Judge Latwin: Planning: Panacea or Pandora’s Box – A Paraenesis

Holding Court is a series by retired Rye City Court Judge Joe Latwin. Latwin retired from the court in December 2022 after thirteen years of service to the City.

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By Joe Latwin

There is much talk about updating Rye’s Comprehensive Plan. At the last City Council Meeting, former Council Member and Planning Commission member in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marcia Kapilow remarked that she had just driven from Greenhaven to the Square House and marveled at how wonderful and beautiful Rye was. Her sentiments are not isolated. Her view is almost universal. It was echoed last Friday at the Rye Seniors Men’s Club – a meeting of about twenty gentlemen, some in their 90s, who have lived here for many decades, if not for their entire lives. We are blessed with a great home. So why do some want to change it? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” (Widely attributed to Bert Lance, Director of the Office of Management and Budget in Jimmy Carter’s 1977 administration.)

I offer several observations. Rye’s Comprehensive Plan was adopted last in 1985. The Comprehensive Plan is often referred to as the “master plan”. I would estimate that only a handful of Rye folks have even read the 1985 Comprehensive Plan or know what it calls for. It set forth some aspirations for future development in Rye – most of which already have been enacted or will not happen. Nevertheless, a loud chorus cheers for its updating. Merely because something is venerable doesn’t mean it should be updated. Mark Zuckerberg, Prince Harry, Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Anna Kendrick, Jessica Alba, Keira Knightley, Gal Gadot, Bruno Mars, Amanda Seyfried, and Rachel McAdams are all as old as Rye’s Comprehensive Plan. (OK, I would replace some of them, but not because they were old nor would I diminish their works.)

Somethings have changed in Rye that make certain issues no longer a concern. There a few if any large tracts of land that can be subdivided. We don’t really have to be worried about 50 lot subdivisions as most private land is already subdivided or in the hands of government or large institutions. The zoning already in place would limit the number of lots, especially in sensitive areas, such as on the coastline and in flood zones, where minimum lot sizes were substantially increased. Even if we upzoned certain areas, it would have no immediate effect since existing properties would be grandfathered in. What it could do is devalue property, not only in particular, but also generally if Rye is no longer considered a wonderful place.

The ignorance of what is in the 1985 Comprehensive Plan raises other concerns. If there is some inadequacy in the Plan, what is the inadequacy? I have not heard a single person point to any inadequacy in the exiting Plan other than it is 41 years old. If there is something wrong in the existing Plan point it out so we can discuss it and promptly fix it. We need not and should not wait to go through a years-long Plan process to correct an error. If there is an inadequacy, then it has existed for 41 years. The blame for the failure to fix that inadequacy should be laid on the feet of every City Council and the Planning Commission Member, especially those that based their political campaigns on doing an update. If they saw an inadequacy, why didn’t they remedy it? If they didn’t have the vision to see a problem, they were willfully blind, incompetent, or lazy.

However, the biggest concern should be doing something for the sake of doing something. In the Hippocratic Oath, the foundation of medical ethics, the Prime Directive is to avoid causing harm when administering remedies. Planning is like a waterbed. If you push down here, something will pop up elsewhere. Several years ago, we considered requiring buildings to be set back further as they rose in height. Suddenly, plans were being submitted for buildings that looked like wedding cakes. Clever architects, planners and lawyers will do what they do to engineer around restrictions, or if the restrictions are too tight, they will stifle us. We may take something that has given us a wonderful City and capitulate to the squeakiest of wheels seeking to impose personal agenda on the rest of us. Some may want more housing, but few of us want to see Rye become a Co-op City with multistory apartment houses. I also would wager that most would not want a ten-story tower built next to them, We may be spending a couple of million dollars to tell us we don’t have the wonderful City we all agree we have and to convince us to do something that will destroy our City.

Read The 1985 City of Rye Development Plan