HomeMy WebLinkAbout1995-06-15 TOWN OF GROTON PLANNING BOARD
Thursday, 15 June 1995
Board Members (*present) Others Present
*George Totman , Chairman Bob Walpole
*Monica Carey Joan E . Fitch , Recording Secretary
Sheldon Clark
*Jeff Lewis
Verl Rankin
*George VanSlyke
*Cecil Twigg
The meeting was called to order at 8 * 13 p.m. by Chairman Totman.
G. Totman: Let's call the meeting to order. There wasn't much to put on the agenda for this week.
There was a possible boundary change coming in for a Mr. Streeter that Carol told me about. She said
that at that time , last Friday, he hadn't come in yet but he was in talking to her. I told her to put in on
the agenda just in case he did come in. I haven't heard anything since . Bob Walpole has been talking to
us about flag lots and he' s been asking us for the last sic months to let him know when we passed the
flag lots because he had a couple of clients he thought would be very interested in it. So I called him and
told him we were having a meeting tonight and didn't have an awful lot on the agenda, so if he wanted to
come talk to us -- he was appreciative of this and said he would be here tonight, a little after eight .
Everyone has the May minutes and read them. Anyone have any comments on them? Anyone want to
move we accept them?
M. Carey: I move we accept the Planning Board minutes for May .
C. Twigg. I second it.
G. Totman, All in favor? (All were in favor. ) Before we get going along, I thought you might be
interested in what a Long-Form SEAR looked like . This is just the first stage . They are still working on
it so there'll be more volumes coming. (Chairman Totman showed the Board members what had been
submitted to the Town of Lansing and they were discussed by all .) We've approved the minutes and Mr.
Streeter hasn't showed up, so Bob is here to talk to us about some ideas he may have on some flag lots.
R. Walpole. I 'm not going to talk about flag lots.
G. Totman: Whatever. That's what I thought you were going to talk about.
M Walpole. This is (displaying map) a hundred acres out of the old Cornelius farm . Here's an ideal
situation, I think. When we did the Carl Dates property -- there 's the private road concept. We've got
some large parcels of property up in here . They could be sold 25 , 30-acre lots. What I mean by the
private road concept is where 60 or 80 foot - - the most you can have off a private road concept is four
lots. NYS says you've got to have 15 feet on the road -- but it's a private road , no cost to the Town. And
you 're seeing a lot of it done. . . . this type of property. I think it's better than a flag lot. And you can use it
in all areas ; a flag lot has to be used in certain areas. But here you've got to put the lots down here in
front. You haven't got enough road frontage here . Who is going want a lot that goes all the way back?
So you can have four, five , or sic lots on the road and either have one 60 or one 80-foot private road that
comes up. It's all in each deed .
J. Lewis: You wouldn't connect that from South Main Street to Mack Street, then?
R Walpole, Oh , no . Who's going to pay for that -- it's $ 140 per foot.
J. Fitch: Bob, for the record , do you have a tax map parcel number on that?
Town of Groton Planning Board Meeting June 15, 1995
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R Walpole: No , I don't. That's South Main Street. It's owned by the Paragon Enterprises out of the
Bahamas . And in today's development costs there's not too many large developments going on . I think
there 's a big one in Lansing. But they haven't started the road yet. Basically, just looking at the
problem here in the Village of Groton , the Superintendent of the Works tells me yesterday or the day
before that we haven't done anything up there on Spring Street. We wanted to start building houses up
there August 1st. But the government won 't allow it. They have to go up there and run around looking
for Indian stuff; that's what's held it up .
CO Zwigg: Indian stuff?
IL Walpole. Artifacts . But the private road concept in this particular area here might work with
the lots down here in front and maybe four lots up there in back.
CO Twiggy Who governs this? Now we don' t have anything in our ordinance about these private
roads, right?
R. Walpole. The private road concept, I think, basically -- now correct me if I'm wrong, George, -- I
think we put it through the Site Plan Review subdivision process first. Then the Town Board has the
final action .
CO Twigg: I mean , where do you get the rules to go by? Do they come from the State? You say you
can have four on a private road . We don't have any rules in our regulations to govern us on. . . .
R Walpole. New York State law says you have to have 15 foot - - and that's legal . But you can go
with a 60-foot road , or even 80 -- I forgot how big we put them over to Lansing -- if they ever want to deed
the road over to the Town, they've got to come up to Town specs to make it a road. So that would be the
purpose of either a 60 or an 80-foot piece of property up in back. It works. It works fine . The
townships around us have been using it. There's no cost back to the Town because it's spelled out, cut
and dried. And people like the idea; otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
M. Carey: So each person buys whatever the parcel they want, they buy a chunk of the road and
maintain that.
IL Walpole: Four of them own the road. Each unit owns either 15 or 20 foot, depending on what size
the right-of-way is up there.
C. Twigg: But each parcel has to have it's own road frontage .
IL Walpole: That's correct.
G. Totman: The only way you can get away with that is that supposing you want to go back in and
have 20 lots. And still have it a private road so you can control what's in there and whatever. Then you
have to go through the State Attorney General and form what they call a homeowner's association. It's
fairly lengthy and fairly expensive, probably two or three-thousand dollars to get all the documents
and paperwork together. If you do that, then you are allowed to have more than the four on the road .
Because then the State will call it an official highway and your property is then qualified as bordering
on that private road . But if you don't do all that, then you can only have four. If you get more than four,
then you've got to get into the association type thing. That's the way it was explained to me .
C. lwigg: Still, it's not any burden on the Town.
G. Totman: Most of the towns I 've talked to -- I know Lansing, for example, likes it because they are
encouraging it. I think we've put in six over the last three or four years over there . They do it through
the Town Attorney. In fact, when people come in and talk about it, I give them a copy of what's been
done in the past -- the prospective people who want to come in and do something like that. And they
have their attorney look it over -- no two attorneys trust each other. Nobody has really asked for any
change when they're doing it. It's good for the town because you're getting four new taxing units with no
cost to the town . It' s written into their deeds saying they've each got 15 foot of it. They all get together
and build a road . When you drive down it, you never think of it as a private road in a lot of cases. Some
of them really don' t do the driveway too great . Now the one off of the Carl Dates property - - on the
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Town of Groton Planning Board Meeting June 15, 1995
northern part -- that is built almost to Town specs. Some of the others are built so they are happy with
it themselves . But they also know, and it's in their deeds, that they cannot request the town to take it
over as a town road . It's written so that if somebody wants to come along and develop the property
beyond them, and all those four people agree , then that parcel of that town drive can be brought up town
specs and the town will take it over and connect it with a development beyond so you don' t have
developments all over the place that don't connect with each other. In fact, some towns, if you've got a
long, private road and there's lots of land in behind it, will request that you keep an easement to the
back property in case it's ever developed back there that that's the way it will be . Because whoever
wants to develop the back property might have to come back and make that road a town road just so
they have access to police, fire, and have proper exits, etc. It's really a good deal for the towns. They
don't have to do anything.
Ce TWI g: What they have in this -- I guess George mentioned that -- they put in this agreement
that Thaler wrote up that the town can take it if they want it? Or if these people want to give it up?
G. Totman: It's also in their deeds they can't come back later and charge - - saying I own 500 feet of
road , 15 feet wide, and they can't come back and charge market value . They have go give it up for a
dollar if that happens. But that's all taken care of in the deeds, up front.
C. Twigg: They have to give it up to who?
G. Totman: The town.
C. Twigg: But the town couldn't say -- now, we need this for a highway to get back in. . . .
G. Totman: Only under the circumstances that somebody develops behind them and they all - - see,
lots of times one of those people that live back there, or those people themselves, might get together and
buy 50 acres that goes on beyond them . Okay? They want to develop it. They like what they've got.
Because if you develop something, you can make your own rules and regulations so it's not going to
change the nature of your neighborhood when somebody buys in there . So they go for a subdivision,
make their own deeds and covenants, we can make our property worth more money and we can make
money off of all this back here . But we don't, now, want to have that long of a private road . We'll build
it to town specs and bring this up to town specs what we've got here now, and then go petition the town to
take over the whole road. It hasn't happened around here, but it has happened in the State .
G. VanSlyke: Are you going to do it on both sides?
IL Walpole, No. This over here is not. . . . it's junk land. Drops right down.
G. VanSlyke: How are you going to develop this, then?
R Walpole. Most likely there 'll be a couple lots here and this here will end up going with this
property. I 'll go back to these people and have the engineers make a rough draft of it. Things have
changed since the last time we used it.
G. Totman: I don't think you have -- this came on afterwards. After you sold it. That Peter was the
first one to do that.
IIL Walpole. It's a good use of the land . We need to convince the Town Board of it. Not every property
is designed to do it with . There would have been a chance on Mack Street, but the school district is now
here . . . , (speaks too softly -- can't hear, can 't record) . I think you 're talking big bucks . There 's just not
the interest here .
G. VanSlyke: So where would you run that road?
It Walpole. Back down here . There are 18 acres in the Village . We've had people look at that
already .
G. VanSlyke: So you're really looking at this section here?
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Town of Groton Planning Board Meeting June 15, 1995
R. Walpole: Only this section here. This 18 acres here could very well be annexed onto the Village.
G. Totman, (Explaining why Mr. Walpole came before the Board) . I thought he was coming for a
different reason . What he's talking about is - - he 's got this big parcel of land that used to be the
Cornelius property. Because of the lay of the land and the road going up through the middle of it, it's
hard to make any kind of a development out of it that's salable. It's hard to make lots if you have to
build roads to the Town specs because it can be very expensive. He has been watching what's been going
on in other towns and learning about this private road concept. Like he said , it makes it much more
affordable . He's coming to the Planning Board is to , I guess, stimulate some interest to see what the
Planning Board thinks about it and to let us know what he's got in mind . If he can talk the owners of
the property into doing something with it into using that concept, will the Planning Board be willing to
go along with it and recommend it to the Town Board. By talking about it ahead of time it won't be such
a shock. He does that in a lot of towns where he's going to go into an area where they might have an
auction or whatever -- Munsons do it a lot too -- those two do it more than anybody I 've seen.
Sometimes they meet a couple of times with a various Planning Board here or there and explain what
they've got in mind and before they put their signs up to sell the land . They come in and lay out the
whole thing so the Planning Board doesn't think they are trying to do something behind their backs.
Most Planning Boards like it because they are aware of what's going on in their town .
C. Tw1we But I'm a little confused because this is really a Planning Board deal -- this is a Town
Board, he says.
G. Totman: No . The way I'm aware of it happening is if the Town Board will approve of the concept
of the private road , then it becomes a subdivision . Then he follows the rules of a subdivision .
CO Twigg: Oh, okay.
G. Totman: The Town establishes that they will accept the concept of that private road . Our zoning
changes have all been passed and approved, and they've told George he can go by them now. I notice this
was in the Shopper this week; I have no idea why that was. I guess it's good to let people know. It's done
with . My question is -- Monica, you're one of us who went to New York, right? Did you finally wind up
getting your money?
M. Carey: Not all of it, no. I ,just got paid for whatever expenses I turned in . I don't think Mary
did either.
G. Totman: They don't guarantee you $500; they guarantee the expenses. But you didn't get what
you turned in for?
M. Carey: No. Why? Did you?
G. Totnian: Yes. I think I did . When you ask them the question, tell them I got mine. I think the
Town Board should read it. One other thing I would like to tell you about -- this is a letter to the Town
Supervisor from the Commissioner of Planning of Tompkins County. What he's doing is explaining
what's happening on the County Planning Board . I think I 've been telling you a little bit about it, but it
probably didn't sink in because you 're not involved with it like I was. But the County Planning Board
consisted of about 33 people and each town could appoint a member of their Planning Board, or appoint
somebody to be on the County Planning Board . Most of the towns that had Planning Boards appointed
a member from their Board . But then there were members representing people from Human Services,
Health Services, EOCs, the EMCs, the Farm Bureau , Farm Protection Boards -- every one of those
boards could appoint somebody to serve on the County Planning Board . So when you went to the
meetings, if you were , for example , a new person on the Groton Town Planning Board , and you went to
their meetings and they asked you would you like to serve on the County Planning Board, you would
assume you would go learn something about planning. They very rarely ever talk about anything
having to do with planning on the County Planning Board . They'd go around the room and most of the
time it was taken up with people telling about what the EOC is doing, the EMC is doing and stuff like
that. I started a campaign about three years ago of getting that changed so we could break that up into
two groups -- one an advisory group that had these people that were representing the various functions
of the County, and the other a planning group - - you could call it the Tompkins County Planning
Federation , whereby the Town of Groton , or Dryden, or wherever, appointed one of their members to go
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Town of Groton Planning Board Meeting June 15, 1995
to this, they would only be talking at their meetings about planning and zoning. They could have little
seminars and come up with ideas, discuss how they are doing subdivisions in various towns, so the
towns could be up to date with each other in what they're doing and you wouldn't have to go through all
this about what the EOC and the EMC and Human Services - - they are all good things, but a lot of the
people just involved with planning really didn't go down there to learn that. Most of those boards are
all from the City and they are all City-oriented type things. So anyway, to make a long story short, we
finally got the Charter changed , got approved by the Board itself to break itself up , and what it meant
was that the officers that were there then would no longer be there because you were going to have two
boards now and each board would elect their own chair. It wound up being the Tompkins County
Planning Federation whereby towns that had a Planning Board, a member of that board has to be
appointed . Nobody else. They can 't be just a friend of the Town Board or somebody like that. If there's
no Planning Board, a member of the Town Board has to be appointed so that the purpose if it being that
a member of that group will be representing the municipality itself, reporting back to their meetings so
they will be learning something, taking it back and forth and , hopefully, it would be a lot better. That
happened on May 8th and it went to the County Board and got passed by the County Board. So then this
letter was sent out. All the terms were for three years before . And because they dissolved everything,
the terms all stopped and you've got to re-appoint the people . I think once it gets started and once it gets
going it will be good because a lot of the towns now are taking State law that was passed in 1993 where
they say Planning Board members have got to attend training sessions. The Town Boards didn't have
to enact that, but most town boards are -- setting up an attendance schedule and if you want to be on the
Planning Board, at least once a year you've got to go to some kind of an outside-of-your-own-town
sponsored training seminar. Hopefully, this will help make it available so that people who want to do
that don't have to go to New York or the Catskills or someplace like that. They can do it nights or
Saturdays. So I think it was a good idea. This letter that Teresa got went to all the town mayors,
village mayors, and town supervisors. I made a comment to Monica the other day, because Monica was
telling me that Teresa talked to her about this, I was successful in meeting the goal that I and a few
other people had in getting this changed and set up, but in the meantime, after this letter came out, I got
taken off the County Planning Board and they appointed Monica instead of me .
M. Carey: Are you sure they appointed me?
G. Totman: You told me they did.
M. Carey: Teresa said she was going to present it. I don't know. . . .
G. Totman: It will be good because it will get somebody else going to those meetings. I just thought
it was kind of unique that I wasn't even asked - - I 'd been on the Board about 20 years and wasn't even
asked . Monica says she got asked . I probably would have said sure , appoint somebody else , but it was
just one of those things. But anyway, you have to take the good with the bad. But if you're doing it in the
Interest of the whole Town, that's what counts. Does anybody have anything else they'd like to talk
about? I can 't manufacture things to put on the agenda. I don't feel guilty about not having a long
meeting because we did spend a lot of time writing up the ordinances and we got that done .
J. Lewis: I was just wondering if the building permits were up or down, and if George had seen
any difference because of the new ordinance.
G. Totman: I think it's too early, It was just around the first of June he got the message from the
Town Attorney. I think it's easier to understand, from a people's standpoint.
J. Lewis: So how long will this actually last before you have to rewrite it again?
G. Totman: That's up to you . If you go by the State standards, they recommend every five years.
But it depends - - some towns get a lot of changes. Even though they recommend 5- 10 years, most of
them take 15 to 20 years.
C. Twigg: I took nearly that long to get the changes made . We'd be working on it all the while .
G. Totman: This is the third time we've done this since we did the original one in 1972 , But in
Lansing, they started out doing the same thing the same month we did back in 1993 , and their
comprehensive plan they presented to the Town Board hasn't been passed yet. And they are half way
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Town of Groton Planning Board Meeting June 15, 1995
redoing the ordinance . And it's the first time they've done it since 1972 , Normally you don't start
redoing the ordinance until the Town Board passes or accepts the Comprehensive Plan ; and they
presented their Comprehensive Plan to the Town Board about six months ago. It isn't that they have
any problem with it, they just haven't done it yet. So the Planning Board ,just went to work on the
Zoning Ordinance changes. Now they've decided they hadn't ought to go much farther until they go back
to the Town Board and find out why the Comprehensive Plan -- there's no serious problems -- the Town
Board just is busy doing other things and it's been put on the back burner.
J. Lewis: Now will they have to have a public hearing?
G. Totman: Yes,
J. Lewis: With the Town Board and the Planning Board?
G. Totman: They can do it either way. It's easier to do it together. It's about a 50/ 50 thing the way
they do it.
M. Carey: I move we adjourn the meeting.
C. Twigg: I'll second it.
The meeting was adjourned at 8*57 p.m.
Respectfully submitted ,
Joan E . Fitch
Recording Secretary
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