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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03-30-2017 CSAC minutes approved 1 Conservation and Sustainability Advisory Committee Minutes of March 30, 2017 meeting Present: Roxanne Marino, David Diaz, Don Ellis, Andy Hillman, Bara Hotchkiss, Robert Oswald, Sue Poelvoorde, Brice Smith Roxanne called the meeting to order at 7:01 p.m Approval of Agenda Roxanne noted that Sue requested to add an agenda item as New Business to discuss other projects the committee could pursue in 2017 beyond the review of the Zoning Law updates. Roxanne asked for a motion to amend the agenda. Sue moved, Bara seconded. Approved. Approval of Minutes Roxanne presented draft minutes for the January 17, 2017 and March 8, 2017 meetings and asked if there were any corrections. Hearing none, Roxanne moved to accept the two sets of minutes, Sue seconded. Approved. Updates on Town issues or Board actions related to Sustainability/Conservation Ÿ HeatSmart II Program – Ulysses meeting schedule Roxanne reported that the first meeting was held at the Racker Center and was sparsely attended. The second meeting is Saturday, April 15th, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon and will split the session between the Ulysses Town Hall where the presentation will be given and the Trumansburg Village Hall where the installers will be set up. Information on the session is posted to the Town’s website. Bara noted that she has not received anything on social media about these sessions. Roxanne will check with the organizers to see if they are posting to social media. Ÿ Clean Energy Communities Roxanne reported that the Tompkins County Council of Governments’ (TCCOG) Energy Task Force continues to work on the aforementioned NYSERDA program. A coordinator for the Southern Tier has been hired, Terrence Carroll, and he is housed at the Cornell Cooperative Extension office. Towns are working together to complete actions necessary to be deemed a clean energy community. To date, actions that have been taken that will help Tompkins County communities reach the qualification include the countywide solar program and the, currently in-process, unified solar permit. In addition, TCCOG will look at training on sustainable energy for code enforcement officers and benchmarking energy use in town buildings as additional actions. 2 Once communities receive designation they will be eligible for grant funding to do other projects. The Town of Ulysses Board is discussing a potential project for Town Hall to replace the current heat/AC system with a heat-pump system. Old Business A) Proposed Glare Standard and changes to Town Solar Law Roxanne reported that the Town Board passed on our committee’s recommendations to the Planning Board for consideration. The Planning Board agreed with the majority of our recommendations with two exceptions. 1) The Planning Board wants to use 1-foot topographic intervals in the glare analysis tool rather than the ten-foot interval that is the current standard for the SGHAT tool. Brice explained that the base mapping currently used in the tool is Google Maps, which is ten-foot intervals. Any deviation from this level would have to be manually entered in to the SGHAT and it would hamper the ability to use the optimization tool in the analysis program. Roxanne asked Brice to write up the explanation for not recommending the change to the one- foot interval that our committee will send on to the Town Board and the Planning Board. 2) The Planning Board does not support our suggestion to allow the maximum height limit of a solar array to match the maximum height allowed for the district, e.g. 32 feet. The current law states 20 feet. The CSAC continues to support changing the maximum height limit to 32 feet to allow for design changes to the array layout that would help to minimize glare impacts on surrounding development. Sue moved to have Roxanne prepare a memo from the CSAC to the Town Board restating our recommendations to maintain the topographic interval used in the glare analysis tool at ten- feet, Brice will provide the wording, and change the maximum height permitted for an array to 32 feet. Don seconded the motion. Approved. B) Zoning Update Roxanne and Andy reported out on some of the discussions ongoing through the Ag Committee and the BZA. The committee began to discuss sections of the draft Agriculture Zone that are of concern including lot size, road frontage, changes from uses allowed by special permit to uses allowed with site plan review and parcel subdivision standards. Roxanne noted that the committee must have our comments to the Zoning Update Committee by May 4th. In light of that deadline an additional meeting in April should be scheduled. The group discussed how to utilize the Google document set up by Don. Specific wording changes to 3 the draft zoning should be done within each proposed section. General concept and supportive documentation will be included in an appendix document. New Business Ÿ Workplan Discussion Roxanne recommended that due to the time, this agenda item be tabled and discussed at a future meeting. Bara will type up the list of suggestions she brought to the meeting and email them to the committee. Next Meeting The next meeting of the CSAC is scheduled for Thursday, April 13th, 7:00 p.m. The second meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 24th, 7:00 p.m. Meeting adjourned at 9:03 p.m.