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2002-01-24 SP SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING JANUARY 24TH, 2002 7:10 P.M. Mtg #7 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT SUPERVISOR DENNIS BROWER COUNCILMAN ROGER BOOR COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER COUNCILMAN DANIEL STEC COUNCILMAN TIM BREWER TOWN COUNSEL Mark Schachner TOWN OFFICIALS Chris Round, Executive Director of Community Development Marilyn Ryba, Senior Planner Craig Brown, Zoning AdministratorlCode Compliance Officer Bruce Frank, Code Compliance Officer Bob Keenan, Director of Information Technology John Strough, Planning Board Member Larry Ringer, Planning Board Member Lewis Stone, Zoning Board Member Chuck McNulty, Zoning Board Member Supervisor Brower called meeting to order. . . PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE LED BY SUPERVISOR DENNIS BROWER PUBLIC HEARING - PROPOSED LOCAL LAW OF 2002 TO AMEND QUEENSBURY TOWN CODE BY REPEALING EXISTING CHAPTER 179 "ZONING" AND REPLACING IT WITH A NEW CHAPTER 179 "ZONING" NOTICE SHOWN 7:10 P.M. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Chris Round, whose Director of our Community Development Department and his staff, Craig Brown and others have spent a great deal of time forging this new zoning ordinance. We've had a few public outreach meetings to date and a great deal of input from the public and I want to commend them for the work they've done thus far. Chris has a presentation for all those citizens who are present that hopefully will show you various parts of the town that are proposed for a zoning change and the reasons behind it. MR. CHRIS ROUND, Executive Director-Thanks Dennis. I'm going to use the mic because tonight is a public hearing. We do have a brief presentation, it's going to take about twenty to thirty minutes. I'm going to speak fast because I'd like to get through the front end of the stuff. The front end is a little bit about background, how we got to where we are. The middle section is a summary of what are the changes to the zoning ordinance. The end of the presentation would be an actual live GIS map duplicating what you see over here so that we can zoom in and basically walk you around the town where are the changes that are proposed and then we will close the presentation portion, we will have a public hearing so everyone will be invited to speak and offer comment on the ordinance. There will be no action taken tonight. It is just a public hearing. We expect that we will receive those comments, share those with the board, summarize those. If you provide us with written comment, we'll take those for several days and we haven't determined, but it's open, we'll take them, summarize those, share those with the board and look at adopting an ordinance. We're shooting for a February adoption date. We have to wait for the Adirondack Park Agency to provide final review comments because we are within the park, we have to maintain a locally approved land use plan status. With that, we'll go on. A little bit about background. Our current zoning ordinance was adopted in 1988 so it's been twelve, thirteen years now since we've had a new ordinance. Everything we're talking about tonight is based in our comprehensive plan. The zoning ordinance by nature has to be grounded in a comprehensive plan. We hired Chazen Companies and tonight we have Stu Messigner. Stu has led the town through this process. We have established a steering committee, comprised of many individuals that were interested in the revision of our ordinance. We established focus groups and we'll talk a little bit about that. What you have in front of you tonight is a two year effort, it's result of many hours of meetings, hundreds of hours of review and multiple iterations. Thanks Bob. Bob Keenan, Bob's our Director of IT here and has volunteered to run the program for us. Here's a list of our steering committee members, I'm not going to read them but it is a diverse group and some of the people I mentioned before, our Planning Staff, Marilyn Ryba, our Senior Planner came on during the process and I apologize, I have my back to the board here, but it is a diverse group. I'll go to the next slide, focus group meetings. We did do a lot of public outreach. We wanted to make sure that we did reach out to every involved group, any constituency that we could identified. So, we met with business owners, citizens groups, general public, open meetings to get some feedback on what direction the ordinance should change. So, there's our focus group meetings and again, I'll emphasize in public outreach, as we developed this ordinance, we introduced a draft a year ago in September. So, September of 2000, that draft, we received comments during that time period, we went back and made some significant revisions to that and then we introduced it again in September 2001. We summarized that in our town report, if you had a mailing address in the Town of Queensbury, you should have received a copy of the town report summarizing the ordinance and the major changes. We then conducted five information workshops in the various firehouses throughout the town. Those were conducted in August and September. We have ample handouts, you can see and I'll make reference to those later. We published the ordinance on our websites and here we are at the public hearing process. What did we do to revise the ordinance? Here's just some bullet items. It is a two hundred page document, it's very difficult to summarize some of the changes but here are some of the major changes. It is reformatted. By reformatting and reorganizing it, we think we've made it simpler to gain access to, simpler to interpret, simpler for our Zoning Board and our Zoning Administrator to make interpretations. We updated definitions. Many, of the activities that we're undertaking today, in the land use realm, weren't contemplated in 1988 when the previous ordinance was written. So, we had to update definitions. We revised and rewritten our review processes, site plan, clustering and planned unit development. A lot of what we hear from the developers and the land use attorneys involved in the process is that some of the processes we're antiquated or conflicted with how we're actually implementing our ordinance. One of the new changes and you can see, we've got some blowups of these, are a tab of their summaries. Rather then have a narrative list in our ordinance, we provided, these happened to be developed in Excel, it's just a listing of uses along the left hand colunm, a listing of the zones along the top row and then you can identify, is this particular use allowed in your zone. So, we think that has simplified the process. Here's an example of that and I'm just going to flip to the next slide. So, we identify something by an accessory use, permitted use, etcetera and they're color coded. What's new? I think one of the most significant things and something that Chazen Companies spent a considerable effort on are commercial design guidelines and we do have six areas, they're actually five different design guidelines where we have specific drawings depicting how we want the form of commercial development to take place and we'll talk a little bit about that later or when we break up but I think they will go a long way towards improving the quality of development that occurs in the town, that will provide an easy communication tool for a developer when they do come into town or somebody who resides locally, what actually does the town want to see. We find that developers, people that come in propose a project, often really are taking a stab in the dark when the make a presentation to a Planning Board and then they go back and revise their document. So, this is meant to give them some real guidance. Access Management, is going to be a very particular thing. Access Management is the control of access to highways and it's one of the more, let me rephrase this, it's very important, apparently it's the most effective means to provide and maintain the level of service on highways in lieu of constructing additional capacity and constructing of additional roadways. So, one of the major problems the town faces and is going to continue to face is the growth of traffic. Access Management is meant to control how commercial development accesses the highway, how frequently the spacing of those curb cuts are and hopefully provide for an easier trip up and down some of our commercial corridors. Special Use Permits, that's another new itern. We've had some sensitive, particular sensitive land uses that are often in conflict with residential land use. We've tried to address that through the use of Special Use Permits that will allow our Planning Board to impose special conditions where a land use may not be completely appropriate in an area of town and you see there's a list of several of those and specifically adult uses, and kennels fall into that category, that's a no-brainer. Marinas. Marinas are not an allowed land use in the Town of Queensbury. We have numerous marinas in the town, this is meant to allow marinas to maintain their operating status and allow us to become involved when they come in for an expansion to see that it happens in an orderly fashion and it happens consistent with the adjacent landowners wishes. I apologize, I'm going to run through a lot of this stuff, I think most people are really interested in what are the map changes so I'm going to brush over this but we will answer any questions in the future. Environmental Performance Standards, that's a significant thing and it's a tool that is used in many new zoning ordinances. We have clear standards on what kind of lighting do we want to occur on commercial properties. We've had several projects that come through in the last five years where we think facilities are over lit, inappropriately lit and this is meant to address an appropriate level oflighting. We've used an industry standard that's used throughout the nation to provide some guidance on how much lighting should occur on a commercial property. Clear Cutting and Grading standards, we had some standards in our current ordinance, we think this is an improvement. Some of the complaints received over the last five to ten years was that properties are being cleared without any development proposal being put forth. This allows us to provide some level of regulation to make sure that properties aren't being clear cut. Particulates and Smoke, those specifically addressed in Industrial land uses. Soil and Erosion Control, basically, we've beefed up our standards to be consistent with New York State Urban Design Measures and Stormwater Runoff, we've basically taken that out of another section of our ordinance and placed it into our zoning ordinance and we can talk a little bit about that. One of the more significant things from a commercial aspect are Landscape and Buffering Standards. This slide doesn't do a great justice to the graphic that Chazen Companies prepared but landscaping was often subject to our Beautification Committee and the input of our Planning Board and what we've tried to do with this was put forth what specific tree species are appropriate for the north country, what kind of densities do we want to see planted under specific conditions, such as parking areas, other specific density we'd like to see in order to mitigate aesthetic impacts. There's a Protection Standard. One of the complaints we've had from our Planning Board was that commercial site plans would install their landscaping but not maintain it so we do have a new protection standard in there. Buffering. Buffering used to be based solely on separation distance between a commercial use and a residential or an industrial use and a residential use. Now, our buffering, as well as being based on uses, instead of just a strict dimensional separation requirement, we have a planning scheme that's proposed that's performance based and it should be more effective when trying to buffer the conflicts between two land uses and we have specific diagrams showing what is required and what is proposed. New zoning districts, we have three new zoning districts. Our mix use district and we'll talk a little bit about that. Main Street is one of the more, is the focal point for our mix use district. It's designed to allow mixing of residential and commercial uses with professional uses in order to create a vibrant neighborhood. Main Street specifically, we'd like to see pedestrians. There are some design guidelines to seek pedestrian friendly type of development. Two to three story buildings, parking in the rear. We have some examples of that. Commercial Industrial districts, those are districts are located, you can see on VanDusen and Corinth and Dix and Warren where we're going to allow some commercial uses to take place in some former industrial areas. We found that these industrial districts haven't taken off as industrial districts and that there are need in these specific areas for some commercial retail uses on a limited basis to allow some service uses for some specific areas of town to help cut down on some traffic. Professional Office district, that's right here on Bay Road. Basically, we've renamed our multifamily district here for what we want it to be. We want Bay Road corridor to be Professional Office District. So, we've done that and there's several other smaller areas of town where we've also proposed design guidelines that would help guide how we would like the development to look along the Bay Road corridor. Modified two of our zoning districts. The Highway Commercial district we split into two. Basically, the Highway Commercial Intensive district is identical to the current Highway Commercial district. The HC Mod or the moderate district is, removes some uses that are inconsistent or that were most problematic for the adjacent residential landowners. In this district, specifically the east side of Route 9 between Montray and Round Pond and you can see some of the uses that we've eliminated from that district. We also have gotten rid of two districts. You see our Commercial Residential district, which most of that area is now zoned multi use and we've also eliminated the Plaza Commercial district and we've zoned those areas Highway Commercial and so there's not a big change there, it's just a nomenclature change. What's been rezoned and this is where we're going to go into our map presentation. We're going to walk you around the town and show you those properties where we have made some changes to actual zoning districts or their existing zoning. This is North Queensbury, in order to get your bearings, that's, Lake George is that white area to the north of the map. There's several properties, I see Mr. Bolen in the audience, he's within this particular area. We've proposed, there's several existing properties that are currently zoned LC-42. They're small lots, we're zoning them Waterfront Residential, they do indeed have waterfront access and this zoning will allow, basically them to continue to do what they're doing today, there's not a big change there. There's three areas here, and Craig the subdivision name here? MR. CRAIG BROWN, Zoning Administrator-Ridge Knolls. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Ridge Knolls, this is Ridge Knolls here, it's currently zoned 42 acres, most of the lots are three acre or less in there. This was also proposed as an AP A map change we had to get through and it's a three acre zone. So, it's basically, the property was missed zone and this is going to allow the landowners to maintain their lots in an existing fashion. Every time somebody came in with a housing addition in this area, they've got a hundred foot setback on a three acre lot, it was very difficult to constraint. Two areas here that are, this is Route 149, I'm sorry, this is Ridge Road or 9L, those two areas are subject to design guidelines that we're trying to maintain an Adirondack theme and don't ask me to describe that but you know what it is when you see it. This property here is the, I believe that's the George Ryan property and I'll try to give you some references to help you know where you are, we're proposing to zone that consistent with what the golf course is zoned to allow the garden stand to maintain it's existence in that location. So, that's two minor ones. And again, we'll walk you through this, we'll pull back up the GIS maps so if somebody has a question about what I'm talking about, we can come back to that. This is Sunnyside. There's a lot over here, a single lot that is currently zoned three acre and we're zoning it to be one acre consistent with this, all this yellow area is one acre zone. So, it's zoned three acres. We did a suitability analysis, we looked at soils, wetlands, slopes, depths to groundwater and we made, and it was also identified in our comp plan that this was suitable for one acre zoning. So, that's one of our biggest up- zoning in this particular rezoning. This is the southeastern portion of the town. This is the Hudson River along the south, Dix Avenue. This is the airport right here. This is one of the larger areas that we are rezoning several properties. This property adjacent to the airport that we are zoning Industrial, these gray areas are Industrial. They're currently zoned Single Family Residential and we don't see that occurring. The comp plan identified that we do have a new sewer district coming into this area and this would be a primary for some industrial development. This is Dix Avenue and this is the Boulevard. There's several changes going on here. Along Dix Avenue, we're proposing a Mix Use Zone. We see that there's some limited commercial development. Some people don't even know that this is Queensbury, if you're not from the area, you drive through, you think you're in Kingsbury or Hudson Falls but there's several small retail establishments over there. We're basically, we're zoning this to allow residential use to maintain it's existence but recognizing the need for some smaller service uses in this area. This area here is also, this whole area is mixed use. It's land that's been zoned industrial, Zack's Hot Dog Stand is in Queensbury and we're proud of that. This is the Ciba Geigy site, it's zoned Heavy Industrial. We're maintaining our Heavy Industrial designation here. One of the things to clean up, we do have Light Industrial One Acre, Light Industrial Three Acre, we're calling it all Light Industrial, the density will control how much development will occur. We don't need to say, minimum lot size on that, that's a simplification of our ordinance, we think that's a good thing. You see this area here, this is the K-Mart site which we hope will maintain K- Mart site here. This is the area that we are zoning from, right now is zoned Industrial, part of it is zoned Industrial, part of it is zoned Plaza Commercial. We're going to zone this Commercial Industrial. So, this will allow industrial development to occur. We do have sewer in this area, we'd like to see industrial development occur in this area but it will allow for a limited commercial development to occur. So, it's kind of recognizing that that area is in transition. This is Quaker Road, there haven't been, just the name changed to the HC area here and we'll move on. This is the Northway. This is Route 9. What we want to show you here, this is the Aviation Mall right here, one of the significant changes has been in the works for probably ten years, that this an area that's zoned Multi Family Residential. There are some garden apartments in that area. It was proposed in our comp plan to zone that Highway Commercial So, we've established a Highway Commercial Moderate area in there. That was at the request of the landowner earlier on during this process. We have, you can see this is the HC Mod area. This is Montray Road right here and this is Round Pond, Great Escape. We've had a comment already that this HC Mod extends onto a property that is directly adjacent to the Great Escape. The Great Escape is located right here and it may not be appropriate for HC Mod in that area, maybe it's more consistent to have HC or another designation. That's the kind of feedback that we're looking for, from you tonight. We also have in this area, these are some properties that are plaza's that were zoned Plaza Commercial. We're designating them Highway Commercial. There's not a big change there, it gets rid of a zone. I think the Highway Commercial zone would allow some gas stations, drive-thru banks. Plaza Commercial doesn't, its really the commercial center of town, there's really not necessary for that kind of distinction here. So, we've made those changes to that section. Greenway North, there are no changes, this property which often has been the contentious issue here in town. Call it Red Lobster, call it Cracker Barrel, what you will. We evaluated that property. We looked at designating it a Professional Office property. We felt we could do that and not be subject to a spot zoning concern. We looked at it, the numbers, we did a pro-forum, the numbers didn't justify zoning it Professional Office. We couldn't reach a consensus. The Steering Committee and there are some members here and I'll acknowledge them maybe a little later, we struggled with it just like the boards have struggled with it. We couldn't reach a consensus and we punted, I think that's the only way we can say it, we just couldn't come up with the best designation for that. I think several of the members thought it was Professional Office, would be an appropriate designation for some kind of health related facility and others thought it, it was a commercial property and you've seen that debate go on, I think we'll continue to debate that. It's going to remain as it is zoned and it's a residential zoning. This is the ACC campus here, this is Bay Road and this is Glen Lake, the lake in Queensbury. This is our Professional Office zone. This zone recognizes that we do have some sewer coming up the area. We've established design guidelines, we call them the Bay Road design guidelines. Basically, we'd like to maintain pitched roofs in this area, buildings that look residential in character or professional in character so that they're not inconsistent and in conflict with residential properties to the rear. We'd like to minimize the amount of pavement that is visible from the Bay Road corridor. So, we've got some diagrams of that, we can look at those after. We think that this is a good thing, I think it's something that people acknowledge at what's, basically, we picked up on what is good that's going on, on the corridor and basically put that into our draft of our ordinance. This is also an area that was identified in our comp plan. This is Gurney Lane Road and it's very difficult to see. This is Exit 20 and these are several properties that are just south of the West Mountain Infirmary that we're proposing to zone Professional Office and I know that there are some people here that may be opponents of that, there are several proponents of that. What we recognize is that they really aren't residential in character, they're so close in proximity to the Northway. It's very difficult to build these as residential units. So, we're looking to encourage some low intensity professional offices and I think that's, that we can address the concerns that the residents or the adjacent landowners may have through the site plan process. I think, in no way are we going to exceed the traffic that's generated at the West Mountain Infirmary, I think that's a real busy place, I think the concern should be just flipped in that regard. That can be handled through the site plan review process, what is the traffic impact. I think the lands are not so large that we be encouraging a large scale development, I think you'd see a moderate scaled development in that area. This is Main Street and Corinth Road and what we're highlighting here, is there is a small professional office area at the north end of it which fronts on Sherman Avenue, this is Sherman Avenue and that basically recognizes the professional offices that exist on Western Avenue. We have a mixed use development, this is our entire Main Street. Mix Use does allow for residences to maintain, allows those people to stay there. What we're tying to encourage on Main Street are two and three story structures. We have design guidelines to go along with our mix use area and that's a discretion in and of itself but I think this is one of the more exciting, from my standpoint, one of the more exciting areas of town that we're really looking for redevelopment to occur and that we're really going to reinvent how we look and how people perceive Queensbury and the entrance to the City of Glens Falls. The gray areas are the Industrial Zone lands, those are staying the same. This area was zoned I think CR, Commercial Residential and we've zoned it HC Mod. Basically, that's the hotel that exist there, the McDonald, etcetera. So, it's really no change per se but we just wanted to acknowledge that. This is one of the other commercial industrial areas, this is currently zoned Industrial. We're proposing a CI designation to allow the industrial use but to encourage some small scale commercial development in there to provide some services to the adjoining, this entire neighborhood. We see a lot of traffic pressures at Exit 18 because we don't have service uses on the west side of the Northway. So, this is one of those things that we're trying to encourage and you saw, we did a small rezoning here, this is the Stewart Shop. We had to rezone that property to allow Stewart's to move forward and we've already had antic total feed back from the other gas service providers on the corridor that they are seeing, their business declined because of Stewarts. Number one, because they do have a competitive advantage but because of their location and people are finding it's more convenient and that's one of the things that we want to do, that's good planning, at least in my mind. This little box here, these are residential properties that were formally zoned industrial, we've zoned them residential for what they are. So, it's not a big sweeping change there. This is West Side Auto right here, this is Carey Industrial Park. Web Graphics is, I think this property right here and this is VanDusen, yes. This is zoned residential and most of it, this is Lake Zoli, as I know it, I don't know if everybody else knows it as Lake Zoli. There are two properties, Niagara Mohawk property and another private property owned that we're zoning industrial to, because the property was split zoned. So, we're basically changing the zone line. We feel confident that we can buffer those industrial uses in the event that they do come with our performance standards, with our new landscaping requirements and with our site plan review process to alleviate the concerns of our residential neighbors. This area is Hidden Hills, Queen Victoria's Grant, Queensbury Forest, Sherman Pines and the Pines. This is the City of Glens Falls reservoir, to get your bearings here. This area was mostly one acre, zoned SRI acre. We've designated it SR20. Most of the lots that you see here are less than twenty thousand square feet. So, it made sense to zone it twenty thousand square feet lots. There is very little opportunity for additional development, I think this property itself is controlled by the City of Glens Falls. So, there's really little, no net increase in development that's going to occur in this area but we thought it was most appropriate and it is one of the larger areas that we did re-designate. Several smaller properties, we did a little cleanup here. These two properties are owned by the City of Glens Falls as part of their watershed property. They were zoned residential. We have a zoning designation that acknowledges municipal ownership in Parkland Recreation uses so we zoned them in that fashion. This is a privately owned property that was zoned with that PR zoning designation and it wasn't appropriate to zone it Parkland Recreation so we zoned it SFRl acre. So, that was to alleviate the burden that we were placing on a private property owner in that area. And all of these recommendations again, I want to emphasize were identified as recommendations in our Comprehensive Plan and were debated after many hours with various constituencies and our Steering Committee members. I think at this point, we want to open up the public hearing portion to hear your comments and we'd encourage you to limit your time to three to five minutes. If we can answer some questions on the fly without getting too lengthy, we'd like to answer thern. About the zoning map, we'll pull that up and we can scroll to any spot that you'd like to see or if you have a specific comment that you want to place on the record, we'll do that. We do have several written comments, we're not going to read those verbatim. Caroline Barber is here from the clerk's office, they will be recorded, they will be on the record and we will review those, so they bear the weight of verbal comments so they will not be dismissed or ignored. With that, we'll turn it over to the board and thank you for enduring our presentation. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Chris, after this public hearing how long will people have to submit written letters or comments after the meeting? TOWN COUNSEL SCHACHNER-That's actually entirely up to you, as the Town Board you should make a determination in that regard and to have a public comment period for as long as you'd like. MR. ROUND, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-Basically, the board can't take action, I think the APA meets the second week of February so if at some portion after that, Mark, we can establish that date tonight, so the public is well informed in that regard. TOWN COUNSEL SCHACHNER-Yea, we're expecting the Adirondack Park Agency to render it's advisory recommendation on this on February 14th and to render it's actual decision on Friday February 15th. They're not obligated to do that but that's what we expect. The earliest, the Town Board meeting in February, the second meeting would be on Monday, February 25th, that would be the earliest that you could act, remembering that prior to acting, you also have to conduct SEQRA review. The Chazen Companies, several months ago prepared a Long Form Environmental Assessment Form Part I and obviously the Community Development Department will assist the board in that regard as well. There's no magic to that February 25th date but that would be the first regular Town Board meeting at which you could take action if you saw fit to do so. MR. ROUND, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-I recommend that you keep it open until Friday, February 15th, if comments are received by that date and that would allow us to give you some feedback on what those comments are. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Okay, thank you. Well at this time, this is an opportunity for the public that's present that would like to comment on the new zoning ordinance to step forward, state your name and address for the record please and please try to limit your comments to five minutes in length if possible. PUBLIC HEARING 7:45 P.M. MR. RICHARD LINKE-Richard Linke, I was at a meeting similar to this, I remember thirty- three years ago when the zoning of Exit 20 by Gurney Lane was being configured and we fought very hard to keep it residential. The reason it looks so good today is that residents fought hard to keep it that way, the way Gurney Lane looks and I'm really curious as to the reason why the existing zoning isn't satisfactory and I have just five quick points to make. Number one, on the map, when it first came up it said the changes that have been made, and that really makes me very nervous when I see something in print like that. The zoning changes that have been made, I hope that this isn't locked in stone. Many of you that know that interchange, may recall a few years ago, there was a two hundred year old Pine that got hit by lightening and came down next to the county building, the county garage, that small brick building and what a devastation that was. A rape of the area and it was a natural occurrence, there wasn't anything we could do about it but no matter what kind of professional offices might be allowed to go into that sliver of land there, as people are leaving Queensbury, there are going to be parking lots, there's going to be winter time when the foliage isn't on the trees and it's just going to be another barren spot. What happened to the Adirondack image that you were just talking about? Why destroy some of the last vegetation that we have in this area? I hear all kinds, I see the diagrams about parking lots and trying to reduce the impact of say, professional office buildings but last time you waited at a doctor's office or dentist office with fourteen or fifteen other people sitting there, you know that there's an awful lot of parking and an awful lot of cars going in and out, we see already on Quaker Road. Also, this is the area, this interchange is when people leave Queensbury and see Queensbury get on from Vermont, get on to go south. Again, what kind of an image do you want them to take with them? This interchange is one of the only interchanges on the whole interstate from Albany to Canada that doesn't have some kind of gasoline station or Stewart's Ice Cream Station, why ruin the last piece of land? And again, the reason for this change, I wonder over at the miracle strip over there with the malls, there are empty stores over there, if someone needs some profession office space, I suggest they go there. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you, sir. Would anyone else care to address the board? Yes, sir. MR. BOB F ALLMANN-My name is Bob Fallmann, I live up on Gurney Lane and like Dick, I would hate to see this area be rezoned. It's an area that's been surrounded by residential, it was residential single family one acre and it is surrounded by residential area and in the past the town, I've been here for twenty- three years and the in the past the town has always try to keep this kind of comer of the town as a residential or as a green area, you might say. Just to give you an example, on the property I bought there twenty-three years ago, the zoning was sixty foot by a hundred foot for a lot, for a building lot. Okay, over the time, the town has moved that to three acres and then, now it's five acres and that just goes to show you that they wanted to keep a rural atmosphere, you might say, to this section of the town. And when I see professional office coming over, that's kind of a stepping stone, to me to moving commercial in that area and as Dick said, we had one instance a few years back where they tried to put a sales office for a trucking firm in on that comer on there. Another reason, I don't see any reason, I mean, there's enough of that blue that you've got for professional office space throughout the town in other areas to really accommodate what the needs are. I don't see any reason to expand that over in that particular area there. And again, another thing that I don't like about the idea is that you're basically increasing the density, intensity of development in that area. Professional Office allows you to go on twenty thousand square foot and according to those, the things I've read on it, you can put duplex housing in there or multiple family housing in addition to the professional offices on there. In that whole area you've got in blue there, was going to drain right down in towards that Rush Pond area which is basically a sensitive environmental area in there and I don't think you really want to start increasing density there, I thought you, I'd think if you were going to do anything, you should go in the opposite direction and decrease it. So, I'm asking you if you wouldn't just leave that as Single Family Residential One Acre and do away with the proposed professional office standard. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. MR. SAM BUTTO-I'm going to reiterate. My name is Sam Butto, I live on Gurney Lane as well. I'm going to reiterate what everybody else has just said about Gurney Lane, I'd like to see it remain the aesthetically pleasing area that it is right now today. I think by changing it to a professional office area that you really open up a can of worms and it becomes a lightening rod for other development that I don't think we want to see there. So, I am definitely opposed to the change. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Anyone else care to address the board? MR. FRED CHAMPAGNE-I guess I have a couple of concerns. My name is Fred Champagne, I reside at 1 Juniper Drive. I think I read somewhere in here, Chris and you're going to have to guide me through this but somewhere in this guide, did I see where mining has been removed from RR3 and moved over to Industrial? I think we've got some folks out here that would like to give us a round of applause for that. A little bit late but maybe not. My next concern is, as you indicated on the south side of Lake Sunnyside, south side of Sunnyside Road, most of that now has been changed from three acre to one acre? Is that a correct statement? MR. ROUND, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-That's correct. MR. CHAMPAGNE-And you did say that there was analysis made of the various soils and good reasons for justifying that change. I would also like to point out that those soils that are even north of Lake Sunnyside going from the north side of Sunnyside, at least through, well obviously 149, those soils, as I've done mine inspections out there, appear to be, not all that different from what you've just changed from three to one and I'm just curious as to why the board or your group has not taken a second look at how you might modify or to change that zone from three acres to one acre and believe me, I'm not excited about higher density anywhere in the Town of Queensbury. But what I am concerned with is, you know, for those of us that have moved there and I guess I've been there now since about 1957, I sure would like to have gas. I would like to have water. I think the survival of Lake Sunnyside is going to be sewer and I've been through all the motions and the analysis and the costs and the effectiveness, if you will, of doing those kinds of things. Now, I also realize that that will never in God's world happen, given a three acre zoning. You know that and I know that. Developers can not afford to support that kind of development, necessary to improve those utilities based on three acre zoning and I would just like to encourage you to take another look at that and rather then having someone come in on a random basis and go through the process of having that rezoned through a zoning change, I just think it needs to be looked at hard before this shift is made. That's my second point. I guess my third point is, as I review this map and I think you said in the very beginning that you made every effort to try to simplify this, well, I've shared this with some of my neighbors out there and as I look at this map and the various zones that you have tried to identify, to me it's like tiptoeing through the tulips. I mean, it just goes from, you know, twenty steps forward and you're in another zone and I just, you know, again, realizing what happened to the section of property up there on Aviation Road and Route 9, realizing the pitfalls that we've fallen in there, sooner or later, someone's got to make a determination, how best to zone this town to keep it as simple as we possibly can while at the same time, allowing for the variations in terms of what the needs are. I'm not a developer and certainly never hope to become one but I've got to tell you, if I had to go through everyone of these different areas and try to identify by line, it's going to, I mean certainly it's going to make work for the Zoning Board and the zoning staffbut it's still pretty complicated, to be very honest with you and fortunately, I've not spent the time that some of you have dealing with this. But it just seems to me as if there maybe some other alternatives here to even further simplify and I guess, what I'm saying is, not that we have too many different zones, but we have too many adjacent areas that tend to be of a different zone. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you, Fred. Dr. Hoffman. DR. MICHAEL HOFFMAN-I'm sorry, I didn't catch, was there a time limit on the? SUPERVISOR BROWER-Approximately five minutes. I don't have a stop watch so. DR. HOFFMAN-I may split my presentation in half then. Just a general comment, I do feel that this for the Town Board members here tonight that this may be the most important item that you'll vote on during your terms as Town Board Members so I would strongly advise you to spend a lot of time and effort and thought on this. I would strongly advise you to read the entire zoning code in it's entirety. I don't think it's that difficult to do that. It may seem like an obvious thing to suggest but, my, I had the distinct impression when the Master Plan came in front of the Town Board a few years ago that definitely there were people on the Town Board that hadn't read it and voted for it anyway. As far as more specific comments, ah, one other general comment is that as you go through this, read it, educate yourselves, ask around to other residents of the community what they think and ask yourself what you would like the town to look like ten or twenty years from now because this is the closest thing that we'll have to a blue print of what the town's going to look like. As far as specific comments, I'd like to just address these various miscellaneous re- zonings that have been nicely summarized on that chart back there and actually, I'm quite glad that this was put together because it made it much easier for me to identify where all these changes actually were. I'd like to just encourage to, we just heard Chris present a general overview of this but if you look at each individual rezoning I would say he spent probably about ten seconds per rezoning. I think it deserves a little bit more time and effort and thought. I know the Steering Committee has spent a lot of time and effort on this and they certainly have done their homework and we have a great debt of gratitude to them but they're not our elected representatives, you are. So, I would encourage you to look in more detail at all of these specific re-zonings. A few specific comments about the re-zonings, I am concerned about areas that are be rezoned to higher density. In certain circumstances where they're already completely built out, I can't argue with that. Obviously, if they're built out, it's not really going to have an affect on development patterns and it would make it more efficient for future modifications to those properties and so forth. But there are some, some of those areas do contain undeveloped properties and particular there's the properties that are currently zoned as Parkland Residential 10 acre which is adjacent to Potter, Land Conservation 42 acres. I think if you look at them, the increase densities are numbers five, number 15, number 21, number 29, number 30 and number 33 on the list there. Some of the reasons why they're listed as going to higher density state that they're consistent with current lot sizes. Now, again, if there are substantial undeveloped properties within these areas, I really don't accept that as an adequate justification for rezoning because the zones that, the zoning and the development that occurred twenty or thirty or forty years ago, is not necessarily appropriate zoning for 2002. We have a different town, we have twice or three or four times as many people as there were here thirty or forty years ago. We have stresses on traffic. We have stresses on the school budget, our school population. I think all of those things have to be taken into account. I think there also is a little bit of a confusion perhaps in terms of use of the low density versus large lot sizes. Contrary to what you might think, I'm not a big proponent of large lot sizes. However, it is possible to have low density and still have relatively small lot sizes but maintain the lower density zoning but allow for clustering which would allow those utilities to be put in on a more efficient basis. Allow roads to be put in more efficiently and at the same time, preserving open space. And I wanted in particular just to bring to your attention, there was an article in the Post Star from November 30th about a cluster subdivision in Saratoga Springs, they mention, it was on a one hundred four acre parcel, it included forty-six lots, three quarter acre each with sixty percent of the land dedicated to open space. The original proposal that had come before the board there was for a, was for forty-six two acre lots that would have taken up the entire parcel. Now, we have a cluster provision within our zoning but what made that feasible, what made that protection of the sixty percent of the hundred four acres as open space, what made that possible was the fact that it was zoned two acres rather then half acre or an acre because it allowed that much more property to be clustered away from and it gave an incentive to the developer to use that clustering mechanisrn. So, I bring this up in particular because right now we have an Open Space Committee which is looking into what the town can do to protect open space and I'd be very concerned to make sure that we're not going to undercut that committee by up-zoning to higher densities unnecessarily. As far as, again some of the specific areas that were mentioned regarding the property adjacent to West Mountain that's currently zoned Land Conservation, have we looked at how close that property is to the water supply for Halfway Brook Reservoir? What would the impact be on the reservoir? Do we know what the impact of some of these re- zonings would be on traffic, especially the rezoning that's planned for adjacent to Dixon Road? Dixon Road is currently very heavily traveled. Some of the intersections adjacent to Dixon Road are very busy. If we increase the density in that property, what would be the impact? If we do have to increase the density, maybe Land Conservation 42 is not appropriate but is there something in between? I believe the property that we were looking at adjacent to Dixon Road was going to go to half acre lots. Well, is there something in between 42 acres and half acre that might be more appropriate for that? What would be the impact on the noise, from the Northway to the adjacent neighborhood? Has anybody talked to the neighbors in that Dixon Road subdivision as far as what their feelings are about that? Do they even know that this is happening? I think that's all I'm going to say for right now. I'm coming back later, I have a few comments to make about the design guidelines for Route 9 corridor. Thanks. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Yes, sir. MR. PATRICK SORSBY-My name is Patrick Sorsby and I live on Ridge Road in Queensbury and I've lived in this area most of my life which is not a long life, I'm only twenty-six years old, but I love the Town of Queensbury because of what it provides. It has a unique resource that you can't find anywhere else in the world and that's it's scenery and way of living and my hope is to help preserve that as much as possible and my greatest concern with the rezoning proposals here tonight is that the public doesn't have a full opportunity to digest the proposing changes and then comment and become deeply involved in the process. While I can appreciate the opportunity to come tonight and talk with you about the proposing changes, I would like better to see the proposed changes put to a town wide vote. As it was quoted in that paper by the Town Supervisor Mr. Brower, these are very important changes to the future of the town. Given their importance, I would hope if it were possible that we could educate the public through the newspaper and media on the proposed changes and see if we couldn't put them to some kind of town wide vote, possibly in November. Now, I understand that legally the town can do it by a vote of the board but I think something as major and important to the future of the town should really have a little more time to digest and really have more time for the public to get involved in and really put their participation into it. And again, I can understand that they do have the opportunity here tonight to come and talk to you but I really think a vote would be more appropriate, something as important as this. And again, personally I would rather see, I'm very, I look with anticipation at the town's proposal to preserve open space but I would just echo the other sentiments put forward tonight that we don't undercut ourselves by the same time proposing to protect open space but opening development up. It's almost putting the cart before the horse, we should almost preserve open space and then look at what we can develop and so if we can keep an even balance on development, I think it would be very conducive to the future of the town. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. MR. JOHN CURRY-My name is John Curry and I live on the Bay Road, just above the new fire house up here. First of all, I'd like to support and commend the committee and the board for the removal of mining from the residential zoning. I think when you go beyond normal grading to grade a lot to be able to build a house and you go to changing the topography of the neighborhood, that's a big step in a residential area and I'm glad we're doing away with that with the new zoning. Once again, I commend you on that. More than a comment, I have a question. Did the committee consider the reconstruction of Route 149 at the Bay Road and Ridge Road corridor and will that include any relocation of Route 149 and how will that affect the zoning of the properties that border both of those corridors, the 149, Bay Road and Ridge Road? I guess probably, you may not have an answer other then you have considered that but. MR. ROUND, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-Yea, the relocation of 149 is mostly, there weren't a lot of horizontal realignments. My understanding is, a lot of vertical alignments and there aren't any major, as you saw, there's no major re-zonings along 149 accept for those two nodes and it's basically existing neighborhood commercial zones or highway commercial zones that were established, nomenclature was established for those. MR. CURRY-My second question then, along those same lines, was there any thought given to the, in the zoning process where we could change the egress and access from the fame pit? If you take it away from the WRIA zone and the RR3 zone and to put the access and egress from that pit to Route 149 where it would be away from those residential areas, would that be part of a zoning plan? MR. ROUND, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-It's not a zoning issue per say. MR. CURRY-But I understand that the, one of the reasons that the access and egress has not been changed from the residential area to 149 is because of the traffic pattern on 149 and I'm just wondering if this zoning in any way or the relocation of 149 could be arranged to allow for the access and egress without going through a one acre zone area, residential area? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I guess I don't know the answer to that question. That's something that MR. CURRY-I would ask that to be considered, thank you. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Can I just comment, I know, several comments are about up- zoning and increase densities and that's not the nature of this process and some people also commented about public participation and public involvement. All these recommendations that were put forward to the Steering Committee were established in our Comprehensive Plan. The comprehensive plan process was a lengthy process, it did involve numerous meetings, outreach program, it was completed in 1998. So, you see, we're not, these things were dreamed up by the Steering Committee. They were identified in the comp plan process so, anything that's out here, any of these re-designations were identified in a comprehensive plan process that was public participation process and we've done our best to reach out to the public and as I said, most of this, most everything that you see here tonight was summarized in some fashion and it's very difficult when you do summarize you do lose some level of details. So, that's what we're here for tonight. MR. GEORGE RYAN-Hi, my name is George Ryan. I have two questions. One question is, is that, I'm zoned SRIA right now and in my proposed zone is that RR5, is that the new proposal? MR. ROUND, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-That's correct. MR. RYAN-Now, another thing, zoning grows. It grows with the time and it changes. Are you guys going to planning to start a new zoning plan as soon as this is done because zoning grows that fast? I mean, you're taking my land that's suburban residential now which I have truck farm on it, it's very commercial and you're going to make it RR5. I sell propane, I have all the same problems as every other commercial business on that strip right there. I'm next to a logging supply, I'm next to a bar and restaurant and a golf course and you're going to take my suburban residential where I have a pig farm and you're going to make that rural, I don't understand how you come with this RR5. Zoning keeps changing as the time comes. You could put whatever zone you want into it but you're not going to change the issue of the use of that land. It's still going to be the same and it's still going to get in tensed as taxes go up, I have to keep going up or whoever owns the land. Zoning changes by the year. It's a shame that you started this in 1988 and it's not done because by the time you get this done, you should be doing a new one because that's how fast things change. There's more people coming on the earth and it's just going to keep getting worse and worse. You can restrict whatever you want but you're only going to hold it back so much and I think you're giving me a screwing by making mine RR5 and I don't like it, I just want that to me known and it just doesn't jive. So, that's how it's going to be. I mean, I'm selling on it, I've got a commercial business there, you can call it whatever you want, I've got animals and I went for site plan review and even prior to where I started when I first came to this town in 1979, when I started they told me five hundred feet from the four comers is Highway Commercial. Well, my land fits within that five hundred feet of that Highway Commercial and yet we're going to get this RR5. Like I said, it's not going to affect me, it might affect my kids or if I try to sell it but myself, how are you going to stop somebody from doing what they've doing? So, I'd like you to take that into consideration and it should be zoned, I'm next to a bar and restaurant. They sell shirts, golf balls, golf course, logging supply, Stewarts gas station. I get the truck traffic and everything else and that is not a good use. It's not a good use as a suburban residential one acre either. Golf course in the back, you can't play in the yard, you get hit in the head with a golf ball. The trucks in the front, you wouldn't dare let your kids out, they could get runned over. Now, they're going to come through and widen the road, the cars are going to go by faster. It's commercial, it's not RR5. I mean, I don't know where you come in with that or where you get the picture from and like I said, it's not going to affect me and you should be working on a new zoning already, this thing should get adopted and then you should start a new one because zoning changes every year. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. MR. MATT COFFIN-For once I agree with George. I'm Matt Coffin, I live on Ridge Road. The first few are questions that I have. Design guidelines, that kind of makes me nervous whenever anybody tells anybody what to do, usually, they don't want to come because they don't want to be told how they're going to make things look. Should we have another video store like we had down on Quaker Road? No, we shouldn't but I think that should be a pretty broad guideline, not specific like it seems to be. Who knows what people will want to build? Second thing, maybe the reason the industrial isn't taking off is because of this zoning package. You know, we have to think that over too. We set up these zones that were supposed to be industrial but I went to a couple of these meetings where they brought up the fact that we were going pre-approve these things for different uses. Has that ever been done in any of this industrial? MR. BROWN, Zoning Administrator-The Veterans Field. COUNCILMAN BREWER-Yea, Veterans Field has guidelines and that's it. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-We have, to answer your question, yes we have limited properties have received MR. COFFIN-Limited. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Yea. MR. COFFIN-But this whole industrial should be, when these people come in and want to start a business, we should have it all set down so, here, this is what we can do for you and I don't believe we have that in Queensbury, at least I've never seen it. LC42 to WRl, that's a joke. That land up there that you're changing, I'm LC42. I agree with green area. I think it's, I bought thirty acres. I built my house in the middle of it. Ever since I did that, you've done nothing but pick on my parcel just like you have, George's. You tell us what we can do and what we can't do. If you want COUNCILMAN BOOR-Where actually are you located? Where is your property? MR. COFFIN-2047 Ridge Road. COUNCILMAN BOOR-Okay, I mean, COUNCILMAN BREWER-By the Gun and Rod Club. MR. COFFIN-Yes. COUNCIILMAN BOOR-Okay, sorry. MR. COFFIN-That's a good question. I'm your fan already, I voted for you once, maybe I might do it again. This parcel here, I'm zoned 42 acre parcel too, you're going to change this to a one acre parcel, that's money. That's nothing but money, is the reason that you're doing that. Those lots are worth a huge fortune, everybody knows it, it's lake front property, don't try and fool us with this green area. Maintain existing area. You've got to grandfather businesses like George's. You can't just shut these people off and say okay, from now on you can't do it. The same with mine particular piece of property. When I built, I had to be thirty foot away from the brook and then it was fifty foot, then it was seventy-five foot. Now it's, I don't know, what is a hundred now? I can't pick my house up and move it every time you change zoning. We've got to have specifics in there for grandfathering that exempts these properties that are being picked on and I do feel picked on when you change it and put my whole house into a non-existing state. Back to this, if you like green area, I've heard a lot of people say, well, let's keep this green, let's keep that green, let's not develop this, let's not develop that. My plan for that was buy property and I think that either the people should buy it themselves or we, as a town should buy this property and keep it forever wild, if that's what we want. Don't pick on somebody that pays taxes and buys the property and not let them develop it. If you we don't want it developed, like Charlie Wood's little piece up there that everybody loves to pick on, buy the danm thing, then it will be forever wild. You might not like the next part. I think that the people that are being affected should pay for that. It should be set up just like a water district. If the people in that area don't want that property developed, they don't want to have a Red Lobster in there, I can't blame them a bit. Let's having a taxing district, those people will be taxed for that property, it will be similar to a homeowner's association. That settles the whole problem. You won't have to worry about half of your Steering Committee not agreeing and half of it agreeing. Fred Champagne had a good point. Postage stamps, that's just what this map looks like. We can't spot zone but boy, it's a good thing you put different colors there because it sure looks like a lot of postage stamps plastered allover the place to me. We should design the town so that we know where we're headed. Not just change because, you know, a certain group screams today and tomorrow another group screams and then, let's have clustering. Well, yea, clustering works fine, twenty years down the road we change like you're doing with this zone right here and we say, okay, that was a clustered zone, now we're going to change that. So, that forty acres that was set aside for wild, well, we're going to develop that now. That's a very good possibility, if you change the zoning in the future that this will happen. Once again, make that homeowner's association buy it like we used to have the recreational fund where they had to give money to, for each building lot. It's the same principal. Those people would buy it, those people would maintain it and those people would pay taxes on it. It wouldn't be tax free. Two hundred and seventeen pages, it doesn't sound like it's simplified to me, it sounds like a book. Voting on changes, like the one man brought up. I think that's a real good idea and I think it should be done by the area, not by the whole town. We have different voting areas and I think as each area is affected, Timmy's area, and Dennis' COUNCILMAN TURNER-Do it in each ward? MR. COFFIN-Yes, wards. Let that ward decide how they want the property. Maybe then, you wouldn't get all this clamor and cluster about the whole thing. You know, if I don't want Ridge Road to be zoned a certain way, well, maybe everybody down there next to the future Red Lobster would have a different matter. You know, they wouldn't care how Ridge Road was designed and vice versa. So, let's do it by ward. I guess that's probably the end of it. I would like to know why every time there's a change, once again, it does seem like certain parcels of property, mostly people that own property do end up with the short end of the stick. You know, this is, I think would be solved by us buying the green area or making people that want these areas, buy them but as a town, we could finance these programs, like the one on Quaker Road or wherever. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Yes, Ma'am. MS. HEATHER SHOUDY BRECHKO-Good evening, my name is Heather Shoudy Brechko and I'm with the Lake George Association and just for the benefit of everyone present, I just want to let you know who the Lake George Association is and what, our interests. We're very interested in the Zoning Ordinance changes because we've been long advocating a reaching to approach the management and development of the Lake George watershed to ensure long term stability of water quality and the watersheds economically viability. Since 1885 we've been working together to protect, conserve and improve the beauty and quality of the Lake George Basin through education, advocacy and broad base community involvement. We have broad support from over five thousand members from many groups, year round residents, seasonal residents, members of the business community and local governments plus other interested individuals and organizations. The Lake George Association will be submitted written comments in the next week or so but I'm here just to highlight some of our main points and first of all, I'd like to tell you what we're pleased to see, these are just some of the main points. We're very pleased about the requirement to have any increase in floor area of a building that requires a building permit to conform to the requirements of Chapter 136. But in addition, we'd like you to please consider expanding this requirement to those additions within all zones in the watershed of Lake George. We're pleased to see Article 6, Environmental Performance Standards, we're impressed with the prominent location and reformatting for these provisions and the Extensive Wetland Regulations are very appropriate and a needed addition. Article 8, Landscaping and Buffering Standards, this is a good addition to protect the aesthetic resources of the Lake George Basin. We're especially encouraged by the requirements of the section applying to all vacant undeveloped property and all property to be redeveloped and that's the way that we interpreted it but the way Chris Round was talking, talking just kind of stressing on the commercial requirements, I just, I'm questioning whether or not it does apply to residential and we hope that it does. In Article 11, Clustering, this section is much clearer, simpler and easier to navigate. The addition is good for the cluster to design alternative requirement by the Planning Board for those sites exposed to the views from Lake George and those sites located in a scenic vista or view shed identified on the scenic views vista map. However, it was unclear where this map exists. And addition, Article 12, the Planned Unit Development, these requirements are much more concrete and clear and we're also pleased to see that the variance criteria is, criteria for variances are clearly outlined in the ordinance, it will make it much easier for the public to understand the standards that must be met for a variance by applicants. We do have some additions that we'd like to see made, clarifications and changes. In the stream, regarding the stream and wetland building setbacks, it's very clear in the ordinance what the shoreline building setback is in the WRIA and the WR3A zones in the dimensional bulk requirement table. In the definition section it states that the shoreline building setback applies to the shoreline in any lake, pond, river or New York State Department of Environmental Conservation classified wetland or stream and in another section of the ordinance, it's outlined what shoreline setbacks are for the other zones. So, we would just ask that these requirements and setbacks for other zones be put into the dimensional requirements. It would just make it easier for people to understand the code and to more clearly the protect undeveloped buffers that protect the water quality of the lake. In the Waterfront lA and Waterfront 3A, we'd like to see an addition of a shore-land overlay district. Recently the Town of Lake George has proposed to require site plan review for any development within what is known as their shore-land overlay district. This is an area within three hundred feet of the mean high water mark of navigable lakes, ponds, rivers or streams. There are also other requirements within this zone related but not limited to lighting and vegetative screening and filtering of buildings and we would encourage an addition of this type into the new zoning ordinance. In addition in this Waterfront Residential lA and 3A zones, we'd like you to please consider increasing the amount of permeable surface for this zone to seventy percent to further increase the buffering capacity of lots to stormwater runoff. In addition, lighting, we note that there are regulations in place for lighting in Section 179-620, for all uses except residential. The LGA request that the town enact lighting requirements for development within the Lake George Watershed to reduce light pollution. In Section 179,6-80 regarding Stormwater Runoff, we would recommend that a reference be made to the requirements of Chapter 147 of the town code that any disturbance of land in the Lake George Watershed may require stormwater plan and permit under the requirements of Chapter 147. These requirements must be reviewed and met before any development begins. It's just kind of like a cross referencing thing of something that already happens. In addition, in Article 8, an addition could be made to the landscaping and buffering standards to just strengthen it to say that the requirements will also be applying in the building permit process. The last section and highlight of our comments is regarding mountain and hillside development. This area of development is important from the standpoint of aesthetics and protection of water resources. It was very clear in some of the recent proposals to the Planning Board in the last year that the citizens of the Lake George area of the town agree this. Please enact stricter design guidelines and requirements for all new development proposals in the town within the view of Lake George. This was identified in the Comprehensive Plan as a priority for Neighborhood 2, to strengthen and expand those regulations on steep slopes to protect natural and aesthetic resources. From our review, it doesn't appear that this has been done. For your reference, the Town of Lake George has proposed requirements in this area in their zoning code. And we were very impressed with the process and the proposed changes in the zoning ordinance and we're pleased that natural resources and the lake are primary concerns in these changes and I thank you very much for you time. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. MR. PHIL MITCHELL-Hi, I'm Phil Mitchell, on live on 729 Moon Hill Road. I appreciate that you dropped mining as a permitted use on Rural Residential 3 and 5 acre. I'm very pleased to see that. On the other hand, when you talk about grandfathering and things like that, does that count people that are already applied permits for say, like a mining operation? Will they have to get a variance now, a zoning variance on that particular one or is that thing going to go before the Planning Board or how is that all going to work, do you know? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-That's a good question and I can answer that and then maybe if Mark Schachner will add to that. When this ordinance goes into adoption, anybody that has an application that's deemed complete in front of a board, is going to be grandfathered. You know, they made an application under our existing set of rules. It's generally perceived that you can't change the rules mid stream for applicants so, to answer your question, yes. If a project is put forward for a mining permit for a particular site and the rules change, they still proceed under the old designations. So, it hasn't made this project go away. I mean, I know, when people were happy that it's no longer in RR3A zone but the project is still on the table and the Planning Board still has to look at our current zoning rules and regulations if it does come back and they seek approval for that. MR. MITCHELL-Okay. A few things got in the paper that I wrote in and some people even did an interview but some things got missed and one of them was I wanted to give you my deep appreciation for actually serving on these boards and going through all this paperwork and things like that. I really appreciate all of the people that serve in public office and try to make the town as beautiful as it is and keep things in some kind of order and allow reasonable uses and reject unreasonable ones. COUNCILMAN BREWER-That's a strange phenomenal we have in this town that positive comments seem to disappear in the newspaper, it just happens. MR. MITCHELL-Well, they're not always that much fun, you know. COUNSEL JOHN RICHARDS-Good evening, my name is John Richards, I'm a lawyer in Glens Falls and I'm here on behalf of Dennis and Erin Miller. They own the parcel right at the intersection of Dixon Road and the Northway overpass that's currently zoned LC42, for reasons we really don't understand and we're just delighted to see the change and want to endorse the proposed change to the SFR20. That was in the Master Plan and originally I'd been contacted to commence a zoning change petition but obviously, this won't be necessary if this is adopted and we're pleased and want to encourage the board to adopt that change cause it makes a lot of sense. So, thank you very much. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you very much. MS. KAREN SABO-Thank you, Karen Sabo from Twicwood Lane. I'djust like to make a couple of comments or a couple of questions I have. The first thing is on the west side of Route 9, I read something in the paper where Chris was quoted as, he was lessening the restriction from businesses being forty thousand square feet to and I believe is it, becoming not able to be up to ninety thousand square feet, is that correct? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I'm sorry. MS. SABO-For the west side of Route 9, you mentioned in the newspaper in the article on Monday, that there was a restriction of forty thousand square feet for those businesses but that you are not going to have that restriction any more? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-That's correct. The area we're talking about is, this area, there was proposed, this entire area north of Quaker Road, Aviation Road, was proposed as a forty thousand square foot building limit size in the Highway Commercial zone in that area. During the informational meetings, there was significant opposition to that building limit size and the Steering Committee re-examined it and decided to remove that restriction. So, there is no restriction. MS. SABO- There is no limit now? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-No, there is no limit on building size. That would be subject to whatever the density, as it is in everywhere else in the town, the density, permeability, all the other site constraint issues that imposes upon that. With that though, let me just add, we did add an additional buffer requirement along the Northway and I think Craig, is that a hundred? MS. MARILYN RYBA, Senior Planner-Fifty feet. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Is it fifty feet? MS. RYBA, Senior Planner-It's fifty feet along the Northway. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I've got an discrepancy here but it's either fifty or a hundred feet buffer along the Northway, an additional buffering along Route 9. So, that was the outcome of that. MS. SABO-Okay, because that was a concern that I had because it is part of the Land Use Manual that it would like an existing, to keep the existing heavily buffered area and I was concerned that with no limit that would like, be able to have unlimited parking and extensive tree removal. I'd be concerned that fifty feet or even a hundred feet wouldn't be enough and since it is part of the Land Use Manual, about the visual quality and I mean, I can quote a couple things like maintain existing heavily wooded buffer between the properties in the Northway in order to maintain a current quality appearance of Queensbury from the Northway. And also as a vision statement, there's planned development with a concern for protection and natural resources, rural character and visual quality of the town because as we know, like from the current parking lots that are there like with the Great Escape, with that little bit of woods that they have and the DOT land, you can still easily see parking lots from the Northway. And also, there will be a lot more clearing this year as you know of trees along so, to try maintain any kind of wooded area as the land use mentions, now would be the time to do it and I really feel that you know, three hundred feet would be good. Also like the cumulative impact would just be enormous, I think if that much woods were cut down. Also, I have a couple questions, correct me if I'm wrong but are Taverns allowed on the moderate, Highway Commercial Moderate Use because I believe I saw that as a use? That's what I wanted to ask, on the east side of Route 9. MR. BROWN, Zoning Administrator-You've got restaurant listed. MS. SABO-It wasn't on the chart but I believe it was in another MR. ROUND, Executive Director-It's difficult to give you an answer here about that particular thing, I think Craig will, Craig said it probably is included. A use list is never and it's never exhaustive listing, we'll call it that, there always subject to interpretation but I think, I don't know if we have Tavern as a listed use on there but restaurant is. MS. SABO-Well, if tavern is which I think it might be, I would be really concerned about the hours of operation because if, as a tavern owner in a site plan came before you, they could argue that they couldn't be competitive if they had to close, I mean, at nine o'clock you know and being right next to the residential areas, having cars in and out and possible loud music and noises in the parking lot. I don't think that would be very conducive to the moderate, you know the purpose that that is for and some other ones that I had questions about was, you mentioned in one of your slides that auto body repairs were not, were excluded in the moderate use? But on the chart, I saw that they were on, auto body repair was in the moderate use chart. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Yea, I do see that on chart, we'll have to double check that. MR. BROWN, Zoning Administrator-We made that, sales and service removed. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Sales and Service eliminated and repair would be maintained, I'm not sure if that was a conscience effort.. MS. SABO-Because I'd be concerned with oil and transmission and everything like that. And also, another one that I'd be concerned about is a nursery because of the pesticides, fertilizers stored, possible spills that you might have close to a residential area and also, machinery noises, backhoes for digging and anything like that, I don't feel a nursery would be a conducive use next to a residential area. And also I just have another question about the buffering and I just would like to again, say that I would really like the board to consider a retroactive law for buffering and for lighting for the current businesses so that you could keep all of Queensbury uniformed and all of it would be not imposing on the residential areas and they would all have to, like a newer business would have more restrictions than a business that is current and it just wouldn't set, it wouldn't be equal, it doesn't seem to me and also I can think of bright lights now that may be bothersome that you know, could be helped by this new law if it was retroactive to, in some way, you know encompass the current businesses. Thank you. MS. BETTY MONAHAN-Betty Monahan, Sunnyside Road. I haven't had a chance yet to do an in-depth analysis of this document but I do want to say that I think that the layout and the graphics are a big improvement over what we have and I think they're going to be very helpful to everybody. I did have a question. Has anyone done a calculation of what the proposed build out in this town will be under the plan and I'm looking towards the SEQRA document. You know, the number of units, the number of families, the impact on the various school districts cause there will be a number of additional classrooms needed and you know, just in the district that it applies, to me the school district Queensbury, keeps running out of classrooms. I understand they want to build another building and I'm not sure how many of those buildings are even paid for at this time, probably a couple of the building projects and that's about it. The impact on the Fire and EMS services. The impact on town services, like your Highway and Rec Departments cause those are really all questions that have to be answered when you do your SEQRA and so I'll be interested to know if that's been done yet. I also, going back to the times when we had some problems, I'm looking at some non-conforming lots and the allowed uses in density that's going to be happening. Sometimes and I think the AP A has a regulation or did, that if you don't have the size lot that they area calls for, you're not automatically allowed those uses because we had a case where somebody owned about an acre and they were in a LC2 zone and they got that allowed use and it really wasn't appropriate for just having an acre in there. So, you know, look at that please. Have you worked with Glens Falls on the changes you've made in the zoning that pertains to their watershed property, are they been a party to this? And I only ask you that for one reason and I'm thinking along Potter Road, the reason that that density was what it was along Potter Road was, because that is in Queensbury residential area, there's one section there. Not all of it, but one section, at the time the city was a little strapped for money and they said, we may have to sell off some of that watershed. Well we didn't want them to think of selling off the real parkland part and we thought, this is something the town can do for the City of Glens Falls to permit that one little area there where it is residential all around it to be done residential. So, you know, in case you want to put that in the back of your mind. At one time when Jim Martin was still here and unfortunately, it was just before we had so many changes in the Planning Department and so it never could be finished because nobody was here long enough, we looked at the sizes of barns and garages allowed all over this town because obviously, if you've got a forty-two acre or ten acre piece of property, you need a little bit more equipment to maintain it then somebody that's in a SR20 and looking at that, we did sizes of outbuildings in comparison with the land that they were going to be on knowing that some people were going to need tractors and so on and so forth. I'm sure that document is somewhere down in that department and I think it was a well worked out document, practically completed and you might want to take a look at that too. And then, as a taxpayer, I will tell you, I would be perfectly happy if the town bought that area that we talk about, the Red Lobster and Cracker Barrel cause I think for the sake of this town we need to save that green space coming in and out of Queensbury just for the impact on people. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I would be happy to see the town buy that piece of property even though it's going to raise my taxes. And I think that when we look at all this housing development going on, that we need to make some kind of mechanism for some green areas through and around those housing developments so we can try and put this town back to some walker friendly areas and that you can walk between subdivisions and stuff rather then have to jump in a car to go to everything. So, that's another thing, another thought I'd like you to think about it and I will do some written comments on some of the definitions and stuff when I have a chance to do that in depth. COUNSEL JON LAPPER-Good evening, for the record, Jon Lapper. In general, I think that there are a lot of progressive changes in the proposed ordinances. The parking requirements, there's some shared parking concepts included which would reduce the unnecessary pavement. I think the design guidelines are very good in terms of reducing lighting, in terms of the buffer requirements and the design guidelines, or the architectural guidelines. When somebody comes into town with a development, they'll do what they're required to do and when it's set forth exactly what's required, it's a lot simpler and you don't wind up fighting about it. So, I think that those are very good and I think that the ordinance is more readable with the charts and graphs just because the technology is better now than it was in 88 and I think that that's helpful. I really only have one specific comment. In the Professional Office zone on Bay Road, in the prior zone or the existing zone right now allows office buildings go a thousand feet back from Bay Road and there's an existing office park that was approved last year, the first building is a daycare just south of the college, that provides for fourteen lots for office buildings. There's another that's approved that will be starting soon and there's a lot of interest from other people for medical and other professional offices in that park. Under the current zone or the current proposal in the Professional Office zone the offices would only go five hundred feet back and I would urge you to reconsider that. When I studied this in detail and advance of the meeting, I called Chris and mentioned that. I don't know if that was something that was intentional but I think that case, for that project and in general it would be better to encourage the Professional Office on Bay Road corridor rather then more residential there and that's it. Thanks. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Mr. Sutton? MR. STEVE SUTTON-Steve Sutton, 49 Bell Mountain Road. A couple of comments. I think these things are great because you actually find some common ground once in a while with some former adversaries. I am concerned on that Route 9 corridor along Route 87 that that buffer be maintained at a substantial amount. If it's fifty feet, it's not enough from 87, if you really want to keep the flavor of Queensbury coming through especially as you come north on the Northway to enter the Adirondacks. I don't think anybody wants to have it look like Clifton Park or the backs of Wal-Marts or whatever. So, I think Mrs. Sabo has some legitimate concerns about the buffer there. I like the flavor of Route 9, I think we've developed quite a nice corridor through there compared to Quaker Road. I mean, that's a different type of corridor that's very, you know, the car dealers, the big boxes and whatnot. So, I'd like to see every effort made to keep Route 9 the flavor that we have, the tourism, the type of business that's come through there. My other comment is on the Professional Office at the bottom of Gurney Lane. I support my neighbors in their opposition more, not as much for the aesthetics as what they've talked about but, it's one of the most dangerous little spots in our town. I've already had a pretty bad accident there. It wasn't my fault, by the way. I've been known for a few scrapes around town but that wasn't my fault but it's a very dangerous section of town. It's almost every day coming down off Gurney Lane from West Mountain or just people coming off the Northway, maybe because of the aesthetics because of the mountain right there, they don't even know Gurney Lane is there. So they don't see it. They come off the Northway, they pull right out on, to go over towards the municipal center. So, that's become a really tough spot there. I know through site plan and a lot of study maybe, you know but then you're talking lights and everything else and it does change the general aesthetics of that area. So, I think a lot of thought should be put into that one little blue square right there cause I think my neighbors have some definitely legitimate concerns. But they hadn't brought up the actual danger of that area, it was more aesthetics and I agree with them on that too but it definitely could pose a problem. The rest of Route 9, I mean, I think on that one section, I'm affected quite a bit along that whole one side, I really don't have a lot of problem with that but I can see some thought was put in that as far as the neighbors go and I think that's good but the other side I am concerned a little bit about but thank you, anyway. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Yes, sir. MR. CHUCK MCNULTY-Chuck McNulty, I live at 14 Twicwood Lane and I'll agree with Steve Sutton, I think here's something that he and I can agree on. I'm really concerned about what is proposed for the west side of Route 9, along that strip. If it's allowed the way it's proposed now, you're going to change the nature of the neighborhood. You're going to change the nature of the commercial development on that road because you're going to be allowing big boxes in there. As I understand it, Wal-Mart already has an option on the Cinema and the camp ground. If they get in there, they're going to clear cut and pave. You can require occasional trees but it's going to really change what's there, it's going to change the buffering for the residential neighborhood, it's going to change the character of the commercial development that's there now as Steve mentioned and I think really, you've got a tourist and recreational theme along that line now. We've had our arguments about noise and lights and that sort of thing but we can cope with that but if it goes forward as it's proposed now, you really are going to change the nature of that whole area, you're going to change it away from what seems to be nice now in the way of tourism and small businesses. Along that line, a couple of other concerns I've got right now, I see very few references to warehouses now in the proposed new code. Traditionally, we've kind of considered warehouses as being appropriate for industrial areas. I'd like to suggest to you that Lowe's, Wal-Mart, BJ's, a Sam's Club are also warehouses, they happen to have a retail element to them but they are huge. They change the nature of the areas where they are and I think some attention should be given to where this type of large store or warehouse is allowed in the town. If you allow them to just sprinkle anywhere in the commercial areas, you're going to end up destroying the character of all of the commercial areas. Another passing comment that may not apply right now in this but it has mentioned some. Things like sound, lighting being a problem, controlling lighting. I know the board tried to tackle sound ordinance and found that it was such a can of worms that you wanted to back out of it but I think it's something that the town is going to have to face up to, both lighting and sound. I would suggest that it is reasonable to put some kind of rule forward that would say that lighting and or sound should not cross property boundaries. Now, for example, Department of Environmental Conservation in their regulations controlling solid waste facilities, landfills, compose facilities, have a rule that says odor can not pass the property boundaries. Now, if they feel that it's reasonable to say odor can't across the property boundary, it's just as reasonable for a town board to say that sound or lighting shouldn't cross a property boundary, at least at certain times. But please do take a look at a what you're doing to the commercial strip on Route 9, I think that west side needs some real attention. You can't allow freehand on the west side and provide restricted development on the east side and figure that you're protecting the residential neighborhood, it's not going to work. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Anyone else care to address the board? Yes, sir. MR. STEVE SAVITZ-Steve Savitz, Gurney Lane. I'm totally opposed to the re, you know, what you're doing up there, going to the PO and my question is, you were saying, I forgot your name gentleman? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Chris Round. MR. SA VITZ-Chris, you said there were people that were for it. Can you tell me who was for it and why? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I can't. MR. SAVITZ-What's the reason for doing it? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Again Steve MR. SA VITZ-I mean there must be a reason. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-It was put forth in the Comprehensive Plan to look at that. I wasn't here for part of the plan, who the individual that spoke out for that. It wasn't on the top of the list of the Steering Committee and the Steering Committee didn't feel strongly about it and it then it was, I think the committee was, their awareness was heightened that hey, this was included in the comp plan and what was the committee's feeling about that and it then it was included. So, I had just, I made that comment to start because I had a couple of conversations with people at the boards that I had heard some opposition to that. MR. SA VITZ- Yea, because you did say that you had people that were for it. Yea, I mean, you did say that. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Yea, but I don't, I can't say it's, that gentleman there with the blue hat on, I can't tell you that. MR. SAVITZ-You don't know. Does anyone else know? And you see all the people from Leland Estate and everyone drives up through Gurney Land and like Steve Sutton was saying, the intersection there is bad. I mean, it is really bad. Bicycles go by there, people are going to get killed on that intersection especially, and I don't see why you need more office space in Queensbury especially right there when you come off the Northway. I mean, what you're doing is you're extending the million dollar mile across the road, that's exactly what's happening. Does anyone else have anything to say about that or anyone work on that? COUNCILMAN BREWER-I didn't work on that. I would agree with what you're saying and what you're neighbors have said. COUNCILMAN STEC-I don't think it's very likely that that will get rezoned. MR. SAVITZ-Okay. COUNCILMAN STEC-Ifthat makes anyone feel any better. MR. SAVITZ-It's just totally ridiculous. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you, sir. MR. COFFIN-One more quick thing on that buffer. Didn't the federal tax highway, didn't they cut off highway funds and they're going to have to cut back so far on each side of the Northway like they're doing south? I think that I read something about that that the federal highway funds are going to be cut off because of a safety issue, that they have to be cut back so far. So, perhaps some of these people that are saying a bigger buffer zone, could be right dead on because if the state comes through and strips their section, you're not going to have any buffer zone. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-They're saying, I don't know if anybody here knows but that there is some truth in that and that, you've seen clearing along the median along the Northway and along the shoulders along the Northway because of those federal standard and I'm not sure what that particular standard is. MR. COFFIN-That should be looked into while you're talking about the buffers. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-That's true. COUNCILMAN BOOR-Is there a date on when that becomes effective or is it just MR. ROUND, Executive Director-It's in effect now and I think what the gentleman is referring to is that they are holding, the Federal Highway Administration is holding up aid to State Highway Administration because that's where we receive all transportation dollars because they have to maintain that particular standard. COUNCILMAN BOOR-Do we know how many feet they are going to be taking? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Yea, I don't even know that there's any proposed in our particular area. I know that there are areas that they have done it and we can certainly come back to you with that. COUNCILMAN BOOR-Because that would certainly be a consideration, I think before you rezone something if you know something is coming down the pike, literally. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Well, just to clarify, there is no rezoning along Route 9. This is going to maintain the way it is today so we're not changing the zoning designation along the west side of Route 9, the area between 1-87 and Route 9. So, there's nothing new proposed other then we are proposing to increase the buffers along that area and we see that as a positive. I think the debate is what's adequate. COUNCILMAN BOOR-Let me ask you this, the portion we were talking about this Professional Office, is some of that, would some of that be taken by this new federal taking of property? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-No, they're not taking, and this is from what I understand, they're not taking property. COUNCILMAN BOOR-Well, I know but I mean, they're COUNCILMAN STEC- They're clearing. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-But they're clearing within their existing right-of-way and I can't answer that. COUNCILMAN BREWER-Between the Northway and the fence that they've put up. COUNCILMAN STEC-Right. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Don't they already maintain like a hundred, a certain distance, a hundred yard or a hundred and fifty yard area next to the Northway, all the way up the Northway? COUNCILMAN BREWER-Yea, but they're making you clear it, Dennis. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-It varies, you can see the width of the right-of-way varies as you travel up and down the Northway. COUNCILMAN BOOR-In the past did it, was it predicated on the distance between them? In other words, if the lanes were far apart, was that part of the total easement or was it, was it always lateral to the outside, always to the right? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I don't know the answer to that, Roger. MR. LINKE-Another question, Richard Linke again on Gurney Lane. Do I see in the blue you've included a cemetery as being rezoned here? That's crazy, a cemetery. COUNCILMAN BOOR-That's clustering. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Some of our cemeteries are zoned residential too, so. MS. KAREN ANGLES ON-Karen Angleson, I Greenwood Lane. I just have a question for you Chris. They've been talking about the increase of the size on the zoning for the west side of Route 9 for the buildings and you just said there was no change in the MR. ROUND, Executive Director-There was no change. The existing zoning does not dictate the maximum building size. The proposed zoning does not. There was a proposal in our draft that said, hey, we want to limit the, I think the committee thought, we want to limit the growth of big boxes and we don't want to see it grow north along Route 9 and therefore let's propose a forty thousand square foot building size limit. MS. ANGLESON-Right. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I mean, a property owner, if they own ten acres, might be able to build three or four or five forty thousand square foot buildings but they would not be able to build a hundred and twenty thousand square foot, a big box and there has been some recent tests, I know Stu is familiar with the Oneonta area where that, whether that's legal or not or whether there's justification for that. So, that entered into the decision making process as well, so. MS. ANGELSON-Well, I'd still like to recommend that you stay with the draft that as limiting to forty thousand square feet. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-As limiting in size, yea. MS. ANGELSON-Yes. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Yes, sir. MR. MARVIN DOBERT-Marvin Dobert, concerned about Main Street, West Glens Falls. I have a question and perhaps a comment. But initially, Chris, I wonder if you could ask a question, answer a question for me. The concept of mix use as a new category, could you explain that again? You've explained it to me before but I wonder if you could explain it to me again. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-There are a number of allowed uses in the Mix Use Zone and they do allow for instance, I'm looking at our list, Convenient Store, Daycare Center, Gallary, Motel, etcetera. So we do allow apartments, several other uses and the idea behind a Mix Use is to create a, if you see urban centers, vital downtown neighborhoods, you create vital areas or vibrant areas, excuse me by mixing uses together. The old way of thinking was, and you see much of the town is made up that, let's call it exclusionary zoning or Euclidian zoning, let's designate one area of the town residential, let's designate an area of the town commercial and they should not mix and that's a, in the Mix Use designation does away with that. We want to encourage the mix of residence, retail use and office use because they create interesting places and the Mix Use designation allows that and on top of that, what's also a, and we haven't talked a lot about, is our Main Street Design Guidelines and that also encourages the two and three story structures along Main Street. So, we're encouraging high density, relatively high density development on Main Street because we want development to occur in that area and because we would like to mix the uses and we want to create a pedestrian friendly downtown type of environment. MR. DOBERT-My question is, how does one seek out guidelines say for design so forth or do you folks have any kind of services at all that would MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Yea, so if you've got a proposal that you want in order to encourage somebody, we have in our ordinance, we have diagrams. I mean, there is a narrative section under our Main Street Design Guidelines it talks specifically to, where would you like signs placed, where would you like the building placed, where should parking go. So, it gives a site designer an inkling of where do I start when I start my project. We're struggling with Main Street now, one of the design guidelines is that parking should be in the rear of a facility rather then in the front, we want to get away from the suburban strip look that we have on some of our commercial areas so that we have the building in the front and we create a, like a street wall or a street line, would really define, define the corridor. So, that's it and I don't know if I'm answering your question, Mr. Dobert. MR. DOBERT-Well, you are but I'd like to emphasize something here. I'm going through a transition right now, our business has moved and I'd like to develop the corner and I seek to perspective people, there's many, many questions that are asked that I can't answer. There just, so my comment is, Chris, the Town of Queensbury is not a friendly place for a commercial person, I can tell you from experience and I can tell the board and I could give you many examples of people that are unhappy with commercial, compared to the surrounding areas. So, my challenge to you and to you people on the board is to define as best you can, rather then when you make a mixed use area, your comment to me was when I spoke to you, well, what you should do is when you have an object or a perspective customer, you come in and talk to me and we'll discuss it. I, that to me leaves open ends and it tells me that, it's more difficult to accomplish a goal. So, in your work and I compliment you Chris because you're refreshing in the scheme of things. You're a good communicator and you've done good work and I would encourage you to try to nail down these things as best as you can and specifically the mixed use category so that it's more definitive so that we can answer these questions, we don't have to shag down to the Queensbury Planning Department every time we have a question in our effort to enter into commerce. MR. ROUND, Executive Director-I appreciate the comment. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Anyone else care to address the board? Yes, Mr. Hoffman. DR. HOFFMAN-Mark Hoffman, Fox Hollow Lane, as promised I'm back. Just a couple of quick comments again on open space. The, one, again, one of the concerns I have is a perception that if an area has a lot of densely populated homes that it's okay to put more densely populated homes in there and I would just point out that those may well be the neighborhoods that are most, in most dire need of open space protection. Also, the comments were made that if the town wants open space, they should buy the property and certainly that's one mechanism that may very well be viable but I would point out that the expense of buying property is going to be substantially increased the higher use level that it's zoned for. So, if the town wants to increase the cost of buying whatever property they might want to buy, now's the time to zone it higher so it would be more expensive for you. The, it has been appropriately mentioned that there are not a lot of properties that are being zoned to a higher density and I think that's good. However, I would point out that there is this process or phenomenon known as a chain reaction that does occur and once you start rezoning one area in a neighborhood to a higher density, well then the next plot over the neighbors want to know why theirs' wasn't rezoned to a higher density. We've already heard that tonight with regard to the Sunnyside, one area was rezoned higher and now we have a resident who wants to have some additional areas in the same region rezoned to a higher density. So, before we start on that slippery slope, I would just be careful about that. I would also comment that, regarding clustering that the, in the cluster regulations, it does state that the SFR zones do not permit clustering. I'm not sure really what the reason for that would be. I imagine the reason is that you want to protect that for single family homes but the cluster, my reading of the cluster regulations state that it has to be restricted to the zone that it's in anyways. So, you're not going to have multifamily zones in a single family zone anyway so I'm not sure why you wouldn't allow clustering there, as particularly important because some of the areas that were going to be zoned to a higher density are being proposed to be SFR zones that would not permit clustering. As far as, I just want to make a few comments about the Route 9 corridor guidelines. I have mentioned before that I am somewhat disappointed in them. I don't think that they really represent a substantial improvement over what's currently present and to some degree, might actually produce a deterioration. Specifically, I'm concerned about the fact that the guidelines actually call for or require to rows of parking to be located immediately adjacent to the streets, between the street and the stores. I don't think from an aesthetics standpoint that what we want to do is have the first thing that somebody sees as they ride down, what really I consider to currently to be the main street of Queensbury which is lower Route 9, the first thing that you see is a parking lot. Now, that's not to say that it shouldn't be automobile friendly, there's no question that that is our commercial center, in today's day and age, for a commercial center to be successful, you have to accommodate automobiles and by all means, we should. But that doesn't mean that you have to stick the parking lots right out next to the street. The Comprehensive Land Use Plan specifically states that there's too much asphalt in that area of the town and I don't see that requiring parking next to the street as the way to get around that. Also, even some of the terminology that's used there, I know it's just semantics but it does set a tone. You know, when a developer is looking at this and wants to get an idea of what is the town really looking for and he sees the description of the area as being a shopping strip, I mean, I just, to me, using the term a shopping strip makes me think about a suburban wasteland, personally and maybe I'm different about that. But I would just suggest, why not use the term commercial center instead of shopping strip for lower Route 9? I think we need to make that a place that we should all be proud of, it's subject to immense development pressure. I think, you know, it's interesting what you're trying to do with Main Street that mayor may not come to fruition. It depends a lot on the economics, the geography and so forth but we already know that lower Route 9 is a successful commercial center. It's got all the right demographics, the right geography, the right highways. You've got Aviation Mall, you've got Crandall Park, you've got Glens Falls. You're between Glens Falls and Queensbury. It's the right place. It's going to be developed. The question is, what's the development going to look like and I just don't think that you've put forth an ambitious enough proposal for what downtown Queensbury should look like. Along those lines, again, you know, I think it's key to move the parking toward the back of the stores. I've seen it done in other places, suburban Boston has done that, some of the suburbs around Boston of done that successfully. It's easy to get in and out with your car but you just don't have to have it right in front of the stores. One of the arguments in favor of having that is that it's supposedly reflects what's currently there. However, I would point out that none of the establishments that are there now meet the parking criteria that's in that guideline as far as having two rows of parking adjacent to the street. The guidelines also state that there are current, that the developers should use examples, current examples which are supposedly, there's supposedly references made to these current examples along the Route 9 corridor for what their proposals should look like. But there are no examples in that section, I looked for them, there are no examples and it's probably because actually if you look at what are the most attractive buildings and the most attractive site plans for that road, none of them would fit in with the guidelines that are currently proposed. If you look at Glens Falls National Bank, you look at Troy Savings Bank, Wendy's, Friendly's, none of them have parking in front of their establishments. They tend to be relatively newer stores that have been brought out in the recent, through site plan review and so forth and I would just think that the way this current regulations are written it would be a step backward. I'd also suggest that something more could be done about signs. There is mention about signs along the Route 9 corridor but it really says very little, restricts the height to twenty-five feet and it says they have to be either pole signs or, what's the other term? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-Monument or pylon. DR. HOFFMAN-Pylon, they have to either be pole or pylon signs and less then twenty-five feet. That doesn't really do much as far as setting an aesthetic standard. I think you could be more specific than that. Lower Route 9 is not a super highway, typical speeds of cars going along that road might be thirty miles an hour. There are frequent red lights, plenty of opportunity for people to slow down and look at the stores, you don't need to have enormous signs in order to attract customers. So, that's it for Route 9. Just, two or three other miscellaneous items. Planned Unit Development, I've commented previously and still feel that the guidelines for how to determine density in Planned Unit Developments, the way it's currently written is very ambiguous and could be interpreted in many different ways and I would just encourage that to be looked at again. And finally, as far as pedestrian and bicycle access, there's really very little in this current zoning that promotes safe bicycle and pedestrian access. I agree a hundred percent with Betty Monahan who suggested that we try to write something into the code that would encourage separate subdivisions to allow pedestrian connections between subdivisions so people don't have to get in their cars, go out on busy roads to go to a subdivision that might only be twenty feet away. I think, there is a mention of pedestrian convenience in the site plan section but I would encourage perhaps more specific guidelines as far as exactly what developers can do to make their properties safer and more convenient for pedestrian access as well as for bicyclists. There's a requirement that stores that have over fifty parking spaces need to have a bicycle rack, I would suggest that a much lower number of parking spaces might be more reasonable. The cost of a bicycle rack is negligible and you might want to look at something like twenty spaces instead of fifty spaces for that. I would also comment that this Main Street is supposed to be pedestrian friendly area but I would suggest that every, every neighborhood and every commercial area within the Town of Queensbury should be pedestrian friendly and safe for pedestrians as well as bicyclist, I would consider that a basic right and not a privilege. And one final comment, I did quickly look at the section that, related to clear cutting and I could not understand it, I don't, I'm not sure I understand how, exactly what the restrictions on clear cutting are. Maybe, again, maybe I'm just not understanding it properly but it seems like it needs to be clarified. Thanks. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Thank you. Yes, sir. MR. BOB BOLEN-Good evening, my name is Bob Bolen and our family has been on the lake for since 1903. My wife and I, for the last fifty years and raised our family and four of the five children we have are in the area and the focus here, I want to be brief because I feel that I had good meetings with Chris Round and his associate and I think it's vital, really vital to appreciate when you have common sense and fair play on the board and people putting in their time and addressing these manners in the best possible way. We took issue with what was being done to our property in Section A and we're the, it's fifteen acres in total. It's the head of the Ridge Road, across from Ron Williamsons' Country Store and there's an old 1860 farm house and outbuildings, a large barn on the property and everyone in the area thought it was going to be torn down. My wife liked it so we bought it, we've been upgrading it and it's made a difference. The neighbors are happy and the old timers come by and they compliment what's been happening. But when we received word from the AP A of the plan for area A, we saw that they were proposing to convert the topside of the fifteen acres and leave six and a half acres of our property in what we consider to be limbo and we feel based on the realities, based on the facts, that there's no real basis for that. The total area that they're proposing to, as I call it, leave in limbo is two hundred and sixty-four thousand square feet, six and a half acres and the map here on page 2, Appendix I, Area A Wetlands, shades in roughly half the depth of our, the southern tier of our property as wetlands and of the two hundred and sixty-four thousand square feet in that six and a half acres, really, if there's more then twenty-two thousand square feet of that, it's a lot. We have a summer home for fifty years up at Pilot Knob and so I had the US ecological survey maps going back, oh roughly twenty-five years and where the drawing, the Area A Wetlands drawing on page 2, Appendix I shows that approximately half the depth of the property is wetlands. The US ecological survey map shows a line at that halfway point where the level of the land is twenty feet above the level of the lake and the, that same map, ecological survey map and the Adirondack Park Agency's data here shows that our land and the land along the east side of Area 5 is forty feet above the lake. What has happened here is that a, there's a, in the middle of the property, halfway back, there's the little figures that they put in for wetlands which evidences the location of a mountain brook which has water in it about three months of the year. In December, January, and February the water flows, there's quite a flow but the rest of the year, there's practically nothing moving along and that frankly does not qualify as wetlands. Actually, that entire six and a half acres is high ground from the level of the stream which goes into the lake, the land sours in height as evidence by the fact that the survey, the ecological survey shows that it's twenty feet above the level of the lake. I tried to make my case as briefly and as concisely as I could and has always been the case where we're very dependent on your people of having a look, see, it takes your time and it's a difficult job but and it's not often appreciated as much as it might, but I made the point as well that our family's up here for five generations, have fought in four wars. I have fought battles on the lake where there was violations which should not have occurred and went to Albany and fought the battle and we won but it's very costly and it never should have happened, frankly. If common sense is served, if the law is served then the burden is lessened, you know, on the citizenry and I'm happy to see we've got a new young man over here in our area I, so we're happy to see you putting in your time and we'll support your efforts. And again, I was, my wife, as I said, my wife and I, we're very happy with the courtesies and the way that our point, our case was made to Chris and his associate and we look forward to having the matter addressed in a fair and reasonable way. That's about, one more point. When we got the property, we had it appraised by the real estate division of the First National Bank and they appraised the buildings, the house and outbuildings a given figure. With the upgrading we've done on just the 1860 farm house, that has tripled and you know, our taxes have gone up. They went up last year and you know in a reasonable and fair basis and they're lovely people, a nice old lady came by and she did a good job. But we had a knock on the door three weeks ago again, it looks like they want to increase the taxes again and I took note of the fact that going to Church, I passed a house down in Glens Falls. It's just absolutely fabulous, just one of the most well designed, architecturally designed houses I've seen in the whole area and it was bought by Montgomery, you know, and I said, what in the world, you know, how much did that go for? Well, a hundred and fifty thousand. It looks to me as though, now, that house has thirty-two hundred square feet, mine has seventeen hundred square feel. It looks big because it's well proportioned you know, and it's styled right but it's not a big house and I say, there's only seventeen hundred square feet of living space. In the Montgomery house, there's thirty-two hundred square feet. Now, my taxes, the values now are being, have at least an even level and with a knock on the door, it looks to me like my taxes are going to go up again. Now, I have a barn that's, I guess a hundred and forty year olds too and we've spent a lot of money on the house which we're very happy with, our neighbors and especially the old timers, they tell us how pleased they are with what's happened to Charlie Wood's old place and it's going to cost us a lot of money upgrading up the barn so I would like to see a little moderation. I'm retired now and you know, for fifty years I couldn't really care, worry that much about the cost and we fought our battles in the lake, on the issues with the Lake George Park Commission where at one time twenty-five years ago, the Pilot Knob Boat Company came in, in the middle of winter without an easement in total violation of the law, put a thirty by seventy foot dock in and we found that it was going to go another thirty feet and they were represented by one of the most powerful lawyers in the area. Well, we, what we did was provide copies of just the basic data, not opinions to all the old timers in the area and anyone who were concerned about these matters happening around the lake. One of my neighbors said, well, they put it in because they're never forced to take them out. We fought the battle, it cost a lot of money, we went down to Albany and I couldn't believe how many old timers went down and testified for us. It was dead wrong, we were fortunate too in that Bill Clark was a neighbor and also Mr. Waggamann, one of the biggest contractors in the area. Mr. Waggamann was in Florida, he came up and waged war against it. Mr. Clark wrote a fabulous letter and we won but it cost a lot of money. It was not fair, it wasn't common sense, it did not do justice to the landowners, to ourselves where at that time, the family had been seventy-five years on the property and this was adjoining. SUPERVISOR BROWER-We're getting a little bit off the subject. How would you, apparently you would like to suggest something regarding your property to the board as far as zoning? MR. BOLEN-Well, I feel that I made my case briefly and fairly and reasonably and factually to your Planning Department and the courtesies were superb. You know, I have confidence, I, it was my impression they were sympathetic in terms of the total picture and the arguments I put forth. So, it's in your hands. I sometimes feel that there are powers like the Lake George Association which does, you know probably eighty percent of what they do, who knows what the percentage, is good but it's not good in all cases. That's why our representative in our area, when he can, look in on these matters and standby the property owners, you know and see that there's fair play. I do not, I made the point that the map is wrong, manifestly wrong and the US ecological survey is attests the fact that's wrong. It shows that the land is twenty feet above the lake where this drawing shows that it's wetlands and that's about at a point, our land at that point is five hundred and thirty-five feet deep, that's at a point about two hundred and fifty feet deep. So, this is not a small error, it's a big error and why was it done. Well, there are powers interested in gobbling up portions that are on the streams, you know, close up onto the lake that are looking at these matters which is important. But if they want it, I mean, let them buy it, you know, the point has been made earlier in the evening. I have no plans for that but I have big family up here and I just don't, I don't feel that what's being done is fair and I have confidence that your people have a look at it and make, give it your best judgment. That's it. SUPERVISOR BROWER-Well, I appreciate your comments, thank you. Would anyone else care to address the board on the zoning issue or issues? MR. ROUND, Executive Director-While I have an audience, not to close the public hearing out but I just have a couple more slides. A lot of what people talked about tonight was vision for the community and ways we could influence the future of the town. The Comprehensive Plan process, most of this is based in the Comprehensive Plan process and there were a hundred recommendations in total and we talked about town wide goals and strategies but we've talked about the Zoning Ordinance and Regulatory Recommendations, we came up with an action plan and right here we've got thirteen of the largest items, action items. There is a handout on the table that outlines these and I'm not going to read each of them. Some of the initiatives we talked about, people talked about tonight, Open Space Plan. We are in the mist of an Open Space Plan processing, Marilyn Ryba is our Senior Planner at the other end of the table, we do have a Citizens Steering Committee formed on how to establish and preserve open space within the town. We have a Land Conservancy Organization that was formed as a result of our Comprehensive Plan that's going to do just that and look at, how do they acquire or preserve open space within the town. What is open space? I mean, I think that's the most general question people need to ask themselves. So, you should see some information about that in the media, on our web site. Capital Planning process, etcetera, we've got a handout of this and we've got the status on some of these things and one of them, we talked about the Zoning Ordinance tonight. The town has taken great strides in the last several years towards achieving some of these goals and one of them is the Capital Improvement Plan. The Town Board last spring, summer, adopted a Capital Improvement Planning Process and that's going a long way, not a lot of communities of our size have a Capital Improvement Planning Process and that's going to tell a lot of the public to interact with the Town Board and how we're spending our dollars when it comes to infrastructure improvements, when it comes to land acquisition, when it comes to facility expansions, etcetera. I mentioned the Queensbury Land Conservancy, that's a separate entity, it does receive some funding from the town. We encourage you to give involved with the Land Conservancy. We revived the Queensbury Economic Development Corporation in the last three years and they've taken great strides and I think they don't get the credit due to the them for encouraging regional, a regional focus. The Warren County Economic Development Corporation has reinvigorated and reinvented itself over the last several years but we were the motivators behind the business incubator that's being planned and then it will probably be located within the City of Glens Falls recognizing that that's going to pay benefits to Queensbury and to the entire region. Veteran's Field GIS, that is a shovel ready site. That is a site located within in Queensbury owned by the City of Glens Falls where an industrial developer, if they comply with performance standards and with specific site plan regulations, they can come and get a building permit without having to go to the Planning Board. So, that's a shovel ready site. A gentleman mentioned earlier, why don't we have more of those. Well, it's very difficult, you've seen that we're trying to balance conflicts between land uses, neighborhoods, etcetera. It's not easy to plop an industrial facility down anywhere in town. So, you've got to look at things on a neighborhood, a case by case basis. This is one of those, we hope to do that in other locations of the town. Sewer districts, mentioned in our Comprehensive Plan. We've got four sewer districts either under proposal, in various stages of completion that are going to help preserve our environment, that are going to help stimulate some commercial growth, hopefully stimulate industrial growth, so we talk about job creation problems and lack of employees rather then lack of opportunities for employment. I mentioned works in process, open space plan, we mentioned our Main Street redevelopment plan, we do have a project for Main Street, we hope to offer more details of specifically what is required of development on the Main Street. We have visuals above and beyond what's contained in our zoning ordinance, things that we're trying to attract. We're not going to dictate what is going to be constructed in Main Street but we'd like to influence how it's appears. We'd like to encourage a lot of different uses but will bring you more of that. Mention was made about a build-out analysis. How much development could occur in the town? We have conducted, the GIS map you saw earlier, that's simply a graphic presentation of what GIS can do. GIS can allow us to analyze spatial data, meaning map data and really it's beyond my capability to explain it but we have conducted a preliminary build-out analysis that can tell us, under our existing zoning, how many houses could built given a certain set of circumstances, how much commercial development could occur in the town. The changes that we've made in our zoning ordinance are not significant from a build out perspective. We're not going to, as a result of our density changes, we're not going to result in a thousand new homes. It's very insignificant but the build out analysis does demonstrate that, it's a draft right now. It's a very complex process and we hope to be sharing that with you in the future. Bay Road Beautification Project, hopefully next spring you'll see, we'll go to construction on some landscaping improvements at the intersection of Bay and Quaker on a town owned piece of land. Marilyn Ryba has been involved with that, the town is involved with that and is supporting funding of that. We hope to create an attractive entrance to the town and to the Bay Road corridor. New York State Small Cities, we received four hundred thousand dollars to improve some housing in the neighborhood bounded by Veterans, Luzerne, Sherman and Western Avenues. One of the things we talk about tonight was density and increasing density but one of the things that we haven't paid a particular attention to with the rezoning, is affordable housing and there are people who will argue both sides of that issue. There's not a lot of entry level housing in the Town of Queensbury and we want to preserve large lots or low densities or cluster housing. Well, we've got to look at it in much greater detail about the housing needs of the town because we're not providing for the housing needs of the broad spectrum of individuals who would like to live in Queensbury or who have been displaced because of housing prices. I think that's it from our formal presentation but I encourage you, if you have any more comments, feel free to do so. I just wanted to get that before we lost our complete audience for the night and I appreciate everybody's comments tonight and everybody attending. SUPERVISOR BROWER-What I'd like to do is leave the public hearing open for written comments until the end of the business day, Friday, February 15th and those of you that would like to comment in writing are welcomed to and we certainly will take your comments, your written comments into consideration along with all the comments that were provided this evening and we thank you all for your interests and concern and for your thoughtful comments this evening. It's very much appreciated and hopefully, the process hopefully will work in the end. Other there any other comments by board members? Chris do you have anything further to add? Caroline, do you want to just mention the written letters, correspondence we received from individuals so far to date? DEPUTY TOWN CLERK BARBER-We received a letter from Nace Engineering, Tom Nace. Also Attorney John Richards, Attorney Mike O'Connor and John and Mary Doty. Dennis Brower, Supervisor And Town Board, Town of Queensbury Re: Proposed Revisions of Town Zoning Code Dear Supervisor Brower and Town Board Members: I have recently started to review in detail the proposed new Queensbury Zoning Ordinance. In order to thoroughly understand how the proposed code would work, I have tried to apply it to a couple of site development projects which I am currently working on. In doing so, it quickly became obvious that there are some areas in the proposed code which will be very difficult or impossible to comply with and will probably result in a proliferation of request for zoning variances. As an example, the new Access Management section (Article 19), requires specific separation distances between driveways located on the same side of a highway. The required separation appears to be excessive given the width of existing properties and generally accepted highway design standards. For example the required driveway spacing on Route 9 would be 550 feet. This is less than the width of many existing lots and will probably lead to variances request. The objective of this article is "to reduce conflicts along the most heavily traveled roadways to achieve safe and efficient movement of traffic". The article request that, where available, site access be from side roads, rear roads or shared access points. It does not consider the fact that our major arterials such as Route 9 Quaker Road are heavily used by tourist unfamiliar with the area. The safest driveway in this instance is one where the unfamiliar driver can quickly determine how to get to where he wants to go and not necessarily one which simply reduces the number of access points. Another problem with the Access Management section is that it is applied to access and development roads (i.e. subdivision roads). Although the separation requirement for these roads is not overly restrictive, it simply adds another set of requirements which are not really necessary. While being what I consider overly restrictive in one regard, this section does not even address the issue of access driveways on opposite sides of the highway. I sincerely believe this section of the proposed code requires further consideration and refinement. Based upon my limited review of the proposed Zoning Ordinance, I strongly suggest that the Town Planning Department spend an extra month or two reviewing the code by "trying it out" on various types of projects in all of the various zones. I believe that this time will be well spent and will result in a better code, fewer future code revisions, and fewer requests for zoning variances. Please call me if you have any questions. Sincerely, Thomas W. Nace, P.E. Dennis R. Brower Supervisor Town of Queensbury Re: Proposed Zoning Ordinance Dennis and Erin Millerrrax Map # 114-1-1 (Dixon Road) Dear Mr. Brower: I represent Dennis Miller and Erin Miller, owners of a nine acre parcel on the south side of Dixon Road, next to the Northway overpass. The Miller's residence is adjacent to the road; the balance of the parcel is unimproved. The Millers had originally engaged me to commence a proceeding to change the zoning of their property, however, adoption of the proposed ordinance will make this change unnecessary. I am writing therefore on behalf of the Millers to urge the Town Board to promptly adopt the proposed zoning ordinance. The Millers' property is presently zoned Land Conservation 42 acres, although the Town's master plan found no environmental reason for this classification. Under the proposed ordinance, it will be zoned SFR 20, similar to the adjacent properties on Griffing Place and Hughes Court. This change incorporates the recommendation in the Town's master plan and will eliminate the current incongruous and onerous zoning designation. Thank you very much for your consideration. Very truly yours, John H. Richards Queensbury Town Board Queensbury Town Hall Re: Draft Zoning Ordinance Gentlemen: Due to a prior commitment, I will not be in town on the evening of the 24th. However, I reviewed the draft Zoning Ordinance and believe that a number of changes need to be made in the Ordinance; some, housekeeping in nature and some substitive. For what it is worth, and not on behalf of any particular client, I will give you my comments as I have read through the Ordinance for your consideration. Page 4 - Accessory Use. I would take out of the example, the square footage size of the storage shed and/or garage, as used, it infers that items in excess of those sizes would be deemed principle uses and require a variance. Page 5 - Adjacent Area. Here, also you lump together State and Federal wetlands with their being no horizontal buffer for Federal wetlands. Federal Wetlands which can be as small as 1/3 acres should not be expanding by including adjacent area. Page 6 - The first definition on my copy does not have a heading. Page 6 - Alteration. Would seem to include a rearrangement of internal as well as external structural parts, as this term is used later in the Ordinance, it would be better to limit the definition to external structural parts. Page 6 - Amusement Center. It might be good to add "tracks or riding areas for dirt bikes or four wheel recreational vehicles", based upon past experiences. Page 7 - Area, Building. Decks should be included in the terminology of "uncovered porches" with the same appearing as uncovered porches/decks. Page 8 - Basal Area. Why use the term, "breast height" where elsewhere in the Ordinance, we used four feet. Page 9 - Boundaries of a Freshwater Wetland. In the definition offreshwater wetlands, on page 17, I do not see subdivision A, B or C. Page 9 - Building Floor Area, Total. Why do you not exclude all of covered docks, you exclude "docks", but then, apparently, include portion of covered docks upland of water. You do not define whether you are talking about high water mark or low water mark and you are setting up a unnecessary or inconsequential calculation that will simply be problematic. Page 10 - Building Square Footage. Is there a conflict for the exclusion of storage and servIce areas for commercial buildings? Page 10 - Canopy. If caves, up to 18 inches, are not consider intrusion into setbacks, why would you not have the same exception or exemption for the first 18 inches of Canopy. Page II - Cement Manufacturing. Reference should be a site, not to a building and if you inspect the only existing cement manufacturing site or plant in the Town of Queensbury, all processes, including the conveying of materials, are not included within a building. In fact, if you look at the other two cement manufactures in the State, you will find the same physical set-up. Your definition might be better to a plant, which produces cement. This proposed definition is a substantial defect in the proposed draft ordinance. It could very well be interpreted as making the existing cement plant, a non-conforming use; and any effort to grow that business could be interpreted as requiring a use variance; notwithstanding the platitudes which are stated in the purpose provisions for heavy industrial. Page 12 - Cluster Development. I believe cluster development is an important too to allow innovated development, as opposed to cookie cutter subdivisions. However, I think the goal should be maintained the "perception" of open space. This can be accomplished without having the open space owned or be accessible to others than the owner of the open space. Thus, I would eliminate from the definition from cluster development, the term, "access and the term" common: and leave same as defined, but which has open space, which part of the overall development plan. The problem with common access, is liability issues, where you have a single owner. You could also remedy the definition deficiency by adding after what you presently have, the following: Or a portion of oversized parcel on which development is restricted, regardless of whether access is allowed to public or other owners within the subdivision: Example, no build strip along road to preserve wooded viewshed from collector road. Page 14 - Distribution Center. May need to expand to include UPS or like facility; UPS, because of National connotations looks upon itself as being other than a distribution center. Page 14 - Dock, Commercial. This should be based on non-owned boats. May boathouses on Lake George have two slips with, possibly, two boats on outer sides of boathouse; also, how do we count waive runners? The definition should be changed to accommodate more than four (4) vessels, except canoes or rowboats and sailboats and waive runners under 18 feet. Page 15 - Dock Repair/Dock Replacement. It is kind of meaningless if you do 75% this year, and 25% next year. There should be a more practical definition, if there is a need, repair to a dock should not be any different than a repair to any other type structure; and perhaps, there is no need. Maybe you should distinguish above and below mean high water mark repairs; if you are replacing a deck, it doesn't make sense to have 75% of a deck replaced. Page 17 - Game Preserve. Will an owner be allowed to hunt in compliance with other rules and regulations in an area he sets up as game preserve? Page 18 - Garage, Private Parking. Does the I Y2 tons' capacity affect large pick-ups? Why do we have a size limitation on private garages? I've seen unnecessary struggles and discussions on someone who wishes to have a 3 or 4 stall private garage. With larger houses that are being built, it should be up to the individual, whether he wants the two bedroom house with a four car garage or a four bedroom house with a two car garage, as long as it's not used for commercial purposes. It makes no real planning sense, except as a reaction to what happened on Pickle Hill Road, and it would eliminate unnecessary variance applications on larger homes. Remove the language of, "shall not exceed 900 square feet in area. Page 18 - Greenhouse. If a greenhouse is used as residential purpose, why are we concerned about the size of it? And even if there is some justification for size, 300 square feet is not realistic and, probably, a minimum of 500 square feet should be set before a greenhouse is considered commercial. Page 19 - Homeowner's or Property Owners' Association. Introduces language that I am not familiar with, "acknowledged by the NYS Attorney General's Office". I think what was meant, was "approved". Page 22 - Lodge. Why limit in total any accessory uses. Why not make some definition that says, "any vending stand, merchandising or commercial activities shall be incidental to the purposes of such club". Notwithstanding even that modification, I'm not sure how you handle in-house catering of outside functions or a fraternal or service organization that has an actual public liquor license. I would think you're better off simply eliminating the restriction sentence. Page 22 - Lot, Building. Needs an exception for cluster development lots, particularly if you are going to allow cluster development lots without minimum lot size or width for that district. Page 23 - Marina. Need to allow exception for more than one non-owned vessel, eve the Lake George Park Commission allows such use of a property with some return to the property owner to offset the assessment that comes with water frontage. Page 24 - Mobile Home. Why are units for business, commercial or office purposes included in definition, shouldn't the terminology be limited to units designed to permit occupancy for residential purposes. Page 25 - Open Cribbing. Lake George Park Commission has a dimensional requirement as to what is the minimum opening for "open cribbing" and it might be good to add same to the definition. Page 27 - Permeable. No definition is give for impermeable surface, except by comparison to the definition for permeable, which may be acceptable; what was the purpose of the definition for impervious area on page 20? Page 30 - Quick-Launch Facility. Better than trying to define the period offrequency of when a vessel might be launched, would be to state that vessels are stored upland, where the owner may require launch on demand. Page 31 - Retaining Wall. Every retaining devise should not be considered a retaining wall. There should be some dimensional height requirement before the devise is considered a retaining wall. I suggest a wall in excess of 24 inches in height. Page 33 - Setback. I would add to the exception, "except for the building caves, or a canopy". Page 33 - Shoreline. The word, "mean" should be added to the definition as it is understood from Lake Regulation Provisions. Page 34 - Storage Shed. The move from exclusion "recreational vehicles" or else you are requiring a variance to store mo-peds, four-wheel all terrain vehicles, jet skis, snowmobiles. Page 36 - Subdivision. Add to the exception, the terminology, "to correct/adjust a boundary". Many times adjoining owners simply agree to adjust their boundary because of established land use or proposed land use. Page 37 - Vessel. Same does include "jet skis" and thus, I refer you back to my comment on number of vessels for a owner of property. Page 38 - Wharf. Typically, this definition also includes language to effect that includes structures which provide pedestrian access to lake or stream. Table for Waterfront Residential Minimum Setbacks. Why do we have 75 feet from setback when in WR-IA, we have 50 foot front setbacks? There is a portion of Glen Lake, which for, whatever reason, was made WR-3A; the impact on the lake for that portion of the lake, most of which is already developed at 50 feet is the same as the rest of the lake. Likewise, I personally do not believe that the height limitation on principal structure of 28 feet, is meaningful. The very lots that need the larger 35 foot setback and lots that we typically are asking for variances from, for the 28 foot. In most cases, this amounts to the formation of a boat of the structure, at the front of it, that is not in compliance and from an esthetic architectural point of view, it probably detracts more from alternative designs than is benefited; likewise, accessory structures, those behind _ don't need a 16 foot height limitation. Perhaps those within an arbitrary 100 feet of lake shore would be restricted, but if you have a home built on many of the smaller lots, the accessory structure, which is to the rear of the lot, is totally out of sight of the lake and to impose a height restriction there, makes no planning sense. The separate limitation between principal and garage, should be eliminated, in fact, this new proviso appears to apply only to garages, not to all accessory structures. Lake lots aren't going to be over- built with the floor area ratio and I believe that owners should be able to use typical and standard designs. Page 49(9) appears to be contrary, or out of sync with the definition of expansion, as set forth at page 16 and as is worked into later narrative statements; they should be reconciled to pick up the automatic waiver for less than ten spaces. Page 53, ~175-5-020 (A) Why limit size of storage sheds (accessory structures)? By definition, their use is determined. Why require site plan review? Many of those ridged storage shed which are sold are 10 x 14, 10 x 20. Is it the intent to increase the business of the Planning Board or the level of permits that are required. Page 59(B) What is the difference of having a doctors or dentist's office in a home as opposed to an accountant, lawyer, etc., particularly where there is a limit as to the number of in- trips per week - 20? This is a slippery slope and probably, will create an unfortunate nightmare for all types that are permitted. Maybe the definition should require a log, that is available for inspection, I can't imagine sending to someone's property to make visual observations for a period of a week. The legislative decision might be necessary that you are either going to allow it or not allow it. Page 60, ~ 179-5-100 (A) requiring.... percent of .... in a lot for each unit is a waste of property and over regulation. Typically, duplex units are smaller than a single-family home and the necessity for area is not equal. My suggestion would be 75% of a minimum lot, for each unit, be required. Page 61, ~ 179-5-100 (D) Multiple Family Dwellings. Developer still pay the recreational fee, even if they provide their own recreational facilities. There should be some reconciliation to this double expense. Further, the Planning Board should be able to waive recreational facilities, where appropriate. 9i.e., Senior Citizen Development or development next to established Town Recreational Facility). Page 61, ~ 179-5-110. Sanitary Requirements in Waterfront Residential Districts. Shall allow from minimum expansion before trickling application. (i.e., any increase in excess of 10% or of which adds a bedroom). If a person adds a porch or enlarges a kitchen, there is no corresponding impact on sanitary requirements and there are probably many other like examples, add a garage. Page 71, ~ 179-5-180. Good Neighbor Plan. I don't believe you can legislate attitude. This appears to be an attempt to do so. There area any other number of regulations already in place that provide an enforcement tool for the provisions contained in this section. It looks like we're just adding more regulations and additional expense, a passing enforcement in Homeowner Association who are the "local recognized organizations". These thoughts maybe better placed in a purpose or intention setting, certainly the Planning Board could condition any approval on most of these items, except again, reference is made to that "record of good faith". I have a real problem with zoning or planning that is in proposed or enforced by a popularity contest, as opposed by Environmental Regulations. I actually think that the whole section should be taken out of the proposed draft. Page 76, ~ 179-6-040. Particulates and Smoke. The Queensbury Town Board Dear Board Members: Because of illness in our family, we will be unable to attend the meeting on January 24 at which time we understand the issue of zoning in the town will be addressed. We would like to offer our thoughts on the subject and ask that our letter be included in the record of that meeting. We live north of the town office buildings off Bay Road. The new Bay Ridge Fire Department building is across Old Bay Road from our property. It is our opinion that the current zoning of our area, RR-3, does not adequately address the character of our neighborhood. Specifically it permits mining operations in a clearly residential area; it requires 3 acre property sites in the midst of developments that are I acre; it limits the amount of residential development and places unfair tax burdens on those who own considerable acreage and wish to sell. Our area does not have town water, sewer, or gas service presumably because of the present population density. We urge the Town Board and the Zoning Board to consider rezoning this area of Queensbury to be residential, RR -I, stipulating that residential development from this time forward be planned to retain the natural character of the area, and be limited to single family dwellings on one acre lots. Thank you for allowing our input by way of letter. Cordially, John and Mary Anne Doty Supervisor Brower adjourned meeting. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, DARLEEN M. DOUGHER TOWN CLERK TOWN OF QUEENSBURY