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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1988-05-19 TOWN OF GROTON PLANNING BOARD Thursday , May 19 , 1988 , 8 : c' 0 P . M . BOARD PUBLIC George Totman , Chairman Harry Griep , Sovocool H1 * Michael Post , Vice Chairman *Cecil Twigg * Monica Carey *Veil Rankin * Bill Casolara * Gary Ballou M . POST , Vice Chairman , opened the Planning Board meeting . Minutes of the April 21 , 1988 meeting were discussed.. C'. TWIGG questioned the seconding of Gary Ballou on the last motion , to adjourn . Minutes should be corrected to read " . . . VERL RANKIN seconded the motion to adjourn . . . " M . CAREY made the motion the minutes of the April 21 , 1988 meeting be approved as corrected ; V . RANKIN seconded the motion . ALL voted in favor . MINOR_ SUBDIVISION proposed by HARRY GRIEP Sovocool Hill Rd . , Town of Groton , Tax Map No . 25 - 1 - 19 . : : M . POST : I was not at the April meeting so I need help from the rest of the Board that was present . Harry , what was your understanding , what was the Board going to do tonight ? H . GRIEP : I never received any official paper stating the subdivision was approved . Be CASOLARA : The preliminary sketch was accepted . It hasn ' t been " approved , it is only at the beginning of the process . V . RANKIN : I ' ll make the motion we approve the subdivision . Be CASOLARA : Without a hearing ? C . TWIGG : A hearing is not needed in the short form . V . RANKIN : He says he has everything presented . . . . Be CASOLARA : Are you making a motion or withdrawing your motion ? VERL RANKIN made the motion the Planning Board approve the Minor Subdivision proposed b HARRY GRIEF Sovocool Hill Rd . P P Y 9 , Town of Groton , Tax Map No . 25 - 1 - 19 . 2 , without a public hearing with the condition that everything is legal ; * # Page - 1 M . POST : What was everyone ' s understanding of why we asked Harry come back this evening ? B . CASOLARA : I ' m under the impression , given the status of a Minor subdivision , he had only supplied the Board with a rough sketch and we require a survey plan . M . POST : He was to present the formalized Plat ? H'. GRIEP : Yes . V . RANKIN .* He was suppose to bring the final plat and approval from the Health Department . M . POST : This is the finalized Plat ? H : GRIEP : Yes . M . POST : Does this deviate at all from the preliminary sketch presented at the last meeting , are there any differences ? H : GRIEP : No , just that the first one was my rough drawing , it did not have the surveyors measurements on it . M POST : So the two , preliminary sketch and final plat , are essentially the same ? 1 .H GRIEP : This one was just a rough drawing , it was not surveyed ; this is the surveyors map and this one is a picture of the whole land . C . TWIGG : The Board asked him to bring in a rough draft of the whole thing to see what he was going to do down the road . M . POST : Is there any new information on this document that the Board did not have before ? TWIGG and CASOLARA didn ' t see any . C . ; TWIGG : That is essentially what he explained to us , what he presented tonight . M . POST : I guess we are at the point now where we have a preliminary plat , we take a look at it and see it is essentially like the one presented at the last meeting . A motion was made , and carried , at the last meeting the Board wanted a plat more to scale and drawn more clearly . C . ' TWIGG : Now the decision is , is there any environmental impact . Page . - M . IPOSTO That comes out of the short form , did you talk to Gary W . about the environmental impact ? H . IGRIEPw. I filled out the form and I had the Health Department thing on the septic . M . POST : Has he granted you a Building Permit ? H . GRIEP : No he hasn ' t , he had one for me but I couldn ' t get it . : V . RANKIN : He ( G . Woad ) called me tonight and said he had told Carol to issue the permit but Colleen said he couldn ' t because the Planning Board had not approved the Minor Subdivision yet . M . POST : So the Board must either approve or disapprove the proposed Minor Subdivision then Gary W . can issue the Building Permit , if everything else is in order . Be CASOLARA : I have a point of order , first of all Verl has a motion on the floor that has not been seconded . ** V . RANKIN : I will withdraw the motion . Be CASOLARA : Second , can you direct me to the section in the manual that discusses the short form for Minor Subdivision , 11 M . POST : What we are going through now is the Site Plan Review process and it is my understanding we can accept the preliminary plat and turn it over to the Zoning Officer and say , " based on what we know as the Town Planning Board , this meets the zoning requirements , " and then Gary W . goes ahead and either issues or does not issue the Building Permit . Help me to understand where you are coming from . Be CASOLARAa I was under the impression the short farm was part of a Rural Subdivision . M . POST : If you came in here and said to Colleen , ' I want a Building Permit , ' there are three or four documents you have to fill out and one. of them is the short form Environmental Impact Assessment Form . Do you have a copy of that Mr . Griep ? H . GRIEP : I don ' t have a copy of it , I have it marked down here that I signed it . M . POST : I don ' t think that is relevant here , it is Gary Wood ' s responsibility. We tell Gary , we as a Planning Board feel that this is appropriate and it is his responsibility to issue the 'Building Permit and request the short form of the Environmental Impact Assessment . Page - 3 ' I B . CASOLARA : I misunderstood you , I thought you said we did not have to hold a public hearing because of the short form . ' I I M . POST : No , I didn ' t say anything about a public hearing . B . CASOLARA : Somebody did . Noted that Cecil mentioned using the short form without a public hearing . M . POST : With the presentation of a preliminary plat , it is the responsibility of the Planning Board to say whether it meets the requirements or not . If we approve it , it goes to Gary Wood for the rest of the process . It is Gary Wood ' s responsibility of issuing the Building Permit , part of which is the short form Environmental Impact Statement . That is my recollection . I am lost here in what question you asked that started this dialog . C . TWIGG : The Environmental Impact , that means traffic , or neighbors , or anything that will have an impact of some sort . We can deem if we need a public hearing before we approve it if we want more input from the community . But if we think it has no significant impact we can approve it without a public hearing . j B . CASOLARA : It is your understanding then that on a Miner Subdivision it is Our Option whether we hold a public hearing ? TWIGG , POST & CAREY agree that is their understanding . B . CASOLARA : I don ' t recall a problem with the issuance of the Building Permit from last meeting . C . TWIGG : That question was brought up about issuing a Building Permit before we approved the Subdivision . B . CASOLARA : Absolutely not , Gary W . asked us for concurrence on issuing a Building Permit because he wasn ' t allowed to issue a Building Permit for two dwellings on one parcel . And I simply asked him where it was in the Planning Ordinance that empowered us to make that .judgment or decision , and he said it was not in the Planning Ordinance and I said I did not think we had any right to make a ruling on that . G . BALLOU : I seem to remember he was talking about a prior situation where a precedence was set . B . CASOLARA : As the minutes reflect , there was no dissension from the Board to issuing the Building Permit and we did make the motion to begin the process for a Minor Subdivision as proposed in the application . I don ' t know why the Building Permit was held up - Page - 4 V . RANKIN : Gary W . says the reason the Building Permit was l held up was that Colleen said the Board has to approve the Miner Subdivision before he can issue a permit . I M . POST : Harry , do you have any additional input ? H . GRIEP : What more do you need ? V . RANKIN : The only other thing Dill did ask about was the other two lots and Harry has presented a rough drawing of any future proposal . I would put my MOTION back on the table that the Planning Board approve the Minor Subdivision presented by ` HARRY GRIEPg B . CASOLARA seconded the motion . I No further comments or discussion . I VOTE : 4 in favor : C . Twi gg , M . Post , V . Rankin , M . Carey 1 abstention : B . Casolara G . Ballou not a voting member yet . MOTION CARRIED M . POST : Any further issues on this question or any further d i 5CUSS i 1 1n . C . TWIGG : I9d like to know what the procedures are on the question of the short form , I have something in my mind . . . . M . POST : Bill , as I described it to you and what I think I ,, said was we should approve the preliminary plat and based on that ' Gary W . can issue the Building Permit . Think of what we have been doing here , we come in and have a copy of their Building Permit and the short form' Environmental Assessment Form , it is ;really the other way around . I am not sure what happened last time but we may have jumped out of sequence here . B . CASOLARA : It ' s a matter of procedure and I .just interpreted the procedure differently . M . POST : Let ' s talk about this . B . CASOLARA : I was under the impression the short farm Site Plan Review was in the event of someone opening a business . When I read the documept the procedure described for a Minor Subdivision , it say in the review of the sketch plat provided or if review results in the determination of a Minor Subdivision the procedure in Section 231 to 239 should be followed . Section . . . . Page _ 5 says a public hearing shall be held by the Planning Beard for a Minor Subdivision upon submission of plat for approval . So I was confused when you started mentioning the idea of a short form and somebody else says we don ' t need a public hearing , it ,just didn ' t make sense to me . I did not understand what was going on . I don ' t even understand what Verl ' s motion was , he made a motion to accept the subdivision and we already accepted the sketch last meeting . C . TWIGG : I would like clarification , I read this thing and it says we need a public hearing . M . CAREY : We have never made Roger go to a public hearing can his Minor Subdivisions . M . POST : We have approved Minors without p . bl ic hearings . i i CO . TWIGG : I am not questioning so much can we do it but what the procedure is , I ' d like to know where the section is . i B . CASOLARA : Maybe it is foolish of me , but this is the law and when the law says we should do something then we should follow j i t . II M . CAREY : We usually have left it up to George whether or I not we needed a public hearing if there was going to be an environmental impact . M . POST : We need to do our homework on that before the next j meeting . REVIEW OF ZONING ORDINANCE CHANGES B . CASOLARA : I don ' t know what or why this is on the agenda , George , Gary W . and I have not met since the last meeting . ` M . POST : So the current status is the Planning Board has decided to recommend the changes to the Town Board ? C . TWIGG : Last meeting the Planning Board approved what the committee had done so far . M . POST : So now we want to get it over to the Town Board and have them approve it and incorporate it into the overall plan ? B . CASOLARA : Not yet . M . POST : We still have some more changes and some more i homework to do ? I .. 1 Page - 6 B . CASOLARA : No , the person who is going to be compiling the document wrote the letter to George indicating an agreement to be consummated between her and the Town of Groton regarding the development of the materials for submission to ' the Town Board . The purpose is to have the document renovated , with the rationale , index , with all the changes incorporated before it goes to the Town Board for submission in its final form . M . POST : You are saying , at this point we have. not gone through the document totally so that we can find all the changes . B . CASOLARA : We made all the changes , I was under the impression that George was working with some other people on committees to read through the document . There are a lot of things that need to be tied up in here . There are cross references throughout this document to other sections that are now gone . M . POST : So the answer to my question was , no , we have not finished going through the original document . B . CASOLARA : If we are going to have the work. done I would think we want to have as much of it cleaned up as possible . Right now , with just myself going through with a cursory examination , I have found many instances over the last few weeks of cross references of , ' see section such and such ' and ' refer to section so and so , ' those sections are deleted . M . POST : So at this point we have not _gone through the original document totally . B . CASOLARA : Ri ht . No one has read through the document and 9 9 typed up all the references to ' facility ' , all the cross references , etc . M . POST : Because of that . maybe we are not in a position to have someone else create a formal document with .justifications and rationale and have it presented to the Town Board . B . CASOLARAa I think we are in the position to begin to have that happen . M . POST : Does it make sense to go through several . . . . , wouldn ' t it be more efficient to go through the original document and make all the changes and give it to somebody and have them create something so the Town Board only goes through it once ? B . CASOLARA : Well , no , Gary W . , George and I stopped working on this after several months with the intent of getting accomplished this amount of work . Our intent was not to do the whole document at this time . We said , ' let ' s stop at this and get this much into the document , get the document cleaned up , and then next winter or next fall start working on it once again . ' We have no intention , unless someone else wants to do it , of beginning an . . . I Page - 7 i renovating additional sections ; realizing , of course , that there are a lot of sections that need renovating . We feel our work is done until next winter . George was of the opinion to get these changes to the Town Board and get the document up to snuff so we can make additional changes in the future . i i C . TWIGG : We have to get this into the computer before we can do .justice to the document . B . CASOLARA : George wanted the rationale included with the sections that are changed . So a section that was changed would show what it was , why it was changed and what the new verbiage will be so when the Town Board members get the document they can read it and see , here is what it was and here is what it is now and why it was changed . But when the process is done , you will end up with the final document that will only incorporate the changes . My point is , there are a lot of cross references that are not tidied up yet . C . TWIGG : So there is nothing we can do tonight ? B . CASOLARA : I think there are things we can do between now and j the next meeting . We could start by dividing the manual up and j each take 20 pages or so and cross reference back and make sure the sections are clean . M . POST : What I thought I heard you say a moment ago was , we made a lot of changes , we stopped making changes , and now we have someone put this in a form to be submitted to the Town Board . Now you ' re saying , yes , we can make more changes . B . CASOLARA : No , I mean there are things we can do that are I nonsubstantive changes . There are nonsubstantive changes in the document , for example , the word / use ' facility ' . Facilities are no longer in the document and any reference to facilities should be removed ; it is not a substantial change in the document itself but a tidying up . If someone reading the document sees , ' the facility should be such and such , ' well , where is facility , it is no longer in the document . Or a reference that says , ' see Section .: 171 , now Section 217 is totally different . The document � needs to be tidied up . M . POST : We ' ve made a lot of changes in the document , I think we need to step and give it to this person who is going to put it in the form to be presented to the Town Board . Unless we � have a stopping place there , how do we know that our changes were in the original version or whether they came later on ? So what is the problem ? i B . CASOLARA : The problem is I know there are a lot of references to sections that have been deleted . I M . POST : Perhaps it is too early to have someone start f incorporating all these changes . Maybe we should make more Page - 8 I changes to get it into better shape before we give it to the person to compile . The ideal situation would be if we all had time to put in the effort and energy to get all the changes done and then turn it over to this person to complete . B . CASOLARA : I know that George and Gary W . and I don ' t have any plans to continue working on this until the fall . The avenue you are going along on is that these changes won ' t go to the Town Board until the fall . M . POST : What I said was we have to do 2 things . C . TWIGG : I think what you ' re trying to say is we are at a stalemate as far as the Board is concerned . We can ' t do anything for now until we know what the committee is doing . It ' s the committee that is really making the decisions as to how far we go and what we do . G . BALLOU : What was the goal to begin with ? B . CASOLARA : The goal was to begin a massive renovation of the document , we started in late fall of last year meeting on other Thursdays and Gary W . , George and I started working on this series of changes . We got to a point where we said , ' this is what we have done ' they were accepted by this group and we wanted to formalize it and go to the Town Board and also , in that process , have an individual take the document and put it into the computer , into a word processor , creating an index , a table of contents with the intent of tidying up sections that have never been incorporated with the prior changes done . Co TWIGG : We have to define , ' this is what we have to do and this is the next thing to be dune . ' Didn ' t you say that once it is on the computer it would be much easier to tidy the thing up ? B . CASOLARA : Absolutely , but we still have to go through and find those sections that refer to sections that are no longer there and terms that are now deleted . C . TWIGG : I think we Ought to drop it for now , there is nothing we can do about it tonight , G . BALLOU : There was a committee of three working on the changes ? B . CASOLARA : Yes . G . BALLOU : I think that committee or another committee should continue to work on tidying , up and at some point in time , you want to get rid of this one and have another one the way we want it to be for use . C . TWIGG : I guess there were some contradictions in this one too that had to be taken out . Gary W . says he works with it Page - 9 . r every day and he doesn• t understand i t . In other words , it is hand for Gary W . to work with it , it ' s no wonder the Board doesn ' t understand it when somebody working with it every day doesn ' t understand it . It ' s difficult to apply the document to different situations . V . RANKIN : This document was written by a city man and it is too complicated for a township . M . POST : If there is no further discussion on this subject , there is one other thing Colleen asked me to do . I need a list of those of - you who plan to attend the May 23 - 24 seminar at TC - 3 . All members present plan to attend the seminar . Gary Ballou will call Colleen Pierson , Town Clerk , about getting sworn in . VERL RANKIN made the motion the . meeting be adjourned9 CECIL TWIGG seconded the motion ; MOTION CARRIED . THE NEXT REGULAR MEETING OF THE PLANNING BOARD WILL BE THURSDAY , JUNE 169 1988 AT 8 : 00 P . M . Respectfully submitted , MAIRVAT A . PALMER Page 10