Four new homes proposed for Kings Highway

The April 3 Chester Town Planning Board meeting included two agenda items. The small agenda can be attributed to the town’s building moratorium, which has any project of five or more units and any warehouse on the shelf for nine months pending the completion of the town’s new comprehensive plan. It may be a busy January when new projects can finally be presented.

Developers of a parcel of property on 1414 Kings Highway between Well Sweep Lane and Pewter Circle have reduced the number of lots on the property from six to four, to comply with the building moratorium. The property also contains a parcel with a stormwater pond that the developers are hoping the Sugarloaf Homeowners Association will take ownership of. The town engineer listed 20 issues to be addressed by the developers. The project has federal wetlands on it and is a habitat for the bog turtle. Developers want to extend the sidewalk on Pewter Circle to cover the homes they are proposing as well.

The second agenda item concerned the possible creation of a new chapter of code in the town law concerning clearing, filling and grading (CFGs) from excavation sites. Board members noted the town code was created in 1973 and some things were left unaddressed. Most towns have code for CFGs and board members suggested looking at surrounding communities for examples of code they would like to emulate and code they would like to avoid.

The town of Newburgh was noted as an example of a town with an onerous code 18 pages in length, while the town of Tuxedo was praised for having a “reasonable” code. The building inspector was in the audience and said it is difficult to enforce CFG issues as the code currently stands, and he supports a new chapter of code dealing with it. Members of the planning board agreed that the town board should be the one to put forward this new law and then the planning board should review the proposal. The board also said they would like input from the comprehensive plan regarding the matter.