The early retirement of Southold Town Assistant Town Planning Director Mark Terry this summer and a shortage of staffing in the town’s planning office has had a greater impact than expected on the pace of the town’s Zoning Update, acknowledged Town Planning Director Heather Lanza at the Town Board’s Dec. 16 work session.
Pictured Above: Southold Town Planning Director Heather Lanza at a public information session earlier this year.
The town also parted ways with its zoning consultant, ZoneCo, in July of this year.
Its Planning Department has been kept busy with large applications coming into the Planning Board, said Ms. Lanza, as she gave an overview of her office’s progress on the Zoning Update in the months since a series of public informational sessions this past summer.
“In September, I said in three weeks I would have a working draft, but that was unrealistic, due to staffing shortages, which had more impact than I expected,” said Ms. Lanza.
The town recently advertised for a new position of Environmental Planner, and Ms. Lanza said her office has a pile of resumes to go through before it hires someone.
Mr. Terry, who had worked for the town since 2002, retired four months early in August, telling The Beacon at the time that he needed a change of pace from a desk job.
He was hired earlier this month as a consultant by the Village of Greenport, where he is expected to begin by advising the Village Board at a planning-related work session this Thursday afternoon, Dec. 18, at 3 p.m.
Ms. Lanza said a plan to use artificial intelligence to summarize public comments on the Zoning Update didn’t work out, and she expects it to take “another few months” to compile the comments.
“I think that’s realistic,” she said. “I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.”
Ms. Lanza pointed out that another major effort of the Planning Department, updating the town code regarding cell towers, has also been taking up much of her time, with a draft code expected to be set for public hearing at this afternoon’s 4:30 p.m. meeting.
The town’s Zoning Update Advisory Committee, she added, has been working on modeling the proposed changes’ impacts on commercial and industrial properties throughout town. An early analysis of that data, she said, has found that the majority of Southold’s properties, both commercial and residential, are on lots that do not conform to their zoning district.
Councilman Greg Doroski, who is leaving town office at the end of this year to take on his new role as a County Legislator representing the North Fork, said at the Dec. 16 work session that he was frustrated with himself that he hadn’t pushed Ms. Lanza harder, as the Zoning Update missed every deadline that was set over the past several months.
“I’m not going to be here anymore, and I regret not working harder on this,” he said. “It feels like we’re losing momentum. There was a lot of great public input work we did, which has not been summarized and is getting a little stale.”
Mr. Doroski asked if Ms. Lanza needed more staff.
“I have always asked for more staff, but I never got it,” she said. “When we don’t have enough staff, we can barely get by with our regular projects.”
“There’s a growing chorus that the Comprehensive Plan took 10 years to get done, and we’re four years into the zoning update,” he said. “We’re 14 years away from that information — that’s a lifetime. We still haven’t implemented those changes. We’re almost lapping ourselves.”
Ms. Lanza said she doesn’t believe the information in the Comprehensive Plan is stale, and added that, while she understands there’s a feeling that Southold is being overwhelmed by development, she said most construction people see being done is on single an lots and “doesn’t have a lot to do with zoning.”
“That’s only looking at the code from one direction — as a tool to prevent overdevelopment,” said Mr. Doroski. “It’s not only about what we want to prevent. It’s also about what we want to promote, not just to prevent overdevelopment, but to promote the development we want.”
Mr. Doroski also serves as liaison to the town’s Agricultural Advisory Committee, and several members of that committee came to the board’s Dec. 2 meeting upset that a proposed change to the town code regarding the committee was not on the agenda.
The board had pulled the resolution from the agenda earlier that day, ironically, because it had made some changes it had wanted to run by the Agricultural Advisory Committee at a committee meeting before it was set for public hearing. But members of the committee were not informed of that change.
“Two weeks ago, there was frustration expressed, when it seemed like there was agreement to put agricultural processing on development rights-sold land,” said Mr. Doroski. “It feels like we’re spinning our wheels, still… we’re in the same spot we were in four years ago related to agriculture, and business owners don’t have the luxury of “we’ll wait”…. We really need to give them a target and meet that deadline. You need to tell us…. Even before we lost Mark, we missed every single deadline, by weeks.”
“End of March?” suggested Ms. Lanza. “I didn’t want to give a date — I didn’t want to overpromise…. I’m as frustrated as anybody. I would love to have this project done.”
“I’m more frustrated than you,” said Mr. Doroski.
“It’s part of the whole planning process,” said Town Supervisor Al Krupski. “The zoning update has taken up a lot of time. The community input has been overwhelming…. There were some objections and a lot of concerns.”
“I think the public understands this is a process and their voices need to be heard,” he added.
In an email update to followers of the Zoning Update process later Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Lanza said the town plans to hold another series of public input sessions once it has a new draft, “probably in late spring.”
Read Our Ongoing Coverage of the Southold Zoning Update
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Just as a correction, there was no resolution prepared to allow for limited processing on Town DRS lands. What was on the agenda was a resolution to go to a public hearing on changes to Chapter 71, which formally codifies the Agricultural Advisory Committee. These changes hadn’t been run past us and we had some concerns. In a November 2023 Town Board work session (the last one that AAC has been invited to), there was verbal agreement of that Town Board to allow for some ag processing on DRS lands and to eventually look at allowing some sort of retail on DRS properties, since these are both not allowed at the current time and the comp. plan says there should be consideration of them. Hope this helps… (From a volunteer member of the Ag. Advisory Committee)