Tub talks get heated in Village of Great Neck

Adam Lidgett

Village of Great Neck trustees and residents on Tuesday debated a bill that would permit bathtubs and showers in the basement of homes.

“Our law does not permit a shower and a tub. The question before us now is if we want to permit them in basements,” Village of Great Neck Mayor Ralph Kreitzman said. “We’ve received requests by a number of people.”

Village trustees and resident offered a variety of opinions before the public hearing was adjourned until the board’s June 2  meeting.

Trustee Barton Sobel said many houses in the village were built with only one to one and a half bathrooms, and that there is often nowhere on the upper levels of these homes to install additional bathrooms.

Trustee Mitchell Beckerman said he believed residents should be able to put in an extra bathroom in their own home as they see fit.

“In today’s world you have these 1,400-square-foot homes with one and a half bath[rooms],” he said. “You have three and four and five kids and these small bathrooms — it’s criminal to now allow them to have the proper number of bathrooms.”

But some village residents worried allowing full bathrooms in basements would lead to homeowners illegally renting their basements out.

“This is not for someone to take care of someone in old age,” village resident Jean Pierce said. “They are going to be rented out. You are going to get these people who buy a house and stuff it with 19 people.”

The debate took on political overtones when Village School social studies teacher Sam Yellis, who announced his candidacy for village trustee on Tuesday,  said he was also concerned about the basements being rented out and the possible use of hotplates in basements that were illegally rented.

“It’s not just some hypothetical thing. My heart still bleeds for that man who lost his family to that hot plate fire,” Yellis said referencing the seven Brooklyn children killed in a house fire sparked by a hot plate in March.

Yellis will be challenging Beckerman and fellow Trustee Jeff Bass who are running for re-election with Mayor Ralph Kreitzman.

Beckerman said the village shouldn’t not allow people to put in full basement bathrooms out of fear someone might abuse the law.

“If somebody wants to do something illegally at home they’re not waiting for us to put something in the code so they can do it,” Sobel added.

Sobel also said that some village residents have already put bathrooms in their basement, and that if the bill passed the village code would require them to put in the emergency exit window.

Trustees also discussed the possibility of requiring residents who want bathtubs and showers in their basements to also install fire and carbon monoxide detectors.

Bass suggested amending the bill to allow the village to permit showers and bathtubs in basements on a case-by-case basis.

But Stephen Limmer, attorney for the village, said permitting things on a case-by-case basis is difficult, as the village would have to decide what to base the need on in determining who gets to install a full bathroom in the basement.

Kreitzman suggested possibly amending the bill to allow showers and bathtubs in basements in households where there is only one bathroom.

In other business, trustees voted to hire Leonard J Standberg & Associates, a Freeport engineering consultant, to do survey work for the village’s new Village Hall to be located at 265 East Shore Road.

The village will pay the consultant $4,600 to do the survey work, which includes looking at how construction workers will have to move dirt on the property, Village Clerk Joe Gil said.

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