Panel endorses $500k plan to update zoning law

The city could spend more than $500,000 to update its zoning code, moving Kingston to a form-based system that puts the emphasis on buildings rather than on land use.

At a meeting Wednesday, the Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee endorsed a resolution to spend $524,394 from the city’s surplus fund balance to hire a consultant to update the zoning code and partner with the Newburghbased planning organization Pattern for Progress to provide additional support during the process.

Of the funding, $499,394 will be paid to the consulting firm of Dover, Kohl, and Partners of Coral Gables, Fla. The remaining $25,000 will go to Pattern for Progress.

The city’s current zoning code was adopted in 1963.

The funding resolution awaits a final vote by the the full Common Council, which is scheduled to meet April 7.

“This is not a cheap endeavor,” Mayor Steve Noble told the committee. “This is something that we have not done in, obviously, 50-plus years.”

Noble said Dover, Kohl, and Partners was chosen by a city zoning subcommittee that had issued a request for proposals last year. The subcommittee received four responses and chose to interview two of the firms, Noble said. He said Dover, Kohl, and Partners was the subcommittee’s unanimous choice for a consultant.

Noble said the firm has done some “really exciting” work on a national level related to form-based code, which is something the committee felt very strongly about. He said the firm has also done work for the city of Albany.

Noble said the firm uses an inclusive public process in its work and would create visualizations to help people understand the proposed zoning regulations.

Pattern for Progress would act as another consultant on behalf of the city, Noble said. He said representatives of the organization would serve as local liaisons and would be at every meeting to ensure the project does not get held up because of a lack of administrative support from the city.

Noble noted that the city’s Comprehensive Plan update was supposed to have been completed in a year, but it took more than four years because city’s staff was stretched so thin. Having Pattern for Progress on board will help the city avoid that happening with the zoning code revision and will make for a better final product, he said.

Zoning Board of Appeals Chairman Tony Arqulewicz told the committee that the expense of the project “seems like a big nut to swallow,” but the update will bring the city a whole new code.

“So we’re going to be totally revising the current zoning and guidelines,” Arqulewicz said. He said the current zoning code has been called such things as inflexible, complex, reader unfriendly, antiquated, unclear, and not a reflection of current Kingston reality.

Arqulewicz, who served on the zoning subcommittee, added that the Zoning Board of Appeals needs help. He said the board has been on a collision course the last couple of years because more and more of its decisions have not been based on clearly delineated language in the code.

Arqulewicz pointed to a decision the board was to make the following evening regarding the proposed mixed-use development in Uptown Kingston known as The Kingstonian. He said that decision on an appeal of a ruling by the city’s zoning enforcement officer would be much easier to make if the zoning code was rewritten to have exact and unambiguous language.

Rewriting the whole zoning code will not be an easy task, but it has to be done, Arqulewicz said.