The Village of East Hills board of trustees recently passed an amendment to its building code, one that imposes a temporary moratorium on all residential subdivision reviews and approvals.

The amendment will be in effect for 180 days, retroactive to March 24, when the BOT approved the motion. It applies to all residential-zoned areas of East Hills.

Specifically, the amendment states that "no applications for subdivision plans submitted to the ... Village of East Hills, its Building Department, and/or its Planning Board, shall be accepted, nor shall any pending applications for [the same purposes] be reviewed or processed" in the 180-day period that is part of the legislation.

According to village officials, the purpose of the moratorium is to "enable the village sufficient time to review, study, hold public hearings, and prepare and adopt a comprehensive plan concerning the creation of new residential subdivisions."

In the meantime, subdivision applications that have been submitted and approved prior to March 24 will not be subject to the ongoing moratorium.

"Developers want to subdivide their properties," East Hills Mayor Michael R. Koblenz acknowledged. However, when East Hills was incorporated 50 years ago, it wasn't intended to be a place where such subdivision would occur, the mayor added. "The village was built that way," he said, adding that local residents themselves are not happy with the idea of subdivisions proliferating in the village.

The action in East Hills is only one of the many attempts villages in the Roslyn area have taken to deal with the subdivision issue. Several years ago, the Village of Roslyn drafted and approved its own new building and zoning codes.

More recently, residents in the Village of Roslyn Estates had a major debate over amendments to its own zoning codes, ones that would diminish the actual number of subdivisions in the village and, in general, to prevent overdevelopment.

Even when Roslyn Estates enacted new tree codes, the subdivision issue emerged. A draft of that law noted that all throughout Long Island and especially on the North Shore, a habit of developers purchasing property for the sole purpose of subdividing the structure had resulted in the destruction of "vast numbers of trees," a process that Roslyn Estates officials hope to prevent from happening in their village.