By Michael Ryan
WINDHAM - There are more idioms than you can shake at stick at that are applicable to the process of creating zoning in the town of Windham.
The pot is being stirred on the subject of zoning after a somewhat heated planning board public hearing, recently, surrounding a proposed 30-lot subdivision on just over 100 acres out along County Route 10.
County Route 10, not that long ago, was a bucolic back road between Windham and Prattsville where cows could mosey and a couple of churches dating back a century and more are preserved.
Things are changing. A wedding business is located in what used to be the middle of nowhere and just up the hill from there, heading back toward the east, the 30-lot subdivision is in the planning stages.
It will likely be high-end, single family homes, presuming it meets all the local regulations that currently wouldn’t prevent the building of almost anything under the sun anywhere the crow flies in Windham.
A special committee of citizens and an outside consultant, over the past year-and-a-half, have been venturing deeply into the weeds on what is expected to be the town’s new zoning law.
The consultant, Helen Budrock from Delaware Engineering, says the group is “moving slow but making steady progress,” hoping to have a first draft ready by mid-spring of 2025.
That draft will undergo a series of public hearings before being ultimately handed over to the town board for approval or rejection.
Not that long ago, zoning was a nasty 4-letter word in Windham, so there is no certainty, once the public hearings take place, that new regulations will be enacted.
The tide, though, is shifting in that direction. Officials and residents alike use idioms to describe the latest effort, such as “shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted” and “too little too late.”
There is a clear sense that Windham is still like the Wild West in terms of development. There is money to be made and very limited controls.
If somebody got it in their mind to build a gas station on residential Mitchell Hollow Road, there wouldn’t be much to stop them, short of an intense outcry from the citizenry.
Zoning will not be an end-all solution to folks not wanting added noise and less scenery in their backyard, but it could help set better boundaries.
Budrock says the committee is now focused on “ridge line protection” and non-permissible development on “a certain percentage of slope.”
There are plenty of both in Windham, and plenty of 100-plus acre clearings of old woods going on, somehow needing to meet in the center, welcoming growth while saving the country beauty that draws visitors.
One of the larger absences that is expected to be addressed by zoning is in minimum lot sizes in what will be designated Rural Residential zones.
The committee will reportedly recommend a minimum of 5-acre lots in sectors such as County Route 10, the Big Hollow and elsewhere.
Windham has some land use guidelines but “they are all stand-alone laws. We are making sure they are all incorporated into zoning. It is a tedious process but we want to get it right, right out of the gate,” Budrock says.
Things that folks don’t necessarily think about until they are knocking at the door include solar energy farms, telecommunications towers, storage containers and campgrounds.
“We should be able to get those down pretty quickly,” Budrock says, using existing legislation in similar communities as models.
The committee meets twice this month, including on December 18, also giving thought to flood hazard protection and streamside development, working within rules already set by the Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Environmental Protection.
A resist-at-all-costs NIMBY (Not in my Backyard) mentality is not the only element at play. Concerns are being raised about the impact of all the major subdivision developments on the water table, wildlife, etc.
“That’s why we have these public hearings,” town supervisor Thomas Hoyt says, noting that whether or not Windham could have written zoning regulations a generation ago, it didn’t.
“The town has been evolving for two-hundred years. We have to move on from where we are today which is what we’re doing,” Hoyt says.
Budrock, who helped secure a grant, paying for the zoning process, shares that sentiment, saying, “most communities have zoning.
“It is very rare not have it. People have a right to develop their land. It is also important to make clear everyone’s land rights.”
Or as the idiom says, land use rules can no longer be as clear as mud. Nobody wants to jump the gun or throw caution to the wind.
There is no use crying over spilled milk. It won’t be a piece of cake, but the time is coming to decide if zoning hits the nail on the head, or not.
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