Workshop on Mobile Home Law
by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board met on Monday August 10 to discuss the Town’s 2015 Mobile Home law. This law was not included in the Planning Board’s enabling legislation passed in July because Councilman Tom Berry said it is deeply flawed and needs to be revised, so the meeting began with asking Berry to say what he believes is wrong with it.
He began by saying this law charges the Town Codes Enforcement Officer (CEO) with enforcing its provisions, but the CEO law passed a year later does not include this law as part of his mandate, so that contradiction has to be resolved somehow. He then said the section about micro-homes references State regulations that don’t exist. There were no state regulations on micro-homes in 2015 when this law was passed, but CEO Fran Rogers said he believes micro-home regulations were included in the new 2020 State Building Code.
Berry had more points to make, but the discussion grew more general as it proceeded. Planning Board member Brandon deWaal was present, and he said enforcement is the big issue with this law. He said people are bringing in trailers or campers with no permissions and no one is doing anything about it. “It’s the wild west around here,” he said. deWaal said that he personally believes that any new structure should require site plan review to make sure that water, septic and driveways are in compliance. While the Mobile Home Law currently under consideration requires site plan review for mobile home installation and even for replacement of a mobile home on the same site, the Site Plan Review law exempts one and two family homes. The result is that there are a lot of driveways in town not in compliance with the road specifications established by the Planning Board, and emergency vehicles may be damaged trying to negotiate inadequate driveways, or may not be able to drive to the residence at all. Also, said deWaal, there are some lots where it is not possible to keep wells and septic the required distance apart.
The Board seemed inclined to reconsider the one and two family exemption from site plan review, but that was not the subject of this particular meeting, which was trying to grapple with revisions to the Mobile Home Law. The general strategy seemed to be to focus this law exclusively on mobile and manufactured homes, and take out provisions having to do with recreational vehicles and micro-homes, to be dealt with in separate laws.
The issue with micro-homes is that there is a new State law on such installations, and the local law needs to get in sync with that new State law. The issue with recreational vehicles is that while this law forbids use of RVs as full time residential dwellings, it does not spell out the rules for use of RVs as temporary or seasonal living quarters, either as visitors using the water and waste facilities of an existing house, or parked seasonally on vacant land with on-board waste facilities.
The Board felt that it should come to some kind of a consensus about the substance of these laws before presenting it to the Town Attorney for final drafting. Towards that end, Heinz Noeding offered to put together drafts of three laws covering these matters for further discussion by the Board, and it would then meet to complete these drafts and ready them for handoff to Attorney Gruenberg.