Four Boards Meet Together To Discuss Regulation of Growth And Development
by Thaddeus Flint
Just how to go about overseeing the Town of New Lebanon’s growth without losing site of what the residents want their town to look like, while at the same time making building applications as painless as possible, was the subject of the night for the first Quad Board meeting held last Tuesday.[private]
“Land use is not in any way punitive or prohibitive” said New Lebanon Town Supervisor Colleen Teal at the meeting of the Town Board, the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Planning Board, and the Conservation Advisory Council.” We want growth and development, but we want to be careful about how we do it.”
The problem with being careful is that being too careful will scare people away from trying to do anything at all.
“Laws should be an easy process,” said Teal. “They shouldn’t be cumbersome…they shouldn’t be hoops that they have to jump through.”
At the moment though, it was admitted that at least a few cumbersome hoops still exist. Some residents have found themselves being bounced from the Planning Board to the Zoning Board of Appeals and back again for what they might have thought were relatively simple projects. Sometimes a project is required to have a site plan review for simple use changes. And there was a difference of opinion about whether or not minor subdivisions should require the seller to first obtain building envelope, perc test, and driveway specs.
The problem (or one of them, anyway), as the Town’s attorney, Stephanie Ferradino, sees it is that the New Lebanon’s building code is cumbersome in its vagueness.
“I would like the ambiguity to come out of your codes,” said Ferradino, adding that it would be better if both the applicants and those processing applications could simply go “down a list” checking off what needs to be done.
And all that vagueness is expensive. “We are paying more for legal because of that ambiguity,” said Teal.
One solution already in the works by the Zoning Re-Write Committee under Chairman Ted Salem is the rewriting of parts of the Town Code that need updating.
Another solution might be more multi-board meetings. For larger projects, it could make sense to have the applicant meet with the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals at the same time so everyone is on the same page. Another possible solution was to streamline applications by going to a simple site plan review instead of a full site plan review. However, not everyone could agree who would be the one to decide which applications triggered which site plan. Some wanted New Lebanon’s Code Enforcement/Zoning Enforcement Officer Cissy Hernandez to decide what triggers what review, while others thought that the chairs of the ZBA and the Planning Board should have the say.
As New Lebanon moves forward when it comes to changes in zoning and planning, as well as the enforcement, the look and feel of the Town itself could change as well.
“Where do we want our Town to go?” asked Planning Board member Robert Smith.
Smith noted that a Dunkin Donuts franchise is now looking at opening in what would be a new building next to Stewarts. Some residents feel that chain-type stores such as Dunkin Donuts are “not a fit for our Town,” said Smith.
The problem with that logic, Teal pointed out, is that the Town already has chain stores—Family Dollar and Stewarts.
“It’s not our job to stifle competition,” added Planning Board chair Ray Herriman.
Councilman Chuck Geraldi noted that pretty much everybody was happy when they thought Hannaford—which has over 180 stores—was about to open a location in New Lebanon. “We are not here to pick winners and losers,” said Geraldi.
But Smith made the point that the residents might be the actual losers as their Town moves toward that soulless corporate look that is now repeated across the country, from one bleak suburb to the next. He also noted that Stewarts, Family Dollar, and Hannaford do actually provide useful things that people need, like batteries and notebooks and paper towels.
Nobody, it seems, really needs another donut. [/private]