2000-02-15 SP
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING
FEBRUARY 15, 2000
7:06 P.M.
MTG#lO
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT
SUPERVISOR DENNIS BROWER
COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER
COUNCILMAN DANIEL STEC
COUNCILMAN TIM BREWER
BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT
COUNCILMAN JAMES MARTIN
PLANNING BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT
CHAIRMAN, CRAIG MAC EW AN
SECRETARY, CATHY LA BOMARD
ROBERT VOLLARO
ROBERT PALING
ALAN ABBOTT
ANTHONY METIVIER
LARRY RINGER
TOWN OFFICIALS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHRIS ROUND
JOINT MEETING QUEENSBURY TOWN BOARD AND QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD
PUBLIC HEARING - VETERANS FIELD LIGHT INDUSTRIAL PARK
SUPERVISOR BROWER-We welcome your participation this evening. I'd like to open the meeting of the
Queensbury Town Board. We're meeting here tonight on the proposed Veterans Park GElS Project in
connection with the Queensbury Planning Board. With that I'd like to defer to Mr. Mac Ewan our Planning
Board Chairman so he can open the Planning Board Meeting.
CHAIRMAN PLANNING BOARD, MR. MAC EWAN-Good Evening. I'll call tonight's meeting of the
Queensbury Town Planning Board to order. We will turn it back over to Chris.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MR. ROUND- Tonight's a little unusual for most people if anyone has ever
been to a Planning Board meeting before. We have a joint meeting of both our Town Board and our
Planning Board. The project that we're talking about initially on our agenda is the Veterans Field Industrial
Park Project. We have received a Draft Environmental Impact Statement on that project. We have
internally reviewed that and found that complete. We established a comment period for that project and
this is the public hearing on the Environmental Impact Statement. The reasons both boards are in front of
us tonight is that the Town Board is the designated lead agency for this project. The Planning Board is
involved in that they will be issuing several approvals. Number one, they will be entertaining a
recommendation for a rezoning of the project site with that we are also looking at development of a new
zoning district for this project. They are also reviewing the project in a conceptual basis for site plan
review to look at a propose subdivision and propose development of the site. The SEQRA process this is
the public hearing on that component the Town Board is a primary agency they will make the SEQRA
determination on the impact statement. We felt it beneficial to have both boards present so they would be
able to receive comment from members of the public at a single time we found that to be more efficient and
allow both boards to hear what the public has to say. With that both public hearing are open we will
receive public comment we'll close the public hearing. The Town Board will leave early tonight and then
the Planning Board will continue on with its regular agenda. We have Stu Messinger here who is going to
present some background and Diane Barber from the City of Glens present some information on the
project.
DIANE BARBER, DIRECTOR OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CITY OF GLENS
FALLS... ... .....
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Diane could I interrupt you. You know, I thought you would be the perfect
candidate to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance this evening.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE LED BY DIANE BARBER, DIRECTOR OF ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CITY OF GLENS FALLS
PLANS PRESENTED TO BOARDS
MS. BARBER-We're here tonight to seek public input on the cooperative development of Veterans Field.
The history of Veterans Field from this project's point of view approximately a fifty-acre piece of property
owned by the City of Glens Falls, but located in the Town of Queensbury. It is from an orientation point it
is border by Sherman Avenue, Veterans Road, and Luzerne Road. Thirty-nine acres of this property is
zoned light manufacturing. Ten acres is zoned one acre residential that ten acres is on the northern
perimeter of the property that borders Sherman Avenue. About a year ago this week we received a letter
from Chairman Gargano telling us that Governor Pataki had approved our joint project that was presented
to the Governor's Office. The Governor was going to award thirty sites throughout New York State. The
State would throw in some monies into the coffers for municipalities to use for economic development
projects. The technicality of the grant is the grant is in the City's name, however, we presented it as ajoint
project between the City of Glens Falls and the Town of Queensbury. I have to tell you Mr. Supervisor
with all that we see in the paper about non-cooperation between the City and the Town I can tell you that
I've been working on this project for about a year and three months and we have seen nothing but strong
support from the Town. Chris Rounds contributions to this project are immeasurable and it has been a very
pleasant experience with that being said. One of the things that we said to the Governors Office was look
we've got fifty acres of land it is basically flat the drainage is good it is sixth tenths of a mile from the
Northway. The Northway is a major transportation route and we anticipate with some other efforts that
we're undergoing in economic development that we're going to be increasing commerce with Canada.
There is a great deal of effort being put into cross border business expansion and we believe the way we're
positioned this piece of property is going to be particularly attractive to companies who are looking for
distribution routes to New England, New York City, the western part of the State and to Montreal. One of
our biggest trading partners is Canada so I think we're going to see that it is an asset for this piece of
property. Another asset is it is located across the street from the Firehouse which that does help the
occupants from a fire insurance point of view. We believe that one of the things that brought this project to
fruition is our emphasis on joint municipal cooperation. We have done a number of soil testing
Etc., Stuart Messinger of the Chazen Company is a company that was chosen through an RFP process and
an interview process to be the company to represent us in our documentation in our validation to the
Department of Health, Department of Environmental Conservation and the Governor's Office of Regulatory
Reform. So what I would like to do is turn this over to Stuart so he can bring us all up to date as to the
technicalities of the project and we look forward to your questions at the conclusion.
STUART MESSINGER, DIRECTOR OF THE GLENS FALLS OFFICE FOR THE CHAZEN
COMPANIES-Briefly, Diane indicated the site is actually about forty-seven acres or so maybe you can
bring it up here and we can face it away from these guys since you all have a copy. As I indicated the site
is presently zoned light industrial one acre from about this point down this point is zoned single family
residential. The Town's Comprehensive Plan completed in 1998 recommended that the entire property be
rezoned to industrial use. Concurrent with that as Diane said the City and Town jointly sought money to
develop this as shovel ready industrial park. The idea of a shovel ready industrial park is to have
infrastructure in place, approvals in place, before an industry comes so that we know what to expect rather
than have an industry come and get into sort of a battle over whether or not it is a good idea. What we're
doing here is going through an approval process ahead of any industry even being interested in the site and
trying to set out thresholds if you will for development. What we've done is create a generic environmental
impact statement that talks about different generic thresholds of development what impacts those might
have and what levels of impact would be acceptable or not acceptable. The idea is to set forth levels of
development that don't have bad adverse impacts in advance so if a business comes in and it meets those
criteria's they could move forward. If they don't meet the criteria they would have to go back in front of the
Planning Board there would be another public hearing and potentially the SEQRA process would be
reopened. That's sort of the purpose here tonight we don't have a specific project what we're trying to do is
look at the impacts of any development here before it happens so we can design good projects and design a
good site. The goal at the end of the day for this project is to rezone the entire parcel to a new district think
of it as light industrial number one it is a new type of light industrial district unlike the existing light
industrial districts which basically have setback requirements and allowed uses, but nothing else. What this
will have is a set of what we are calling performance standards. So it will have criteria for allowed uses,
but will also have a set of performance standards such as the noise level that would be allowed at the
property line the type of light fixture and the amount of light fixture that would be allowed at the property.
Standards related to vibration, standards related to traffic and so forth. The idea as I said is to try to define
environmental thresholds in advance of a specific project. As Diane indicated the site is about forty-six
acres in size it is bisected by a federal wetland area that's the shaded area that you see here so that's sort of
an important consideration in terms of how you layout a development on the site. It is located next to the
former Glens Falls City Landfill it is also located next to a State PCP disposal cell. In terms of the
development program for the site in talking to local economic development officials we try to understand
what size site a business who might be attracted to this location would be interested in. What we were
generally told is five to ten acres that businesses would be looking at five to ten acres sites. We created a
subdivision plan that has eight lots each of them a minimum of five acres and most of that five acres is
usable in most cases. They are configured in such a way that the sites can be combined so that if somebody
wants to come along and combine a couple of five acre sites you've got a ten acre site they will be able to
do that so it has a lot of flexibility. This is the basic lot layout and our conception is this would happen in
phases in terms of infrastructure and we'll talk about that in a moment. With the first phase there are a
couple of lots along Luzerne Road the second phase is four lots along Veterans Road and then a third phase
would be served by a cul-de-sac of basically a reconstructed road off of Sherman Avenue so what would it
look like? The point of this exercise is not to try to define what specific buildings look like, but to try to
define the thresholds of impact that are acceptable. We don't really care how the building sits on the lot so
much as it sits a certain distance back doesn't result in noise over a certain threshold that the property line
doesn't have glare over a certain threshold and so forth. This particular build-out configuration does
indicate the maximum amount of development that could occur and that's important when you are thinking
about traffic impacts down the line. This scenario looks at each of the eight lots being developed to their
maximum potential and this about four hundred thousand square feet of new development spread over eight
lots. You'll notice that this wetland area in the area next to the former City Landfill ends up being
undeveloped. These are fairly significant setbacks from Veterans Road. There is a landscape buffer along
all of the road frontages and then these buildings are setback this way. There is an internal access drive
here not a new roadway, but basically the idea is to hook-up the parking lots internally so it minimizes the
number of vehicles coming out onto the surrounding road network. The same lot configuration let's say
you've got four new people and they all wanted to combine lots, okay this might be how it would look at
some point in the future these are larger buildings this is actually about a five hundred thousand square feet
and that's the maximum amount of development that the project site could hold under this configuration.
So the point is that either one or a combination of these two things might happen depending on what the
desires of a particular set of tenants are. Let me talk a little bit about some of the environmental impacts
and mitigation measures that we've identified. Diane alluded to one of the major issues being the location
of the former City Landfill next door and the State PCP cell next door I'm going through another
investigation process for that. There have been a number of soil tests for PCP on the site in the past we in
turn did another round basically put a grid across the site and took thirty-six samples varying depths and
soil. We were pleased to learn that the site is essentially a clean site. I think we came up with two trace
levels below a part per million. The State's action levels for a industrial site are ten parts per million of
PCP's that's the level at which they require some kind of cleanup activity. It is lower for residential uses it
is one part per million. In the thirty-six samples we took we had one sample that came out below that one
part per million thresholds so we don't have an environmental contamination issue on the site. We took
into account we did a stage lA and IE Archeological Study which is basically we went through the site and
dug and looked for cultural artifacts we didn't find any we developed a stormwater management plan. The
site as you know if you live around here is very sandy and that is to our advantage in terms of stormwater
management we don't have need for central facilitates here. The idea is that individual uses as they came
along would be able to use drywells and similar types of arrangements divert flow into the ditch along
Veterans Road so we don't have to have a central stormwater management facility for the site. We did our
flora and fauna inventories we don't have any rare endangered species of any kind on the site. We did an
extensive traffic study the traffic study told us a couple things. One is that there is a threshold of
development of about a hundred and twenty five thousand square feet of new development that's if you go
by the book that is how many cars are generated by industrial uses. By the book we are going to need to
reconstruct the intersection of Luzerne, Veterans, Richardson and that's sort of a key threshold of
development. It is when you reach that point that there is going to have to be some roadway improvements
before a new development can happen. You'll notice that on this particular development plan we show
curb cuts onto Veterans Road in several locations. One of the comments that we've been talking about
internally is whether it would make sense to sort of combine those to have fewer curb cuts on Veterans
Road that is something we will be looking at with the Town's technical traffic reviewer. We looked at
utilities; utilities are sort of an important consideration on this site because we have a sewer line that ends
just a little bit to the east. We have an eight-inch water line that goes up just pass the firehouse, but it is not
adequate for fire protection purposes. So this plan contemplates the extension of the sewer line for Phase I,
first down Luzerne Road to a point opposite lots one and two. That would provide service to Phase I and
the existing water line would actually be adequate to take care of those lots so that's a fairly minimal
infrastructure extension. To do lots three through six we need to bring a sewer line up most of Veterans
Avenue to a small lift station up here. We would bring a twelve-inch water line that would connect
Luzerne Road and Sherman Avenue that would provide a loop system and provide adequate pressure for
fire suppression purposes. There is sort of an advantage to the neighborhood from that point of view in that
you get improved water pressure up Veterans Road. In the third phase we would simply send water and
sewer service into these two lots here. Our thought is that these two lots in particular are sort of prime lots
in that they sit up a little bit higher, they have a view of the mountains, they are potentially visible from the
Northway. They are the most expensive to develop in terms of the infrastructure that's required to get
there. The thinking is that they are likely to appeal to sort of a higher end tenant or client that gets me to the
question of uses. The use list for this new zone would be very restricted basically it would be restricted to
industrial manufacturing and office uses not warehousing which is a question a lot of people have asked
what about warehousing. The idea is to bring in this is really a business development project the idea is to
attract businesses that are going to bring jobs to the region and hopefully decent jobs. I think that's sort of
all of the basics on the project. As I say, the DGEIS contains a propose zoning ordinance amendment that
contains the noise thresholds and so forth. We're in the middle of a comment period that goes to I think
February 28th, so the Town is accepting written comments until the twenty-eighth and they can be directed
to the Town Board. At the conclusion of the comment period we will prepare a final Environmental Impact
Statement that responses to any comments we have tonight, that responds to your written comments. The
Town is going through its technical review process with its comments. The Planning Board is going to talk
about the site plan aspects of the project tonight so we're going to respond to all that make whatever
revisions are necessary and move forward. Any questions from the boards before I give it up to the public.
MR. V ALLARO-Looking at the plans and the term shovel ready I really don't see any preliminary roadway
even construction roadways in the plans that I reviewed. Shovel ready really when somebody comes to the
site and you say its shovel ready what they like to see is roads and curbs. I don't see any roads addressed in
any of these plans I looked at.
MR. MESSINGER-We don't propose to build any permanent roads on the interior of the site.
MR. V ALLARO- What about construction you don't have to make them permanent ... . . ...
MR. MESSINGER-That's a good question and we haven't addressed it.
COUNCILMAN BREWER-Wouldn't a tenant kind of dictate that. If the tenant wanted ten acres certainly
you wouldn't have the same road as you would if a five-acre tenant came in. I understand exactly what you
are saying and it is a good idea, but where you put them you don't have an idea of what size the tenant
might be.
MR. V ALLARO- That was a question I asked myself so I'll get onto my next question. I'm not sure what
the value of us reviewing the eight of the four is because it could be anything from one to eight.
MR. MESSINGER-Possibly.
MR. V ALLARO-One would be way off from that.
MR. MESSINGER-The key thing for the Planning Board to consider is the impact thresholds so that you
can get through the SEQRA process. If somebody comes in with a project that meets the traffic numbers
that meets the setbacks, that meets the noise number, light numbers, you can say we're done with the
environmental review process. If it is a significant enough difference site plan you may need to look at it
again and it is set up for that.
MR. V ALLARO-I guess the term shovel ready to me almost indicates unless we want to be able to tell a
perspective client that we will tailor the site in terms of the road if that's what you've got planned that's one
thing.
MR. MESSINGER-Construction roads?
MR. V ALLARO-Just construction roads.
MR. MESSINGER-I think Tim's comment is right on. The idea is they are going to do that the way their
construction manager wants to do it. The grading plans that we've given you are our concept of the grading
plan. Somebody may come in with a different grading plan in the event that they do you may need to look
at it again that's how it is set up.
CHAIRMAN MAC EWAN-Do you have a specific list of the kind of industries you are hoping to attract to
this site? Maybe the public would be interested in knowing ahead of the game where we are headed.
MS. BARBER-It is currently known as light industrial it could be medical device, machine shops,
sophisticated CNC machines that type of industry that is environmental friendly. We're hoping to attract
businesses we will not look for warehouse type people because our goal is to try to win back some of those
manufacturing jobs that have left our region over the years. What we're seeing in Glens Falls is that there
are a number of small businesses that are working toward that machine shop. We've got a couple ofRPI
Engineers that have setup downtown so we think we are starting to be able to nurtured those industries and
get them ready to grow perhaps out into their own facility out at the park. We're hoping we're calling a
highest and best use and that's going to be employee oriented verses the big box warehouse. Along that
same way, I think a part of economic development is to be a good neighbor and Saratoga County is doing
an exceptional job in their distribution warehouse attraction. I think they are sitting right on the Northway
one of the things that we can do is support them in their effort. They have been coincidentally quite
supportive of us in our efforts to make this a light -manufacturing site.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Would anyone care to address the board at this time?
BRUCE LUNDGREN, GRANT A VENUE EXTENSION-It appears the map shows the wetland running
entirely through this old development here yet they say that through the tests there is no need for storm
sewer attention. My question is where is this water going and why doesn't it need some attention?
MR. MESSINGER-It is not that it doesn't need attention. The soils are really sandy. They are extremely
good soils in terms of drainage.
MR. LUNDGREN-Then why do we have a wetland there if this is such good drainage?
MR. MESSINGER-Let me finish my answer. The plan for the individual parking lots is to direct them to a
drywall system basically along Veterans Road and then back in the rear of the property. We have gone
through the calculations and Rist Frost has just reviewed them it appears that it will be sufficient to handle
the water. As to why there is a wetland. This wetland here is the former borrow pit for the landfill so this
is where they were taking out fill for the cover the landfill so that's why it is here. This is an intermittent
drainage panel that flows under Sherman Avenue to the north. It is fairly narrow it is a very flat area the
water has to go somewhere so that's where it is going. We've got these Stormwater Management Reports
that are going through the calculations for where the water goes basically it can handle two drywalls.
MR. LUNDGREN-It appears that if it flows it flows north and it flows right over to where it is soon to
have a ballpark.
MR. MESSINGER-That little intermittent drainage... ...
MR. LUNDGREN-We've got storm sewers that run down Sherman Avenue that link in with the City of
Glens Falls. We that live over in the neighborhood of Ames Place, Grant Avenue, Seward Street are very
concerned about both of these projects and the storm sewer problem and the runoff problem. We've all had
water in our basements until they put the storm sewers down Sherman Avenue which tie in Glens Falls and
I want to make sure this continues to happen. If we get two developments in there we've got this
development there and not good attention to storm sewer runoff, and if we get another development across
the street off Sherman Avenue with the Glens Falls City Schools without good attention to stormwater
runoff we're going to be flooded again. Years ago Mike Brandt took care of that for us and fortunately the
City of Glens Falls even came to grips they opened up their storm sewer. I want to be sure that Glens Falls
and Queensbury stay together on this thing. Thank you.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Would anyone else care to address the board?
DR. MARK HOFFMAN, QUEENSBURY-A couple of questions. One, I believe we've got at least two
industrial parks in Town how close to capacity are these two parks? If not close to capacity how confident
are we that building a third industrial park would fill? Are there going to be direct costs to the Town of
Queensbury or the City of Glens Falls for doing this or is it all coming from the State?
MS. BARBER-The State component is this project is a hundred thousand-dollar project. Fifty thousand
dollars is coming from the State of New York. Twenty five thousand is being funded through the Greater
Glens Falls Local Development Corporation and twenty five thousand is being funded through QEDC.
That expenditure will bring us up to just about our current state, but with a small caveat of doing some
construction documents for infrastructure etc., into the field. As far as other parks in the Town of
Queensbury I'll defer to Chris because he is your expert, but I will tell you that out at the Airport Industrial
Park that is basically sold out. There are a couple vacant lots that are being held by private individuals.
Kerry Industrial Park does have some available acreage there and that's about it. We're finding that we
have to by-pass some of the referrals that we're getting from the State of New York because we do not have
an inventory of lands or buildings that will fit the criteria that the new clients are looking for so we're by-
passing some potential opportunities and that's one of the thrust for this particular project.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Mark did you want to comment on that?
ATTORNEY SCHACHNER-Only this is up to both boards, but I just did want to point out from the
standpoint of the process that we're going through tonight this is a SEQRA public hearing on the Draft
Environmental Impact Statement. What that means is that all the public comments have to be addressed by
the final Environmental Impact Statement. To the extent that the boards don't want to get bogged down in
answering questions right now tonight it is up to both boards obviously. But to the extent you want to not
get bogged down in that you don't have to go through that answering process or the debating process
tonight. Even if you do whatever comments are made by the public still need to be addressed and answered
in the Final Environmental Impact Statement. So to that extent the comments really should be addressed
basically to the boards especially to the Town Board as SEQRA Lead Agency and they don't have to be
answered right here as we sit here tonight.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Would anyone else like to comment?
HOLLY WHEELER, RICHARDSON STREET, QUEENSBURY-I'd like to know is there a list of what
type of companies are allowed in a light industrial zone? What kinds of hours of operation are these going
to be limited too? What kind of traffic flow is this going to create on my street? What kind of noise level?
I know in a copy of something I forgot what it was titled it does say the decibel levels, but I don't know as a
1.Q. public person what does that equate to in terms of actual noise. I like these comments addressed I
don't know where you are going to address them from. Is there a copy of what is allowed in light industry
zone?
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MR. ROUND-There is a list of our current light industrial zone. Through this
process we hope to limit that list both through the new ordinance the new zoning designation we envision
that the City in attracting industry it is going to target specific industries as Diane indicated. That is going
to further the limit the list of industries that are going to be allowed on the site. With that the external
impacts of the facilities that would be the construction on the site, traffic, noise, hours of operation, that
will also be detailed within a section of the Ordinance and a part of the Impact Statement process. You
may have seen when we kick off this process we identified this as available for public review at locations.
You can see it is a large document.. . ..
MRS. WHEELER-I saw that.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MR. ROUND-This is the supporting technical information that you are not
going to read in the evening hours. There is an executive summary that is available that will talk about
some of these issues and we can make them available and give you a copy.
MRS. WHEELER-Can I get a copy of that.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MR. ROUND-We can give you a copy of that.
MRS. WHEELER-I stopped up to the office tried to get it, but she came out with that pile, I said never
mind. Thank you.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Anyone else like to address the board?
JOHN STROUGH, QUEENSBURY-Ijust like to make sure that the Impact Study addresses how the
residential area would be impacted by this the residential area surrounding this proposed project.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Anyone else care to address the board at this time.
HANS HANSEN, SEWARD STREET-What scares me is when they talk about these drywells. I lived
there now for thirty years almost it doesn't work that will all run into my basement. When Mike Brandt ran
those lines in that's what saved us over there. Now, they are talking about doing this over again if you just
watch on Sherman Avenue in the Spring when the saltwater starts running out of that field it runs into the
sewer line that used to run over into our area over there. The engineers or whatever you've got there they
are thinking about putting in drywells they don't work why can't they learn that the drain lines up there is
there any reason or what? Are the drywells cheaper that's specific right? I rest my case.
MR. MESSINGER-It is a good comment. You're the second person to make it so we'll take a look at it.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you very much. Would anyone else like to comment?
MIKE, 44 VETERANS A VENUE-A couple questions that I have. You guys are talking about putting
sewer lines going down Veterans Avenue what are the chances of the people that live along that area
getting sewer lines put in as well is that a possibility?
COUNCILMAN BREWER-Absolutely.
MIKE-What about like natural gas lines? I'm sure these people aren't going to want to pay gas. I know
from where I live they stop at one end and stop at the other end but the middle of Veterans Ave. there is
nothing. I personally would prefer natural gas where I arn. View you guys were talking about a view.
These people are going to have a beautiful view of the mountain is my view going to change? Am I going
to be looking at the side of their buildings? What about the people's property values that live there the
property value of our houses are they going to go down? If I decide to sell my house five, ten, years from
now am I going to be able to have a good chance or is that going to decrease my chances of selling my
house? Really the only other thing, I know you said a lot of the money is being funded by State and what
not, but what about when people come in to buy these lots what's happening with that money that you guys
are going to be making off of them whether it is eight, four, or one, or whatever?
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you.
KEVIN IRELAND, HARRIS STREET, QUEENSBURY-Like the former gentlemen just mention I'm
concerned a little bit about the aesthetics of the industrial park. How the street will appear. Will it be
widen, will it be safe with walkways or sidewalks. I'm concerned about during night time will the whole
place be light up so that if you are trying to have a little gathering in your backyard all you can see is the
lighting of the industrial park or will it be nice and dark so you can see the star? I know this might sound
trivial to some people, but that's one of the things I enjoy in the area that I live that's all I wanted to say.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you very much. Anyone else like to address the board don't be shy folks.
Last chance anyone? Okay, I guess with that we will close the public hearing or should we leave it open
for public comment?
ATTORNEY SCHACHNER-It would be appropriate to close the SEQRA public hearing. The Town
Board by law cannot make any decision yet anyway on any aspect of the project because we have to await
completion of the Final Environmental Impact Statement. That in turn has to await the close of the public
comment period on the twenty eighth of the month at which time Mr. Messinger and others will be
involved in preparation of the Final Environmental Impact Statement so we have a number of steps yet to
go. The Planning Board can issue its non-binding recommendation on the propose rezoning really
whenever you like, but you certainly don't have to do that tonight. But, in any event you can pick that up as
soon as we convene as just a Planning Board if you wish to that's entirely up to the Planning Board. Town
Board wise it would be appropriate to close the public hearing and the Planning Board as Chris said plenty
of work to do still ahead of it tonight.
COUNCILMAN BREWER-Diane, if you could, a question was asked about the money and I think that's
important that people know what's going to happen to this money if you could explain rather than wait until
it is written out in the responses.
MS. BARBER-When you have two municipalities taking a look at a possible revenue stream it kind of
becomes a target of what are we going to do with the revenues. The Town Attorney, City Attorney, our
Mayor and your Supervisor will be discussing the revenue streams we've had a couple of suggestions
though. There is a precedent in the City of Glens Falls once before we did have an industrial park on Dix
Avenue part of the park was in Queensbury; part of it was in the City of Glens Falls. What happened at
that point is any taxes that were generated were shared so there was kind of a pretty innovated way of doing
that, that may be reconstructed. There is a possibility as you know sometime when new projects come to a
region the IDA gets involved with a Pilot Program where there is some sort of tax abatement for a certain
number of years that may happen also. It is up to the governing bodies to determine how that's going to be.
Our main goal coincidentally for this project is to create jobs for the region and we've kind of moved
forward on that knowing that probably the sale of land will not be a major revenue stream or will the taxes
that are generated. We all envy the tax rate in the Town of Queensbury you know that in itself will
probably be minimal that will be determined by the governing boards.
SUPERVISOR BROWER-With that we will close the public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact
Statement. I guess our board will wish you well and we'll turn it over to Mr. Mac Ewan, Planning Board
Chairman.
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
RESOLUTION ADJOURNING
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING
RESOLUTION NO. 83. 2000
INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Tim Brewer
WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION
SECONDED BY: Mr. Daniel Stec
RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns its Special Town Board
Meeting.
Duly adopted this 15th day of February, 2000, by the following vote:
Ayes: Mr. Turner, Mr. Stec, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Brower
Noes: None
AbsentMr. Martin