Year Round Status for Summer Homes

Here is an article from the New London Day that was published December 23, 2008 you might find interesting.

OL To Start Year-round Occupancy Check In March
By Jenna Cho        Published on 12/23/2008

Old Lyme - The town hopes to begin using a new system in March to evaluate whether certain homes, previously established as summer homes, should be allowed year-round occupancy.

The process is being streamlined as part of an agreement between the town and the South Lyme Property Owners Association, which in 1999 sued the town, challenging the validity of zoning regulations that restrict beach homes on lots smaller than 10,000 square feet from being occupied year-round.

The lawsuit was withdrawn from federal court in October.

About 20 residents at a special town meeting Monday night unanimously voted to approve a $33,000 transfer within the current budget to begin building the new system. The transfer was made from unused funds that had been reserved for a new hire in the public works department, according to First Selectman Timothy Griswold.

The fund transfer allows the town to pay for additional personnel to scan documents - which is part of the town's bigger plan to get all its town documents onto digital form - as well as mail them out to homeowners via certified mail and handle preliminary application reviews.

The new application method involves cataloguing all information filed with the town on the specific properties into digital form and setting up a system where
homeowners can receive the information, either in paper or digital form, and use it to apply for year-round residency, said Griswold.

Griswold said Monday that 1,970 homes in the beach communities and around Rogers Lake are eligible for review. The town does not know how many applications it will receive for a change to year-round status because some residents are already living in their summer cottages year-round while others have no plans to, he said.

The town sent the $33,000 transfer to a town meeting for the sake of transparency, Griswold said, though it was not obligated to, as the transfer was within the approved budget rather than an additional appropriation.

While resident Bill Folland voted in favor of the transfer, he questioned the timing of the meeting, which came three days before Christmas and a month before another town meeting scheduled in January.

He said he felt the issue at heart of the $33,000 fund transfer was something more residents should understand and lamented the low turnout at Monday's meeting.

”This has ramifications of making more year-round residents,” Folland said after the meeting.

More year-round residents living in summer cottages could mean more students going to Lyme-Old Lyme schools - a potential strain on taxpayers - and more demand for social services, he said.

Richard Moll, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, also worried that his board would see an increased workload due to a potentially large number of seasonal homeowners' applications for year-round status get rejected and appealed.

”We're in a significant crossroads in our town,” Moll said.

The town has been notoriously opposed to the construction of a sewage treatment plant, which a court ruling in favor of the association could have forced. The town addressed its concerns over failing septic systems - a polluting danger to Long Island Sound - by adopting regulations in 1995 prohibiting the off-season use of dwellings on lots smaller than 10,000 square feet.

Those regulations restricted certain beach homes from being occupied between Nov. 15 and April 15. They also required that anyone who has been living year-round in a home deemed seasonal show proof that their homes had been occupied year-round since before 1992.

Zoning Enforcement Officer Ann Brown said at the meeting Monday that as part of the new method of evaluating seasonal versus year-round residency, the Zoning Commission is amending regulations it hopes to approve by March.

Major changes to the zoning regulations could include lengthening the summer season for homes through Thanksgiving and changing the proof of year-round occupancy to since before 1999.