Yates seeks 4 moratoriums to update laws on short-term rentals, solar, wind and farmworker housing

YATES – The Yates Town Board wants to impose four moratoriums so the town can update local laws on short-term rentals, solar, wind and farmworker housing.

The town is seeking a 180-day period where Yates won’t process applications or issue permits for projects in the moratoriums.

“I find a lot of our local laws are outdated,” Jim Simon, the Yates town supervisor, said at last week’s Orleans County Planning Board meeting.

The Planning Board recommended the town proceed with moratoriums on wind, solar and the short-term rentals, but the board voted against moratorium on farmworker housing.

One Planning Board member, Bruce Kirby of Gaines, said all four efforts from the town “are major examples of NIMBY.” Kirby said the town seems to be trying to thwart development in those four areas.

“This is insanity,” he said.

Simon said the town is halting development with the updated laws. Yates will allow projects in all four areas, but Yates will have clearer regulations, he said.

With the moratorium on farmworker housing, the Planning Board cited ongoing litigation between the town and H.H. Dobbins, which operates a farm and also packing house, the latter serving about 60 different farms. Dobbins wants to build a housing facility with 30 beds on North Lyndonville Road (Route 63). Yates says the workers on the farm can stay there, but the town contends employees in the apple packing house technically are not farm workers.

A State Supreme Court judge sided with Dobbins, but the town has appealed that decision.

Yates is now looking at a local law for farmworker housing that it says will align with standards from the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. The town wants to require farmworker housing have at least 51 percent of the workers in the housing be from one farm.

Many in the agricultural community, including the Orleans County Farm Bureau, have pushed back on the proposal, saying it would limit farms from sharing housing or one smaller farm from renting space from another.

The Orleans County Planning Board wants to stay out of the matter. The town can proceed with the moratorium with a super-majority vote, which would need at least four yes votes from a five-member board.

With wind, solar and short-term rentals, the issues are big topics in other communities.

Gary Daum, a Planning Board member from Yates, said the state continues to incentivize solar projects, and there are now several under development in the county, but none yet in Yates.

“It changes all the time,” Daum said about solar. “Our governor every day signs new bills.”

Simon said he is concerned about fires with the battery-storage facilities for solar, and that’s among the issues Yates wants to address in its law.

Yates will be looking at regulations for residential, commercial and industrial systems, whether roof and ground-mounted.