Riverhead Town plans to drop apartment committee

The Riverhead Town Board, saying that only a handful of people have actually applied for a permit to create an accessory apartment since the town changed its zoning code to allow homeowners to create one, is planning to eliminate its appointed Accessory Apartment Committee and replace it with a group of town employees.

Town code allows accessory apartments of 300 to 650 square feet in owner-occupied homes, and the code was amended in 2009 to allow larger apartments of up to 850 square feet, provided they do not exceed 40 percent of the home’s actual area. No apartment may have more than one bedroom.

But, with only a few applications filed for such apartments, the town is proposing replacing its Accessory Apartment Committee with a new committee headed by the town’s building and planning administrator and the planning director and building inspector or their designees.

A public hearing on the change has been set for Sept. 17 at 7:10 p.m. in Town Hall.