New Lebanon Town Board Action – A Dead Horse?

by Thaddeus Flint
In New Lebanon there is too much beating of dead horses going on, and dead horses need to be beaten because there are no meeting minutes. These were some of the more interesting themes of the September New Lebanon Town Board meeting held Tuesday night.
The “dead horse,” or horses in this case, are the Town’s closed landfill and the Town’s sidewalk project, which might or might not be a project.
[private]The landfill issue really is, as Town Supervisor Mike Benson put it, “a dead horse.” Benson has explained time and again the deal that was made to close the dump and how the agreed payout from Columbia County should see to it that the Town will never have to spend its own money on capping and maintaining the property.
This doesn’t stop Planning Board Member Trina Porte, who will also be running for a seat on the Town Board in November, from continually trying to get more details on the closure from Benson. When Porte brought it up at this meeting one could almost see a little volcano starting to erupt over the top of Benson’s head. “This is not a question and answer period,” Benson stated calmly while chomping a piece of gum to death. Porte went ahead and asked her questions anyway. “I’m not going to answer the same question fifty times,” replied Benson.
And that might seem reasonable. However Porte did make one valid point. She wouldn’t have to ask the same questions over and over if she could read the minutes of the Board meetings. Where are the Board meeting minutes from the last meeting or the meeting before? They don’t exist. Yet, according to Porte, New York State recently passed legislation that requires Towns to post agendas and meeting minutes on their websites if they have one.
Town Clerk Colleen Teal explained that meeting minutes were now about six months behind. “The Board cut my staff in half,” she said. There is only so much she can do and “every day is a new fire” so she can’t predict when they will be caught up to date. “They are a priority though,” she added.
The minutes have also been made a priority by brothers Mark and Gregory Baumli. They have a property in the Town which they feel would be extensively impacted by the proposed sidewalk project. At the August meeting Mark Baumli asked for clarification on what was happening with the eminent domain part of the project. Would his land be taken? Did he still have time to file an appeal against eminent domain? Did he even need to at all? Benson did his best to explain his understanding of the eminent domain proceedings but added that he would like the Town’s attorney, Andy Howard, to also weigh in. As Howard was absent from the August meeting, Mark Baumli requested that his questions be added to the following month’s agenda when Howard would be on hand.
That didn’t happen. “I was not placed on the agenda,” Mark Baumli informed the Board Tuesday, “and my questions were not answered.”
Baumli also asked for copies of the minutes. “What can the Board do to get the minutes up to date?” The Board had no response to this. Howard said, “You can go to the Town Clerk.”
Baumli knew that of course. “She doesn’t have them.”
“You can F.O.I.L them then,” said Howard.
“How? She doesn’t have them,” said Baumli. “State law says we are entitled to them.”
“I would have to look into that,” said Howard.
“That’s what I asked Mike to do last month,” Baumli replied.
“He didn’t get the minutes,” interjected resident Joanna Johnson-Smith.
Baumli then asked Howard to clarify the eminent domain procedure and a petition to bring the sidewalk project to a referendum which was seemingly ignored.
Howard explained that the public hearings merely decided that the sidewalk project was in fact “in furtherance of a public purpose.” This means that if there were a sidewalk that it would benefit the public. “There is no action to take a referendum on,” said Howard. So the petition calling for a referendum did not yet apply. The only thing that could be done at this moment in the project would be to appeal at the Appellate level to say it’s not for a public purpose. “There were no rights trampled,” said Howard. People will still be able to fight public domain should that ever occur later in the future. The project is still very much in its infancy. “We’ve barely taken (pardon the pun) the first step down the sidewalk,” Howard said.
The problem seems to be one of communication. Nobody from the Board had yet simply stated what each step would entail or when, if ever, it could go to a referendum. And some residents are worried that a referendum could be somehow avoided even if a majority of voters wanted one.
“I think that’s what people are afraid of,” pointed out resident Joan Phelps. There were two referendums on Town Hall projects. “We voted it down twice, and yet now we have a Town Hall,” said Phelps.
A Supermarket On The Horizon?
What the Town still does not have, but most people would certainly be in favor of, is a supermarket. Every now and then one sort of appears on the horizon but few residents seem to get their hopes up anymore. As Councilman Doug Clark said when the last candidate was looking for financing to move into the Midtown Mall, “I will believe it when I see it.” Now a new candidate is on that horizon.
“After two years of extensive efforts to attract a new supermarket to the town, we finally have what appears to be a viable proposal from a known, experienced developer. It is imperative that we not let this opportunity slip away from us,” states a handout provided by Benson from the Economic Development Committee. The details of the plan were not discussed but might hint to a project discussed in an August 30 email to Planning Board members from Planning/Building Department Clerk Cissy Hernandez which states, “Paul Calcagno stopped in today with the attached plans.  He is a developer seeking to demolish the Tilden Plaza in order to construct a new building for a grocery…I do not have the application yet, but this will be slated for the September 18, 2013 meeting.  He stated that he has already met with Doug Clark and Mike Benson.”
Trina Porte, who is on the Planning Board, appeared unconvinced. “FYI–another Benson and Clark disaster in the works,” she wrote in an email on September 3, “Why would anyone want to demolish a place that has several of our most successful town businesses in it?!!”
Benson however is impressed with Max Gitter of the Economic Development Committee. “He’s doing an incredible job,” said Benson. Indeed the list of other projects the EDC is working on is remarkable. From getting a new, more “user friendly bank,” in this case Berkshire Bank, to replace the not so friendly Bank of America in “the coming weeks or months,” to working to attract the NY Philharmonic to the Town for its summer home, to trying to transform the abandoned Hess Station into a small visitors center, the EDC is certainly taking the initiative toward revitalizing the Town’s economy.
Crime Not Paying
And that could be good, because crime hasn’t been paying lately. Benson was concerned at a significant drop in revenue through court fines. Were people being too good citizens such that their lack of arrests was hurting the Town financially? “The court’s job is to be a court and not a revenue generator,” said Benson, “but it does present a little bit of quandary to us.”
Not to worry, people were actually just as bad as they always were, reported Court Clerk Tistrya Hamilton. A reorganization of State Troopers had dropped tickets from 30 to 60 a week to 3 to 5 a week, but now its back up to 60 to 90 a week. In fact the Town now has a “huge drug problem,” says Hamilton, “unfortunately much of it is youth related.” The court should be churning out the money soon, seeing as how an effort to set up a TRACS (Together Reducing Alcohol and Drugs in Our Communities) program by ex-Town Justice Darcy Poppey and Councilman Matt Larabee was met with ambivalence by local parents and the first meeting had to be cancelled.
The next Town Board meeting will be on October 8. In the meantime civic minded residents can attend the first of three meetings by the Conservation Advisory Council on an open space initiative to be held at the Town Hall on September 23 at 7 pm.[/private]