2006-02-07
(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
WORKSHOP MEETING
FEBRUARY 7, 2006
INDEX
DISCUSSION Various Topics of Discussion 1.
Floodplain info., Sketch Plan, Policies &
Procedures
THESE ARE NOT OFFICIALLY ADOPTED MINUTES AND ARE SUBJECT TO
BOARD AND STAFF REVISIONS. REVISIONS WILL APPEAR ON THE
FOLLOWING MONTHS MINUTES (IF ANY) AND WILL STATE SUCH APPROVAL
OF SAID MINUTES.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
WORKSHOP MEETING
FEBRUARY 7, 2006
7:00 P.M.
MEMBERS PRESENT
ROBERT VOLLARO, CHAIRMAN
GRETCHEN STEFFAN, SECRETARY
CHRIS HUNSINGER
THOMAS FORD
ANTHONY METIVIER
THOMAS SEGULJIC
DONALD SIPP, ALTERNATE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-MARILYN RYBA
ZONING ADMINISTRATOR-CRAIG BROWN
LAND USE PLANNER-SUSAN BARDEN
DIRECTOR OF BUILDING & CODE ENFORCEMENT-DAVID HATIN
STENOGRAPHER-SUE HEMINGWAY
MR. VOLLARO-Is everybody ready? Okay. The first thing I’d like to do before we even get
started, I’d like to make an introduction to a Mr. Donald Sipp, sitting at the end. Don’s our
new alternate for the Planning Board, just appointed last night at the Town Board. Welcome
aboard.
MR. FORD-Welcome, Don.
MRS. STEFFAN-Welcome, Don.
MR. SIPP-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-The next thing I’d like to do is get into the topics of discussion. You all
should have a copy of it, for the agenda for February 7, 2006. The media release came out,
and it didn’t say much, but this was put together so we could get a handle on some of it.
Before we get started on our own business here, just in talking with one another, there’s going
to be a presentation by Dave Hatin on floodplain information, and information concerning
floodplains and floodways, principally what kind of information does he get from FEMA, the
agency that comes up with that information. So Mr. Hatin, if you’d like to get started, feel
free.
MR. HATIN-Sure. Good evening.
MR. FORD-Good evening.
MR. HATIN-What I’ll try to do is Bob asked me to give you about a 15 minute dissertation
on what the floodplain program’s all about and how it works and how it may or may not
relate to you. If you’re not aware of it, the Town does have flood prone areas in it, but
they’re not real prevalent. We do have some areas along Halfway Brook that are probably
the worst that the Town sees, and that’s where most of the development in the floodplain
occurs. We do have some other areas, the lakes believe it or not are all considered floodplains
to a certain elevation. The shoreline along Lake George below Glen Lake, Lake Sunnyside is
still considered floodplain on the maps I brought. I brought a sample map with me tonight.
There’s 12 maps that make up the Town, and basically the information I work with is kind of
primitive now days. George has managed to digitize it and put it on the GIS system, so it is
available to you through the GIS System. Basically, the Town is broken up into 12
quadrants, if you want to look at it that way. And each quadrant has a map number that
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goes with it and when somebody goes to develop in, for me, what is known as a flood area,
we’ll go to those maps, pull those flood maps and see if the development is close enough or
within the flood plain. And a flood plain is identified typically as this dark blue shaded area
here and the light gray area. That is what is typically called a Zone C or Zone X and the
other Zone B, excuse me, Zone A, Zone X, then we have Zone B and C. The white area is the
area outside of the flood plain. The dark shaded area is the area that is definitely in the flood
plain and the light gray shaded area is areas where subject flooding would not be as severe as
the dark shaded areas. Now the problem with these maps is that you can see, they give no
boundaries, per say, George can pull this up on his GIS and show you whether lots are in or
out of the shaded areas and darker areas. But, the problem is, it doesn’t give you topography
and it doesn’t tell you the lay of the land. So you can have two lots next to each other,
identical elevations, one lot could be in the flood plain, and one lot could be out of the flood
plain by boundary but the lay of the land is the same, and common sense tells you these areas
will be flooded. So, DEC who administers the program for FEMA locally, they are the
regional coordinator for it. They have told us, given us a determination that if the lay of the
land is the same, we can include it, however, if the applicant chooses to argue that point, they
have a valid point that the line is not, they are not within the lines; it’s typically done by
surveyor, with the surveyor actually comes out and …these boundaries based on survey
points on the map and show where the actual lines are drawn in the sand, I guess, so to speak
and then prove whether the structures and land itself are in or out of the flood plain. And we
have a situation down on Cronin Road, I want to say 5 years ago, but ever time I look back in
history, it’s probably about 8 years ago now; where 2 identical houses built side by side. The
lot line was actually the boundary line between the flood plain. One was in, one was out. The
lay of the land was identical. So one house was actually exempt from flood insurance and the
other house had to get flood insurance. But what we did is tell him to build it to the same
elevations for both because these maps when they do get digitized and are I guess are more
computer literate and more specific as FEMA starts to update these maps and right now the
Town not being a flood prone area is very low on the totem pole considering what is going on
down south with the hurricanes and the flood area down there. That’s were generating all of
their efforts and money. So someday, I’m hoping, over the next 10 years, that we’ll see
digitized maps that will be parcel specific and site specific with actual delineations and
elevations. Right now the only elevation I have to go by when I look at these maps is the
actual flood elevation they predict for a 100 year storm. So that’s how the system works, it’s
pretty archaic considering now-days technology. How the process starts is with an
application. It is filled out by the applicant who is typically the building or the property
owner or the building representing the property. This is an application they have to fill out
which basically forces them to shoot the elevation that they have to get the lowest floor level
structure to prior to building. And what it does, it sets a bench mark on the property so that
when they come back, when the mason comes in and pours the foundation and pours the
basement floor, the slab pour, that he has a benchmark to get the top of the slab to and if he
fails to meet that, then he has to either go to the Town Board for a variance or take the slab
out and raise it, one or the other. So we always try to get this paperwork upfront, so we know
the surveyor’s been out to the property, put the bench mark out on the property. Now it’s up
to the surveyor to mark that site specific for the developer and the developer has to tell his
mason, this is my cellar floor or my slab, it has to be at this elevation or higher; it can’t be
lower, but it can be at that elevation or higher. Now, the Town has also taken a step further,
where we changed our law about 3 years ago to require that the slab be 1 foot above the flood
elevation. So if this map has a flood elevation, if you look at these squiggly lines here, I can
pass these around, so you can take another look at these.
MR. FORD: May we ask questions.
MR. HATIN: Sure, you can interrupt me anytime you want to. I’m trying to squeeze a 2 or
3 hour course into 15 minutes. So I’m giving you the down and dirty of it.
MR. FORD: When does this occur.
MR. HATIN: Anytime a development within those shaded areas.
MR. FORD: Okay, but when in the process, does it occur.
MR. HATIN: At building permit process. That is how the law is written. When structure is
ready to submit for a permit. They must comply with the law which requires them to submit
this paperwork that I showed you and we have to give them that information based on …
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MR. VOLLARO: Dave, does that, when they do their swaps, in other words, there
stormwater plan, do they take into consider the flood plain data.
MR. HATIN: That, Bob, I cannot answer for you because I’m not involved in the SWIFT
program, so that’s…
MR. VOLLARO: What I’m looking at is somebody like Tom Nace, or one of the
engineers that supports the applicants that comes before us. Is he also using that kind of data
to determine when, you know, if he’s building, he’s got to say, well I’m in the flood plain, I’ve
got a problem. Does he work with this kind of information.
MR. HATIN: To answer your question directly, Yes. To just expand on that a little bit.
This only looks at the elevation of the structure, it doesn’t take into account, stormwater.
This is not a concern about stormwater management. This is only concerned that, to stop
flooding damage in the structure.
MR. VOLLARO: That’s the idea of the 1 foot above.
MR. HATIN: Yes, that’s what I started to say, is it use to be the Law reads: at or
above the flood plain elevations. If you look at the squiggly lines that go through the dark
shaded areas, you’ll see different elevations as it goes downstream. That would mean that
you have the: at elevation or above. The Town took a step about 3 years ago to make that a
little more stricter; and put one foot above. And the reason we did that is because it lowers
the insurance premiums for homeowners and it also gives us a cushion because if your at or
above the flood pain, if you’re at the flood plain, common sense tells you that there is a good
chance you’re going to get some flooding. If you’re one foot above, that lessens the chances
and therefore also, lowers the insurance premiums, so they tell me.
MR. GOETZ: How old is that information, like on that map, right there.
MR. HATIN: That particular map, Bob, if I could look at that quickly, there’s a date right
down in the bottom corner.
MR. VOLLARO: 1984
MR. HATIN: 1984. Most of the maps are basically 1984 and then have been updated as
development has occurred along the flood plain areas. The corridor, to give you a rough idea,
the corridor between Quaker Plaza and Lowe’s has been upgraded as recently as, I think,
Lowe’s I want to say has been there for 5 years. So, that was upgraded about 5 years ago at
my request because it changed the flood plain and the corridor that the Halfway Brook flows
through. So I requested that they update that map, so they did an update to that map. If
you ever see a letter.
MR. FORD: Who is they?
MR HATIN: FEMA. FEMA themselves. Federal Emergency Management Agency. The
same agency you see that deals with hurricanes, floods, the same agency.
MR. VOLLARO: What’s the scale of this map.
MR. HATIN: One to 400, I think. I think that’s what it says.
MR. SEJULIC: So development will impact flood plains.
MR. HATIN: Yes, where the Girl Scout camp is, they built a bridge from the new
Girl Scout office to the Girl Scout camp itself in Meadowbrook. And when they developed
that bridge that goes across, I’m sure some of you have seen it, they had to, the engineer had
to show that he would not impact the flood plain by putting the piers in the Halfway Brook
corridor, which is part of the flood plain. So, he has to put the spacing of the piers, the height
of the bridge, all figures into that and he has to calculate the flood itself plus any back up that
could occur from the flood and make sure it’s not enough to back it up and impact everybody
upstream.
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MR. SEGULJIC-So if someone develops in the floodplain, what they’ll do is raise the ground
surface up so it doesn’t flood, and because they’re doing that, that impacts the, I assume it
disperses the floodplain elsewhere.
MR. HATIN-For a typical residence, it probably has no effect on flood waters themselves. A
bridge would only because it allows (lost words) to come down and create the dams and back
the water up. A typical house, all they’re concerned about is making sure that the house itself
does not receive water damage.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, what if you had a number of these houses, a large area, acres of it, for
example?
MR. HATIN-That would have to be looked at as a total impact.
MR. SEGULJIC-So it potentially could impact the floodplain.
MR. HATIN-Yes. We’re looking at typical single family, you know, small size structures, so
not enough to really impact the floodplain itself, but if you’re talking large scale
development, where they’re going to come in and raise (lost words) such as Lowe’s, Lowe’s is
a prime example of that. We did make them re-do the maps based on that, and Lowe’s had to
take that into account by doing their six feet of fill. They had to account for the area they
were lessening floodwaters (lost words).
MR. SEGULJIC-Did that have a dramatic impact on the floodplain?
MR. HATIN-Well, what it did is it changes the shaded area, actually narrows it down,
because they also did improvements since they did that, too. If you look at the bridge that
goes into Lowe’s through Quaker Road, there’s more culverts than there were.
MR. SEGULJIC-So what they did was their stormwater management and their fill.
MR. HATIN-Stormwater doesn’t have anything to do with it because stormwater
management is managed on site.
MR. SEGULJIC-But that water’s got to go into the floodplain eventually.
MR. HATIN-Well, it goes into soils and commonsense would tell you it disperses from there,
but it doesn’t have a direct impact on the floodplain. It would be over time as it disperses
from the soil. The more immediate impact is the road drainage as it goes into these streams
and then raises the elevation (lost words).
MR. SEGULJIC-So the impervious surface is the greater impact.
MR. HATIN-Impervious surface is the drain directly into the floodplain area, yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay.
MR. FORD-Dave, when DEC or FEMA or representatives are involved, are they on site?
MR. HATIN-No. They’re only involvement is basically to produce the maps for us.
MR. FORD-So they never do an on site inspection?
MR. HATIN-No. In fact, these maps that you’re looking at now were developed in an office
out of topo maps of the area. No one ever physically came to Queensbury and surveyed
Queensbury. That’s why we have the problem where the lay of the land can be the same, but
one lot can be in and one lot can be out (lost words), that’s how they were done back in the
80’s. It’s very primitive. Now they use GPS and satellite positioning to actually shoot the
elevation of the land and the new maps, like Schoharie County has all brand new maps
because they’re very prone to flooding . So that was one of the target areas, and their maps
are very site specific, and they’re digitized. So we can get them on our GIS system.
MR. SEGULJIC-Could you just quickly explain the difference between the floodway and the
floodplain?
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MR. HATIN-Floodway is typically where water is channeled, and floodplain is where water
would spread.
MR. SEGULJIC-And you can’t develop in a floodway. You can develop in a floodplain.
MR. HATIN-You can develop in a floodway if it’s done so it does not increase the height of
the predicted flood elevation, which is what they had to do with the bridge for the Girl Scout
camp. They had to prove, through engineering, that it will not raise that elevation of that
highest level any more than what was there before development, so it can’t increase the
impact.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay.
MR. FORD-Do you ever find that the reality of what exists doesn’t correspond to what is
predicted will exist?
MR. HATIN-Well, the problem is we’ve never had a 100 year flood to find out. So I don’t
know what the reality is of it. I can tell you that all the structures that have been developed
have never had floods. The flood areas, we pretty well know where they are in Queensbury,
and typically it’s going to be in this area right down here, Meadowbrook and Cronin. That’s
really the only flood area we have to deal with. I mean, this last storm we had two weeks ago
did wash out some culverts of Halfway Brook and things. That’s the first time in the 18 years
I’ve been here that’s happened, and the 25 years I’ve lived in Queensbury.
MR. FORD-So the flooding across Meadowbrook, is that stormwater runoff or a plugged
culvert? What issues are associated with that?
MR. HATIN-Well, I can’t speak to that specifically. I can tell you that the rainwater
running off from the roads, and anything that discharges directly into the Halfway Brook is
what’s raising the elevation, and it depends on the amount of rain we get. Plus with snow
melt and things like that. So that all impacts that, and flooded culverts will make the
floodplain up, upstream, but the problem we had on Homer Avenue, Homer Avenue is not in
a floodplain. If I were to bring in a map, it would show it’s not even near the floodplain, but
(lost words).
MRS. STEFFAN-And then Craig can probably tell us some more about that, because there
are some other issues in addition to rain water. You’re talking about blocked culverts.
MR. HATIN-Yes, just because you see a flooded area there during a rainstorm doesn’t mean
it’s in a floodplain. We have to actually go to the maps. The maps will are what determine
that.
MR. FORD-But if it is in a floodplain, and it’s flooding, it still might be caused by something
else, food culverts or other issues?
MR. HATIN-If that was the issue, we could (lost words) contribute, there are a number of
things that can contribute to a flood.
MR. VOLLARO-One of the things I’ve often wondered about is a lot of the runoff that takes
place, for example along Halfway Brook, let’s just stick with that issue for a minute. As that
Brook becomes sedimented, and the sediment continues to rise, the volume of water that’s
able to move downstream gets less. That volume gets, essentially starts to rise and rise, and
can reach the.
MR. HATIN-Are you talking culverts or are you talking?
MR. VOLLARO-No. I’m talking the streams in general from just general runoff from
development or whatever. We tried to stop that with various.
MR. HATIN-Yes. I can’t speak to that, Bob, because I don’t know of any areas where that’s
occurred. I can tell you culverts have flooded from sediment. Typically what you see, where
you have fast moving water, is you don’t typically get your build ups of sediment. You
usually get them in the eddy areas where you have areas, and that’s why you typically see a
sandbar on a curve, okay, because you have that slow moving water where it can deposit.
The fast moving water keeps it going. Culverts usually plug up for a number of reasons, logs,
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beavers, things like that. It’s a little more prone to it. Does it affect it? Yes, it does affect it,
because it affects everything upstream because it’s assumed that culvert is at its full
potential, and if it doesn’t, than obviously that will affect everything upstream.
MR. VOLLARO-I talked to the gentleman who lives right next to the Brook, and he’s right
on Cronin, the small house that’s on Cronin Road, and he sits to the east of the brook, he’s
right there, small house.
MR. HATIN-I was going to say, it’s probably north or south of the Brook, the way I’m
looking at it.
MR. FORD-Yes, it’s southeast.
MR. VOLLARO-He’s lived there, he tells me, for 10 or 12 years now, something like that, and
he’s noticed that the bottom of the Brook is slowly rising. In other words, the base of the
Brook is being sedimented.
MR. HATIN-Could be.
MR. VOLLARO-Because when he first got there, he never had any breaching. Now he sees it
breach pretty early. So I don’t know.
MR. HATIN-Yes, I don’t know. That would have to be studied by an engineering firm. I
couldn’t speak to that. My job, in this whole realm, my job is to make sure any development
in a floodplain is built to the floodplain standards. Structures one foot above or beyond,
actually garages you can build below that level as long as they have a front door and a rear
door. Your typical residential structures have to meet that one foot above or beyond, and
then they meet the floodplain, and that’s my role in this.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, you know, and I think it’s worth mentioning that the reason that
this was developed is for flood insurance.
MR. HATIN-Right.
MR. HUNSINGER-Because we have national flood insurance.
MR. HATIN-Right.
MR. HUNSINGER-And Towns can opt in or opt out.
MR. HATIN-Right. We opted in. One of my unofficial titles is Floodplain Administrator,
and that’s, you know, before I came here, nothing was done with this program. I kind of
picked it up and got it. In fact, I brought it, because we have to keep records because DEC
comes in about every two or three years and just does quality insurance inspection of our
program, and since 1991, we’ve.
MR. FORD-But they confine that to the office, right?
MR. HATIN-What’s that?
MR. FORD-They tend to confine that to the office and review of documents?
MR. HATIN-Yes. It’s just review of paperwork. What he’ll do is he’ll go through this list I
have and he’ll pull a couple of permits to make sure that the paperwork is in order, that we’ve
done everything that we have to, that the elevation certificate was issued properly, the
surveyor did what they were supposed to, pull up the proper (lost words) crossed the T’s,
dotted the I’s, things like that, but since I’ve been here we’ve only issued 20 permits, and
that’s in 18 years. So it’s not a lot. I don’t want you to think that there’s a lot that goes on,
because there’s really not a lot, if you look at the scheme of things, but we have had some
development. Lowe’s was a fairly large impact on the floodplain, and so was Quaker Plaza.
So that’s why I requested that FEMA update the maps. It’s called a Letter of Map
Amendment or a LOMA, and that’s generally done at my request. Any Board member could
request, you could request an amendment, a property owner could request an amendment, if
they feel they’ve done something (lost words) damage to their property. We had one on Glen
Lake where the floodplain map showed the land and the structure in a floodplain, but if you
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went out and looked at the land, the lake level was 15 feet below the structure. So the map
didn’t match the property elevations. So he put in a Letter of Map Amendment to get his
property out of the floodplain, and therefore he gets an exemption on his flood insurance.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MR. HATIN-Otherwise they were trying to hit him for having flood insurance premium, and
he’s saying I’m 15 feet above the lake. The lake elevation can’t even (lost words) at the
highest elevation. That’s some of the inconsistencies that are out there.
MRS. STEFFAN-So the flood insurance is a Federal program.
MR. HATIN-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-But if your property is in a floodplain, then you have to buy the insurance,
and that premium is set by the?
MR. HATIN-Well, I shouldn’t say you have to buy it, but they force you to buy it. It’s not a
choice.
MR. METIVIER-Well, if you’re getting a mortgage it’s not a choice, but if you own the
house outright you don’t need to get it.
MR. HATIN-Yes. Pay cash, yes, that is the one exemption, yes, but if you get insurance on
your house, the insurance company can require it, and most of them do now days. We get a
lot of requests, I would say probably on average about one a week of determinations of flood
map panel numbers, which is the number on the bottom of that map going around, and the
zone that that particular road might be in, or how close we can get that property, and a lot of
times I have to tell them, I can’t make that determination because the map is that specific.
You’re going to have to hire a surveyor to find out, because they’re right on the boundary
line. Even with the GIS system, you still, if it’s that close we tell them hire a surveyor
because we can’t pin it down that close.
MRS. STEFFAN-So these floodplains are designated specifically by elevation? Soil
hydrology doesn’t play into it at all?
MR. HATIN-There’s no physical inspections of the site. It’s all done off the topo maps and I
forget what other map they might use. They told me a long time ago, and it was all done
basically in an office.
MRS. STEFFAN-This is actually one of our frustrations as Planning Board members because
when we have an application that comes in front of us and it has wetlands on it that have
been delineated, sometimes folks have never been out, you know, Army Corps folks or DEC
folks. I don’t know, as a new Planning Board member last year I was assuming that a
representative came out and looked at the site, because there’s a signoff, but that’s not the
case.
MR. HATIN-The only person that goes and physically looks at these, most of the time, is me,
or a surveyor, and it’s not a perfect system but it’s the best we’ve got right now.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay.
MR. HATIN-So we do the best we can with it. Like I said, hopefully some day they’ll
digitize our Town and then we can put it in our GIS system and we can be very parcel
specific, because I’m assuming what’s going to happen is some parcels are going to come out
and like I said, the ones that have the lay of the land the same, but one parcel is in and one
parcel is out is probably going to expand.
MR. FORD-So it’s good to keep that in mind as we have permitting or approvals from DEC.
It’s good to note that they, in fact, have probably never been on site.
MR. HATIN-I wouldn’t say that, because I know a lot of the DEC, when you get a survey, a
lot of the DEC flagged wetlands, that has been a physical visit to the property by a DEC
representative, and Craig can probably speak more specifically to that, but I think it’s when
you’re looking at general maps, I think you can make that assumption, but when you’re
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looking at a survey that says delineated flagged area, you see flagged area, that’s a physical
problem.
MR. METIVIER-It’s possible, though, that we could be reviewing applications and never
know that we’re looking at a floodplain, right? I mean, wetlands yes because they’re
delineated.
MR. HATIN-Unless it is identified by the Planning Department on the GIS system.
MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. HATIN-I can’t speak for what the Planning Office does, as far as before it gets to you,
because generally when it gets to me, now we’re at the building stage. So I have to make sure
that if it hasn’t occurred by then, that it does occur. So either way it gets caught. It’s just
whether it gets caught up front or before a building permit.
MR. METIVIER-But it wouldn’t be up to us to make sure it met the requirements that you
have to have them meet.
MR. HATIN-Yes. That is my responsibility. I mean, you certainly as a Planning Board can,
if you know it’s in a floodplain, you feel there’s a problem, you’ve got to talk to Town
Counsel, but I’m assuming you condition that approval that it has to meet the flood
elevations, you know, and meet the flood approval, especially if you’ve got part of the project
in and part out, and they want to exempt a certain portion of it, the lay of the land is the
same, commonsense would tell you, if one’s being flooded, the other one is, too. I would think
that could be in your purview to condition that.
MRS. STEFFAN-That brings up a question that I had. We recently were reviewing an
application, and the question came up, if you’re building in a floodplain, and then you’re
filling to put in foundations, you’re filling. You’re raising the elevation. You’re putting in
foundations. How does that displace water?
MR. HATIN-Well, commonsense tells you it does displace water because water can’t go in
that same area. How it affects the outlying areas, that’s for an engineer to determine, and
that’s where we got into the floodway versus the floodplain. The floodplain doesn’t really, if
you look at that on single individual projects. A development may be an even bigger impact,
but in a floodway, it definitely becomes an issue right up front. That’s why we had to make
the Girl Scouts go through what they did, because that definitely was in a floodway, had
bigger impacts on the floodway, and we actually had to go to DEC to get some
determinations from them before the project even got off the ground to see what was required
of the applicant, which was the Girl Scouts, and then what the engineer had to provide to me
as proof that he had met those requirements.
MR. FORD-Getting it off the ground is very appropriate.
MR. HATIN-Yes, the higher the better, obviously. The bottom line, the reason behind the
program is to stop (lost words).
MR. METIVIER-And the potential exists, and I’ve seen this occur before, that actually
development can create a positive effect on flood areas, not necessarily negative. Because
when you start bringing in fill and stuff, that’ll act as act almost like a sponge to these areas
that can be able to absorb more water, you know, I mean, we lived over on Meadowbrook
Road. We were in a floodplain, and it’s funny you say that because two houses were and two
houses weren’t, and we never had a problem, but neighbors three doors down, four doors
down, I mean, they had water coming up all the time to their house, and they weren’t in a
floodplain, per se. I mean, it was bizarre. We had to get the flood insurance and everything.
So, you know, when you ask the neighbors across the street, after our houses all went in, they
never had any wet basements ever again, and they really related that to the fact that they
brought in four houses, put in all that extra fill, and it acted as a buffer to their areas, their
homes. So it was interesting to see the whole.
MR. VOLLARO-If you put enough fill in, you know, a raise the elevation of the house itself,
you can get a profile that looks something like this. The water’s going to roll away from that
area.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. METIVIER-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s going to go some place else. The problem that we have, we’re restricted,
as Planning Board members, is to make sure that the amount of runoff that was there before
the development isn’t any greater after the development.
MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-And that’s where, you know, the engineers have to put in their, do their
stormwater management plan, put in drywells, put in, you know, retention ponds.
MR. HATIN-And if they’re in a floodplain that would be on top of that.
MR. VOLLARO-Knowing a little bit about how Hydro Cad is put together, and I’ve talked
this over a little bit with George as well, Hydro Cad puts in a certain amount of information,
they’re called constants, and, in order for the program to run, where the engineer is at a place,
he has to determine some constants about that area to get the Hydro Cad to function, and
some of it has to do with floodplain areas. He’s got to plug some stuff in, and that’s why I
asked Tom Nace about that not too long ago, when he came before us. I said, how current is
that, and that’s when he mentioned your name. That’s the first time I, as a person, knew
that you were connected with this floodplain data, but the problem I think is we’re a little
behind the power curve here on updating that information, currently getting it digitized so
that he can have a much better feel for it, when he plugs some of this stuff in.
MR. HATIN-You might want to speak to George, but all the flood maps, as far as I
understand it from George, are digitized on the GIS system. So the shaded areas you see here
do show up on the GIS system. Like I said, though, they are very general in nature. They’re
not site specific. They don’t particularly show you the lay of the land, which means that you
have to either go out and look at the land or be familiar with the land, and you can get this
problem where, on the GIS system, you’ll see the edge of that Zone A, and this parcel will be
in and this parcel will be out and if you went out and looked at it, the lay of the land is
identical. So it’s the same elevation and everything, but that line is drawn right down, the
survey, again, I can’t go by our GIS system because that’s not 100% accurate either, but as I
said, I think George said two or three feet maybe, typically, but a survey is the only accurate
representation, a physical survey, and again, that’s taken off these maps (lost words) by
scaling maps. So, just to finish what I’ve tried to get to, just so you know, when it’s all said
and done, after they submit up front information about how high they have to build, and
that’s the lowest floor level of the structure. So you have to remember, a lot of people think
it’s the, if you’re building a ranch, they think it’s the first floor of the ranch, it’s the basement
floor, all right, is what the floor elevation has to be elevated to. A lot of people forget that,
and that’s why we have to remind them, remember, this is your basement floor level, not the
first floor, because people think if they berm around their house that they’re protected. Well,
flood waters will penetrate that and flood the basement. So they want the cellar floor above
(lost words) when we’re looking at these. If you look at the house down here at the end of
Haviland, the last house on the left, you’ll see they’re built fairly high out of the ground,
that’s the reason why. Believe it or not, that particular lot is in a floodplain. The lot next to
it is out of the floodplain. So as you can see the lay of the land, how it floods.
MR. VOLLARO-When you talk about the slab itself, usually a slab is, what, about four?
MR. HATIN-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Then you’ve got the foundation you have to go down, to support the
structure. Foundations have to be usually on.
MR. HATIN-Virgin soil.
MR. VOLLARO-Virgin soil, and they’ve got to be compacted, usually, to some spec of
compaction.
MR. HATIN-Not for residential. Virgin soil is adequate for residential. Commercial
structures, we have to make them test the soils.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Well, when you get into real wet areas, that’s the thing that concerns me the
most, how do they get down to virgin soil in some of these areas. That’s why we want test
pits done, for example, to know what the seasonally high groundwater looks like.
MR. HATIN-Yes, but that doesn’t have an effect on the foundation itself. What would have
an effect on the foundation is the hydraulic pressure against the slab. I mean, all the
problems we’ve had in flood prone areas with high groundwater areas, you actually see the
slab slip. The foundations haven’t moved at all. So I’ve seen the slab actually pushed up
about three or four inches, but we’ve never seen the foundations move themselves, because
the foundations get equal pressure on either side, but the slab is all underneath and forces it
up.
MR. VOLLARO-So long as the footings are on virgin ground.
MR. HATIN-Yes, they’re on virgin ground and they haven’t dug deeper than they were
supposed to and then dumped the fill back in and now it’s unprotected fill and it’s not virgin
soil, but they put it right on that virgin soil, and my guys are real good about making sure
that, I mean, we make them dig frost out at this time of the year and everything. So, I mean,
we’ve never had a problem, in the 18 years that I’ve been here, with the foundation that
wasn’t, that was done properly. We’ve had problems with things that haven’t been (lost
words).
MR. VOLLARO-Normally we’re not confronted with the ones or the twos. We get
confronted with, you know, condos, for example, that displace quite a bit of property.
MR. HATIN-If there’s ever a question, I mean, get on the phone and just ask me, and I can
give you the information that you need to know to deal with that development, and the
engineer can contact me. If it’s engineer for the applicant, I can tell them what requirements
they have to meet. I won’t see any paperwork to me until they come to build. Because
particularly the one you’re talking about now, when they go to build that, we’ll get one for
each one of these, one of these permits will be filled out for each individual building, and
they’ll have to go down there and shoot, and put a benchmark on a tree or on a stake or
something, and then the surveyors have to come back and shoot the slabs when they’re done
pouring the slabs, and then we’ll get, this paperwork will get, again, pre-reviewed by me to
make sure they’ve shot that benchmark. Then when it’s done they fill out the rest of this, I
fill out my part, and say now they’ve met the requirements of the floodplain, and then we
issue an elevation certificate which is an official document. So then that closes it out and it
gets logged into my book.
MR. VOLLARO-The chart that went around is mostly on Halfway Brook. It looks like it
almost follows the Brook, almost completely.
MR. HATIN-Yes. Halfway Brook pretty much is a floodplain area, and a lot of tributaries,
actually up on West Mountain Road there are some floodplain areas that go into Halfway
Brook. You wouldn’t think of, but they are up there. This particular one goes from behind
Rolling Ridge, which is off Ridge Road, up to around Sanford Ridge.
MR. VOLLARO-Now you’ve got a whole bunch of these in the office that you can refer to.
MR. HATIN-Yes. There’s 12 of them. They’re broken up into different sections of the Town.
Any time you want to come in and look at them, if I’m not there, all you have to do is ask the
girls for the flood maps. If you could take the master map, and you know these rough areas
that you’re looking for in Town, you know, you could get that map number, and then you
could take the map and try to narrow it down. It’ll give you a rough idea of what you’ve got
to deal with. Like I said, there are no parcels shown on these maps, but then George could
take it to the parcel specific area, and let you know if it touches that parcel or if that parcel’s
in or out, and then from there it’s, you know, if somebody wants to argue that the point that
they’re in or out of the floodplain, we’ll tell them to go and get a surveyor, and prove to us
that they’re not.
MR. VOLLARO-Just to let the Board know something, you’ll be getting something in the
mail. You’ll be getting some aerial shots in the mail with overlays of particular properties on
them and also a second set that shows what the floodway might look or might not look like in
that area. I don’t want to talk about the specific project. Some of you may understand what
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
it is, but this map will come in the mail, and then you’ll know what it is. It’s pretty good. I
saw them today. It’s very well done.
MR. HATIN-George can do a lot with the GIS, much more specific.
MR. FORD-That’ll designate the floodplain as well as the floodway?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, you’ll see it. There’s a legend in the bottom right hand corner.
MR. FORD-Okay. I just wanted to make sure we got both.
MRS. STEFFAN-There should be flood zones, floodways and floodplains, right?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I don’t know whether he’s gotten that specific or not, but when you
see them, you’ll get a real appreciation.
MR. HATIN-Flood zones are the different shaded areas, like white is Zone C or Zone X,
typically, Zone B and then Zone A or Zone AA, that’s what the zones are. So that just is a
designation. An insurance carrier can look at that zone and know whether that person is in or
out of the floodplain or on the perimeter of a flood zone area, just by that letter designation,
and then we also have to give them the panel number, which is the other number you see
down there, above the (lost word).
MR. VOLLARO-I think what George did is he went to those maps and so he knew what area
he had to look at, then he got the topos for that area. I think they’re fly overs, basically, is
what they are.
MR. HATIN-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-So, Dave, when it comes to groundwater, surface water levels, and then
hydrology, which I mentioned before, that’s all stormwater issues?
MR. HATIN-Yes. What we’re concerned about is surface waters that affect construction.
That’s what the floodplain management program is all about, and what contributes to all
that is a lot of things, you know, stormwater runoff, depending on where it goes, the amount
of rain you get in a short period of time.
MR. VOLLARO-The one thing that we concern ourselves with is the big question, should or
should not, you know, should they be developing in an area that we’re looking at when we see
a lot of stormwater problems and we have to take a look at some of this.’
MR. HATIN-I guess that’s your decision. I can tell you in the flood prone community where
inevitable, similar to what happened in New Orleans, that the government has gone in and
actually bought land out from, bought the homeowner’s land and to move them out of those
flood prone areas, because they just get flooded year after year after year. We don’t have
that situation here in Queensbury. We have areas get flooded. We don’t have structures that
get flooded year after year after year. So on the scale of things, we’re way down at the
bottom of seriousness, but we still have to look at it the same way. It doesn’t diminish what
we have to do.
MR. HUNSINGER-When the Mississippi flooded real bad a few years ago they bought out
whole towns.
MR. HATIN-Yes, and that’s what they’ll typically do. They did down in Schoharie County,
somewhere. I was at a floodplain administrator meeting last year in a conference, and they
said where they were considering buying out this section of the town or going in there and
actually raising the structures. FEMA was going to provide the money to raise the
structures. So they do some things because the board wants (lost words).
MR. VOLLARO-Does anybody else have any questions?
MR. FORD-I just want to get one clarification. When you build a structure, you obviously
have an opportunity for runoff from roofs and so forth, and there’s less surface for perc. So
one way of addressing that is building some sort of catch basins or structures to take care of
that?
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. HATIN-That’s one way to do it.
MR. FORD-That’s one way.
MR. HATIN-Try and retain it on site, in a different way.
MR. FORD-But it does impact, when you build a structure and you’ve got that runoff, it
definitely, if it isn’t mitigated, it definitely would worsen the surrounding area?
MR. HATIN-Yes, I don’t deal with stormwater management. That’s the zoning and
planning office, but anytime you create a hard surface, that water’s got to go somewhere. It
depends on the amount of water, where it’s going to go, how much it’s going to have an
impact, I guess. The water is still going to shed.
MR. FORD-Thank you.
MR. HATIN-Hopefully I’ve given you enough information.
MR. VOLLARO-Thanks very much.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thanks.
MR. FORD-Appreciate it.
MR. VOLLARO-And we will take advantage of going in and looking at those once in a while.
MR. HATIN-Any time you want, they’re available. Even if I’m not there, just ask the girls
in the office. They’ve got them right in the drawer. Most of them know how to use them,
too, as far as the panel information.
MR. VOLLARO-Sure. That’s great. Thanks a lot, Dave.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thanks for the clarification, Dave.
MR. HATIN-Thank you for the time.
MR. VOLLARO-The next thing on our workshop agenda here is Item Number Two is the
review of Sketch Plan under Article Three in your, I guess you all have the Subdivision of
Land map, 183-5 through 183-7. It’s very short. It doesn’t talk much at all. It talks about
the purpose, and it pretty much decides in here, if you read it through, that this is really what
they should be doing, or what we should be doing, I guess, is to be reviewing a lot of these
things under Sketch Plan. What we do now, the Preliminary comes in. It usually has a
waiver for Sketch, and we usually waive the Sketch without too much trouble. We just waive
it, most of the time. I don’t ever remember that we’ve ever said, no, we’re not going to waive
the Sketch. We want you to come back with a Sketch Plan, but what I think that the Sketch
Plan gives us a nice opportunity to do a little planning, which we don’t get a chance to do.
Primarily this Board does reviews of site plans and subdivisions. A Sketch Plan would give us
the opportunity to take a look at the overall plan and make recommendations. A lot of times
I notice when we do Sketch Plans, it’s kind of like, well, ho hum, you know, we’ll take a look
at it and we don’t spend much time on it and the guy goes away or the gal goes away or the
applicant goes away and I don’t know whether he’s gotten good direction or not. So what I’m
really proposing here is that we do Sketch Plans, particularly on subdivisions. If you go into
179 Code, there is an area in there that alludes to, but it isn’t, you know, it’s in 179-9-100, and
since it’s not specifically stated there, but I’ll read it to you. It says development
considerations, and it’s 179-9-100, like I said, the following are those factors which relate to
potential for adverse impact upon the natural, scenic, aesthetic, wildlife, historic, recreation
or open space resources of the Town of Queensbury. These factors listed below shall be
considered as provided in this chapter before any site plan review project is undertaken in the
Town. I said to myself when I read that several times, it’s kind of the basis for a Sketch. I’ve
talked to Craig Brown about it, because in my little piece that I wrote, I said we would
probably be doing that on a limited basis, but even there, I think what we probably ought to
do is if we see something that we’d like to get a Sketch Plan on at the site plan review, maybe
we ought to try to just make that known to the applicant, maybe even at the completion
review meetings, or at the pre-application conference, rather. That may be a point at which
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
Craig or Susan, whoever’s going to do the pre-app, could say, you know, it would be a good
idea for you to come forward with a Sketch Plan of this site, because we really don’t have, in
the law, the ability to require it, but we can always ask. We can always ask that that be
done. There’s nothing the Planning Board can’t ask for. The applicant could turn around
and say, I’m not going to give it to you because it’s not in the law. Most of the time I don’t
think they do that.
MRS. STEFFAN-Bob, could I ask a question for clarification?
MR. VOLLARO-Sure.
MRS. STEFFAN-Did you say that before a site plan review you want to see a Sketch Plan on
the subdivision?
MR. VOLLARO-No, no, no. There’s two things. There’s a site plan and there’s a subdivision
plan. 183 definitely has got the requirement for a Sketch Plan right up front.
MRS. STEFFAN-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-No problem there. I mean, there I think we can request it without any
problem at all. 179 does not, but 179 has a spot in it, in 179-9-100, that alludes to it in my
way of thinking, and it says, the following are those factors which relate to potential for
adverse impact upon the natural, scenic, aesthetic, etc…..these factors listed below shall be
considered as provided in this chapter before any site plan review project is undertaken by the
Town. Before. And then it goes on to talk about natural water, land, noise, air quality,
critical resource areas, wildlife, historic, site development, etc., etc., all the way down the line.
So if there’s something that comes before us during the pre-application conference, if either
Susan or Craig thinks that this might be something that would be useful to do, they can
certainly ask for it. That’s something we discussed, you might have some input on that.
MRS. RYBA-Well, I just think a lot of those items refer to the same items that you look at
under SEQRA.
MR. VOLLARO-Very, very similar.
MRS. RYBA-So looking at it, that’s SEQRA determination or SEQRA review. So I guess
I’m not really sure if there’s a complete SEQRA, what we would be asking for in a pre-
application.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t know. The specifics would come, you have to take a look at what
the site plan looks like to begin with and whether or not it would pay. What I’m trying to do
up front here is to, before we get into the specifics, particularly on subdivisions, before we get
into Preliminary, we give the applicant a very good review at Sketch Plan. So when he comes
in with a Preliminary, he’s already, he’s getting much, much closer than he would be if he just
waived the Sketch and came on in.
MRS. RYBA-I understand that part on subdivision. I guess I’m just, because if it’s not real
direct in the Code.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s not.
MRS. RYBA-How does the applicant come up with a Sketch Plan for site plan?
MR. VOLLARO-You can ask them. If you think that maybe it would help him and us, both.
We have an obligation to the applicant as well as to ourselves, to make sure that we give him
the best direction we know how, before he spends an awful lot of money. One of the things is
if we can give him some guidance before he gets into his pocket real deep it might be a help.
Most of the time in site plan probably that’s not true, but I wanted to, we’re going to pull it
out. Craig and I have discussed it, and we’re going to take it out of my little write up. We
will not do it because it’s not enforceable.
MR. METIVIER-I have a question, and maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but
typically if you have a pre-application conference, doesn’t that mean there’s an application
coming before you?
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-It means to the Planning Staff that an application is coming in. It’s the
first time the Planning Staff gets a real opportunity to sit down with the applicant.
MR. METIVIER-Okay. All right, and typically when they do the pre-application
conference, that will end up on next month’s agenda, correct?
MR. VOLLARO-It may or it may not. It depends, if they deem it not to be complete for
some reason or other, or there’s something that they ask them and the applicant would go
away and say, well, no, I’ll come back with that or something like that.
MR. METIVIER-Okay. Right.
MR. VOLLARO-Normally it probably would be on next month’s agenda. I’d like to let Craig
answer that question, though.
MR. BROWN-Yes. I will. One of the things you want to think about here is, Bob’s right.
It’s not required for them to come in for site plan review, for Sketch Plan for site plan
reviews, like it is for subdivision. It sounds like what you want to do is maybe develop certain
thresholds. If you’re going to do a commercial retail establishment over 50,000 square feet,
we’d like to see that at Sketch Plan. If you’re going to do an addition to an existing
commercial development over 5,000 square feet, I’m just throwing numbers out here, we
would like to see that at Sketch Plan. If we, Susan and I or Stuart or Bruce or whoever does
these pre-application meetings have that, I don’t know if it’s called direction, but have that
request from the Board, if there’s a consensus on the threshold, we can pass that on to the
applicants and say, gee, with a project like this, the Board is likely going to, you know, would
like to see this at a Sketch Plan level rather than, you know, develop your plan, spend all
your money, come in for site plan review and say, whoa, you’re twelve clicks off here. I’ll give
you a prime example. I talked about this before, Wal-Mart. Everybody knows how long
Wal-Mart sat before this Board to get their approval. A week after they submitted their site
plan review application, Chris Round and I, I don’t know if Marilyn was in there with us, we
sat in Chris’ office, on the speaker phone, conference call to their project engineer and their
attorney, and we came up with a list of about eleven or twelve items that we said, we think
the Planning Board’s going to press you on all these issues, traffic mitigation, parking, green
space, whatever they are, here’s what we find from your plan that we don’t think our
Planning Board’s going to like. They chose not to address those concerns, and over the next
thirteen months of review before this Board they checked off every one of those items that we
identified with them in that first meeting, and it was kind of a Sketch Plan review that we did
with them, you know, in the conference call. They’d already submitted their application.
They didn’t want to revise it before the next time they sat before the Board. So I think
there’s a benefit to do a Sketch Plan review of a site plan or as a discussion item, however you
want to look at it. Is it necessary to do it with all of them? No. Big projects like that, I
think it may be advantageous for you to do that, and you know you can operate the same
way you would for Sketch Plan in subdivision. There’s no decision. There’s no formal
resolution. It’s an interchange of ideas. We like this, we don’t like that. We have concerns
about the floodplain in this area or, you know, you’re in the Halfway Brook watershed. So
we want to see a little more attention paid to what are your impacts downstream when the
water leaves your site, or what about upstream when it’s coming onto your site, you’re not
going to block that and cause flooding. So, you know, you could look at all those things at
the Sketch Plan, before they even, (lost word) they’re going to come in with a concept
drawing for you, but before they get into their number crunching design stuff, the Board can
at least look at the concept and say yes or no. So I think that’s what you’re saying. My
suggestion would be to come up with some trigger, some thresholds that we don’t send mom
and pop in here for Sketch Plan on their site plan, but we do send Wal-Mart. So I don’t know
where that line is.
MR. VOLLARO-It could be acreage or size or numbers of dwelling units or whatever. We
could run some sort of a trigger on that.
MR. BROWN-Yes, but I don’t expect we’ll see much of those. I would like to see it almost a
routine thing, though, that on subdivisions we do come in with Sketch Plan.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean, what we hear from the developers every time about Sketch
Plan review is if you follow the Code, and they provide everything that they’re supposed to
require for Sketch Plan review, you have the Preliminary plan.
14
(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Pretty close. That’s a neat idea, though.
MR. HUNSINGER-That’s why they come in and say, well, why should I give this to you as a
Sketch Plan when I gave you everything you need for Preliminary review. Let’s just skip the
Sketch Plan and go right to Preliminary.
MR. BROWN-In the Subdivision Regs.
MR. VOLLARO-The Subdivision Regs, but there’s one thing missing with that. They
haven’t had any input from us.
MR. HUNSINGER-I realize that, Bob. I’m just saying, you just commented about the need
for Sketch Plan review for site plans and saying how it would make sense for them before they
spend a lot of money, but that’s the problem with the Sketch Plan as laid out in the Code for
Subdivision. There’s too much detail, and that’s why they’re skipping it.
MR. METIVIER-I almost think we need to identify what things we discuss at Sketch Plans
for Subdivisions and other wise, and not invite applicants in for Sketch Plans, and there’s a
reason why I say that. As you know in the past, we’ve caused problems for ourselves because
you sit down at Sketch Plan and you ask somebody for something and then they come back
with that, and all of a sudden you start changing your mind, and it always come back, well,
you said, well, you know, when I sat here at Sketch Plan, you said this is what you wanted,
and now you’re saying you don’t. My question before was posed that people are coming in for
applications, okay. There’s a pre-conference. There’s an application in front of you, and, you
know, in those instances, it’s already too late. Their application is submitted or is being
submitted and everything, and you should just let those lie as they may because again, you
start doing Sketch Plan for larger subdivisions, not subdivisions, site plans, and, you know,
what’s to say we’re not going to change our minds and what’s the ramification of doing that?
Do you know what I’m saying? So, if we give them a criteria that they have to follow, Wal-
Mart, you know, you have to have this many trees, this many plantings, this color building,
your parking has to be this, whatever it is, you know, and if they adhere to that, wouldn’t it
be easier, almost, to have them do a Sketch Plan, have us review it for however long it takes,
send them away, and then come back and have us say, no, that’s not really the way they we
want it, even though we told you that’s the way.
MR. HUNSINGER-And I can totally understand the position that Wal-Mart took. Because
here you are, you’re just the Staff, you know, they’re saying, you guys are just the Staff.
Maybe we get before the Board, the Board loves it, and we don’t have to waste time and
money and energy to modify this, and that’s always the dilemma. I mean, I’m following the
same lines of comment you’re making, Tony.
MR. BROWN-Not to get too far off track here, we face that same situation just about every
time we sit down with somebody for a pre-application meeting. We can tell them, you know,
based on the 100’s of Planning Board meetings that we’ve processed, the Board likes it this
way. They don’t like this. They want to see a lighting plan and the grid format, and they
just don’t care. They submit what they want. We’ve told them what they’re going to need to
do, and they come to you and hear from you and now they’re mad because they’re delayed,
and, you know, it’s the same dilemma. We can pass the information on.
MR. HUNSINGER-The environment that most of these companies work under is most
communities beg for these developments. So they can just throw any piece of crap on a piece
of paper and the community’s going to say, this is great, we’re getting a new store. We’re
getting sales tax revenue. I think we forget that being on this Board.
MR. METIVIER-I heard a joke once that somebody did their development in Washington
County and they could literally do it on a napkin, you know, approved, with gold stars, I
mean, but around here, I think we do a good job, but, you know, it’s different.
MR. HUNSINGER-It is different.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it’s different because there’s less and less available land available,
good land, developable land. Every piece of land is developable. You can engineer the hell
out of it and build something on it.
MR. METIVIER-I have one here that’s not.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-What I’m trying to say now is that in the stage we’re at in Queensbury, I
would like to see every subdivision come in and give us a chance to, knowing what we like, is
to try and give them a division of what we think it ought to be.
MR. METIVIER-Well, if we can come up with a way to do that without causing too much,
you know, aggravation for the applicant, granted.
MR. VOLLARO-You know, Tony, the aggravation for the applicant really is that, in my
mind, is when he comes in with a Preliminary and he’s already incurred engineering costs and
then we start hammering him on all the stuff and he goes, Jesus, I’ve got to re-do this again.
An engineer’s going to cost me money. I’ve got the lawyer sitting here, clock, clock, clock,
clock, clock, who’s on the clock, you know.
MR. HUNSINGER-But isn’t that exactly what you’re asking them to do?
MR. METIVIER-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Not necessarily. I think that he doesn’t have that kind of investment at
Sketch Plan. He shouldn’t have.
MR. BROWN-In subdivision.
MR. HUNSINGER-In subdivision you do.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t think so.
MR. HUNSINGER-I think the real issue here, and we’re kind of dancing around it, you
know, the issue isn’t with the process. The issue is with the Zoning Ordinance, and that’s
where the problems lie. I mean, we can tinker with the process all we want, but we’re still
going to have, you know, less than an ideal situation, and I don’t think there’s any way of
resolving this dilemma, to be quite honest about it.
MR. METIVIER-And, you know, truth be told, if you think about it, and let’s go through
the past 25 applications. Of those 25 applications, how many of those people were in front of
us that are a part of the Dream Team, and they know what we want. You know what I’m
saying? So if you think about the little guy who comes in with a little drawing and
everything, and you know, you work with him and he’s great and you know you might send
him away. Charlie Seeley, perfect example. We needed some stuff from Charles Seeley. We
asked for it. He came back the next month. Everything was fine. Right. So the big guys, I
mean, you’re talking about Sketch Plan subdivision, I mean, they know what we want. They
know what we’re looking for at this point. So it’s going to be no surprise to them, or at least
it shouldn’t be.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I think what they’re trying to do is get away with as much as they
can, most of the time.
MR. METIVIER-But I think they’re getting to the point where they’re like, well, we’re not
going to get away with much anymore, and it’s going to become, you know, it’s going to come
to the point where eventually they’re going to get it. I really do believe that. Because they
know that we just don’t screw around anymore with this stuff, and we don’t.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t know. I still feel that there’s merit of looking at a Sketch Plan
before you get into the Preliminary plat.
MR. METIVIER-As long as we don’t make promises.
MR. VOLLARO-We can tell them that. We can certainly say that this is our best look at,
best direction we can give you at this meeting, based on what you’ve shown us here. If I was
somebody, I wouldn’t want to put an awful lot of money into a subdivision by doing all the
stormwater work, all the engineering work, all of that, and then coming before the Planning
Board and they don’t like it or it doesn’t work.
MR. METIVIER-But we also cannot decline the Sketch Plan. Can we even go as far as
saying to somebody?
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-We do them all the time. Is that what you mean?
MR. METIVIER-No, no, decline an application based on a Sketch Plan. So my point is, can
you actually say to somebody, you know what, in Sketch Plan review, we just don’t think
this is going to fly. We would suggest you don’t go any further with it. Can you actually do
that?
MR. BROWN-I think you can send a pretty strong message if you don’t like that plan.
MR. METIVIER-Well, not so much a plan, subdivision.
MR. BROWN-That’s what you do, design, the layout of the subdivision.
MR. METIVIER-Maybe just the idea, maybe just the location. Let’s say they take a
floodplain, and we know it is, and we know it’s going to be a disaster, I mean, can we, at
Sketch Plan, say, you know what, our recommendation would be to halt any future idea of
developing this area?
MR. VOLLARO-I think if we really feel that, we should. Yes.
MR. BROWN-It might be a little too soon in the process to do that. I mean, you haven’t
done SEQRA yet. You haven’t had a public hearing yet. You haven’t really gone that far
through the process, and like I said, you can send a pretty strong message that, you know,
we’re concerned about, you know, here’s the laundry list.
MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. FORD-Put them on alert.
MR. METIVIER-And then we could send them away saying, and if you wish to come back
with these items addressed, we still are not going to guarantee you an approval?
MR. BROWN-Yes. You can say that, sure.
MR. METIVIER-So it’s perfectly clear that we’re not making any promises, any false hopes
or anything like that?
MR. BROWN-Sketch Plan, no decisions made, no resolutions.
MR. METIVIER-No. I know that. My fear is, and I thought about this most of, since your
e-mails have been going back and forth. You send somebody away with a laundry list, and
they follow every single thing you asked them to do, and it doesn’t meet SEQRA or whatever.
We have a problem, because they’re going to come back to us and say, you told me this is
what you needed. This is what I did and this is the result. I spent $25,000 doing it.
MRS. RYBA-I think Counsel would tell you, and I have heard them say this in the past, is
when you have done Sketch Plan is put it right on the record that you come right out and say
that. You do realize that this is just a Sketch Plan or a concept plan, and our comments are
not to constitute any approvals, and put that on the record, and you’re covered, but you do
that each and every single time.
MR. BROWN-If you’re generic with, we have concerns about traffic, we have concerns about
stormwater, and not really tell them, we’d like to see the road moved 25 feet this way and we
want to see Lot Four be three acres instead of two acres, if you don’t get that specific with
them, I don’t see what, you know, they could bring back and say, you told me I could do it
this way. I don’t know what one you were talking about before, but I guess there’s a way to
do it. I hope I’m not trying to sell you one way or another, but I’m just trying to explain
that thought.
MR. GOETZ-I guess that was going to be my question. Where is Staff coming from in this
situation? Is this something you feel would be helpful and useful to you, or do you think it
just clogs the schedules more?
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MR. BROWN-Well, it’s not so much useful or a detriment to Staff, so to speak. This is really
for the applicant, the process to come and kind of feel out the Board on how do you think,
you know, what do you think about the project, and I agree with Chris. The Code is written
so that Sketch Plan and Preliminary are almost the same, the requirements for submittal.
Are you, or can you be a little more lax with waivers for Sketch Plan and say you don’t have
to bring me everything at Sketch Plan? I suppose you could cut them a little break to do a
Sketch review, but either way it doesn’t matter to us.
MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, I remember the last few Sketch Plan reviews of last year. Board
members wouldn’t even say anything, because they felt that they were boxing themselves in a
corner, and it was like, what’s the point of this exercise. It was just taking up an agenda item
for the meeting.
MR. BROWN-I think there’s way to do it, but everybody’s got to feel comfortable doing it,
and it sounded like last time not very many people felt comfortable doing it.
MR. METIVIER-Well, again, you put yourself in a situation where they come back and say,
you know, Mr. Metivier said that, it’s like, yes, maybe I did, but, you know what I’m saying?
You don’t ever want to have them come back at you and say, you told me to do it this way,
this is the way I did it, and now you’re saying no, and we’ve done that before, and after a
while it does get frustrating even for us.
MR. VOLLARO-If we have it as a practice, in other words, we do it all the time, we’re going
to get better and better at knowing how to handle the Sketch Plan.
MR. METIVIER-Absolutely.
MR. VOLLARO-We don’t do it that often, and when one comes to us, we sort of look at it
and go, yes, it looks okay. It’s the right zone. It doesn’t have any slopes over 25. It doesn’t
have any outcrops, blah, blah, blah.
MR. METIVIER-But you know what, you’re not going to get any of those applications
anymore. Every application for a subdivision or otherwise in front of you right now is going
to be for, and we’ve talked about this, crap land, wetlands, slopes, areas that you can’t build
on, you know, so everything’s changed.
MR. VOLLARO-And if that happens, we can always say exactly what you’ve said, Tony,
you know, we don’t think that that’s a really, really good place to put your subdivision. It’s
got too many down sides to it.
MR. METIVIER-And we should start practicing that if that’s the case. We really, truly
should. We shouldn’t be two and three meetings for some of this land that should not be
developed.
MR. VOLLARO-You’ll get no argument from me on that one.
MRS. RYBA-One of the things I’m thinking about, in one community I worked in, we
developed an incentive in the Subdivision Regulations whereby people came in with a Sketch
Plan. The requirements were essentially the same as Preliminary, but if they got through all
of the Sketch Plan requirements, and they essentially have had their Preliminary done, it was
accepted as a Preliminary plat. I don’t mean to muddy the waters, but there are things that
you can do.
MR. VOLLARO-That means that Preliminary is not conditioned. It’s an accepted
Preliminary, and by the way, the Final is almost like a rubber stamp at that point. Boom,
boom.
MR. METIVIER-And that actually leads into the next topic of conversation with the
Preliminary versus Final and the fact that you want your Final plat. That actually, I could
live with that in those cases.
MR. VOLLARO-What I’m trying to do is to bring it to the point where, and I think Chris
said it, he said what we’re really looking for is a good Final drawing.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. METIVIER-Absolutely, and you know what, I mean, are we going to move into the
next topic here? I’m getting all excited about this.
MR. VOLLARO-Let’s stay with the Sketch Plan. I haven’t heard anything from this end of
the Board.
MR. SEGULJIC-My only concern with the Sketch Plan versus the, I like to see things fleshed
out.
MR. VOLLARO-Up front.
MR. SEGULJIC-Up front, because one thing I have found, you’re looking at something, and
it doesn’t always end up being that way. So if we’re looking at, you know, just these
sketches, it’s not going to really tell us a lot. So I guess where I’m going with it is, your
Sketch Plan ends up being your Preliminary anyway.
MR. VOLLARO-Except that I think on Sketch Plan, we have an opportunity to talk to the
applicant about our Preliminary. It comes in to us and we’ve got to deal with that
Preliminary. We have no input on it.
MR. SEGULJIC-I’m fine with that. I’d like to see things fleshed out, what they’re thinking,
also. That gives us insight into what they’re thinking, and then we’re talking more details
instead of. I guess one of the things we always want to avoid is helping them design the
project, and if we get too involved with Sketch Plan, then we end up designing their project
for them.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, in some cases, for example, you know, should the parking be in the
front or should the parking be in the back? That’s one of the things we could talk about. We
don’t like your parking up front. That’s not what we’re looking for. The Code talks about
putting parking in the back. You don’t have sufficient lighting on this. What kind of
lighting are you going to use? I’m going to use 30 foot poles. We don’t use 30 foot poles. We
use 20 foot poles.
MRS. BARDEN-I don’t know that if you go for a Sketch Plan for a site plan, I don’t think
I’d get into the detail of maybe a lighting plan at that point. It would have to be specific on
you’re talking about layout of the building, configuration of the parking and those kinds of
things, and landscaping, lighting might come later, because you want Sketch Plan to be a
brief discussion, not, you know, to go into a full site plan review.
MR. VOLLARO-We’re not going to do that. What I want to do is to make sure that the
Planning Board gets an opportunity to talk to the applicant about his project, before he
spends an awful lot of money in Preliminary.
MRS. BARDEN-Exactly, but the applicant probably wouldn’t have a lighting plan yet at
that stage.
MR. VOLLARO-He may not. He may talk about that. He might want to bring it up. As far
as lights on the street, we wouldn’t be talking about house lights, but on subdivision, there
may be street lights involved on the subdivision.
MR. BROWN-Tom had an interesting comment. He said we don’t want to get into
developing or designing the project for the applicant. I think, to some extent, this is just my
opinion, that the Planning Board does kind of want to do that. I mean, this is the Town of
Queensbury Planning Board. There’s a Town Comprehensive Plan. There’s Subdivision
Regulations. There’s Zoning Ordinance, and the Planning Board is here to drive that bus and
make sure the Town is developing as close to those plans as possible, and if we see a
subdivision or a site plan that comes in that’s got a big ticket item that doesn’t fit in that
puzzle some place, I think it’s a good idea to say, you know what, this isn’t good. This
mountainside development subdivision doesn’t fit in our plan. This site plan with all this
parking right next to the Brook and this Halfway Brook watershed doesn’t fit in our plan.
So, not to get to the specifics of designing it, but the big picture.
MR. SEGULJIC-No, I understand that, but we don’t want to say, you know, put the parking
over there. We want them to come to us and we can say, we think it would fit better over
there.
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MRS. BARDEN-I think that you do want to send that message, though. I mean, I think
that what would be beneficial for us is that we tell them that at the pre-application meeting,
but they don’t have to do it. It’s a message, like Craig said, if the message comes from you,
they would have an incentive to front the building to the street and put the parking in the
back. So I think, as far as the layout of the plan, I think perhaps you should. You have
design guidelines of how you’d like to see the building and the parking and kind of set the
stage for the elements that will come later, which will refine the process.
MR. METIVIER-And I think that you, in your pre-application conference, should be able to
set the tone, and that’s why I don’t understand why we don’t have a checklist, if you will.
We require, you know, this wattage of our light. Our poles can only be this many feet.
Parking is required to be in the rear or the back, and here’s the number of spots that you need
for employee or for square foot, and, I mean, if we were able to put together a list like that,
send the applicant with that list, and if they follow that, it’s going to make everyone’s jobs a
little bit easier.
MR. BROWN-Well, we do have that. We have the Town Code.
MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. BROWN-That’s what they should use.
MR. METIVIER-That’s right, but they don’t know. I mean, how often do they follow the
Town Code? I mean, often they do, yes, and often an application wouldn’t come in front of us
unless you checked it against the Town Code.
MR. BROWN-That’s where we direct them, the first time we sit down, somebody’s in
throwing darts, you know, what can I do on this property, you know, we’ve talked about,
here’s the zoning, here’s the allowable uses. Here’s the design guidelines, here’s the
performance standards, here’s the zoning requirements, the parking regs. Use these to design
your project.
MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. BROWN-This is a good starting point that the Planning Board is going to start at when
they review a project. Does that mean that if you’ve done everything on this list, that the
Planning Board’s going to like your project? No. There’s different projects, the same Hess
Station on one side of Town may not be the right design you want for a Hess Station on the
other side of Town in a different location, different intersection, different neighborhood. So
identical plans, two different parcels, but they don’t go together. I mean, they can be, you
know what I’m saying? You can’t have both in both spots, the same in both spots.
MRS. RYBA-I was going to say, as an FYI, too, I think with every applicant among us, we
probably spend two to five or more hours with each applicant that comes in, because someone
may come in for an initial meeting with Craig or myself, Susan and Craig, and they go around
and start talking to everybody, and we can give them all the input, and I can tell you one of
your more recent applicants, all the things that we said that the applicant did not do, and of
course it came to fruition. Everything we said was going to happen happened and everybody
came out to speak their piece, but we outlined, here’s all the things, based on the experience.
So we can spend an awful lot of time with people and they don’t necessarily listen to what we
have to say. They’re still going to take their chances and come forward with what they want
to come forward with.
MR. FORD-This is very enlightening and reinforcing. I’m glad to hear about the hours that
are going in, because as I sit and listen to some applicants, it makes me wonder how many
minutes are spent, not how many hours, okay, and I would encourage, in Staff notes, that
there really be a continued focus. Some of them are particularly good, and help us get the
appropriate background on the application process, and I really encourage more of that.
MRS. RYBA-We always try and strike a balance. We know how much paper you have, and
trying to piece it together. One of the things we’ve talked about, because sometimes an
applicant will talk with Susan or Craig or whoever, we all might have different notes, just
photocopying the notes and attaching it to the narrative, just attaching all those items, so
you can see everything that has been said to the applicant.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. FORD-Tom Ford, personally, would find that revealing and it would be appreciated.
Believe me.
MR. BROWN-There’s just two process things we haven’t talked about that will affect, I
guess generate differences between Sketch Plan and Preliminary. The first thing you do at
Preliminary that you don’t do at Sketch is you do SEQRA. That could identify a whole
bunch of things that you didn’t even think about when you were doing your Sketch Plan, and
if you’re feeling like you’re getting painted into a corner at Sketch Plan, and say we’d like to
see this or we’d like to see that, when you do SEQRA, you can find a whole bunch of things
that change your mind from what you thought was good at Sketch Plan. The second one is
public hearing. You get the neighbors come out, and I realize what projects you’re talking
about now. The neighbors come out and what’s up with this project? Why is this before you,
and here’s the problems with it, the property is always wet. There’s a traffic accident here
once a week, and find out those things at the public hearing where you thought, you know,
because of the limited information you had at Sketch, you wanted to see a certain thing. Now
that you’ve gone through SEQRA and public hearing, you see a whole bunch of other
information that may throw you in a different direction, and that’s okay, but at Sketch Plan
you’re starting with, here’s what we have, here’s what we think is going to work, but that by
no means is the end of the review. I don’t know if that helps or not.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that’s true, but when you get used to doing Sketch, and you keep
things in the back of your mind, like you know you’ve got to do a SEQRA when this guy
comes in for Preliminary, you’re already subliminally thinking about some of those things, or
we should be. There’s a real responsibility by the Board, the way I see it. The Board is
responsible in some fashion when, to the Town and they’ve got a responsibility to the
applicant as well, and it means that we’ve got to work, you know, we’ve got to do our job
here, and that gets to be, everybody’s limited in time, and I understand that, and I can
appreciate that, but what I’m trying to do is to get the Board to be able to participate in
some planning. We really don’t. Once that applicant gets in front of us with a Preliminary,
and he’s got, he’s missing $10,000 from his pocket, he’s not going to be happy to change
things. You’ve got to pull him along then to get the drawing out, and what I’m trying to do
is eliminate that. So when he comes in with Preliminary, he has a pretty good idea of what
we told him at Sketch. He may not take that direction from Staff because he says, well, Staff
is not the Planning Board. The Planning Board is going to tell me whether they accept this
or not. Let me go before them and see what they’ve got to say. A Board like this can be very
intimidating when you’re sitting over there, extremely intimidating.
MR. METIVIER-But we know how Staff works. Staff knows how we work, and I think it’s
almost in harmony now that we’re not going to be too far off from what Staff recommends. I
think as long as we send people away knowing that there’s no promises made during a Sketch
Plan review.
MR. VOLLARO-I agree with that, and I think Marilyn said that. Look, this is a Sketch
Plan. We’re going to do the best we can for you, but, you know, this is not laid in concrete.
MR. GOETZ-One thing I like about the Sketch Plans, Chris was right. We didn’t say much,
but I was listening for the overall concept. I think sometimes we can get lost in the little
details and overlook the big picture, and I think that gets us thinking about it, gets the
applicant thinking about it. I think we probably should speak up a little more and voice
some of our concerns or ideas or whatever during those, and I think Craig was right. There
should be some parameters set up to begin with as to what should come in, what shouldn’t
come in, but I’ve found, particularly one I’m thinking about, very useful.
MR. VOLLARO-That was basically my concept is to get the Sketch Plan up front, get as
much as we can into the applicant, hopefully the Preliminary comes back looking at least a
little like our Sketch. So that we don’t have as much conditioning on the Preliminary that we
usually have. If we can cut that down, we can get to Final a lot faster. I’m trying to not
make this a long, drawn out thing, but hopefully this will help to move it along quicker.
MRS. STEFFAN-I think we have had some recent success with Sketch Plans, and I think we
haven’t been successful with some Sketch Plans over the last couple of years. We have
learned some lessons, but I think that one of the things that we need to do as a Board is be a
lot more direct in the Sketch Plan, so that folks leave with some concrete parameters as to
how to develop their site, and as Craig mentioned, in addressing Tom, we have to talk
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
specifically about our Comprehensive Land Use Plan, the Zoning Regulations, and we have to
couch our comments in those, because those are the things that are quantifiable that we can
hold folks accountable to, and we need to stay away from language with, you know, such as
Counsel’s reminded us about. I don’t like that or those are very subjective things and we
don’t have any firm ground to stand on when we use that kind of language. So as we go
forward and look at these Sketch Plans, we have to be very specific and put our comments in
the context of our Town law or our Town guidelines.
MR. METIVIER-But it’s more appropriate to tell somebody you don’t like something at
Sketch Plan than it is at Preliminary.
MRS. STEFFAN-And we can feel a lot better, I think, as the plan develops. I know there’s a
couple of Sketch Plans that we’ve been involved in, and by the time we get to the approval,
you feel good about it because you know you actually start to develop a relationship with the
project, and it’s a plan that you like, and in a couple of situations I think that, when we
didn’t do Sketch Plan and we got to Preliminary, sometimes projects have been approved,
but it was based on sheer momentum that folks on the Board were being polite and not
wanting to call a spade a spade, and I think, you know, there were some things that probably
shouldn’t have gotten approved, and so I think if we can be more direct going forward, we
wouldn’t get into some of those gray areas, maybe if we used SEQRA criteria in addition to
Comprehensive Land Use Plan and Zoning right up front, that we’re giving folks good, sound
advice, but the other thing that happens, and I’ve seen this happen two times since I’ve been
on the Board, is that you give folks advice and then all of a sudden at the 11 hour, right
th
before you go to approve something, a little piece of information emerges that didn’t emerge
through the process, and then you start to believe that you’re a part of a weasel deal and
don’t feel real good about the project. So, I think that it’s important to have the open
dialogue and couch our conversations based on zoning, Comprehensive Land Use Plan, Open
Space, and SEQRA.
MR. VOLLARO-I think, at the very, first of all, what impressed me about the Sketch Plan
there is I think there’s three and a half pages. Pretty simple. You can almost read them.
The last thing it talks about in there is Planning Board recommendations, and I put a star. It
says the Planning Board shall study the Sketch Plan in conjunction with the individual and
Intrinsic Development Suitability Map, and there is one. I didn’t know that there was one,
but we have one. It’s antiquated, but it’s not bad, and other maps and information that may
be appropriate to determine if the proposed subdivisions are in areas where there are severe
limitations to development. Tony, that was exactly what you were saying before. Some
areas shouldn’t be developed at all. The Planning Board shall make advisory
recommendations which shall be applicable to the entire area of development. You tell a
fellow or a gal or whoever the applicant happens to be, that, you know, this really isn’t the
greatest place for you to put this development, based on water, based on slopes, based on
building on the side of the mountain, based on a whole bunch of stuff, and we give him some
direction of that, and when I look at the only three and a half pages here, I said, you could
read these in an afternoon or over a cup of coffee in the morning or whatever and get pretty
familiar with, and first of all, we’ve got to learn to fly this airplane a little bit, you know,
Tom, you know what I’m saying. You’ve got to be able to do this a few times and then you’ll
get comfortable with the idea that we’re in Sketch. Maybe we can even help that Preliminary
come in a lot better than what they have been. I guess that’s the whole story. Everybody’s
got to think about that a little bit. Don, you’re sitting down at the end and you’re listening.
Have you got any input that you’d like to make?
MR. SIPP-Well, in seven years of coming to Planning Board meetings, I’ve seen a change in
the past three or four. They’ve become much tougher on the applicants and I think it’s
because the Board itself has changed. The people have done a lot more homework before
they’ve come to the Board meeting, and I think it’s good, and I still go back to the comment
that Saratoga Associates made one night. He said you have the power. It’s your way or the
highway, and I think that the more information you get, the quicker you get it, the better
you get it. You’ll be able to make judgments on whether the project should go forth or be
turned down.
MR. VOLLARO-Sure. That’s a good point. Well, based on that, we have a consensus, I
think I hear a consensus, I don’t know, I’m not sure, but I think I hear a consensus that we
ought to point ourselves in the direction of doing Sketch Plans. So I’ll go down the Board.
Tony, what’s you’re, up or down?
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MR. METIVIER-On Sketch Plans? Neutral.
MR. VOLLARO-Neutral. You can’t be neutral. It’s only up or down.
MR. BROWN-Just before you answer. Right now in the Code it says, you shall go to the
Planning Board for Sketch Plan. So they’re required to do it.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. BROWN-What the Board does, has done, on numerous occasions, is grant a waiver from
that to go to Preliminary, and you can still do that, and I think my only request, if you
decide to do this, is either decide it’s going to be for everybody, or decide that it’s not going to
be for two lot subdivisions or three lot subdivisions, and we can send that message to people
when we do our pre-application meetings and say, you know, they’re probably not going to
give you a waiver from Sketch. So this Preliminary application you have, put this back in
your folder, do a Sketch Plan before the Board, rather than coming to the Board for
Preliminary and you sending them back, I prefer to be able to give that courtesy to the
applicant and say, don’t waste your time on Preliminary, go to Sketch first, if that’s going to
be the flavor here. That’s all.
MR. METIVIER-I would welcome that, if we could give you some type of, I don’t know.
MR. VOLLARO-Is that a yes, Tony?
MR. METIVIER-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Tom?
MR. FORD-Go with what is called for in Code. If we need to give parameters or thresholds
for guidance, then so be it. Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I think the thresholds and the guidance are in these three and a half
pages.
MR. FORD-Yes, that’s where it should be.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s my opinion. I think if we tell them go back for Sketch and they say,
well what’s Sketch all about, go to 183 and you read the three and a half pages, they’ve got a
pretty good idea of what Sketch Plan is. Really. Chris?
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, you know, again, I think it’s something that’s very useful, and I
think unfortunately in the past it hasn’t been implemented well by the Board, and I think
that’s why we all kind of have a bad feeling about it, but I also do have a concern about, if
we’re going to start requiring Sketch Plans in the majority of the cases, and not approving
Preliminary and Final on the same night, we’re going to run into an issue that bumps up
against our agenda control, and I think that’s something we have to really talk about for a
few minutes.
MR. VOLLARO-I’ve got some comments on that. I saw your memo, and it was well taken,
and I wrestled with that a little bit, and I wrote something up on that, but we’re going to be
getting into Preliminary and Final now, where we’ll discuss that.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Well, I mean, the same concerns apply. If we’re adding,
basically, if we’re requiring a meeting, where we didn’t always require it before, or we’re
bumping something off the agenda, (lost word) an item off.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, we are, but hopefully, rather than spend a tabling and a tabling and a
tabling on a Preliminary, we might get the Preliminary done on the first night.
MR. HUNSINGER-Hopefully.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s the gamble. I mean, it may not always work that way. It may not
always run on rails, but, you know, if we work well at the Preliminary, at the Sketch Plan
stage, we may develop a pretty good Preliminary, but we don’t have as much adversarial,
that’s not a good word I guess, but we don’t have that much concern in the Preliminary.
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MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I’m more concerned about the Preliminary and Final.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, if we’re going to spend five minutes on a Final, like we have on
the past couple where we did that, it shouldn’t count as an agenda item when we’re spending
five or ten minutes on it.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. HUNSINGER-And I think maybe that’s something we need to do talk about.
MR. VOLLARO-And I’ve addressed that in another paper here that I worked on, because I
thought you had a good point and I said, well, let me sit down and think about that and put
something down, and I did.
MR. HUNSINGER-Can we talk about that maybe later so we can get through this?
MR. VOLLARO-Sure, I’ve got it right here, but let’s go stay with the Sketch Plan.
Gretchen?
MRS. STEFFAN-I’m up with the Sketch Plan concept.
MR. VOLLARO-George?
MR. GOETZ-Yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, I have Chris’ concerns, too, and I think we’re going to, I think the
bottom line is I’m all set with the Sketch Plans. We’ll go with the Sketch Plans like the
Ordinance says.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So we have an agreement that what we’re going to do is we’re going
to go with Sketch Plans up front, and Staff will have to take that into account now.
MR. BROWN-Having said all that, realize an applicant can still request a waiver. They can
still go right through us and say, I’m going to go with my Preliminary and request a waiver.
MR. VOLLARO-They certainly can, but the word will get out pretty fast.
MR. BROWN-We’ll send the message as strong as we can to let them know that it’s the
consensus of the Board to not grant waivers of Sketch Plan, but that doesn’t keep them from
asking.
MR. HUNSINGER-And we have done that in the past. I remember, I mean, I couldn’t tell
you which case it was, but I remember a couple of times when Craig was Chairman where
they came in with Preliminary, asked for a waiver, and we went down the Board and said, no,
we want to see a Sketch Plan first, and sent them back.
MR. BROWN-I just didn’t want anybody to get upset when they see a Preliminary
application on the agenda because they’re entitled to ask. The Code says you can get a
waiver.
MR. HUNSINGER-So I think it’s going to be up to the Board to back you up.
MR. FORD-No will echo loudly.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. The Dream Team, as Tony likes to call them, and the rest of the people
who practice before this Board regularly, the phones will be ringing between their
organizations that day. They’ll all know, and they’ll all develop their strategies for how to
try to get around it. That’s just the way it works. We’ll have to tell them, this is what we
want to do. Hopefully it’s for their benefit. They may not all think it is up front, but I hope
that we can put some, you know, knowing that we’ve got a relatively mature Board here
who’ve been through a baptism of fire you might call it, I think we can handle it. I think
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we’ve got enough know how on this Board now to be able to do that. So we’ll put that to bed
and say that that’s what it’s going to be.
MR. BROWN-We’ll do our best to send that message.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. That’s Number One. Two, we’ll get to Preliminary and Final
subdivision application. Now, I have never been a big fan of doing Preliminary and Final on
the same night.
MR. FORD-Are you aware of this, Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-I am. I was at the Town Board last night when it was presented.
MR. FORD-Okay. Fine. I’m sorry to interrupt.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m going to talk about that, but I want to go through my agenda first, and
then we’ll discuss that.
MR. FORD-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-I think Chris had some comments on that, and they were leveled at agenda
control, saying, gee, you know, if it only is going to take us five minutes, then it’s got to be
counted as essentially the eighth.
MR. METIVIER-I don’t think you should even do that. I think that you should honestly
have three orders of agenda. Finals, Expedited, and then the, or actually four, Old Business,
New Business, and Finals and Expedites should not be counted as agenda items, and that
way we could clear up a lot of this stuff that’s going on. Because you know the last time we
did a Final this way, they came back. It took three minutes, and two of that was, hey, how
are you doing.
MR. SEGULJIC-I would agree with Tony. As long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to
on the Final, it should be real quick.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, it should be real quick. I mean, Tom Nace, after we did the recent one
with him, he said to me, you know, he was out of that room in five minutes, if you remember.
It was quick.
MR. METIVIER-Yes, he was, and you know what, if you have three of those, who cares?
We’re not going to have three of those, but the fact is, that’s 15 minutes. You’ve gotten three
items off the agenda out of here, and you can concentrate on the other six or whatever we do.
MR. VOLLARO-I said in my write up, I’ll accept the idea that approval of a complete Final
plat would add to our normal seven applications.
MR. METIVIER-In addition to our seven normal?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but, I also take the position that if the Final is not submitted as a
complete plat, in other words, here we’re sitting in, he’s coming in with Final, we go, okay, we
can get rid of this guy in ten minutes. It doesn’t come in as a completed plat. We’ve got
some problems with it on the second night. We require the applicant to submit a complete
Final by the submittal date required to be placed on next month’s agenda, and, boom, he
goes, I’m almost there, but you’re not there.
MR. METIVIER-And it still only took you three minutes.
MR. VOLLARO-And it only took the three minutes, and he’s gone.
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, because it should be very clear what we’re looking for.
MR. METIVIER-Exactly, and he knows, when we send him away at Preliminary, he knows
exactly what we want. If they haven’t met that, too bad.
MR. BROWN-Well, ideally, we’ll try and be the gatekeepers of that. If you send them away
at Preliminary with, you know, here’s the ten items you need to come back with. When they
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
come back with their Final plat, if those ten items aren’t addressed, we’re likely going to call
that incomplete and it’s not going to be placed on an agenda, but if there’s some miniscule
thing that can go either way, then it would probably get thrown on for a discretionary
decision of the Board, but if it’s not a complete response, we send them away. We tell them
you’re not there yet, you’ve got two more items, come back next month.
MR. FORD-If we’ve provided a checklist, it better be checked.
MRS. BARDEN-And to add to that, again, to what Bob just said about having them come in
at the next deadline for the following month, so we’re not calling them on a daily basis
saying, you still have these four items to get in, and you’ve given them until a week before the
next meeting.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t like that next week thing. If they can’t make that Final, if they
can’t make the cut that night, they’re going to have to submit it at the next, then they’ll be
out until next month.
MR. BROWN-And that philosophy goes, should go for everything, site plans, any application
that gets tabled, you’ve got until next submittal deadline to get this information in and
you’re on the following meeting. It’s a short period for a turnaround of information to get on
next month’s agenda or next week’s agenda. It’s just crazy for us to deal with that, and get it
to C.T. Male. We talked about this a little bit at the workshop, but to get it to C.T. Male and
back and forth in time, it just causes chaos.
MR. METIVIER-But in the fact that maybe we don’t need C.T. Male signoff, it’s something
simple, but we don’t feel comfortable enough, are there exceptions to that?
MR. BROWN-Absolutely.
MR. METIVIER-Okay, but we should take into consideration the fact that if there’s
correspondence, it has to go back and forth between you and somebody else, then we should
be more sympathetic to your needs, too.
MR. BROWN-Sure, today’s the 21 meeting. You have this to us by the 15 of next month,
stth
and then you’re on the following month’s agenda, and it’s just a matter of course and
everybody will get used to expecting that. If the structure’s good, if everybody knows what
to expect.
MRS. RYBA-And the other aspect of that is, I think what tends to happen is, there’s this
rush between the applicant and the engineer, and then stuff doesn’t get into the record, and
that’s, I know that the Planning Board has given applicants and the engineers some leeway,
and there are certain items where that’s okay, but there are other times where it’s not, and
you should really be cognizant of the fact that the record is what we have to go back on, and
if there are pieces missing, that’s a problem for all of us.
MR. FORD-All the more reason why I believe that for an applicant or a representative to be
passing out documents the night, from now on, I’m going to refuse it. Give it to Staff and let
them send it to me, or deliver it. I’m not going to accept it.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that’s been a concept that we’ve operated, but we’ve been lax on it.
MR. HUNSINGER-It was interesting. I found an old document on my computer, and it was
from a workshop meeting where we talked about that item specifically and we adopted a
policy saying, you know, any documents received, you know, after Friday.
MRS. STEFFAN-I found it today. It was a year ago.
MR. HUNSINGER-We wouldn’t accept it.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re right, but we’ve done it, and it’s kind of like when he’s going by,
what do you say, get out of here, take it away.
MRS. STEFFAN-Well, I brought it up at last month’s meeting, and then the second time,
I’m trying to remember if Matt Steves, I don’t know, he went to hand them, he apologized. I
know I’m not supposed to do this.
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MR. METIVIER-And you know what, and the fact is there’s another guy sitting in the
audience waiting to get up there, and you’re going to say to him, after Matt Steves just
handed everything out, no?
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes.
MR. METIVIER-You know what I mean?
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes.
MR. FORD-I do.
MR. METIVIER-I mean, so we really have to adhere to that, and maybe we should direct
the Chairman to direct everything to go to Staff, and will be distributed out, regardless of
what it is.
MR. VOLLARO-As soon as I tell that he’s got to bring the material over there, he knows that
he has an incomplete application.
MR. METIVIER-And you know what, and, you know, we’re going to be the first ones to say,
just bring it over, you know what I mean?
MR. VOLLARO-I know.
MR. METIVIER-It’s tough.
MRS. STEFFAN-I can become more rigid and inflexible if you’d like.
MR. BROWN-We can spread that message, too. It can be in the application, something that
says this is your only chance to submit information. You can’t submit between now and the
meeting, or something like that. It can’t go directly to the Board. It’s got to come to Staff.
MR. METIVIER-However, again, if you’re waiting for C.T. Male signoff which shows up on a
Tuesday morning at nine o’clock, I do think, too, that might be an exception to the rule.
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I don’t have a problem with that, either.
MR. METIVIER-If C.T. Male signs off with an application, I think that should be written in
the record, or read in the record, or whatever, for that meeting, because that’s a huge help to
us
MR. FORD-I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the representative
hand delivering. I don’t think we should be approached by the applicant or the applicant’s
representatives.
MR. METIVIER-How about by members of the community who want to speak and they
bring pictures and stuff like that? I mean, where do you draw the line there?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, that’s the public hearing portion of it, and they’re not the applicant.
They’re trying to tell us something about the condition of the site, about whatever, you
know.
MR. METIVIER-As long as that’s not perceived by another applicant as accepting things
that night.
MR. BROWN-Tony, I think there’s a clear line there between public submission and
applicant submission.
MR. HUNSINGER-I think really the only exception would be a final signoff from C.T. Male.
I mean, I really can’t think of any other occasion when last minute information came in,
because that’s usually our first question when the applicant, you know, when we approach
the applicant, where do you stand with your C.T. Male signoff, and if they got a final signoff
that day, or the day before, I mean, that changes everything.
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MR. SEGULJIC-I can see other exceptions besides C.T. Male signoffs, but I’m having trouble
verbalizing it. I mean, if it’s just a clarification, I think that’s okay, but if it’s something
where we have to think about it, that’s another story, like for example, it would be like a
response to a C.T. Male letter where we have to absorb that. C.T. Male signoff is very clear.
MR. METIVIER-And they have ever right in the world to go through those items during the
presentation, right?
MR. HUNSINGER-Absolutely.
MR. SEGULJIC-I can see someone passing out something to clarify a point.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, one of the things I’ve had problems with, with the C.T. Male signoff’s,
I’ve seen them say, providing this, this, this, and this is done, we sign off on it. Now, just
recently, I looked, I had something, I talked with Susan about it. I said, hey, do we have this
final signoff letter from C.T. Male? This is coming up before a signature on a plat. Do we
have the final signoff from C.T. Male? Because they’ve asked for some conditions to be
fulfilled and then they would sign off. Have those conditions been fulfilled, and we found out
that I guess we had to go back to C.T. Male and ask if they were filled, and I think even the
applicant went, gee, forgot about that.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we shouldn’t be in that position.
MR. VOLLARO-So C.T. Male’s got to give us one of these nice, clean lines, signoff, period.
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, a signoff should be a signoff.
MR. FORD-Bob, I just want to react a bit, because we’re talking about time management
here, and I don’t mind adding a five minute item as an eighth agenda item, but I do object to
going home after 12:30 in the morning and it takes me until two o’clock to get over the
meeting.
MR. VOLLARO-I guess, I wrote another thing here. I agree that the goal of the final
drawings, I’m really answering some of Chris’ well posed questions, but I agree that the goal
is to obtain complete, final drawings. However, past experience dictates that this is seldom
the case. The usual procedure is to condition the Preliminary, and require the final to reflect
and be in accordance with those conditions, and we approve the Final on that basis. Since the
Planning Board, as a body, seldom gets to see the Final plat, the Chairperson becomes the
Final approval agent for the Planning Board when you sign the plat. So the Planning Board
has now never seen that Final, it goes and it’s conditioned and it’s gone, and now somebody
like the Chairperson has to, and I do before I sign them, I look to see that all the conditions
are on there, or, if not, the drawing has been passed by the Planning Board that says that is
the Final plat. There’s no conditions on it at all. The drawing says it all.
MR. METIVIER-But when would Staff ever let you see, and sign a Final plat if not every
condition was met?
MR. BROWN-That would never happen.
MR. METIVIER-That’s exactly what I’m saying. Would that honestly happen?
MR. BROWN-No. Just so you know, process behind the scenes stuff, that’s what we do.
When they come in with their mylar, my map is ready for signing, we compare the map to
the resolution to ensure that everything that’s been approved has been shown or modified to
react to all those conditions. So, that doesn’t happen.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, see what you have there is all those conditions are a result of what was
on the Preliminary, and that’s how the Final gets approved because it carries the conditions
from the Preliminary over, and the Final is conditioned based on the following.
MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-My objective is, hopefully, to come up with a nice, clean set of drawings that
doesn’t have all that stuff on it.
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MR. METIVIER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-It might have a note here and there, but I would just as soon see a clean
drawing, and I think Chris indicated in his write up that that was an objective.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right. The objective is to get a clean Final drawing.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. BROWN-Can I ask you one follow up question on that?
MR. VOLLARO-Sure.
MR. BROWN-I’m trying to find some flowers here to give to the applicants.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re afraid of gun shot?
MR. BROWN-No, no. If the plan is to be able to give them a Final signoff that night,
because their map represents all the issues you’ve raised, everything’s fine, we can certainly
send the message to them, give us, you know, when you submit for your Final, give us your
mylar. We’ll review it and make sure it’s compliant. Staff notes will reflect that. Is it
possible to have it signed that night, because that’s the next thing they’re going to ask. If
I’m going to come in, why don’t I just bring my mylar and have you sign it and I can go file it
the next day. So just a question. If we can say, hey, there’s some good that’s going to come
out of this. You’re going to get your signature on a map that night, we can do that.
MR. VOLLARO-I can certainly be available to sign the mylar. I mean, you know, you call
me up and say, Bob, drive down here and sign it.
MR. BROWN-No, no. It’ll come in when they sit in front of you that night, that night at the
meeting.
MR. VOLLARO-Even better.
MRS. STEFFAN-So there’ll be some ceremony.
MR. BROWN-What they do when they submit for Final, before we place them on an agenda,
they’ve submitted to us all their copies, their paper copies for the Board and the mylar, and
we’re going to compare that mylar to the paper copies and the conditions, and it’ll come in
the box with Staff or we’ll bring it to the meeting and have them, or we’ll bring it to the
meeting, and say, the map you have before you, here’s the mylar that goes with it. If you’re
happy with the map, you can sign the mylar.
MR. VOLLARO-Good point. That cuts down a lot of.
MRS. STEFFAN-But no signatures after 11 o’clock.
MR. BROWN-Plus it gives them, they go away with something.
MR. HUNSINGER-So I guess it was your idea, Bob, to send a memo to the agents?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I had that to all personnel acting as agents on behalf of applicants,
and the decision of the Planning, the one on the bottom that Chris had objections to , and I
understand why, that’s something I want to get into when we’re talking to the next couple of
topics, which is going to be on our by-laws and policies and procedures. So I’d like to get into
that, but does everybody agree that we ought to have the Preliminary on one night and the
Final on some other next night?
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes.
MR. METIVIER-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes.
MR. FORD-Yes.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-So a pretty strong feeling on that.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean, that’s if there’s changes necessary.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, if they come in with a Preliminary, and if it’s all set.
MR. METIVIER-But you can’t do that because Staff may not have prepared a resolution.
MR. BROWN-We want to make sure it’s advertised properly, first of all. I mean, if there’s
some that we can identify during the completeness review meeting that, hey, this is a two lot
subdivision. It’s going to get Preliminary and Final one night. I just want to make sure,
again, if there’s a threshold or a trigger that says these go this way and these go that way, we
can do that, but to get a Preliminary and say, okay, don’t have to come back for Final, and
we didn’t notice it for Final, there’s no public hearing, but it’s still in the Code the steps, you
know, you have to issue a Final approval.
MR. HUNSINGER-I thought all we were doing here was making sure everybody was on the
same page, rather than trying to change a policy or procedure, because again, you know, I
think if someone comes in, they have a good Preliminary, we don’t see a need to make any
changes, they have a final C.T. Male signoff, why could we not give them Final that night, as
we do now?
MR. BROWN-I guess we could just generically advertise everything as Preliminary and Final
and the ones that you can do that for, and sign off on that night, that’s okay, but one’s that
you’d say, okay, we’ll continue this next month when you come back with your Final plat, I
guess we could do it that way. I mean, that’s the way we do it now. We advertise things as
Preliminary and Final. Some nights they only get through Preliminary and they have to
come back next month or next week for Final.
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, well, that’s kind of what we did the last couple.
MR. BROWN-Yes, I think we could do it that way. Okay.
MR. HUNSINGER-Is that not what you had in mind, Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, that would work, I guess. I’m just trying to think through how that
actually functions. In other words, we go through Preliminary that night, and we don’t have
any conditions at all.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-He does a great job. After our Sketch, the guy really got religion, came in
with a really good, and we said, okay, that’s it. What I could see is we would say, okay,
you’re all done. Come back. You’re saying he puts the Final drawing in front of us at
Preliminary, and we see the Final drawing at Preliminary.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, that’s what we do now. We do Preliminary and Final. They’re
generally scheduled for the same night, and just the last couple of times we’ve kind of said,
you know, there’s so many changes in the Preliminary, we want to see them before we give
you a Final, but in the past, we’ve given Preliminary with a bunch of conditions, then, or I’m
sorry, we’ve given Preliminary, and then you’ve given Final with a bunch of conditions.
MR. VOLLARO-With a bunch of conditions on it.
MR. HUNSINGER-And what the goal is here is to give a Final with no conditions. So as
soon as we start to say, I mean, we can only tell that during the discussion. If we’re sensing
there’s going to be a bunch of conditions, we’ll just put those conditions into the Preliminary,
and then do Final the next month.
MR. VOLLARO-We’ve got to have some discretion. I mean, we’ve got to be able to operate
that way.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-Take some thing and say, look, this is a classic situation, let’s move this one,
and those are prerogatives the Board has anyway.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m just concerned about the message that goes out to the community that
there’s a couple of attorneys that deal with us all the time who would say, oh, well.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we just did it on the last two subdivisions.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, and it worked well.
MR. HUNSINGER-It worked well. No one complained. Nobody had an issue with it.
MRS. STEFFAN-I don’t know. Aren’t there situations so rare where we have somebody who
comes in for both, who doesn’t have to come back for Final?
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MRS. STEFFAN-I mean, that’s pretty rare.
MR. HUNSINGER-I think it would be rare.
MR. VOLLARO-Very seldom actually. Usually he comes back, somebody comes back. I’m
trying to eliminate the gray areas, because I’ve always got in trouble when, walking in gray is
always difficult.
MR. HUNSINGER-Sure.
MR. VOLLARO-If we make it real simple, you come in with your Preliminary. If it’s a real
good Preliminary, God bless you, you come in, and maybe what we do is send a message down
to Staff and say, hey, that Preliminary is really ready for Final. We’ll take it as an additional
item. We’ve got seven items that night, but we’ll take that Preliminary as well, as Number
Eight, that Final as Number Eight because it’s that good.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we don’t make Preliminary and Final as separate items.
MR. VOLLARO-No. What I’m saying is, they would come in with the Preliminary, and the
Preliminary is really good, and we say to Staff, look, let’s not make them wait another cycle
to come in with Final. It’s so good it can come in right away.
MRS. STEFFAN-But how can we do that?
MR. FORD-By right away, you mean what, Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, if there’s nothing to do on it and if it’s almost ready, our next meeting,
the next meeting we take that as an item, and we take it as Number Eight, there’d be eight
items that we’d pretty much, boom, boom, and he’s gone. Now Staff has had a chance to look
at it, make sure that what he says is true, that it’s all complete and ready for signing and so
on. I don’t want to essentially get on some high speed train that we’ve got to get these things
approved in toot sweet time. We should be able to do our Final after we’ve done our
Preliminary.
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, because we just talked about we wanted to do Sketch. We wanted to
do Preliminary, we wanted to do Final. So let’s stick with the three part process.
MR. VOLLARO-Otherwise it gets gray.
MRS. STEFFAN-That’s right.
MR. VOLLARO-It gets very gray, and we start to mess around with times, and one applicant
said, gee, you let him come in so fast, and now you’re making me wait for the cycle. What’s
the story? So, we’ll try to make it as clean as we can. You get into trouble with gray areas.
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It really bothers me when you do that. Craig, how do you feel about that, from handling the
thing?
MR. BROWN-Well, I only heard the last half of the conversation. I was talking with Roger
about something else, but, you know, is it going to be slower for them, yes, probably a little
bit. Is that okay? Yes, that’s okay. There’s no need to, just because there’s more
development and there’s more pressure to, you know, more applications before the Board,
doesn’t mean you have to have a 12 item agenda and do three meetings a month to get all
that stuff done. You can control how much you want to do by how many things you put on,
and how you review them, and as far as the way we handle them. (lost words) count Finals as
an agenda item, that’s ideal. I would support that 100%. If you have Expedited Review, the
same thing. The only risk with Expedited Review is, if, during the public hearing, somebody
says something, now you’re into the review of it, and that could drag out for more than five
minutes, I won’t say drag out, that could extend more than five minutes. Those are ways to
work through the, this time of the year probably, no. In the summertime when you get a
backlog of 10, 12 items, where people submit in May and they’re not heard until August,
that’s a good time to shuffle through as much of the small stuff as you can. It works for me.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t have any objections to making a really complete Final plat, Number
Eight on the agenda.
MR. BROWN-Or Eight, Nine, and Ten.
MR. VOLLARO-Eight, Nine, and Ten. Get the three of them off real quick. Chances are
that won’t happen that way, but Eight, Nine, or Ten could be, sure, and just deal with them.
Put them right up front, get them in, get them out and start on your agenda.
MR. BROWN-Because if you continue with the three step process, as Gretchen mentioned,
you’ve seen it at Sketch. Spent a half an hour on it. You sat with them through the
Preliminary subdivision, Preliminary, public hearing. You’ve done SEQRA. You spent an
hour with them at another meeting. So five minutes and you’re through.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, basically just for signoff. I think that works.
MR. BROWN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m happy with that. Okay. So that’s how we’re going to work that
Preliminary and Final, and you would get some of that information out to the submission
community, if you want to call them that.
MR. BROWN-Again, you know, we’ll be creative and craft a notification that says, you
know, please be advised kind of thing, but again, it doesn’t relieve the fact that they can still
ask for all those waivers, directly fire it over our heads and come straight to the Board with
something else, but we’ll send the message, and if the Board sends the same message when
they skip our heads and come straight here and they say, sorry, we’re not going to hear you
unless you come back with Sketch, the message will be comprehended more quickly, I think.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, a couple of those will get to the community.
MR. BROWN-Especially if they’re regular players.
MR. HUNSINGER-So I guess the question, since everyone’s in agreement, we will need to
modify our policies and procedures manual or implement that, to say that a Final plat that
meets all of the conditions set forth in Preliminary approval shall not count towards the
agenda limit.
MR. VOLLARO-I think there’s a place in the agenda limit that talks to 14, and that’s the
place we would put it. By the way, it’s not 14, it’s 18. It’s got to be changed in here.
MRS. STEFFAN-But it also has on the last clause agenda modification. The Planning Board
agenda may be further modified at the discretion of the Planning Board Chairman and our
Zoning Administrator.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
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MRS. STEFFAN-So we don’t have to amend it. Because if they decide that we’ve got a
couple of approvals, they can just add that to the agenda at their discretion.
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-So we don’t have to amend the by-laws.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-Where are you on that?
MRS. STEFFAN-The by-laws.
MR. HUNSINGER-Page 10.
MRS. STEFFAN-11.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-So if the Zoning Administrator determines that all the criteria is there for
the Final signoff, and then you guys can add it to the agenda.
MR. HUNSINGER-And, you know, they fall under Item C, which is Old Business, Previous
Reviewed, and Satisfying Submission Requirements.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Let’s get down into the Policies and Procedures. On the
responsibility of officers, I find some stuff in there that we either should define or remove,
because I find it really ambiguous.
MR. HUNSINGER-Page Three.
MR. FORD-Page Three.
MR. VOLLARO-Page Three, right. It talks on the Chairperson shall preside at all meetings
and hearings and the Planning Board shall have their drawings normally conferred by
Parliamentary Procedure, and I said, well, I’m not a specialist on Parliamentary Procedure.
So I don’t know what’s normally conferred.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean, later it talks about following Roberts Rules of Order.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, that I do understand, but Parliamentary Procedure and Roberts Rules,
are they synonymous? I don’t really know.
MR. HUNSINGER-I don’t know.
MR. VOLLARO-The ones that I wanted to talk about specifically, though, were G and H. G
says perform all the duties incidental to the office. I don’t know what that means, and I have
a note on here that says, name them, we’ll delete them.
MRS. STEFFAN-Well, whatever the Town Board’s provides the Planning Board as Town
Law. That’s part of it.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the Town Law is very, very limited when it talks to the duties of the
Chairman. It’s about three lines. Our policies and procedures tend to amplify that
somewhat, but if you go to Town Law, I think it’s 271, the duties of the Chairman are, all
meetings will be at the call of the Chairman, and the Chairman may, and I didn’t realize this,
but the Chairman may subpoena people as witnesses to come before its Board. That’s what it
says. I didn’t know that, but it’s really very limited when it talks about what the Chairman
does, and what I’m trying to do.
MR. FORD-Well, you see, that’s an all inclusive that lends itself right into what you just
indicated you found.
MR. VOLLARO-What’s that?
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MR. FORD-It allows that to occur. It’s all inclusive.
MR. VOLLARO-Perform all duties, you mean, incidental to the office?
MR. FORD-Yes. Without everything being delineated here.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it says right up at top, you preside at all meetings and hearings of the
Planning Board and shall have the duties normally conferred by Parliamentary Procedures.
That almost mimics 271 Town Law, when it says what is the responsibilities of the Chairman
or the duties of the Chairman, as it says. I hate things that say perform all duties incidental
to the office when I don’t know what it means. Perform such other duties that may from
time to time be required. I don’t know what that means either.
MR. HUNSINGER-That means anything and everything.
MR. VOLLARO-I guess.
MR. HUNSINGER-Just for the sake of edification, I’ve never seen a set of by-laws for an
organization that did not have that clause for the Chairperson or President or whatever the
Chief officer is.
MRS. RYBA-(lost words) by Town Counsel, and I think that’s a part of Town Counsel (lost
words) not have things so specific so that every time you want to make a change (lost words).
MR. FORD-I think it ought to remain in there. For example. It isn’t specified in here that
you, as Chair, could eliminate applause at the end of a public presentation, but this allows
you to do that, if you found that it was not contributing, or if it were if people were getting
unruly or whatever. Under that, under “G” you’re given that opportunity to make some
discretionary calls.
MR. VOLLARO-I think most of those discretionary calls that a Chairman might make
should be also almost supported by the Board. The Board should have, should support that.
He shouldn’t be doing it as one member of the Board. The Board ought to be sort of in
unanimous agreement with what the Chair is doing at that particular point, because we are
all seven of this. This business of being a Chairman really is almost guiding the meetings.
Making sure that, you know, the public meeting goes off at the right time, which I sometimes
don’t do right, but, you know, I’m learning, and that, you know, when the SEQRA has to be
done, he more or less guides the meeting through, as opposed to being in any way dictatorial
from the seat. That’s how I see it. Anyway, if the Board feels, I’m just bringing this up now.
If the Board feels that “G” and “H” ought to stay there, then they stay.
MR. SEGULJIC-They ought to stay because we don’t know what’s going to happen. You
don’t know what issues arise, like on Saturday mornings you have to drive the van as the
Chairman.
MR. VOLLARO-I have to get the key.
MR. SEGULJIC-You have to get the key. All those things.
MR. VOLLARO-Tom, you live closest to this. I’m going to ask you to be the man with the
key.
MRS. STEFFAN-How about Page 10, on the agenda, meetings.
MR. VOLLARO-Meeting agenda, Page 10.
MRS. STEFFAN-I don’t see why you can’t go to completion review meetings.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the last time we did this completion review thing, Craig MacEwan
said, and, you know, Larry and I were sitting there as innocents, he said, okay, you and you
will attend.
MR. HUNSINGER-That’s how I got on the PORC.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s how you got on the PORC.
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MR. HUNSINGER-And Gretchen.
MR. VOLLARO-Right, but I think that there ought to be, and we looked to see whether
there was one, by the way, whether there was that kind of a motion that allowed Larry and I
to do that kind of thing, and there isn’t. I would prefer to see this Board in agreement that
myself and any other Board member be allowed to go to the completion review meetings, but,
Tom, I know you have a particular objection to that, and I can tell you just recently what
happened. An applicant came in, shall be unnamed, because we’re not supposed to talk about
that kind of thing, but an applicant came in with a review, and it was part of the package,
and Craig and I sat down and we looked at it for a while and we said, you know, this is not
ready for review. This is not a complete application, and it became, as a result of he and I
breaking out the prints and talking about it, where we both agreed it wasn’t ready to go.
MR. FORD-My only concern, Bob, is that it would appear to me, and I could be wrong, I was
once before, I don’t want you, as the Chair, or any future Chair, to be doing Staff’s work, and
it seems to me that the completeness of an application should be able to be determined by
Staff.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, you know, basically that’s a true statement. All I’m saying is there’s
a degree of overview that I think is helpful, when a Board member, or two Board members, in
the case of Larry and I when we did it before, were to sit down.
MR. FORD-I’m not saying that isn’t helpful. I’m not, in any way.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re saying that I’m taking some load off the Staff by being there and
helping them out.
MR. FORD-Well, obviously it’s helpful, but is it incumbent upon the Chair of the Planning
Board to do that?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it wasn’t incumbent upon Craig MacEwan, because he assigned it to
some other people. I’m willing to take that. There’s certain things a lot of you folks (lost
word), I don’t expect you to be able to do that. I don’t. I spend more time with Staff,
whether these folks know, I’m there every day, practically, on the leading edge of this, trying
to get thing to work a little bit better.
MR. FORD-Those efforts are appreciated. Really, but you’re also setting the stage for a
reliance upon the Planning Board Chair, not just this year, but for the future. The longer it
goes on, the longer it will go on, or the expectation will be that it will go on.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I think the Board has to take a degree of, has to be a leadership role
most of the time. That’s our responsibility on the Planning Board. The Staff supports us.
They support this Board, and they do a great job of doing that. I just feel that I like to feel
comfortable with what’s going to come before us, as the applications are complete and my
view of complete sometimes borders a little bit different on what I’ve been told by the
Executive Director. Marilyn’s position is, if they supply all the pieces they’re required to get
before you, whether they’re right or wrong, technically, they’re entitled to come before the
Board, and then the Board weeds that out.
MRS. RYBA-Well, Staff does, too. That’s what Susan and Craig do. They look at those
items we talked about, making sure, (lost words) those things are there.
MR. VOLLARO-Right.
MR. SEGULJIC-And he’s not going there to help the Staff. He’s going there to help us with
agenda control, making sure if it’s going to come before us, it’s complete for us. So I think it’s
a very valuable, it’s beneficial, from my perspective.
MR. BROWN-Yes. Remember this agenda control, completeness review meeting happens
very early in the process. Deadline day is the 15, generally. It’s usually the 16 or the 17
ththth
when we sit down with these applications. So we really haven’t had a bunch of time to weed
out the good from the bad, and I would say, to answer your question, Tom, the vast majority
of the time, I’ve got a pile of things that I say, this is not going to Planning Board because of
this, this, and this, and if anything ever comes out of that pile and goes to the Planning
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
Board, it’s because Bob and Larry used to say, you know, the Planning Board can deal with
this. It’s a small item. Call them up, see if you can get it here by Thursday or Friday and
we’ll keep it on the agenda, just to keep the backlog from growing, keep a, you know, if it’s a
one business item, keep it going through the process. We, for the most part, have an idea of
what’s not going to be on, and again, if it comes out of that bump pile, it’s because
completeness review has said, it’s pretty close. It’s close enough. The Board can deal with
this small piece of missing information that we would probably have bumped otherwise. It
helps. It definitely helps, and it also gives him a chance to give us some guidance, not
guidance, but insight on, you know, the type of information the Board looks for, at least Bob
looks for, as far as quantity. Maybe not quality. That you’ll figure out during the review,
but quantity of the information.
MR. FORD-But there’s no way that I, please don’t anyone misinterpret the point I’m trying
to make. What you do and the time you spend and the effort that you make must be
extremely beneficial, and in no way do I want to in any way have anybody feel that that is
not appreciated. I appreciate that. I’m just not at all sure that that is a function that the
Chair of this Board should be providing.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, you’ve got some, what you’re saying is that, let Staff do its job. It
knows what it’s got to do, and let them be the fine grain filter as to what comes before the
Board.
MR. FORD-That’s what I’m saying.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. FORD-Well put, Bob.
MRS. RYBA-I’m just thinking back to 2000, there were applications that were literally paper
napkin applications. They were some pretty poor applications, and we progressed through
the year. I think part of that was one of the reasons for the pre-application process, too, was
just get people, we met a lot of resistance, but we pulled the application (lost words) the
community development community, that fact that it was going to help them, and I think it
really did, and to some degree, I think that the completeness review, part of that, too, was
there were things coming in and it was, how much, until it got to the point where they were
getting so much information, the Planning Board really did accept a lot of materials to look
at because they said, well, we can cover this and we can cover that, and then we started
getting a lot of material, and so it was, let’s be a little bit more picky, and when you get to a
situation where we don’t, as Staff, want to be put in a position where, well, you didn’t do this
right and you didn’t do that right, and you start becoming argumentative in front of an
applicant. I mean, that’s sending the wrong message to the applicant, and so this has been
helpful in that we’re working together so that we can at least get information to the Board, so
that everybody’s pretty comfortable with it, and I think that was why Bob and Larry were
selected by Craig MacEwan or whatever the consensus was because you two were really
pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum.
MR. VOLLARO-No question. That’s how he picked us.
MR. HUNSINGER-Plus you guys had the time to do it.
MRS. RYBA-Yes, so the reason I’m bringing it up is looking at the history of things and how
things have evolved, is it time to reconsider how you’re doing things or is this working okay?
That’s a question.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, we can certainly let this thing go forward, the completion review
meetings go forward for a while. If I feel, if there’s nobody else on the Board that’s going to
be with me, if I feel, in my judgment, that everything has gone through that, everything is
put together as Staff sees it, and there’s really not a problem. Then maybe we say, okay, you
know, let’s terminate that, but I’d like to keep it going for a couple three months here, just to
see how it works. If it looks like we’ve got it running slick down at Staff, then let’s, then I
don’t have to do it. I’m not anxious to spend hours and hours here. My woodworking shop
has like been silent for six months.
MRS. STEFFAN-I also think one of the other issues, we used to, we had some very difficult
Staffing issues way back when you guys first started to do that, and we weren’t at full Staff,
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
and so our Staffing situation is a little bit different. Roles and responsibilities are different
now.
MRS. RYBA-And we also have some people who’ve been on Staff for a while. That makes a
difference, too. (Lost words).
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Let’s get to the meeting agenda, then. I’m going to assume that I’ve
got the approval of the Board, much like Craig MacEwan did.
MR. GOETZ-Excuse me, Bob, I’d just like to add a little bit to this subject.
MR. VOLLARO-Sure, go ahead, George.
MR. GOETZ-I hate to do it, but I tend to agree with Tom on this particular issue. I realize
the contribution, like he does, that you fulfill in doing that, and I certainly have no problems
with you doing it, and if you want to do it, that’s fine, but I think that philosophically
speaking, Tom is correct. If you hire Staff, you have Staff. You sort of have to let them do
their job until they can’t do it. Then you have to step in, but I certainly can live with the
way it is. I also would like to take the time to commend you and the Staff for putting this
meeting together. I think the fact that there’s all eight Planning Board members, the fact
that we have two Board members, we have a member of the public and all the Staff. I think
that shows, really, a care by everybody here, and also the fact that this was a much needed
meeting.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, thank you. Thanks very much. We’ll leave it this way, that I will
continue to attend those completion review meetings until I think it’s not productive
anymore, that Staff is running on rails, there’s not a problem. There isn’t a problem now, and
it can always be that the phone would ring and he might call me and say, hey, Bob, we’ve got
one here we’d like you to look at, for whatever reason. I’ll go down and look at it, jump in the
car, and it’s a ten minute ride for me.
MRS. STEFFAN-I think that that’s a good approach. It’s collaborative that way, and, you
know, if Craig or Susan thinks that they want your input.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-And then you’re also not spending an inordinate amount of time involved
in the process.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, that’s fine with me as well. So we’ll leave it that I’ll do it for let’s say
a three month period. I’ll evaluate it and then from then on it might be just a call to me or to
some other Board member if they want to participate in this, that, hey, we’d like you to come
down. We want to talk to you. Now, meeting agenda, the meeting agenda is prepared by the
Community Development Department and Planning Staff, and is authorized for distribution.
That’s the thing that I get hooked up on, and is authorized for distribution upon approval of
the Planning Board Chairman. Authorized for distribution. The meeting agenda is then
authorized for distribution. How does the Planning Board Chairman authorize that for
distribution if he hasn’t seen it? That’s the thing that’s bugged me a little bit.
MRS. RYBA-I think there might be something in there that the agenda’s put together in
collaboration with the Zoning Administrator.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, this is just establishment of an agenda, and it says the agenda is the
initial agenda maintained by the Community Development Department Staff, and notes all
matters for which preliminary of complete applications have been submitted to the Planning
Board. That’s where the Staff comes in, right up front. It’s on Page 10.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I understand your point. I think, it’s not written well, but I think
it’s implicit that you obviously have to review it before you authorize the distribution.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. There isn’t any other way I could do that, intelligently.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Yes. I mean, when I was Chairman, Susan would always send me
an e-mail draft of what the agenda looked like, and I would say, you know, it looks good, it
doesn’t look okay, whatever the case may be. Might have some questions, but usually it was.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, the authorization could certainly be done by e-mail. That’s absolutely
true.
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, but you’re right. You obviously have to review it before you can
authorize it.
MR. VOLLARO-That was one of the reasons of going to completion review, because there is
where I could say, okay, it looks pretty good. Let’s go with it.
MR. HUNSINGER-I see what you’re saying. Okay. Let’s leave it that that’s the way we do
that. Now, there’s a couple of things that I wanted to just go over here real quickly. Today
we were at Staff, and you know I’ve been talking about these new resolutions that have got a
ton of boilerplate in it. We had Cathi Radner at the table, and she’s now reviewing these
resolutions that, in a way, I marked a couple of them up and said, why this, why this, why
this, and her position was, it really, this boilerplate that’s been appearing in our resolutions is
not really something that is required. It isn’t going to help her with the judge, necessarily.
What she is looking for is that we identify things in the meeting and they’re on the minutes
and that our resolutions are well prepared, but throwing a whole bunch of boilerplates in the
resolution, picking them essentially right out of 179, or 183, isn’t going to help much. That
was her front end look. She is going to review what we gave her, and she’ll give us a read on
that, and see where we go. Because I thought they were far too long. There’s too much
boilerplate in there. Now, any other discussions on policies and procedures or other matters is
open to the Board, if anybody wants to talk about other matters, and there are some other
matters that we’re going to have to discuss that have to do with a couple of draft letters that
have been written by both Chris and myself, concerning The Great Escape situation. Now, I
will mail my, I didn’t have a copy of it when I sat with Cathi today, but I did have a copy of
Chris’, and she thought that Chris’ was well written and said what had to be said.
MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-She hasn’t seen mine yet. I do know that, in addition to these two, the
Town Supervisor has written a letter as well, and he mentions us in this letter, and it says the
Town Planning Board retains the authority to determine whether a Certificate of Occupancy
for the Hotel Water Park should be withheld, in the event The Great Escape does not put
forth its best efforts to complete the construction of the pedestrian bridge. I brought, I’ve
looked at the final, we determined, I sat down with Marilyn today, to determine whether this
document, which is a adopted SEQRA Findings document, which is adopted on May 20, 2004
was indeed the operative document as far as the Findings Statement was concerned, and
Marilyn said, yes, that is the operative document. When I read this, when Mr. Lemery was
clamoring for a meeting with us, concerning the issuance of a CO, it was decided that we
probably ought to send them a letter, instead of having them just come before us. So I’m
going to read what it says in the Findings Statement concerning the bridge, and it’s quite
long. The Pedestrian Bridge was not formally part of this project, nor did the 2001 Findings
condition, the grant of local approvals for improvement of the improvement planned in Park
Area C on the construction of a pedestrian bridge. That wasn’t included. I went to 2001 and
looked it over. The operative paragraph in here, however, I think, it says, therefore, the
Planning Board finds that The Great Escape shall use its best efforts to complete construction
of the pedestrian bridge, prior to or concurrently with the opening of the Hotel Water Park.
Best efforts shall mean that The Great Escape shall pursue construction of the pedestrian
bridge vigorously and provide the Planning Board with clear evidence, on an ongoing basis,
including written quarterly progress reports, that the bridge approval and construction
process are proceeding with all appropriate speed, taking into consideration any factors or
development outside the control of The Great Escape. So long as The Great Escape has
provided evidence to the Planning Board that it has met its obligation to use its best efforts in
pursuit of the timely completion of the pedestrian bridge, there will be no delay in opening
the Hotel Water Park resort. Cathi looked at that and then looked at Chris’ letter, and she
said, you know, Chris’ letter essentially does address that situation. While it doesn’t talk to
examining the best efforts, it says at the end, to this end, it is imperative that a pedestrian
bridge be completed prior to the opening of the amusement park in the Spring. If the bridge
is not completed prior to the opening of the Park, the Planning Board and the Town of
Queensbury reserves all rights contained in the Statement of Findings, including the
suspension of Certificate of Occupancy for the Hotel Water Park, and to Cathi’s way of
thinking, before she read my letter, which I’m going to send her as an attachment to an e-
mail tomorrow morning. She wants to look at both of these, and maybe there’s an
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
amalgamation of these two letters. I had to make the suggestion, well, let’s not write
anything to Lemery. Let’s let them just come before us, and she said, no, no, no, don’t do
that.
MR. HUNSINGER-When we talked about it at the Board meeting, I thought the whole
intent of people’s comments was to get on the record that we wanted the bridge completed
before the Park opened, and, you know, and that’s why I wrote the way I did. It wasn’t so
much, at least in my mind anyway, it wasn’t so much a threat as it was to put it on record
that that’s what we desire, and that is what we would choose to say you haven’t made best
faith efforts. Because I’m afraid that they’re going to come back and, I mean, Staff would
have to help me out here. I know there was at least one report that was late, but I think they
have been very diligent in providing reports.
MR. VOLLARO-They have.
MR. HUNSINGER-And in the reports, they give us a pretty honest assessment, you know,
they are sort of self-gratifying in the letter language, but they do give us a pretty good
assessment of exactly where they are, and my fear is they’re going to come back, you know,
we’ll get to the 11 hour, you know, May 14, or whatever the date is.
thth
MR. VOLLARO-Memorial Day.
MR. HUNSINGER-They want to open the Park, the bridge isn’t there, and they’re going to
say, hey, look, we gave you a quarterly progress report, every quarter. That was the
definition of best faith efforts. You guys never said you had a problem. You were silent on
the topic, and that’s what I thought we wanted to do in the letter was just say, hey, look, we
understand you’ve had problems, but here’s sort of the bottom line, and that’s really, at least
in my mind, the intent of why that language was put in there. I mean, I remember those long
debates about, well, how do you define best faith efforts, and what if it doesn’t happen
through no fault of our own. Those were hours and hours of discussions.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, it was. You know, the whole thing that talked about good faith and
best efforts was really something that Lemery put down.
MR. HUNSINGER-I know. Yes, I remember.
MR. VOLLARO-I had written, and I have a copy of it. When all Board members were asked
to comment into the Findings Statement, I wrote a note to Chris, and I said, why don’t we
make this very plain. If the bridge is not completed by the time you want to open the Park,
that you will not get a Certificate of Occupancy.
MR. HUNSINGER-Well, except at that point it was the opening of the Hotel. We didn’t
think it would drag on so long.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but you know the last time we got a real honest to goodness schedule
from The Great Escape was dated March 30, 2004, and it showed the coincidence of the bridge
and the Hotel Water Park to be June 2005, which has long gone by.
MR. HUNSINGER-And even the current schedule isn’t clear, that the bridge would be, it
just says the bridge deck would be laid in May. So I sort of took it upon myself, in the letter,
to say, well, you know, it has to be done.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I think what the Supervisor said in his letter was that if it’s not done
by Memorial Day, you guys have a problem. He laid the gauntlet down as Memorial Day, as
the day when things have to happen, everything’s got to be working.
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, because that’s when they get busy. I mean, the first couple of
weekends in May that they’re open, they get busy.
MR. VOLLARO-See, I’m used to seeing schedules, I guess, words are nice, but schedules,
boy, they’re really, it says when the steel is coming, this is when we’re going to put it in. This
is what we’re going to do, and this is when it’s going to be ready, and schedules can be
modified, you know, whereas when you get these quarterly progress reports, they’re kind of
self-serving. They say we’re doing everything right.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-What do we know? We don’t know.
MRS. RYBA-Just a few comments. One it’s always good to put something on the record.
Number Two is, the language in here, reserves the right to. That’s important as well. So
those are two key items to portray.
MR. VOLLARO-We’ll see what Lemery does with that, because my guess is he will go back
to the Findings Statement and pick up the paragraph that talks about best efforts and say,
we have indeed done that, and because the bridge isn’t going to be ready in time, we still want
a CO for that Water Park. If I was, you know, the other side of the fence, that’s exactly what
I would want.
MR. HUNSINGER-Sure.
MRS. RYBA-You had mentioned in the schedule, I think the second thing is what the
Findings do say, which is upon consultation with Staff, engineering and Town Counsel. So
that if there is something that you think you want to investigate, that’s part of what you
need to do.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s written in the words. It’s in the Findings Statement. Those words are
right in the Statement. The problem is not being close to the project, Marilyn, it’s very
difficult for me or anybody else, I mean, when you’ve got your hands dirty with the project,
you understand what’s going on, you know, but when you’re dealing at arms length with
something like that, bridges, we’re not at some of the meetings that they had. So you have no
clue. You really don’t have a clue, none of us. To be able to say to our engineering
department, hey, what do you think about this or what do you think about that. We don’t
even know what this or that is yet. If you’re not privy to how things are going, because I
know I’ve sat at these scheduled meetings when we had to talk to the United States Air Force
about something we weren’t doing exactly right, you know, we tried to skirt around it.
MR. BROWN-So is the plan to send them a letter that says, here’s what we think, and if
you’d like to sit in front of us, we’ll talk to you in March? I mean, I apologize. I haven’t
reviewed the draft, is the thought to invite them in to talk about it and get some stuff on the
record?
MR. HUNSINGER-I thought the intent was just put them on notice.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that’s the intent.
MR. BROWN-Let me tell you what he’s going to ask, he’s going to ask to be heard. He’s
going to get your letter and say, okay, I want to come and talk about this now. So I’m just
trying to plan a little.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, why don’t we leave it go at this. I’m going to send Cathi my letter.
She has a copy of Chris’. I think what she intimated to me anyway that she’d like to look at
both and see what comes out of that. She may have some ideas as to how we essentially
marry those two things together. Let’s see what she says anyway. She said she would do it,
and let’s see what happens to it.
MR. BROWN-Well, because the next three months are going to fly by faster than you can
count, I think we’d want to try and get that letter to them as soon as possible and allow them
the opportunity to submit a request to the be before the Board by the February 15 date,
th
which is next Wednesday. So if we can do that, I just don’t want it to be at the end of April
when they sit before the Board and they want to open up in two weeks. If we can get them
here before the Board to hammer things out or not, let’s do it in March.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, look, I’ll stay in touch, if it’s okay with you folks, I’ll stay in touch
with Cathi just to keep her.
MR. HUNSINGER-I’m confused, Bob, as to why you wrote another letter.
MR. VOLLARO-I didn’t. No, I just wrote one.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. HUNSINGER-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-And you wrote one.
MR. HUNSINGER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-So Cathi now has two. She never saw my first letter.
MR. HUNSINGER-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-So I’m going to send her, now she’ll have yours and mine.
MR. HUNSINGER-I’ve got you.
MR. VOLLARO-First edition of both.
MR. BROWN-And if we want whatever the final product is, we can pass around an e-mail
and let everybody be happy with it and then it can go out that way. Because by the 21,
st
when your first meeting is, it’s after the deadline.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, part of the problem is a lot of folks on the Board don’t have access to
the operative document of the Findings Statement to be able to sit down and read the words
and see what it says. Some members of the Board don’t have that.
MR. BROWN-Well, I think probably those members who don’t have it are going to rely on
Counsel.
MR. VOLLARO-I’ll get Cathi my first edition tomorrow morning. She’ll try to take a look at
both, maybe marry them together, and let’s see what we’ve got, and then we’ll send it to
them. We’ll get it going as fast as we can.
MRS. RYBA-Does yours contain information about a new schedule?
MR. VOLLARO-No, it does not. I can also e-mail that to you tomorrow morning, if you like,
Marilyn. I’ll e-mail a copy of it to you tomorrow morning, as an attachment. When I mail it
to Cathi, I’ll mail it to you as well. I certainly would like to see, I know, I’ll bet someplace in,
who’s their engineering firm in Saratoga?
MRS. RYBA-The LA Group.
MR. VOLLARO-The LA Group. I’ll bet there’s an operating schedule in the LA Group that
talks about that bridge. You couldn’t build a structure like that, you know, you’ve got to
know when your steel’s going to arrive, when the designs are done, when each parcel is going
to come in, are you going to build it on site? (Lost word) that’s what they’re going to do. The
bridge that went over Route 9 was a three piece bridge. I watched that go together.
MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, it was pre-fab.
MR. VOLLARO-Pre-fab. My understanding is they’re going to build this bridge on the site,
which somewhat concerns me, but that’s their prerogative. Now, there is a piece of paper in
front of you that’s submitted by Loanne Laakso, on 22 Oakwood Drive. Loanne was before
the Town Board last night, talking about what she writes in here. Apparently there’s, I had a
small conversation with her before this started and she said, you know, the development on
Oakwood Drive she had no problem with. She thought it was okay. She really had a problem
with the transformer that sits in front of her house on the pole, (lost word) a neighbor, and he
said the biggest problem he had was that this thing humming like crazy, you know, a typical
low frequency hum that can be very annoying.
LOANNE LAAKSO
MRS. LAAKSO-(Lost words) the hum comes and goes depending on how many people are
using electricity (lost words) much larger than the homes in the area. The question arises,
why wasn’t it pulled up from the underground that was already there, that’s for the
development? And they made a rash choice about putting a transformer that’s four times the
size of any transformer in any housing development. I don’t think it’s fair.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MR. VOLLARO-What was the result at the Town Board meeting last night? Was somebody
going to
ROGER BOOR
MR. BOOR-Tim Brewer was going to look into it. He knew somebody at National Grid that
he dealt with in the past and he was going to try and make contact with them and see what
he could do. I believe that’s how it was left.
MR. VOLLARO-So until he makes that contact, you know, we’ll find out. They may, if
there’s enough outcry, you know, National Grid may just put it on the ground where it
should be.
MRS. LAAKSO-I’ve asked people not to just yet. I knew this meeting was the Special
Meeting, and I thank you very much for your time. I do really appreciate it because I know
your time is valuable, but on the other hand, if things can be worked out easily, I’d like (lost
words) and I don’t want any other neighbor to have to put up with this. There’s a lot of land
there. We’re talking acres and acres, and I’m confounded as why they can’t buy acreage
before these homes are built. If you look at Twicwood, there are large transformers, but it’s
not in front of anybody’s home. (lost words) it goes out to a large development. I don’t
understand the reason.
MR. VOLLARO-Why it’s not put more co-located in the site.
MRS. LAAKSO-And the developer (lost words) why was it put in there?
MR. HUNSINGER-So this is a transformer that was put up on an existing pole?
MRS. LAAKSO-No. The pole had a light on it. There was no transformer on it before.
There was one across the road, across from the development. They chose to take that down.
They could have gone underneath the road instead of putting up three or four new poles.
They said it was cost effective. I haven’t seen the break out of the cost.
MR. HUNSINGER-I’m sorry, where is the transformer? On the new pole?
MRS. LAAKSO-On the new pole.
MRS. STEFFAN-Is it on the same side of the street as the development?
MRS. LAAKSO-(Lost words) same side of the street, but there’s underground electricity
adjacent to the development and that’s where I thought it was going to be (lost words) from.
MR. HUNSINGER-Are you sure that this new transformer wasn’t put in to service just the
new subdivision?
MRS. LAAKSO-Exactly.
MR. HUNSINGER-I have no idea. I’m just getting the information from you.
MRS. LAAKSO-Because our homes have been fine, and now they need to put it down
underground for the new development.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it’s coming down off the transformer and then going underground to
the development?
MRS. LAAKSO-Two houses away. (Lost words).
MR. HUNSINGER-I know electricity is a weird thing. Years ago I used to manage a multi-
tenant building, and we were towards the end of the power line and there was an industry
further up the road, and every Monday morning when they turned their equipment on, it
would draw all the power away and there would be problems in our building, and we
complained to the utility company for years and years and years, and they never did
anything, and then lo and behold, out of the blue, he came and improved all the lines, and
when we asked them why they were doing it they said, well, you know, it’s part of our routine
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(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
maintenance program. So, I mean, why utility companies do what they do is a great
mystery, and if we can get to the bottom of it, I think that’s about all we can really promise.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, apparently Tim Brewer knows somebody who thinks he talk to at
National Grid about this. It was mentioned last night, I think it was mentioned in open
forum, actually. The best thing we can do is let that cycle run.
MRS. LAAKSO-I want you to understand (lost words) never had any of this (lost words).
(Lost words) to the amount, we’re talking four times the size of any transformer. We’re
talking you won’t find this transformer the size of any industry (lost words).
MR. HUNSINGER-I think the only time we’ve ever seen utility lines on a site plan was The
Great Escape. Seriously, that’s the only time. I mean, it’s not usually something that’s part
of their plan.
MRS. LAAKSO-Because who would have thought, this is four times the size of any other
(lost words) all the others are 25. Who would have thought they would have done that, in
front of a home that only has three quarters of an acre total. We’re talking 11 acres in this
development. I understand that there has to be faith. I understand the logistics, but that’s
the developer’s issue.
(LOST WORDS – NOT SPEAKING ON MICROPHONE)
MR. BOOR-It’s only in the overlay zone. There’s only an overlay zone on Route 9 and Main
Street.
JOHN STROUGH
MR. STROUGH-I mean, my development, all the new developments, Indian Ridge, it’s all
underground.
MR. BOOR-That was the developer’s choice.
MR. HUNSINGER-It’s not required.
MR. BROWN-Probably what you have, without getting too much into it, you’ve got what
are called primary service wires on the top of the poles. We’re talking about 12,000, 24,000
volts, and to run that primary conductor, down the pole, to a transformer, it’s not the safest
thing to do, and that’s probably why they’re putting the transformer at the top, step down
the voltage to a residential voltage, like 220 or 120, whereas if there’s a problem, it’s on a
much smaller scale than the wire that’s dancing around in the ground. So that’s probably
why they did it. I don’t know.
MRS. LAAKSO-But they could have done it another way, and they chose not to, and they
could have done it without affecting people’s homes, and there’s a lot of land, and I think at
some point there’s a responsibility here, for a developer and a Town and the residents to say,
that’s not the proper way to do it. Now I am going to get the neighbors and we are going to
do a petition (lost words) but I just thought you should be aware of what’s going on in your
Town.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, that’s good to know. I happen to agree with the other gentlemen,
with Tom and also with Chris. This is something that National Grid has decided that that’s
the way they want to do it. I don’t know how tight the developer and National Grid is on
this, where the developer said, yes, put it on that pole.
MRS. LAAKSO-That’s going to be my next step is well is I need to talk to the developer and
I need to figure out what is going on, who has the right to do with when the lines are already
underground, and they could attach it.
MRS. STEFFAN-There’s also another recommendation here, if you’re dealing with a utility,
the Public Service Commission can help you, and if you drop those three letters, PFC, to
Niagara Mohawk or National Grid, you will get immediate action.
MRS. LAAKSO-Does the Public Service Commission have a phone number or?
43
(Queensbury Planning Board 02/07/06)
MRS. STEFFAN-Public Service Commission.
MR. HUNSINGER-If you go to New York State home page.
MRS. STEFFAN-Public Service Commission.
MRS. LAAKSO-This is what I appreciate. I’ll do the legwork. I don’t mind that.
MRS. STEFFAN-(Lost words) and it was eight months and a building season later when a
friend of ours said, just drop those three letters, and we had, within an hour, we had a
meeting with the Manager over our lines.
MRS. LAAKSO-(Lost words) that’s poor management, but thank you for your time. I really
appreciate it.
MR. HUNSINGER-And we need to know when these things are going on, too.
MRS. LAASKO-That’s what I think you want to know. Because maybe it’s not (lost words)
it may be something you need to be aware of that, yes, there’s a development, but (lost
words) come by the house, you look at it, and you see if there’s any other transformer in the
area that is that size. Is this the wave of the future?
MR. BOOR-Councilman Sanford drove by yesterday and he said it’s the biggest one he’s ever
seen.
MRS. LAAKSO-I’ve looked, you won’t see one, and if you think that it goes up now, what’s
going to go up next?
MR. BOOR-He said you can’t believe the pole will support it.
MRS. RYBA-National Grid does get copies of all the agendas of the Planning Board
meetings. So they’re aware of what developments are coming forward, and so they know
what’s what.
MRS. LAAKSO-Thank you.
MR. FORD-Thank you. It gives us a line of questioning for future developers.
MR. VOLLARO-I think we’re through with our agenda and we can adjourn this meeting.
Thank you very much, everybody, for attending.
On motion meeting was adjourned.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Robert Vollaro, Chairman
44