letter, which said, “The important natural resources of this site contain economic value in themselves as natural resources that provide protection of human health, water quality and abundance of supply…”

In his remarks, Hyman noted that in February 2008, the developer had threatened the town with a lawsuit when it proposed changing the parcel from one- to two-acre zoning. Hyman told the board that in formulating the proposed zoning changes, the board had followed all the necessary legal steps, and should a lawsuit occur, the board should fight it.

In summing up, Hyman said, “The owner of the 200-acre parcel does not have an eternally vested right to develop the property under zoning laws in effect when the property was purchased.” He then quoted a New York Court of Appeals ruling from 2008 that read, “The decision as to how a community shall be zoned or rezoned… rests with the legislative body; its judgment and determination will be conclusive, beyond interference from the courts, unless shown to be arbitrary, and the burden of establishing such arbitrariness is imposed upon him who asserts it.”

The board has had differences with the developer in the past. In 2006, it rebuffed the developer’s plan to build 200 townhouses on the property. In his letter, Wolinsky asked the board to consider allowing conservation development in all zones, which would allow the developer to move forward with the town house project.

Additionally, in August 2008, the board revoked a permit for a curb cut at the property because the developer was deemed to have overstepped the limits of what the permit allowed.

The board voted to continue the public hearing on May 1 at 2:00 p.m.