Transportation Committee Bill and Why We Oppose it
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- Sets in motion potential for state mandated local development of multi-family housing on State Parking Lots or on town owned properties. Most if not all, Metro North train stations have state owned parking lots. This bill may attempt to set in motion a potential override of local decision making on siting of multi-family housing developments. Section 1 specifically stated "5" transit stations: Why not name the five specific transit stations and their towns?
- This legislation requires the same number of commuter parking spaces to be provided for transit, with no mention of additional off-street parking required for the new units in the housing development itself. It does not account for the possible lack of availability of adequate on-street parking near the targeted state lots for multifamily and mixed-use development. Considering other TOD bills being proposed require no off-street parking at all, the need for off-street parking for such development must be properly addressed as those living in suburbs will continue to need vehicles.
- If it is state owned property, who collects the property tax on that development? IF it is the state, are the towns left to deal with the increased infrastructure costs while the state would get all the property tax revenues?
- This bill seeks to identify and target state and town owned properties for multi-family development and can potentially be tied to other bills that would allow outside Housing Authorities to build a project in a municipality up to 15 miles away.
