South Blooming Grove amends zoning to allow new houses of worship and bigger homes – Times Herald-Record

SOUTH BLOOMING GROVE Property owners soon will be able to apply to the Village Board for permits to open synagogues or turn parts of their homes into prayer spaces under a newly enacted zoning amendment.

The new permit policy for houses of worship was one of a set of zoning changes Mayor George Kalaj and village trustees adopted on July 29 after holding a second public hearing on them. Other changes included doubling the footprint limit for new homes and increasing the allowed density for affordable housing.

The revisions follow a complete turnover of the five-member board in two elections in which South Blooming Grove's growing Hasidic community asserted its voting power, sweeping out all incumbents. The changes, first proposed in May on the heels of the second election, appear to have been a high-priority accommodation for those families and for builders.

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Audience speakers were starkly divided at an online hearing in May that focused largely on new houses of worship. Hasidic residents cheered the proposal as a victory for religious freedom, while other speakersquestionedthe impact on neighbors, the cost of future property-tax exemptions, and the lack of guidelines about what factors the board must weigh before granting permits.

The rules are spare, merely distinguishing between houses of worship that occupy parts of homes and those that stand alone, whether small or large. The Village Board would have to get the Planning Board's recommendations before issuing permits for large houses of worship, defined as holding 50 or more worshippers.

The board overrode the Orange County Planning Department's advice on beefing up those rules.County planners had told the board to expand the proposal to define in greater detail the three categories of houses of worship, limit each to appropriate zoning districts, and spell out the conditions they must meet for approval.

"Providing objective criteria for each class can help the community to avoid potentially significant adverse environmental impacts related to community character, transportation, and visual resources,"read the five-page review letter signed by CountyPlanning Commissioner Alan Sorensen on July 14.

None of those additions were made, other than to say that freestanding houses of worship must comply with the state's fire prevention and building codes.

The village board was set to discuss the application process for new houses of worship at its meeting on Monday night.

According to the Planning Department review, other zoning changes the board made will:raise the maximum footprint for homes to 5,000 square feet from 2,500 square feet;increase the height limit to 35 feet from 25 feet; and increase the number of extra homes a developer is allowed to build when affordable units are included in a project.

The review required the board to explain why those and other steps were being taken and include an analysis of their potential impact in the board's environmental review. Planners questioned whether the village's water system and other infrastructure could support denser development.

The board needed a super-majority of four votes under state law to override the Planning Department's requirements, which it got with a unanimous vote. The board resolution to adopt the zoning changes said of the planners' input: "After reviewsome of the modification requests were made, others were not."

During the same meeting at which the zoning changes were adopted, the village board voted to begin paying salaries of $300 per week or $15,600 a year to two men Kalaj appointed as unpaid assistants after taking office last September. The appointees, Isaac Eckstein and Joel Stern, lead a group called United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove. Kalaj described Stern as his campaign manager while running for office last year.

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South Blooming Grove amends zoning to allow new houses of worship and bigger homes - Times Herald-Record