Sidewalks Again
by Thaddeus Flint
The sidewalk is back.
For some residents of New Lebanon, the news at the July 12 Town Board meeting that a project many fought against and considered dead is once again back with a vengeance might have seemed like the sequel to a bad summer horror movie.
[private]“It was a sore subject before and it will be a sore subject again,” said Councilman Kevin Smith after Town Supervisor Colleen Teal broke the news that NYSDOT is not allowing the Town a waiver or an exemption to end the project without paying back a hefty sum of money.
New Lebanon has already paid $40,000 of local taxpayer money into the project an additional $85,000 to $90,000 of Federal money was also spent, money the Feds would like back.
“And we got nothing,” said Teal of the approximately $130,000 the Town is on the hook for.
That might seem like a lot of money, but it can seem like even more money when it is remembered that back in May of 2013 then-Councilman Doug Clark noted that the project would at most cost the Town only $70,000.
“Spread out over seven years,” Clark said, there would be “no significant impact” to the Town’s finances.
Three years later, looking at possibly $80,000 over that $70,000 figure, and not a sidewalk to walk on, it is starting for some to seem like a pretty signicant impact after all.
“We are cleaning up Mike’s mess,” said Councilman Smith, alluding to the former Supervisor, Mike Benson, who was running the show back when the project first came to light.
It was, however, not only Benson’s “mess” as his was just one of five votes that eventually moved the sidewalks from just talk to the point where the project managers, Creighton Manning, were discussing eminent domain strategies (we use “a one offer system,” said Don Adams of Creighton Manning, meaning the negotiations are non-negotiable).
Benson’s plan was the ‘if-you-build-it-they-would-come’ type of plan that would make New Lebanon a more attractive location for future businesses to locate to, especially a supermarket of some sort. The hoped outcome would be to lessen the tax burden on residents with an expanded tax base. A fair number of residents liked that idea, as well as the future possibility of walking around their town instead of driving.
But as Teal pointed out, “the majority of the public was against it.” It turns out that much of the public like their rural town looking like a rural town and didn’t want to watch it turn into a Delmar or a Latham. Mentioning eminent domain also didn’t help matters much. And a large portion of the public was also skeptical of the cost figures that were quoted.
“How come this wasn’t brought out before,” asked resident and Planning Board member Robert Smith. “That if we didn’t do something we would have to pay this back? Why should I have to pay back for something that I didn’t even want to begin with?”
“I can’t answer that,” said Teal who was Town Clerk back in 2013 with no say in the matter then. “There’s a lot of questions for a lot of parties.”
None of those parties was on hand, however, to answer any questions about the past. The Town Board has been completely turned over since 2013. Councilman Dan Evans, who was absent this night, had come out in favor of the project at a March 2013 public hearing on the project but he was a private citizen back then when he said: “It’s like someone coming to me and saying ‘here take this house, all you have to do is make the down payment. I’d be stupid not to take it”. A lot of others residents probably thought the same way.
At any rate, the past is the past and the future is subjected to it. The Town now gets two options: Pay back the money or build the sidewalks.
“To me this is not going to be an easy decision to make,” said Teal. That the decision has to be made by September will certainly make it even less easy. And if the decision is to ultimately build the sidewalk, NYSDOT wants New Lebanon past the design and acquisition phases by September of 2017. This alone seems an undoable task. While NYSDOT will allow a scaled back project, it still has to follow one of the pre-planned routes—roughly a course from the High School to the bar at the Gallup Inn or from the bar at the Gallup Inn to Lover’s Lane—and that is going to require taking of private land. While Creighton Manning seemed so smug in their belief that they would get the land they needed whether residents wanted to sell it or not, seemingly oblivious to the feelings of anxiety and dismay to which such an announcement would subject land owners, doing so by eminent domain can take time. And in some cases, when the land owner has a lot of money, it can take a lot of time. Certainly more than a year.
The clock is, however, already ticking. Teal wants to make sure all residents know what the Town now faces and at the same time ascertain what they want to do. Do they pay back the money and get nothing? Or do they go forward, paying more money, taking private land, and yet making the Town a bit more accessible? Two public meetings are to be scheduled for August in order to make sure as many people as possible can find one that fits their schedule. They will be held Monday, August 8 and Thursday, August 11 at the New Lebanon Jr/Sr High School at 7 pm.
Solar Coming, Get Me Zoning ReWrite!
Public meetings are also scheduled to be scheduled to find out resident’s ideas on how future solar farms would be zoned, if they are allowed at all.
The Zoning Re-Write Committee (ZRWC) has a framework to start, model legislation provided by New York State. But the Town still needs to decide how much of the code they want to use.
“I suspect that this will get tweaked quite a bit,” said Ted Salem of the ZRWC. One issue mentioned was abandonment. Solar fields have a life span of around 20 to 25 years. The Town wants to make sure it does not get stuck with cleanup costs if it in fact does allow those fields to be built at all.
Teal also wants to make sure that New Lebanon continues to look like New Lebanon and doesn’t turn into some industrial parking lot of solar arrays. “ If we’re not careful, it can have a real significant impact on our views and how everything looks,” she said.
How things look now is also a concern with the Supervisor. New Lebanon has recently been looking at all of the signs along its roadsides. “There was so much clutter,” said Teal, who added that her intent is not to “push businesses out” but to “clean it up to get businesses in.”
However, some businesses recently have gone before the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) in an attempt—some successful– to get a variance for their signs or to add additional signs. Councilman Mark Baumli feels that the ZBA is “not adhering to the law”.
“The ZBA is handing out variances like Halloween candy,” said Baumli who questioned the point of trying to enforce a law if you can just go get a variance anyway.
“That’s a bit overstated,” countered Salem of the ZBA.
“The concern is that if you abrogate your law by giving out variances on every application, it sorts of erodes the effect of your law and sets a difficult precedent, said the Town’s attorney, Dan Tuczinski. “Maybe your law isn’t structured the way you want it to be structured.”
Structured laws or not, Councilman Chuck Geraldi came to the defense of the ZBA, saying that the people on that Board were appointed by the Town Board. “We are not in control of what the Zoning Board does,” he said. “If you don’t like what they are doing, when it comes the time to appoint new people, that’s the time that this Board here has a say in what they are doing. To sit here and bad mouth them is wrong.”
The meeting was not all doom and gloom. There is some good news for the near future. First the newly rebuilt tennis courts are expected to be open before the end of the month, something many residents have been waiting years for. And later, in August, the Route 20/22 corridor is finally slated for repaving, something not just residents, but pretty much anyone who ever drives through the Town has been waiting even more years for. And last, but not least, the Community Picnic is July 30 from 12 to 3 pm at Shatford Park.[/private]