The session sought to answer questions and hear concerns on a series of proposed amendments to the land use code, giving the two governments a chance to incorporate the feedback ahead of taking any formal action to adopt them.

Unlike a formal public hearing, where boards typically don’t respond in the moment to public comment, this allowed a dialogue between the land use code committee and the public. The full village and town boards were not in attendance, as the committee would consider the feedback and any resulting changes directly before presenting those to each board for adoption. Town Councilwoman Emily Kilburn Politi and village Deputy Mayor Jackie Kelly, who both sit on the joint land use code committee, were in attendance.

“It’s the land use code committee that makes the recommendation, not the town or the village board,” Kilburn Politi said. “That’s who was in front of the room.”

The proposed amendments focus on four areas: temporary workforce housing, accessory dwelling units, political signage and special event venues.

The temporary workforce housing amendments stemmed from what village and town officials see as a lack of safety and living conditions ordinances, and contain various provisions meant to ensure clear standards for location, density, duration of use, and management.

“The concern was coming from the general public, mostly worried about their welfare,” Kilburn Politi said. “It’s a way to make sure that they’re being housed safely.”

It also limits the number of temporary workforce housing permits that can be issued to five per zoning district. Kilburn Politi said that’s meant to ensure there’s enough occupancy for seasonal workers that are crucial to the community’s economy, while making sure that there’s not an over-conversion of would-be long-term rental housing stock into temporary workforce housing.

The accessory dwelling unit amendments seek to increase the long-term housing stock while retaining the neighborhood’s characteristics. The new regulation increases the number of accessory dwelling units from one to two, provided that sufficient wastewater capacity is in place, neither dwelling exceeds 75% of the total habitable floor area of the principal single-family dwelling on that property, and is not located in the front yard setback.

It also requires that all applicable setback, permeability and parking requirements stipulated in the code are met. Depending on the zoning district, only one of those two accessory dwellings can be a short-term rental, and it must be hosted.

The political signage amendment removes existing language stating that signs can only be put up 30 days ahead of an election. The town and village cited lawsuits in other parts of the country challenging similar language on First Amendment grounds. The town and village said they want to be proactive about removing code language that could lead to costly and unwinnable litigation.

The special event venue proposals drew the biggest concern from the crowd, and specifically a provision that would have moved up the cessation of music or amplified noise from the current 9 p.m. cutoff up to 8 p.m. Wedding planners warned that such a move would be detrimental to their industry, making it much harder for would-be clients to agree to have their wedding there, if the music has to stop by 8 p.m., and they have to be off the venue by 9 p.m.

Katy Hosler, who owns VanBee & Co, a local wedding and event planning business, was one of the eight or so vendors who attended the meeting. She spoke at the meeting to share her concerns.

Hosler said that wedding planners would ideally like a 10 p.m. noise curfew, and that the current 9 p.m. noise ordinance is difficult, but workable. This mainly involves arranging transportation for parties to downtown commercial establishments for afterparties that stretch later into the night. She said this was already a hard sell to some.

“When these people that are coming in are spending $25,000 on their tent and rentals, then they’re spending another $20,000 on bringing a band in, the thought of having a band play when it’s still just light outside is not super appealing,” she said.

Hosler said it’s less of an issue in the fall, when it gets darker earlier, but conversely, a move up to 8 p.m. would likely turn more clients away, not just for the lack of dancing in the moonlight.

“Then we’re talking about the hair and makeup side of things,” Hosler said. “If you have a wedding party of any size, when we have a 4 p.m. start coming for a wedding, a lot of times, we have brides and their wedding parties starting to get ready at 7 a.m. If we’re then pushing up that ceremony time to say, 1 or 2 p.m because we have to be done by 8 p.m., then we’re talking about a 4 a.m. start time for hair and makeup, which just is making it more and more unattractive for these couples to come and spend their money here and get married here.”

Hosler added that it’s not just a “catastrophic game changer” for wedding planners, but that there’s a large downstream effect to other local businesses, such as restaurants, hotels, babysitters, photographers and boutique stores who all derive business from vending services they provide, directly or indirectly, for weddings. Even though it’s just a one-hour change in the noise cessation, she said it’s a critical time for these celebrations to be taking place, and having to be off the venue that early would mean a lot of potential clients would go elsewhere.

Hosler said that while she’s not sure what future deliberations around this will look like, she was encouraged that the land use code committee seemed receptive to the concerns, and wanted to hold subsequent stakeholder meetings to possibly revise this.

“I don’t think that anybody wants to kill the event field here,” she said. “I think that (the committee) being open to that is super positive. They had told us that it was going to be an internal decision between the people sitting around that table at that time, but I do think they are doing their due diligence of reaching out to other folks.”

“It was a very educational event,” Kelly said. “We listened to their side, and they listened to our side about why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

Kelly and Kilburn Politi said a possible compromise could revolve around allowing the later noise curfew to remain in place, in exchange for limiting the total number of events in a given season or year that the venues can host — giving the wedding planners more flexibility with their clients, while giving neighbors some relief in reducing the occurrences of the later-night noise.

Kelly didn’t foresee any substantive changes to the first three areas of amendments. If there is a change in the proposals to the noise curfews, it would have to go back to a public hearing before the town and village boards, before they could move to adopt the changes. It’s unclear when that might take place.

The land use code was last significantly modified in 2011. Kelly said that these were the most pressing matters to address. She was proud that the proposed amendments were able to be completed in-house, adding that outsourcing it would have likely taken 18 to 24 months and come with a significant price tag.

“We’re probably talking upwards of $100,000 to have this land use code rewritten from an outside firm, which was money that neither (North Elba nor Lake Placid) had,” she said.

The full set of proposed changes, not including what may be further modified to the noise cessation based on these upcoming meetings with stakeholders, can be found at tinyurl.com/2p3jux4f.