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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1994-08-18 L TOWN OF GROTON PLANNING BOARD Thursday, 18 August 1994 Board. Members (*present) Others Present *George Totman, Chairman *Monica Carey *Sheldon Clark *Verl Rankin *George VanSlyke *Cecil Twigg The meeting was called to order at 8 *07 p.m. by Chairman Totman. G. Totman: We're all here except for Verl Rankin and Jeff Lewis . Jeff has asked to be excused because he has a class tonight. I haven't heard from Verl. We have the minutes of July and August to approve . Have you all read the minutes of the meeting. (All acknowledged that they had.) Are there any additions or corrections? Otherwise, I 'll entertain a motion to accept them. Verl just arrived . C. Twigg: I make a motion that we accept the minutes for July and August. G. VanSlyke: I second. G. Totman: All in favor? (All were in favor. ) G. Totman: Mr. Wilkinson is not here yet, but would you like to talk about his request before he arrives? Sometimes it's better to discuss it ahead of time so we have a better idea of what he's asking for. He's asking for a used car business on the corner, or just around the corner of Sharpsteen Road and Peruville Road . M .Carey: We could have a potential problem because of his neighbor up the road and the way he keeps his property. I think we want to make a strong point with this person that we're not going to allow this . G. Totman: Are you talking about the O'Brien property? M. Carey: Yes, V. Rankin: The O'Brien property doesn't look that bad. G. Totman: The O'Brien property over the past two weeks has been cleaned up. I haven't seen it, but I 'm going to go there tomorrow. He has them lined up in a much neater fashion . I haven't been by to count them to see if they meet the rules, but George Senter said he cleaned them up and meets the rules. Nevertheless, just because one guy speeds, not every guy speeds. I think you have to look at this that even though there 's a vacant lot on both sides of this property, we don't want to ruin it so that the owners of those vacant lots can't sell them and have a nice home in there . That's what I think we're all about. Co Twigg: How much frontage does he have -- 250 feet? G. Totman: He says in his site plan checklist that he's not going to have any outside storage. But on the application , he says he wants to have no more than two cars on display for sale . G. VanSlyke: Doesn't seem like that even amounts to a business. Town of Groton Planning Board August 18, 1994 G. Totman: Well, it's a part-time business, I think. He buys cars, fixes them up, and puts them out front to sell them . G. VanSlyke : Where's he fixing them? M. Carey: A garage up behind there. G. Totman: He has a garage up by his house. He has a sign and a license. M. Carey: How did he get a license . I thought you had to have a Site Plan Review in order to get a license . G. Totman: That's right. They won't give you a license until you get a letter from the local municipality saying that it's legal to have a garage there . So I don't know how he got his license, but I 've given out a lot of letters to people saying it's okay for here or there to have them do that. Not so much here , but in Lansing I have . See they don't have Site Plan Review over there ; everything's allowed out in the country. But they've applied for a license and couldn't get it until they received a letter from the municipality. M. Carey: That's why I was so surprised they had a license displayed on the garage. G. Totman: But he does understand he's not going to have that, so I think we should bring that to his attention. If you're going to sell use cars, you've got to display them. He definitely says here that there will be a maximum of two cars. Co Twim Well, if he's buying junkers and fixing them , or whatever. . . G. Totman: He's not going to have any more than two cars sitting out front in his parking lot; that's probably not too offensive . It's probably not more than most people have anyway. But if he doesn't come, I think we should discuss it and then postpone it to the next meeting to make sure he comes . M. Carey: Yes, we need to have his input. G. Totman: We can't very well do the SEQR before he comes; he should be here when we do that. Now, I 've passed out some information on a seminar that's coming up October 1st that's being sponsored by the Rural Officials Network, Rural Alliance Institute -- either way you want to call it. It's going to be at TC3. If you 'll look through it, there's some topics you can pick out if you like . It's a get together of not only planning board members, but for local officials . There 's going to be a panel program on junk cars, the management of them and how they are handled by other towns. There 's going to be a thing on highways, and various other things that are pertinent to local town and village governments. There will be people there from the Department of State who will talk about zoning, planning -- some municipalities don't have zoning and one of their topics is going to be everything a municipality can do in planning for the future short of zoning. I think it's going to be an interesting program. I know the person quite well who's planned it and I think he's putting on a nice program. You can pick what you want to go to that day. It's almost like the Planning Board Seminar Sheldon went to once where you look at the program and then go to the room that has the topic you're most interested in; or you can leave that and move to the next one. You can move from one to the other. Then the break or lunch time will be with people who are there for the same reason so you can ask questions. There will also be vendors there who deal with the type of things pertaining to local government. Anyway, I 'm going to be there . So if any of you are interested , I 'd like to have you let me know at least by the September meeting. I 'm not sure if the Town will pay ahead of time . Normally what the Town of Groton does is you pay and then you turn in a voucher after and get your money back. M. Carey: Put me down . I 'll have to mark my calendar. G. Totman: Did everybody read the minutes of the last planning session we had with Tracey. To be very honest with you , I don't have anything special to bring up tonight, other than to talk about what we're talking about, except for Mr. Wilkinson ; I thought he was going to be here . This would be a good time to make any comments as to what we've been doing. We're getting pretty close to the end of going 2 Town of Groton Planning Board August 18, 1994 through the Ordinance ; then we're going to have to go back through to do some touching up, dressing up of what's allowed in certain areas, and then doing the actual Zoning Map itself. That will take some time, but it won't take over a couple of nights, so we should be done with this by the end of September. Being that we 're here , and with no outside interference , is everyone satisfied with the way it's been going? M. Carey: Just that we want to go back and take out all those Site Plan Reviews we put in there. G. Totman: Yes, now that we understand it better, we can go back and look at that. But we're getting fairly close to the end and I was just curious. We're going to have as many meetings as it takes to finish it. Next Thursday is another session. I would like to see us get it done by the end of September so we can get it in book form and maybe hold a public hearing the first part of October. Now when we get done with this and get it the way we want it, it will be printed in this form like it should be . Then we've got to hold a public hearing and present it to the public showing what we're doing and what the changes are. If there is any major thing from the public , maybe we 'll have to change something. But if we do , then we have to have another public hearing. So this is why I think it's very serious that we take a good look at it. When we say we're all done with it, we should have one more meeting just to go over it all and pick out any little thing. Because when we sit up there , and you've got to be prepared for this, at the public hearing and we're telling the people we're proposing to the Town Board that they change the Ordinance, and this is what we 're proposing they change it to, they are going to be asking what did you take out? what did you change? and this, and this, and this. Hopefully, they'll realize that we're trying to make it more user-friendly and , in most places, more relaxed from what it was . We 're not really making it more strict, but we've got to be able to tell the people what we changed . Hopefully, we'll have a synopsis made up ahead of time we can review. Ce TWI g: I was up to Talbot's the other day and she asked me if their land was in the Industrial Zone , G. Totman: What did you tell her? And what did she say? C. Twigg: Yes. And she said they better change that. I'm thinking of selling some building lots up here because I 'm getting out of the farming business and sell some building lots . I said you'd better talk to somebody about it because you're not going to sell any building lots. G. Totman: You have to bear in mind that a lot of people have never been involved with what we've been involved with here. A lot of people do their own thing on an everyday basis. They own land and think they can do what they want with their land . They don't understand different zones, especially in a town like ours where there hasn't been an awful lot of development or controversy. Groton , compared to a lot of towns around us, hasn't had, the controversy on stuff like that. So I can understand where a person like Mrs. Talbot feels that if she wants to sell building lots, she'll sell building lots. Until they come and find out that they have to go through a subdivision to do it -- she must know that -- so when we explain to her that if she wants to sell building lots in an industrial area, she'd have to go to the ZBA for a variance . C. T IM I think we're going to have to address that. They're talking about getting out of farming. And they want to dispose of their land. G. Totman: Maybe by the time they get ready to do that we might look at the Ordinance and make some other places industrial. Maybe we'll look up there and being that it's close to the Village and sewer and water, maybe we'll move the industrial area in or out of there . G. VanSlyke : That's one of the reasons you put it up there, wasn't it. G. Totman: Yes it was. It was because of water and sewer. I personally think that's where it belongs. If you're going to have an area designed for that, it's where it should be . C. Twigg: But we 've got to be careful, too, if we're going to zone that Industrial. Maybe we should talk to the Town Board. We haven't had any industry in the last 30 years, and in another 30 years they may not need that retirement money. Maybe if the Town feels strong enough that they want that in an industrial zone, maybe the Town should buy the land and set it aside as industrial. 3 • Town of Groton Planning Board August 18, 1994 G. Totman: That's a great idea, but you know they won't do it. C. Twigg: But I 'm wondering. . . can we tell Talbots that their retirement now is frozen? G. Totman: Cecil, that property up there has been in an industrial area for the last 25 years. It hasn't changed . And you can't live where they live and be in a town this small for as long as 25 years and not know that there's zoning and regulations here . Bear in mind also, Cecil. . . . Co Twige: But I think we've got to consider not only the rest of the Town, but the individuals in the Town . G. Totman: I understand what you're saying, but when you're doing a whole Ordinance, you can 't do it on an individual basis, because you'd be in serious trouble. But bear in mind that up there they know it's industrial. They almost had a lot of their land sold . They know exactly, Cecil, what you 're saying they don't know. They took advantage of that one time . They said , "Our land is important. We're in an Industrial Zone , and we're going to sell it to you people, only this is the price tag we're going to put on it. " Those people almost bought it; they went to the Village and they went to the Town, prospective buyers, and they wound up buying some land over near the airport because it was cheaper. G. VanSlyke: When this came up the last time you wrote this thing, and they designated that as an Industrial Zone, they had a chance at the public hearing to understand that it was to be an Industrial Zone , G. Totman: There were two public hearings . The Planning Board did one , and the Town Board did one . G. VanSlyke: This is up front anyway . Wherever we designate an Industrial Zone it will be up front and out there in the public to let them know. M. Carey: How many feet back is the Industrial Zone going up there? Because they could eventually put a road out back there . Their land goes out quite a ways. G. Totman: That's a good point, Monica. There 's a lot of things in the old one that we've seen . That's why I've asked Lyle to come because through their variance procedures they've had a lot of people come in and ask for variances for this or that or the other thing. We make the Ordinance, but they deal with it, so they have a better insight as to what's right and wrong with it than we do . We just help make it, but we don't get the other part of it like they do and those things do come up . And we should make sure that when we make a map out and we put an Industrial Zone in that it should definitely show the depth on the map. M. Carey: I think we found it was 500 feet at one time . G. Totman: These are the things we should go back and look at. You really can't do it until you know what the Zoning Map is. It's kind of a balancing act to do this. M. Carey: If we have 500 feet, somebody could come and get a variance and put a road back there . G. Totman: Cecil is always making the comment that we don't need road frontage, or we don't need those areas because there's somebody that might want to do this or that. It's a good point, and a lot of people say that, but if you took that in seriousness, there wouldn't be any object in making the thing in the first place . There's always going to be someone where you step on their toes . But in all sincerity, in the towns that do have this type of zoning is the part of town that grows the fastest. In some towns, where they don't have zoning at all , a developer will come in and develop 50 lots or whatever, his deed covenants are usually stricter than any zoning you would ever see . And these are the lots that sell the most. You 're not hurting the town by making some areas like that. Many people want to know what can go around them when they buy a place . Most places are much more stricter than we are around here . I think we ought to read these things ahead of time so we don't have to read them when Tracey comes back next week. We can move right on and not spend the time reading them so we can get this thing wrapped up. 4 Town of Groton Planning Board August 18, 1994 Co T wigb: What sections do we have left to do? G. Totman: I think we have Section 200. Co Twigg: PUD is not quite done , is it? G. Totman: No. But that's not that hard to do. A lot of that is the Town Board function. G. VanSlyke : We did PUD didn't we? G. Totman: I really think we did. G. VanSlyke : I guess I suggested we quit at 245 . 6, and we could start with 250 when we came back. Remember, we didn't finish the final plat. G. Totman: Yes, because we were having some discussion about why we have three meetings. Anyway, just that much . So the time schedule is good . By the first meeting in October, we should be able to have a public hearing if we call come and participate . So how long do you want to stay here and talk and wait for Mr. Wilkinson to come? Does anyone else have anything they want to bring up? We talked a little bit about this. It's a Site Plan Review to sell cars on his lot. He's not here to present it to us. It's allowed in the area with Site Plan Review. This means we set the stipulations. If he can live with the stipulations we set, then it's allowed . We can say there's a potential for a lot of neighbors around there and there 's a lot more people living closer than there is in some other areas we've had, so maybe we should hold a public hearing. But we won't hold a public hearing until after we set down with him and set the conditions. Then if they don't follow the conditions, then the Zoning Officer will cite him and close him down . We've done this with other people . This should be in the minutes, and we can 't do that if they're not here . I think you might want to talk about holding a public hearing for this one . M. Carey: I make a motion that we table this until Mr. Wilkinson is present. G. VanSlyke : I second that motion . G. Totman: All in favor? (All were in favor.) Would anyone like to make a motion to adjourn? V. Rankin: I move that we adjourn tonight's meeting. C. Twigg: I second that. G. Totman: All in favor? (All were in favor. ) The meeting was adjourned at 8:45 p.m. Respectfully submitted, VJofE7Fit`ch Recording Secretary 5