Rockville Centre officials decry Hochul’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ housing plan

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The Village of Rockville Centre held a special meeting on March 1 to inform residents about the New York Housing Compact and what it would mean for the community.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s statewide strategy to address the housing crisis, announced in January and included in her executive budget proposal, sets a goal of building 800,000 new apartment units in the state by 2027. The plan would also require municipalities such as Rockville Centre with Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail stations to rezone to allow for higher-density residential development.

If approved as part of Hochul’s spending plan, under the Transit Oriented Development Act of 2023, municipalities would be required to adopt land-use regulations on a three-year cycle to allow for more high-density development.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this would destroy life on Long Island as we know it,” Rockville Centre mayor Francis Murray said at last week’s meeting. “It would destroy suburbia. It dismantles all of our zoning codes.”

Murray explained that if the village didn’t meet the development requirement, the state could override municipal zoning ordinances, height requirements and environmental reviews using a fast-track approval process in order to build high-density housing within a half-mile radius of the village’s Long Island Rail Road station.

The proposal would mandate that 50 housing units be built per acre within the target area. Based on that figure, Deputy Mayor Kathy Baxley said, the village would be responsible for building 504 new apartment units every three years.

“We don’t have anywhere to go except up,” Baxley said. “This would mean building on top of stores.”

A project of that magnitude, she said, would be similar to the three-phase Avalon development, which added more than 514 new housing units to the area between 2010 and 2017.

Village Trustee Katie Conlon said that she wanted to dispel the notion that the board was adopting a “not in my backyard” stance on Hochul’s proposal. “I am not opposed to growth and development,” Conlon said. “I’m opposed to rapid, chaotic growth. We need a smart, well-thought-out growth plan.”

She pointed out that the Housing Compact neither gives municipalities credit for existing housing nor takes into consideration their population density.

According to census data from 2010 and 2020, Conlon said, the village’s population grew by 8.3 percent. Housing in the village has also increased by 3.2 percent in the past 10 years.

“The more housing a municipality has provided over the past several years, the more housing they therefore need to create,” Conlon said. “Because it’s a percentage based on your current housing, we would have to create 3 percent more of that housing over three years. And in my opinion that’s counter-intuitive, because you’re only compounding overly congested areas.”

Nassau County relies on groundwater for its drinking water. But with sewage and septic systems at or near capacity, many people are worried that additional stress could cause irreparable harm to the area’s ecosystem.

Murray said that Rockville Centre school classrooms are overflowing, local roadways and trains are overcrowded, emergency services are overtaxed, and police are responding to more calls than ever. He also pointed out that by 2025, the state would ban new structures from using fossil fuels like natural gas or oil for power, forcing a conversion to an all-electric power supply.

While a portion of the village power supply is sourced from hydroelectric energy, the remaining power supply is bought off the grid, and is generated by fossil fuels, oil and natural gas.

“It’s going to cost you four times as much,” Murray said. “It doesn’t make any sense. Either you’re for the environment or you’re not. You can’t have it both ways.”

To help facilitate the new development, Hochul’s plan would provide $250 million across the state for infrastructure upgrades.

“We would need $250 million just for us,” Baxley said. “We would have to change our electricity, change our sewers, hire more emergency services … it just doesn’t seem feasible at this time.”

There are currently 2,200 housing units within a half-mile of the train station, she said. But since none of them have been built in the past three years, they do not meet the criteria to be considered one of the “safe harbor” communities exempt from Hochul’s proposal.

Part of the Housing Compact also requires that the state create a panel in Albany to determine the standards for development. Trustee Emilio Grillo said that if the village wanted to challenge those standards, it would need to present “clear and convincing evidence” against them.

“It’s a ridiculous standard that is about as close to ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ as you can get,” Grillo said. “So in that instance, it’s putting an added burden on local governments if they want to challenge these decisions.”

Grillo said that he was also alarmed that the state’s proposal would forgo any environmental review, which is usually required by the state in order for a municipality to develop so much as a parking lot.

“When something like this presents itself, rest assured that we’re going to fight as hard as we can to make sure that it doesn’t happen,” Grillo said. “But,” he added, directing his comment to the residents in attendance, “we’re going to need your help on that.”

The purpose of the meeting was to urge community members to spread the message about the state’s “one-size-fits-all” approach, and to persuade their neighbors to send letters to state officials to encourage them to stop the Housing Compact from being included in the budget.

“First of all, let’s not call it a compact, because a compact is an agreement,” Carolyn Stone, a local resident, said during the discussion at Village Hall. “This is an edict or dictate.”

Trustee Michael Sepe said that the issue boils down to municipal zoning regulations versus state control, and is not based on any left-wing or right-wing political agenda.

“When you look at the nuts and bolts of this, it’s not only impractical, but it is noxious in the sense that it is an unfunded mandate, the likes of which this state has not seen,” Sepe said. “It’s about what works versus what doesn’t work. What draws people to move into your state, for whatever reason. For quality of life, for businesses, for income tax, for all the things that make a place attractive versus being one of those states that can’t chase people away fast enough.”

In an effort to encourage more residents to speak up about the proposed housing mandate, the village planned to host a special town hall meeting, with elected officials including Assemblyman Brian Curran and State Sen. Kevin Thomas, on this past Tuesday, after press time, at the John A. Anderson Recreation Center.