Village amends local dock law, giving ZBA more authority
At the April 20 Northport Village Board meeting, there was a public hearing for an amendment to a local law pertaining to pier, ramp and dock requirements. Village residents had an opportunity to ask questions about adding to the existing code and voice concerns before approval.
The approved law amendment pertains to Chapter 124 (section 124-4) Environmental Standards for Residential and Recreational Marine Structures. This specific part of the law now reads as follows:
(4) The areas of the fixed platform/deck shall not exceed 400 square feet. A dock shall not exceed 100 feet in length and shall not exceed 4 feet in width.
i. Any application for a fixed pier, ramp, floating dock or fixed platform that seeks to exceed the maximum(s) permitted under Section 124-4(A) (1)(2)(3)(4) shall at the discretion of the Northport Village Board of Trustees be (a) heard by the Northport Village Board of Trustees or (b)referred to the Northport Village Zoning Board to review and act in accordance with the powers granted to them and pursuant to the criteria established Section 124-4(A)(4)(ii)
ii. Upon referral from the Northport Village Board of Trustees the Zoning Board shall review and act upon the application. The Zoning Board review shall include but not be limited to navigational safety issues; 3 whether it will produce a detriment to the nearby properties; is the requested application to exceed the limits substantial; is the proposed application adversely affect the physical and environmental conditions in the area and can the relief sought by the applicant be achieved by some other feasible method.
iii. In addition to the foregoing, no application for the relief sought hereunder shall be granted without New York State Department of environmental conservation and Army Corp of engineer’s approval of the maritime structure.
Ed Carr, a licensed marine engineer who worked with the Village to amend the law, explained, “the reason the Village chose to change the law was because if somebody builds something in the Village, and it doesn’t conform to zoning, meaning that it’s too close to the property line, too high or too set back, you have the ability to go to the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) to get a variance, or variation of the law. But when it came to docks, this section of the code was outside the purview of the ZBA.”
Ed noted that the ZBA is given very specific authority to grant relief under certain sections of the Village code and it was an oversight that the section covering docks was never added to the list of codes that the ZBA was able to grant relief on.
In Ed’s case, he’s proposing to build a dock that’s closer to the side of his property instead of going down the middle in order to avoid a sewer line. But to do that, he assumed he needed approval from the ZBA. That’s when Ed and Village Attorney Stuart Besen found that the ZBA didn’t have authority to grant a relief for the dock code.
Ed said, “The ZBA was in a quagmire because we had no one to go to for relief, so the Village agreed to pass this law, specifically giving the ZBA authority to grant variances under Chapter 124 of the code.”
Ed also suggested a change to the code language, which previously allowed for a 100- square-foot dock, but was an error. Because the code allowed for a dock that’s 100x4 feet, it should have been listed as 400 square feet in total.
The code still requires relief approval by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Army Corp of Engineers for maritime structures, and docks, piers or ramps under the Village code cannot adversely affect the physical or environmental conditions in the area.
