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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1972-09-13 GROTON TOWN PLANNING BOARD MEETING �a Held in the Town Hall Wednesday , September 13 , 1972 8 : 15 P . M . - 9 * 45 P . M . G . Totman , Chairman* R . Cotanch R . Gleason* Z . Kane* D . Payne* F . Scheffler* H . Dow - Town Supervisor * J . Bell* * - Denotes those present . G . Totman : This is our first meeting since the 7th of June . I tried to have a meeting in July but attendance was so poor we didn ' t have a quorum so gave it up for August being it was vacation month , and didn ' t hold a meeting last Wednesday because it was the first week of school and thought it would be easier to hold it this week . Hicks couldn ' t make it last week and I wanted him to come to dis - cuss our Planning Board ' s area of responsibility with the Town Board and see if we could get some thoughts from the Town Board as to what they would like to have us be doing and , in order to have him be here and report on this to us, Dm holding the meeting tonight . These are the minutes of our last meeting . (Mr . Totman passed out copies of the minutes to all present . ) G . Totman : I have here a letter from the manager of the New York State Electric and Gas and have made copies so everybody can read it . (Mr . Totman passed out copies of this letter to all present and a copy is attached hereto and made a part of these minutes . ) This letter concerns the new law for multi- occupancy dwellings and underground cables . H . Dow : Do you happen to know in this same action , did they take care of cable TV ? I understand now they can put their cable TV lines right along with their high lines when they are being laid . G . Totman : To my knowledge , it is not incorporated in this . H . Dow : This has to do with our problem back in the subdivision period , doesn ' t it ? Z . Kane : That ' s right . H . Dow : This is the same Carrigg we talked to before only we called him Gregg , then . I ' m very glad you have this letter . This will come to bear on everything from here on out and there will be other subdivisions cropping up . Z . Kane : We should tack it right to our subdivision ordinance . H . Dow : This means anyone who buys a lot has to consider the package deal exclusive of utility costs ? G . Totman : That ' s right and I think it ' s important that the Town Clerk mentions this to them . - 1 - F . Scheffler : You mean if this is under four houses you don ' t have to go underground ? G . Totman : That ' s right . According to the meeting I went to in New York last year they were calling this the first step . Their eventual goal is to have all new building constructions go underground but probably considered that would have too much uproar to do it all at once so set it at four or more . G . Totman : Does anyone want to move on the minutes ? R . Gleason : I move the minutes be approved as written . Z . Kane : I second the motion . The motion was carried . G . Totman : 0 . K. There was one thing in there as I read them through tonight that I thought I would do and , to my recollection I .forgot to , and as long as Hicks is here tonight would like to have him take care of it . There was a question on the fee we require for the application for subdivision approvals , - - for instance , in the last case the fee was $ 130 which we returned upon our rejection of the subdivision . The feeling from this Board was should we have returned that $ 130 or should we make it a stipulation in the rules that if the application does get turned down the fee is retained by the Town Board because if we go through the procedures of having a public hearing , putting notices in the paper , etc , it ' s a cost upon the taxpayers . H . Dow : I ' d like to speak on that because it appears to be the very problem we have had ourselves . The money by rights should not be returned . F . Scheffler : I didn ' t think so . G . Totman : I felt that way too . H . Dow : The money should not be given back because it helps underwrite the costs of the procedure and all other costs and work so you and we have learned this the hard way . Hereafter you keep the money . G . Totman : 0 . K. , thank you . Before I have Hicks speak there ' s one thing I ' d like to bring up , being as we are all here but Ronnie . I have asked Frank Liguori , head of the County Planning Department to come to one of our meetings and bring us up to date on the County Planning Board and the role that it feels the Town Planning Board should play in re - lation to the County Planning Board . He seems quite pleased that I called him because he has problems understanding the local Town Boards because , in many cases , the people that represent the Towns don ' t have much rapport with their own respective planning boards . - 2 - G . Totman : I suggested that if a town is anticipating appointing somebody new to their County Planning Board that they pick someone from their local planning board . He was busy for the first Wednesday in October so agreed to come and meet with us on the 18th of October , which is the third Wed - nesday in October , so I would like you to keep that date open . I think it would be beneficial to us to hear what the County Planning Board is doing and what they expect from the local town planning boards . R . Gleason : Will this be in lieu of or in addition to our regular meeting ? G . Totman : I think we should decide on that . If we get any more applications in of course we would have to have a meeting anyway but I would prefer it , myself , to be in addition because we have been dormant a couple of months and from now on should meet the first and third Wednesdays because on the third Wednesday it will be strictly a meeting with Frank Liguori . If we are interested in planning , then it should prove to be a fruitful meeting , I would think . I have here a program of the New York State Planning Confederation ' s annual meeting , which Hicks and I went to two years ago . Last year nobody went from our area , but the meetings we did go to I thought were very beneficial . This year they are having their meetings on the 16th and 17th of October at Kutsher ' s County Club . It ' s down at Monticello . Their program starts on Monday morning with Sunday night for registra - tion and a reception hosted by the people who own the place , - - a candlelight dinner and dancing . Normally the Town Board picks up the bill for these meetings . First of all I suppose if we expect the Town to pay for the tickets have to get the Town Board to agree to it but this should be no problem as they have always agreed to do so in the past . H . Dow : How many do you have in mind ? G . Totman : I want to go . R . Gleason : Would you pass the brochure up so I can spell that word ? Some discussion was held on who would like to attend the meeting if the Town Board approved the expense of same . H . Dow : These things that are for the good of the Town we will try to find ways and means to finance them but in terms of major expenditures we have already spent those funds . G . Totman : As far as I know we are members of this organization , aren ' t we ? H . Dow : I would have to check with Lois but I think we are members . G . Totman : Do you want us to put your name down , Roger ? Wouldn ' t you like to go , Tana ? - 3 - Z . Kane : I would like to but I can ' t . G . Totman : Frank? F . Scheffler : I don ' t know . G . Totman : Dick Bell of the Zoning Board of Appeals would like to go and I should contact Joe Worgo , - -he might want to go , too . H . Dow : I bet he doesn ' t know about them . F . Scheffler : Is the Town Board included in this ? More discussion was held on this by all present . G . Totman : I ' ll wait a week before I send the reservations in and if anyone else changes their minds let me know and I ' ll phone Ron in case he would like to go . Right now Roger and I said we ' d go . Now I called Hicks last week before the Town Board meeting and asked him to give it some thought , - -about the role of the Planning Board and how we should proceed from here and I ' m goring to let him take over now . H . Dow : I want to read something in answer to that . (Mr . Dow then read the policy statement of the Town Planning Board aloud) . The Town Board concurs in the provisions of this policy statement and I can sum it up by saying they are very happy with what you are doing . Now , that in substance , is the basis on which your Board functions and in speaking for the Town Board they accept that in toto . It is exactly the picture the Town Board has at this time of your operation and the Town Board , - -probably I can speak for them , - - or at least for four of them , - - they are very disappointed we lost our first chance at a subdivision but had the developer in the beginning understood the contents of this letter you have here tonight from the New York State Electric & Gas we would have had a subdivision . Now the last week in July , I got in touch with the Office of Economic Development in Albany and told them I would be away part of August and if they could arrange their calendar would like to have them send a representative to Groton sometime after August . I tried to follow through on that just last Thursday - - Wednesday or Thursday - - and the gentleman I contacted back in July was out of the office on vacation but was due back soon so will get back to him this coming week . The Office of Economic Development in Albany is an office con - cerned with the assistance to new town developers in the industrial field . Now as he explained it to me if they came down here , heard our story and are sympathetic to us and find that this town could well stand to grow commercially , and I guess we all agree it could , then their method of procedure goes something like this . They , as a State office , would help us find land up here along our medium intensity area along 222 , help us find land which could be purchased for an industrial park and then they would stand by to help potential - 4 - small business people establish themselves in this park area . They have ways of helping them finance costs and all so that in the end Groton has all this dream come true and get 4 or 5 small companies along 222 , - - something like Adams small equip - ment building , - -he is putting up there , - - Now it ' s conceivable that if this came to pass Groton would have employment for another 100 - 150 people which would certainly add to our business support and our tax base which is climbing little by little all the time but it needs continual encouragement for growth so it ' s possible that your Planning Board would find itself , one of these days , involved with another attempt at subdivision , - - this along more structured lines , - - State involved and commercial , - - but this would come within your area and I know it ' s a long ways between what we lost up on West Hill and something like this but wouldn ' t have anything else to suggest to you in the way of an assignment other than this . So if anything does develop will get right to you with it . R . Gleason : The Town would purchase the park? H . Dow : No , the Town wouldn ' t purchase the park , the Office of Economic Development have a fund which they draw from and they would purchase it and then these companies coming in , - - they would help them become owner of each section through finance through State channels . We will go into this in more detail when he gets here Some discussion was held by H . Dow , R . Gleason and others about available land , and Mr . Dow said he would get in touch with Dr . Blatchly for information on land near his . H . Dow : Now , let ' s go over to junkyards for a minute because I sure hear plenty about them and we have letters that have already gone out to about 5 or six of them . The Town Board has set aside the night of September 26th for hearings at thirty minute intervals leading off with Reid Bixler , then Francis White , Otto Kuff , Pat Galbraith and a Mr . Ploss from Peruville . Z . Kane : What about the one up our way? H . Dow : The Al Metcalfe place ? When he died he left no will and his daughter who lives in Preble is the stumbling block right now , - -a question of her signing off . I convinced her . that if the place was cleaned up and she wanted to sell the home it would certainly bring a lot more money . I just wanted you to know that we are moving on trying to enforce the junkyard ordinance . G . Totman : Hicks , do you have anything else to bring up ? H . Dow : I would like to close by asking for names for the replacement needed for your Town Planning Board . G . Totman : I have some names that Don Payne gave me . The reason I didn ' t give them to the Town Board was that I hadn ' t contacted these people to see if any of them would accept . Don gave me four names and , to my knowledge , none of them have been asked if they would accept and I - 5 - felt they should be asked first . The names were : Professor Colby , C . B . Jennings , Don Chase and Rick LaFrance . 'These were suggestions from Don Payne , R . Gleason : You had some other names , - - they are in the minutes here . G . Totman : Yes , but I didn ' t talk to them either . I was negligent . H . Dow : I ' d say , as a suggestion , it ' s nice to get younger people on Boards if we can . Z . Kane : Rick LaFrance is young , isn ' t he ? D . Payne : And he lives in a trailer . G . Totman : The ones in the minutes are Ken Portzline , Wilson Bgrr Y and Howard Tyler . H . Dow : Well then , you folks will be working on these names and if you can condense your list where we would have only two to three names that would be nice . G . Totman : Yes , - -before we submit them to the Town Board we should contact them first . Hicks , - -how did you make out on the swimming pool fence ordinance ? H . Dow : As no doubt you ' ve seen C . B . Jennings has put his fence up . Right after that Aaron Zeamer sold his home and the new owners have a fence up in line with their house and down in back is a ravine . I don ' t know their names . R . Gleason : They are Italians , - - I don ' t know their names either . H . Dow : So Aaron ' s gone , - -Carl Alexander is legal and all the others I have seen around the Town are legal . Do you have any information to the contrary? Some discussion was held on this by G . Totman , H . Dow , F . Scheffler and others . G . Totman : Thank you very much , Hicks , for taking the time to come down and bring us up to date . I think we should get together like this more often . At our June meeting we discussed going back over our subdivision ordinance and bringing ourselves up to date on some of the things in it we overlooked on receiving the application of the proposed development on Sovocool Hill , and our July meeting didn ' t materialize so we didn ' t discuss this so I didn ' t warn Don and Zana that we would discuss it at this time so would like to plan on them doing this on the first Wednesday meeting in October be - cause some of our problems with that Sovocool Hill development were because according to our own ordinance we shouldn ' t even have accepted the application as it didn ' t have all the information we required with it and it would have solved our problems if we had demanded that the application comply with the regulations themselves . - 6 - G . Totman : If we spend some time in going back over that , - - the subdivision regulations which are our primary responsibility , - - the Town Board has no authority over them , - - so I think it ' s our obligation to not have something like that happen again . Z . Kane : What ' s the date on that , George ? G . Totman : The 4th of October , - -would like to spend that meeting night going over that . Z . Kane : You see to it that you ' re here that night , Mr . Payne ! D . Payne : I may not be here , - - I don ' t know . G . Totman : Does anybody have anything to bring up tonight concerning the Planning Board ? Z . Kane : You don ' t mean adjourning ? G . Totman : I didn ' t ask for that . F . Scheffler : Have you heard anything about that guy compalining about the lagoon bit ? Did anything happen on that ? You said you were going to give it to the Town Board , G . Totman : I ' ll have to ask Hicks about that . If nobody else has anything to bring up I haven ' t anything more . Oh , Hicks , - - some time back , probably around April or May , - -Frank brought up at one of our meetings a handwritten request to the Planning Board of a fellow over on Brown Road who was asking us to look into the ordinance or changing the ordinance so that they couldn ' t build open lagoons within 400 ft . of the road . I think I gave it to the Town Board so do you remember bringing that up ? H . Dow : Who would build this lagoon ? F . Scheffler : Here ' s the story , - - it ' s Nesbitt - - the farm is on the Peruville Road , - - Gordon Nesbitt . Anyway he owns the first field on Brown Road right directly behind that is about 12 acres that run back to the corner where Brown has the farm . Alright this belonged to some woman years ago and she finally died and this fellow that lives in Schwamn Trailer Park bought it and plans to make it into lots of 1 acre each and build houses on it and the ground is exactly the same type as on Sovocool Hill and the guy is going to put in a lagoon in the back which would be right on the border of Nesbitt ' s land so he came up to me and wondered if there was anything in our laws that says there ' s a distance whereby they can ' t build it near another person ' s property . It ' s exactly 400 ft , but this guy could build houses and put in the lagoon and take care of all these homes but the only thing is Nesbitt wants to stop the development and is making this request . R . Gleason : I remember something about that , - - didn ' t the County Health Department approve it ? F . Scheffler : I ' ve never heard any more about it but if the problem comes up we - 7 - e don ' t have anything decided . G . Totman : I ' ll bring it up at the next Town Board meeting , More discussion was held on this by H . Dow , G . T otman , F . Scheffler and others . A motion was made by Z . Kane to adjourn and seconded by D . Payne , Motion carried , Respectfully submitted , Jo ephine Bell - 8 -