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1993-01-25 TOWN BOARD MEETING JANUARY 25, 1993 7:02 P.M. MTG #7 RES #87a BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT MICHEL BRANDT -SUPERVISOR BETTY MONAHAN-COUNCILMAN SUSAN GOETZ-COUNCILMAN NICK CAIMANO-COUNCILMAN PLINEY TUCKER-COUNCILMAN TOWN ATTORNEY PAUL DUSEK TOWN OFFICIALS Jim Martin, Scott Harlicker, Tim Brewer, Corrine Tarana, Harry Hansen, Marilyn VanDyke PRESS: G.F. Post Star, WENU PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE LED BY COUNCILMAN CAIAMANO Supervisor Brandt called meeting to order ... first on the agenda a public hearing on the Hudson Pointe PUD. PUBLIC HEARING - HUDSON POINTE PUD NOTICE SHOWN 7:03 P.M. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-To start out I would like to tell you that originally I had withdrawn from the process because a piece of land in this proposed project abutted some lands that are owned by the family or our family, the Brandt family. But those lands have been withdrawn from the project last week so therefore I wrote a letter to the Ethic's Board that I would retake on my own, my obligations in the process and be involved in it again. So I am going to be involved for your knowledge. PRESENTATION ATTORNEY MICHAEL O'CONNOR-Mr. Supervisor, ladies and gentlemen of the Board, for the purpose of the record let me identify myself. I'm Michael O'Connor from the law firm of Little and O'Connor and I'm part of the development team, that's what we are calling ourself, the group that has put together the proposal that is before the Board. With me at the table is Alan Oppenheim who is with the developer, the Michaels Group. With us here in the audience are a number of people that are associated with the project and I'll introduce them just briefly right now if I can. I guess I'll go to my notes. Jake Halter is with Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation is the actual owner of the site that your going to be discussing this evening. Rob Southerland is with Saratoga Associates and he is the Project Manager for Saratoga Associates who is the planning and engineering consultants for the project. With him tonight are Steve Husky, whose the engineer who has been involved with the septic and water design, and Sue Westa who is a Planner who has been involved and will speak directly with regard to a question of endangered species that has been brought up with regard to the site. Also with us is Ed Curtin who is the Archeologist who has done a study of the site and Charles Manning from Roger Creighton Associates who has done a traffic study of the site. I think that's the team that we have put together and will make the presentation utilizing that team. I first would like to address the reason that we are here and basically that reason is very simple, it's a planning issue. We have asked that the Town Board designate the parcels that we have put together as a planned unit development and that has been done for the purposes of giving some flexibility and design so that we could preserve some of the natural features that are at the site and some of the findings that we've had at the site as opposed to developing this site under the standards or conventional subdivision regulations that we have. We're not asking for a change of use. We're not introducing a different zoning to the property or to the neighborhood. It is residential now and what we're talking about is simply a different type of residential design, a planned unit development. I say that specifically because you have to look at the planned unit development regulations to see where we should be today. At this stage from my reading of our Town regulations, we're not at a stage where we have final engineering design before you. What you are giving us is not a, or what we're asking you to give us, is not a construction permit. We're asking you to make a designation to allow us to go forward and that's something that I think is important to try and keep in mind. I've been involved with the development team for perhaps the last five months, maybe a little bit longer than that and since that time, the directions that I have been given are to cooperate with the Town, cooperate with the neighbors and try and put together a project that is a amiable or everyone is a amiable to. It is a unique approach I think that a developer has taken here. It is not the postage stamp type development where you try to cover all four corners of your site, get maximum, maximum design. It is a real intent and a real desire to be cooperative and come forth with a design that gives us a good product when we're all said and done. The one point and I'm not going to try and get into everybody else's presentation but the one point that I would use as an example is the efforts that were made by the developer to ease the concerns that we're originally set forth as to traffic that would be generated from this project and the impact that it would have upon the adjoining existing neighborhood. In fact, what has happened because of the efforts of the developer, the proposed project will have less impact. It will take some of the existing traffic impact away from the existing development or the existing neighborhood and put it through this particular project. That's just one example of what they have done in an effort to try and come forth with a project that the Town will find acceptable. This is not new tonight and maybe we're going to be a little repetitious but I think for the purpose of the public hearing record we should restate some of what has gone forth. My understanding is that the initial filing with the Town was done under a letter of June 15th and with that filing was a full environmental assessment package if you will. This package right here which is on file with the Planning Board. In August, in part response to the then Zoning Administrator, Part I of the EAF was resubmitted and that's a separate document that came in to the Town. Then in October, on October 27th I believe, additional information which is contained in this packet came in which supported in part the traffic study, some of the engineering design, the generic type engineering and the archeological study that had been performed. The next document was the Town response which came out under letter or date of December 8th which was this document here. After that document we put forth a response under January 6th which is the document which answered questions to questions that came back. Those are the four principal documents that I have within my file. As I understand it, the Town has made or the Town Planning staff has made a final response to the January 6th response. So there is a final report from the Town staff as to what we have submitted to date. There's another document that was also submitted. We resubmitted Part I, so there would be no confusion as it eliminated the 94 acres that at one time was part of the project, based upon our withdraw of that 94 acres from the project. So with that in mind, I think that's the documents that the Town Board should have in front of it. That should be the documents that are available to the public for inspection here at the Town if they have questions as to the particular project that we have before us. I'd like to call upon Alan Oppenheim at this point to give us a general update and also to reaffirm what I've said is the intent of the development or the developer. ALAN OPPENHEIM-Thank you Mike. Okay, members of the Town Board, general public, before getting into the project details, I'd just like to give a little overview of the process that we've been involved with. This land has been involved in the planning process for over two years now. The Michaels Group originally got involved with the project as the project's sponsor approximately a year and a half ago. Prior to that point in time, Niagara Mohawk was working with their planning consultant which continues to be the planning consultant for the project, Saratoga Associates for some time, looking at the site, opportunities for the site, trying to understand the various issues and constraints that we all understand any development that's along the water has. To come up with a plan that we feel works well for the site, addresses issues that are of concern to interested neighborhood groups as well as working from a technical standpoint. Since we've been involved with the project, meetings, not only we've had extensive number of meetings, both on a formal and informal basis, with Town representatives, the Town Board, the Planning Board, people from the Water Board, Fire Department, Highway Department and School Board to make sure that the project satisfies their concerns and requirements. But we've also had extensive involvement with people outside of the Town including the Warren County Planning Board. We've prepared a fairly lengthy document for the State Department of Health to ensure that the proposed septic systems are in conformance with their requirements and will work with, for the site. We've had meetings with interested environmental groups including Department of Environmental Conservation, Nature Conservancy amongst others and approximately six months ago we started to open up a dialogue with the neighborhood to understand their concerns, goals and obviously, one of the big issues with the site as Mr. O'Connor mentioned, was concern with traffic. And I think that we've gone through a, you know, a fairly exhaustive process to come up with what we think is a good solution for the neighborhood. Essentially and Mr. Southerland will get into the details of how it works, but what we've needed to do, to come up with a current road configuration which actually you don't see in this plan, but has all traffic coming from Corinth Road, is secure additional ownership from two additional landowners which includes here along Foothills Drive. As well as working out an arrangement with Mr. McDonald on his subdivision bringing all of our traffic on a primary road basis in through the Southern Exposure Subdivision with Foothills Drive serving and providing secondary access. So the net result of that is effectively what we've been able to do for people in the Sherman Island Road neighborhood, is not only, not bring any of our traffic in through that subdivision but also to set up a road system in configuration whereby all traffic from McDonald Drive will go out through our access roads, not using Sherman Island Road at all. I think as far as the site goes and again, we'll show you the details we've worked to creatively come up with various controls that can protect a site feature that we know all parties have concern with, the bluffs. Putting into place, on a conceptual level at this point in time, conservation restrictions, buffer zones, setbacks. We've got an open space network that goes throughout the site providing public recreational walking path opportunities. So we feel that we've come a long way and have worked hard to come up with a plan that works and seems to meet the concerns of many interested parties and our goal tonight is to provide you with some of the background and detail on how we've gotten to where we've gotten. So I think Rob Southerland will give you a little background on our concept. ROB SOUTHERLAND-My name is Rob Southerland, I'm the Landscape Architect and the Project Manager for this project and with the Saratoga Associates. What I first like to do is describe to you, just essentially that the nature of, quickly, where the project is. Southwest Queensbury, along the Hudson partially, Sherman Island Road coming into the project at this point in time. Corinth Road here and the water treatment plant really to the west of the project site. The project currently encompasses two hundred thirteen acres of which there are two different zoning districts on the site. One is one acre single family residential and the other is three acre waterfront residential. The areas that site specific that are included within that two hundred thirteen acres are a five acre parcel just to the west of the water treatment plant, an area that extends from Corinth Road over to the Niagara Mohawk right-of-way power line and to Sherman Island Road. It's approximately forty-two acres and the parcel here is about one hundred fifty-six acres, that's the primary part of the development. The original ninety-four acres that was part of the project is located here and there are really three reasons why it was decided to withdraw that from the project application. The first really being essentially the fact that it was used for density purposes in the calculations for the project and when the ninety-four acres was included, there was a density as-of-right for the project of one hundred eighty dwelling units. The project did not meet that density as it is proposed so there was no need to include the ninety-four acres for density purposes. We also had a reading really from the Planning staff that any lands that would be public of which, the idea was that this would be a public land as well as a five acre waterfront park here, could not be included in the density calculations. So we really did not want to really have that as land that would enter into that variable. A second reason really was, there was a lack of interest from our sense as far as the Town's willingness to take that on as far as ownership of that land, to deed it over to the Town. Given that, there really wasn't a desire for the project to have it as part of the homeowners association given a distance you know from the main project site where the residences would be. It just didn't seem like it really would fit in, to the context of the open space system within the community. So those are the three reasons why the ninety-four acres was really removed from the project site. I'd like to use this graphic also to briefly talk about the density. There was lots of discussions in regard to this. When you looked at the two hundred thirteen acres that are here, subtracting out the five acres that is considered to be for a public park that's not included in density calculations, you ended up with an as-of-right density of one hundred forty-eight dwelling units based on the zoning regulations. When you employ the density bonus for the PUD, you gain an additional twenty- two units. That yields a total of one hundred seventy dwelling units that would be permitted based on the existing zoning regulations for the area. That would really be within the development, excluding Niagara Mohawk right-of-way land and also again, excluding what would be public lands in the project, the five acre park. We sent information really to the Planning staff on 11-18 in regards to the methodology for calculating density, as far as our calculations, the acres and so forth and received back on December 7th from Mr. Jim Martin, that the calculations were in conformance with the regulations. On January 20th of this year, we were before the Zoning Board of Appeals in regard to an interpretation of whether or not the calculations were correct and the outcome of that was that the Zoning Board of Appeals ruled that Mr. Martin's calculations were a correct interpretation of the Zoning Regulations, that was as of last week. So the as-of-right density including the density bonus is one hundred seventy dwelling units for the project site. The plan has one hundred sixty-three units, that does not employ the full one hundred seventy dwelling units that I just described with the density methodology. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Can everybody in the back of the room hear all right? UNKNOWN-Not very well, no. MR. SOUTHERLAND-I can speak up. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Speak closer to the microphone. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -And keep the microphone closer to your mouth. MR. SOUTHERLAND-The second exhibit I'd like to describe really deals with the two hundred thirteen acres and essentially, what are some of the issues relative to the natural features of the site and to highlight those. I think there are a number of areas that we certainly consider to be very sensitive from an environmental standpoint. The first being the high bluffs area and steep slopes that are outlined in red including, kind of a ravine in areas that really go along Clendon Brook. The brook itself, DEC Regulated Wetland, to the east of the site and we also have a one hundred year flood plain that really traces below the bluff essentially along the brook. Those are certainly key environmental features on this particular site that are significant. We also looked at areas that are really open on the site, there's an existing borrow pit that's been used to supply material for the temporary coffer dam in this location for Niagara Mohawk. There's also some cleared land certainly on the right of way, that's not part of the project. The site is primarily forested in Pine and some mixed assiduous trees. But I think when you look at this graphic, it's clear that there's certainly areas that have developmental opportunities with limited constraints. In other areas, they'd have very severe constraints be it the wetlands, the steep slopes, the flood plain, those are certainly issues that we wanted to recognize in the plan. So in some we can have opportunities and constraints, the level area here that's relatively sandy soils, treed cover offers good opportunities, favorable opportunities for development. The other areas certainly operate with major constraints for development. We'll use this graphic exhibit shortly in regard to the traffic engineers evaluation of the project but I wanted to use this to highlight one of the first issues really encountered that was last January. We presented the plan really to the Town Board informally. I believe it was in February and at that point in time there was concern that we certainly have a secondary access for the project and there were questions about using Sherman Island Road as a primary access. The neighborhood certainly had concerns about additional traffic. There were concerns about a hairpin turn here, there were concerns that the road currently does not have sufficient right of way to be expanded to make it into a public road to meet Town standards. There's also concerns here about insufficient sight distance to make a left hand turn. Those are all concerns that we, were related to us very quickly, even though this particular road had sufficient capacity to take the traffic from the number of dwelling units that were here. From there, we looked at a number of different alternatives that will be discussed from a traffic standpoint shortly but I wanted to use this graphic just to highlight. We looked at an alternative to the south of the project near the water company. We looked at Foothills Drive becoming a primary access and then we also looked at the possibility of reconfiguring the McDonald Subdivision and working with them to make a primary entry road to the site, not an easy solution but one that was worked on. The preferred alternative from the development standpoint that we looked at was really option four which would utilize part of the McDonalds Subdivision. This required looking at how part of that subdivision could be, it required looking at how part of the subdivision with the streets already in place, no units sold on the lots could really be reconfigured to both benefit the existing subdivision, Hudson Pointe as well as the surrounding neighborhood. The existing subdivision is shown here with the same orientation with the cui de sacs and the street really coming out to Sherman Island Road, no access to Corinth Road. There were thirty-three lots approved in this particular subdivision. We looked at how that could be reconfigured so there would be no traffic that would be exited onto Sherman Island Road, terminating the existing streets with two cui de sacs, reconfiguring the northwestern corner to allow for a primary access. That's the solution that we've worked with, reviewed with the Planning staff as far as the way that we think it's most acceptable to really provide a primary access into the project site and not really impact the surrounding neighborhood. Again, our traffic consultant will really talk about that in more detail shortly. The concept development plan that we proposed incorporates what I've just described as far as a primary entry going through the McDonald Subdivision coming around as a road in this matter, as kind of a collector road within the project. A series of cui de sacs, they would access the various types of residential uses here and a secondary access really coming off Foothills Drive. We've also worked with the Town Highway Superintendent, Planning staff to look at how Sherman Island Road could be accommodated, as far as certainly the residences at the south end. We've looked at a solution that everyone seems to have conceptual agreement upon as far as the Highway Superintendent, Planning staff to determinate into a cul de sac on the Niagara Mohawk property and also look at a twenty foot wide emergency access easement that could be developed to connect to the Hudson Pointe road. So at this particular area would have an emergency access out to this site rather than what's currently there now with just one access out to Corinth Road. From a landuse standpoint, what you see here is the two hundred thirteen acres. The five acre public park near the water plant which we look at as a passive park, there will be an overlook, picnicking, that type of thing that would be again, given to the Town. An open space system that would come into the site, in this area to the west of Sherman Island Road would be lots that are essentially kind of affordable housing, that would be approximately a third of an acre lot. Then you get into the interior of the project, these lots are approximately a half an acre. The lots that really come around to the periphery, are a minimum of one acre in size. Then close to the center of the project are multi family units that would be townhouses, approximately forty in total. Just to highlight some of the statistics of that, of the two hundred thirteen acres a little more of half, fifty-one percent would really be open space in the project. The balance would be in the lots and the road system and the public right of way. We're also looking at the idea in addition to the public park at the western end, a public easement that would connect a trail system that would eventually be able to allow the opportunity to connect to land the Town currently owns, as a public park for the Town of Queensbury here. With the idea that could be a much larger system in the future that connect particularly to the west with the Middle Hudson Greenway System that Niagara Mohawk is currently working on. That's essentially kind of some of the land use concepts as far as where the residential lots are and the disposition of where they are on the plan. What we've essentially done is taken areas that are heavily wooded and try to develop essentially wooded lots with open space clusters, trying to not lot out right next to the public right of way but leaving tree lined areas that would really come around to really encourage kind of the conservation, not only the trees but kind the character of the residential project as you come around the main roads. We've also done that here along our primary entry road and one additional feature we've incorporated in the plan, really in the last two weeks, developing a greater setback from the right of way line. So there's a minimum of seventy-five feet between any single family lot in the Niagara Mohawk property line for the right-of-way. There's been much discussion really in regard to the area considered the bluff, the point right here. And we've worked with the Planning staff, not only with site walks but throughout the Summer with how best to develop an area that has high sensitivity due to erosion, existing trees along that steep topography. There's a couple of ideas we wanted to present. The area that I'm indicated right here at the end of the bluff on the point is enlarged at this scale and what we've done is utilize what the Planning staff requested during the Summer that we used waterfront one acre residential lot standards for this particular area. That means a minimum of one hundred fifty feet frontage in a one acre minimum lot. In so doing that, we walked the site, there was a fifty foot setback established from the top of the bluff to the interior of the lot where there would be no development at all and there would be no site disturbance. The only exception to that would be extremely limited clearing of small trees, six inches in caliber or less. From the area, the top of the bluff down to the high water mark of the river, that would be totally undeveloped, undisturbed. There would be no tree clearing, again no disturbance at all. We looked at, we've really proposed the idea of a conservation easement that would protect all of that area that's steep bluffs at the back of those lots. So in plan, what you would end up having us, all of the existing vegetation on the steep bluff, the conservation easement, no cutting. Once you got to the top of the bluff, there would be fifty feet where there could be no development, no pools, no patios, essentially undisturbed area and then you would really also have a rear yard and then you'd really have the house, the dwelling unit established. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Excuse me a minute but whose going to own that fifty feet? MR. SOUTHERLAND-The fifty feet would be within the lot itself and that would be again restricted as far as no disturbance. So that was the concept for certainly dealing with kind of the vegetation along the bluff, looking at the erosion potential and limiting the clearing and also providing housing that would really limit any disturbance in that bluff area. The other area that is certainly of concern is the lower area here when you come down off the steep bluff into an area that's really considered the point. What currently exists there right now are two camps that are no longer in use, the leases have expired and again, there's really no private use of that area right now legally at all. What's proposed for there is passive recreation such as hiking, there could be picnicking down here but there's no active recreation really proposed in another area of kind of sensitivity near the river edge. That concludes just an overview of what the site concepts are, some of the specifics as far as areas such as the bluff where we've done more detail studies to mitigate potential problems as far as erosion and tree removal. I'd like to have Chuck Manning, traffic consultant really talk about more specific issues relative to the traffic. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Just before we get off that, could I ask just a ... question. The five acre public park, that also is not used in the calculations for the density, is that correct? MR. SOUTHERLAND-It is not used in the density calculations. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Well, one of two questions. Why wasn't that considered as part of the ninety- four acres, why didn't you take that back too? What was your thinking there? If you want to answer that, then I have another question. MR. SOUTHERLAND-Sure, I think one of the reasons there's been a number of studies that our firm as done, Saratoga Associates as to a layout for that particular area as far as ideas for that with an overlook, it's been looked at extensively. It's been looked at in regard to the ... boundary for Niagara Mohawk, that area, there's always been at least in the last year, some pretty clear concepts as to what the use could be. The ninety-four acres, there was never any uses that were really described in a plan for that. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO- Which brings up my next question. You made kind of an off hand remark which mirrors a comment in a letter that I saw from the Michaels Group which says that there does not appear to be strong enough interest among the Town officials in this ninety-four acre tract for recreational purposes. And I guess I'd like to hear from you, how you drew that conclusion and where you drew it from because you certainly didn't talk to me about it. So I was just concerned about where you drew that conclusion from. MR. SOUTHERLAND-Sure, okay. MR. OPPENHEIM-Well, I guess, why don't we talk to Mike because we, I think Mike O'Connor and myself have had more discussion with the Town on that matter. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Basically that was the conclusion I think that the development team came to based upon a number of meetings with everybody involved. Whether it be members of the Town Board were you overly enthusiastic when it was over, what were you going to use if for or individual discussions. The only individual discussions that I know that directly effected upon that were some that I had with Jim Martin. We had some lengthy discussions as to whether or not it should be included in the calculations for density and his feeling was that it should not because it wasn't contiguous to the other lands that were being offered. I argued even to the point of going back to Hiland and there was some lands in Hiland that were included in their density calculations that weren't contiguous to the principal areas of development, there was a Town road that separated them. Recently, some discussions I had with whether or not it would be likely that the Town would accept that as an offer in lieu of recreation fees which is required for a subdivision. It's my understanding that the process and I went through this recently with this Board or I guess I began it with the Planning Board, the offer is made to the Planning Board not to this Board and the Planning Board makes a determination based upon a recommendation by this Board and by the Superintendent of Recreation or the Recreation Commissioner which is Mr. Hansen and based upon a recommendation by the Department Head for Planning which was Mr. Martin. And my understanding from Mr. Martin was that his recommendation would be not to take this for recreation purposes. It was not something that the Town would readily want. Alan Oppenheim had some discussions directly with Mr. Hansen and he was led to the same understanding that it was not a piece of property that Mr. Hansen wanted to bring within recreation for use by the recreation department. Those are the basic considerations we had. We had at least two out of the three bodies that would be making a recommendation to the Planning Board indicating to us informally, not formally and not by letter, that they would not be recommending that it come in as a offer in lieu of recreation. So if it wasn't in for density and it wasn't in for an offer in lieu of recreation, there was no particular reason to keep it in. It's not something that we would be able to perhaps use as a marketing tool. In fact it probably would have a reverse effect because you would have a large tract of land that the homeowner's association would have some burden to maintain and pay taxes and insure, if it was not going to be accepted by the Town Board as a offer in lieu of recreation. That's basically I think my understanding. MR. OPPENHEIM-Yea, I just want to add to that, it's not so much as Mike had mentioned, we have gotten some specific input from various people on the Town level. But also and I think it even goes back to original informal meetings that we had even with the Planning Board where it was an issue, it was a concern. I think the Planning Board at one point was, on a conceptual level and we know that they are not necessarily the sole decision making body in that instance, more interested in it knowing of sort of a bigger picture plan. But I think all along, we've never gotten clear directive. It's been a source of confusion and we made the judgement at this point in the process because it had no integral tie into the project at this point or our density calculations that from a development perspective, we didn't want to have the HOA burden with ownership and with that being the case and having no specific answer at this point time, this made the most sense. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Okay, but the point is, that the question was not put directly to the people who have to make the decision. I mean as far as I know, we have never even discussed that. We have never, as far as I know, this five member Board has never discussed whether or not we would accept or not accept those ninety-four acres in lieu of recreation fees. Not to my knowledge anyway. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-I think that's a fair comment. I don't think it's actual this Board that makes that determination though. I think it's the Planning Board based upon recommendation of this Board, at least that was my understanding. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Except this is a PUD, we're it. Right? ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Not on that issue, I don't think. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-The Planning Board I understand makes the recommendation. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Recommendation to us. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Yes, to us. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-And we vote on it. No, I don't want to make a big issue of that. I just wanted to know what, how this paragraph came out in your letter and put that on the record, that's all. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-I'll pass the mic. CHUCK MANNING-Thank you Mike. My name is Chuck Manning from Roger Creighton Associates and our firm has worked on the traffic for this project and the planning for it for about a year now. Essentially, we began the study by doing traffic counts in the area at Sherman Island Road and also West Mountain Road which is shown on the diagram here right down at this location. I think one of the important things that we found when we were doing the traffic counts is that the majority of trips that are generated by the existing development in the Sherman Island Road area are headed in towards Glens Falls. In other words, during the morning peak hour, most of the people from this development head in towards the Glens Falls area. In the afternoon peak hour, they come back out from Glens Falls. And so when we were looking at alternatives for connections to the new development, that's one of the facts that we had to keep in mind. Initially we did have only the Sherman Island Road access and all the traffic went out at that particular location. As Rob pointed out earlier, one of the things that we had determined was that there was a problem there with site distance looking to the east towards Glens Falls because of the curb and the alignment of Corinth Road at that location. That made it difficult for people coming out and making a left turn. Likewise at that location, there was some concern about the traffic on Sherman Island Road because of the alignment of the curb and the basic alignment of Sherman Island Road itself and it's width. So we did begin to look at alternatives. One of the ones we considered was labeled here as alternative number 2, this actually came into Corinth Road to the west of West Mountain Road and again, if you think about the distribution that I mentioned earlier, very few people from the proposed development would have used that alternative number 2. Again, because most people want to go to the east in the morning towards Glens Falls and returning from that direction in the afternoon. The next alternative we looked at was a connection simply over to Foothills Drive depending upon the internal configuration of the roadway network of the development itself, that would have diverted a significant amount of traffic off of Sherman Island Road onto Foothills Road but again, it was still split about 50/50 between the two roadway systems. Finally what we suggested has been proposed as the final proposal, is this new road coming out here at location number 4 with the connection to Foothills still in place as a secondary access. Based on this new configuration and the effectively closing off Sherman Island Road as an access, the new road will carry about eighty-seven percent of the traffic from the development and the Foothills Road as a secondary access would carry about thirteen percent of the traffic. When this traffic is coming out onto Corinth Road at the new road location, we have very good sight distance in both directions along Corinth Road so the traffic leaving the development will be able to see whether they are going left or right onto Corinth Road without any problems. Likewise coming back in the evening, if they're making a left turn into this new road, traffic coming along going west on Corinth Road will be able to see that turning to go left. So because of the straight section of Corinth Road where that's located at this point in time, there should be no existing traffic problems developed. We also looked at the level of service both at Sherman Island Road with the development and also with the new roads, at the new connector road and also at Foothills Road and found a very good level of service at all of those locations. So based on that we feel this plan meets all of the goals of the project. We feel that it completely reduces or eliminates the impact of the project, traffic from the project on Sherman Island Road and therefore proceeding with it in that basis. At this time I'd like to turn it over to Ed Curtin to talk about the archeology. ED CURTIN-I'm Ed Curtin. I have a Masters Degree in Anthropology from the State University at Binghamton and I'm an Archeological Consultant and teach part -time at Skidmore College and at the State University in Albany. I started working, the background research for the history and archeology of this project in, around November 1991 and we soon got into the field as we call it digging test pits to look for archeological sites. We did that in December and in January and the ground froze up and we had to continue in the Spring. The way we approached that was we began to do archival research in the State Archives and in the State Library to try to understand something of the history and prehistory of this region and to try to identify whether any previously recorded sites, archeological sites of either Native American origin or from early settlers, Pioneers or people who might have used the land in the nineteen century or had ever been located on this property. Our archival research indicated that there was some potential for prehistoric sites, Native American sites but no sites had previously been recorded in the State Records. The historical research we did indicated that there had once been some probably farms, a cluster of buildings labeled on a mid-nineteen century map, Potter, at the end of a road which at that time ran part way down now is Sherman Island Road. That road later was extended through the area where the cluster of houses, where it's located, the cluster of buildings, the Potter dwellings, we think. Probably wiping out or obliterating or paving over one of them, possible others. We subsequently located during our field work two foundations that we think maybe related to those folks, to the Potters. We also decided that we needed to look rather broadly to look for prehistoric Native American sites and the reason that we had to look broadly was because we have some sense through our experiences as archeologist that Native Americans in the past in prehistory in particular live close to water. Usually within about one hundred feet either water or the primary feature over looking water. The bluffs in this case that run all along the Hudson and above Clendon Brook. At distances further from water we're not sure because there have been fewer searches for archeological sites at greater distances from water. So what we decided to do was to dig test pits all along the top of the bluff all the way around at a ten meter interval. Ten meters is approximately thirty-two feet and we selected that interval because small camp sites usually fall in there, their diameter is usually about that, a little more, a little bit less but we thought that if even the smallest prehistoric camps that could be there, we had a good chance of finding them if we dug our test pits close together like that. We also decided to take a sampling of the area that's further back from the bluffs, what we call the interior of the property. We decided to do that by focusing on the areas that had been proposed for construction and so most of these areas where you see some kind of townhouses or clustered development or series of contiguous lots we dug lines of test pits through there also at ten meter intervals so that we wouldn't bias our results. If we broadened them, than we would have less chance of finding similar kinds of remains. So we did that and we also had and this is kind of a standard technique I build in, it's good archeological sampling strategy. We created a rule for ourselves that this was an unknown area but we found anything in it, in this interior section, we would then dig more test pits to identify whether archeological sites were frequent there and give us a chance of finding any kind of a cultural resource that would be important. So we went through this whole process and basically the way it ended up was that after we had dug some few hundred test pits, couple of hundred test pits coming around to this area, we began to hit on the east, pretty much the eastern facing bluffs, the tops of the bluffs, test pits that contained prehistoric Indian artifacts. I should point out as your looking at this map these purple dots which I hope that you can see even in the back but one is here and one is here, these are the foundations that I mentioned in the beginning. These areas along here where there are red dots and yellow clustered areas, those are the archeological sites or the archeological finds and the yellow spots are archeological sites that we think are pretty important. So we concluded that, we dug six lines of test pits in locations along here. We continuously worked along here but we assigned designations to sort of measure our work, transects. Transects their lines of test pits and ended up digging about one hundred eighteen test pits as we went along the bluff. We dug some what over one hundred fifty, I think it was around one hundred sixty-five or one hundred seventy test pits in the interior section in nine different places. Once we had finished that work last May, we submitted our first, our stage one report and reported what we had found, how we had proceeded through our background research, what that had indicated, what are strategy for sampling had been, what that had indicated and showed on a map where archeological finds had been made. And then we were asked to do a stage two survey. A stage two survey is a survey that assesses the significance of the archeological finds. And we were asked to do a stage two survey to include any sites that might be still be within the development plan. The historical archeological sites, the foundations are in areas that are proposed to be protected from house lots, that lots would be moved to avoid them. Or in the case of this one along Sherman Island Road, it's an area that's between the Niagara Mohawk right-of-way and the road won't be developed. We went and dug still more test pits to define the boundaries of the seven archeological sites we had found and we also excavated larger excavations. The kind of grid work you may be familiar with archeologist performing from National Geographic specials. These are carefully controlled excavations so that we can measure the position of every artifact and the depth of all the artifacts so that we know from where they occur in the ground, how close the artifacts are together, what kinds of soils they are found in, which artifacts were deposited about the same time by a group of people and in some cases, which artifacts were deposited first by an early group of people and which ones were deposited by a later group. Because we think the people who traveled through here were migratory and may have occupied these areas seasonally. What we ended up finding out of the stage two survey was that we can recommend that five of the seven archeological sites should be considered eligible for the National Register of Historical Places and the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation in Historic Places who has reviewed this work and is responsible for identifying those sites that are eligible for the National Register have concurred with that recommendation. These sites are here, as I've said and in this location there is a site that we think from triangular arrowheads that were found there, is approximately one thousand years old, maybe a little bit more. In this location we found soils of which that showed evidence of people having lived for some time and then a reoccupation of the sites, a couple thousand years later. So we think that the earliest occupation of this site that we call Sherman Island seven, was probably about somewhere around three thousand B. C. and then it was occupied again sometime between five hundred B. C. and five hundred AD. This area on this prominent bluff overlooking Clendon Creek also had evidence of occupation from about that same period, roughly two thousand to two thousand five hundred years ago. And in a location here we found fewer traces of occupation but some artifacts and some what we call post molds which are the traces of posts from wigwams that are still preserved in the ground. In locations here and here, there are areas where we dug some more after our initial finds and found very little and have concluded that these are not significant finds. And in this section we found another site that, of unknown age but of great richness in terms of the number of artifacts produced. So we drew those, you know what conclusions we could from the evidence we found. We found evidence of pit features and hearth features and post molds in several locations as well as burn bone from traces of, you know renmants of meals, they were mammal bones from animals that had been hunted and butchered at the sites and made those recommendations. Which as I said, the Office of Parks and Recreation has concurred with, which is their responsibility to look at and see if that's a correct procedure. The proposal to what to do with these sites is one which there are basically two ways you can go in order to mitigate the impact on sites that are eligible for the National Register and that's the appropriate thing to do, mitigate impacts of construction. And one is to avoid construction on the sites and the other is to excavate them under a scientific plan to recover data, artifacts and records that then can be kept in a Museum and used later for exhibits and for teaching and research. What the Michaels Group as opted to do, the development plan has planned, is to avoid impacts on these sites. Some of which are within the setbacks such as here. Again, you can see from the configuration of the red dots indicating the trail, that the point sticks here and this archeological site is well within this area that's within the buffers protecting the slopes and the wetlands. There's another location in here, there are archeological sites that are designated for preservation by just dropping out some of the building lots. And the qualification that Parks and Recreation has put on that, Parks and Recreation has approved this protection plan with the stipulation that snow fencing be put up during construction around these lots to protect the sites from accidental damage. So I believe that's pretty much the end of our study. We've come about as far as possible in terms of recovering information that indicates a significance and then leading to the review and approval of their protection. I'd like to introduce Susan Westa of Saratoga Associates. SUSAN WESTA-Okay, my name is Susan Westa. I'm an Environmental Planner with Saratoga Associates and I've been asked just to quickly go over the chronology of events that has taken place concerning the Kamer Blue Butterfly, the potential for the Kamer Blue Butterfly existing on the site. Let's see, when we started to first think about this project approximately two and a half years ago in the Sunnner of 1990 we sent out our standard informational request letters that we send to the Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation and Historic Preservation. We do this when we begin any kind of project to find out what kind of issues we might run into on that particular site. Not only do we ask questions about endangered species, we ask questions about water quality classifications, air quality concerns, hazardous waste and archeology. And this is how we began archeological research that long ago and got Ed started with his research on the project. At that time we received letters from the Regional New York State DEC Office and the Wildlife Resource Center who actually stores all the information on threatened and endangered species down in Latham. At that time, both those offices did not mention any concerns over butterflies so we didn't pursue it any further at that time. Approximately two years later, the Town Board notified us or the Planning Board, it came from the Town that they were aware that there now was some concern about the Kamer Blue's potentially being located in the vicinity of the site. At that time, we immediately sent out letters to update those request for information and it's appropriate when you do have a lapse of time of about two years to do that anyway. What had happened was in the mean time, the study had been completed on Saratoga County concerning the Kamer Blue Butterflies and particular sites around the County were identified. We receive a letter back from the Regional DEC Officer who noted that there was a Kamer Blue, a known Kamer Blue site located approximately a half mile from our project site up the transmission corridor. This is the Niagara Mohawk Power transmission corridor and the Kamer Blue Butterfly site that is known is somewhere up in here in the vicinity of where it intersects with Corinth Road. So at that time we were aware that the butterflies only fly during certain times of the year and one of the times is in the early Summer and one of the times is in the middle of the Summer and that was about when this information became available to us. So we tried to immediately find an appropriate butterfly specialist to come and take a look at our site. The Kamer Blue Butterfly occupies open area habitats and really the only open areas that we had on our site were the borrow pit where the soil had been recently removed for the temporary coffer dam and the transmission corridor. The transmission corridor actually is not part of the project. Niagara Mohawk will continue to own that piece of that property, however, the project will impact it in two areas where the proposed loop road will cross it and we wanted to make sure we had done all our homework. So at that time, we hired Spider Barber a Lepidopterist to go out to the site and review these areas. And at that time he got out to the site probably about the third week in August. He did not find any butterflies on the power line corridor or at the Corinth Road site. However he did find Blue Lupine at the Corinth Road site and he found a few more plants down the power line corridor, not where it crosses the project site but not too far north of it. The other thing about the butterflies besides using open habitat is that they require the Blue Lupine in larvae stage for survival. Although they sometimes use other areas, they use many other plants for nectaring, they have to have the Lupine for survival, to make it through the larvae stage. So we submitted their report to the Town and then approximately, in the beginning of December this year, we heard, we got a reply from the Nature Conservancy who had reviewed this information and they felt that Spider been out to the site too late to see the butterflies. The Nature Conservancy does alot of work monitoring the Albany Pine Bush and as a result they kind of monitory the butterflies throughout the County along with the Department of Environmental Conservation, who we also received a letter from. Laura Summers who is the butterfly specialist at the Department of Environmental Conservation in Latham and who said that she concurred with the findings of the Nature Conservancy. Laura had actually been up to the Corinth Road site at the end of July and seen a couple of butterflies of, up there. She said it's probably a very small population since she only saw two or three of them however, that also made her aware that we had been out to the site too late to see them. Our ecologist, Spider also drafted a letter addressing their concerns, he agreed that he may have missed the butterflies. Obviously field work is not an exact science and then there's alot of different perimeters effecting it and alot of reasons why he might not have been out there at the exact time. So he felt that it might be a good idea to go out there again this Summer. Spider, however, felt very confident in his survey of the Blue Lupines. There was some question as to whether the Blue Lupines were still identifiable at that time and Spider said that he had no problem identifying them at the Corinth Road site or north of the site, as a result, if they had been down in the powerline corridor as a ... site or in the burrow pit, he would have picked them out, no problem. As a result of this we met and decided it would be a good idea to meet with the Nature Conservacy and with Laura Sunnners of DEC. First we met with Elaine Ball the assistant director at the Nature Conservancy on January 13th, she agreed that Spider should go out to the site again this Summer to look for the butterflies. Because as we said before, even though the Lupines aren't there, they still could travel down. Although this is a very long distance for them to travel. We just want to make sure that were not running into any problems. Her primary concern was that if the butterflies did utilize this site that with the increasing residential development, there was more potential for disturbance of the powerline corridor. And her suggestion to resolve that situation was for the project sponsor to develop an educational package to be distributed through the homeowner's association which would educate the new residents of the importance of preserving the powerline corridor. Keeping things like dirt bikes, three wheelers out of there especially but also just so it doesn't become a big playground. If the butterflies do use it and it is preserved as it is, they will continue to use it. They may even migrate down in the future with the development even if they're not using it now, if it remains intact. The other suggestion she had was that we try to as much as possible throughout the development and particular in the borrow pit area, plant the site with native species which if the butterflies are traveling through the woods to the borrow pit area which is a slight possibility they could do if they were down there, that they would still even use the borrow pit area. She gave us a number of examples of developments that are coexisting with the butterflies because of measures such as these. The next week we met with Laura Summers of the Department Environmental Conservation. She agreed with all the Nature Conservancy's recommendations and the project sponsor has agreed to follow through with these. She also agreed that Spider should go out this Sunnner again and look for the butterfly which he is going to do. He's going to coordinate that through her office to insure that we don't run into the same problem that we did last Summer and because she'll be monitoring the butterflies down at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve and they should be there a little bit before they're up here. They should have no problem getting up there at the correct time. After she and Spider, she talked to Spider about his Lupine survey, she did feel confident that there were no or that Spider didn't find any Lupine, that he was able to identify ones that were present north of the site. And finally, Laura noted that if for some reason although the butterfly might use the corridor and we didn't find any Lupine down there, for some reason Lupine did show up there this Sunnner, if the seeds had spread or whatever, that the project is flexible enough that these, the only two disturbance points, this one and this one where the road cross, could be moved to preserve sites if they were found. Although, it's not anticipated at all but in the worse case scenario we could protect any sites that would be found like that. And the final piece to that is today, we received a letter from Laura Sunnners summarizing her concerns about the project. This is a letter directed to Jim Martin the Director of Planning and it states that the Saratoga Associates has agreed to conduct another survey this year at the appropriate time and to leave their plans flexible for the areas which are open enough to support the butterfly, based upon this and the willingness to cooperate protecting the Kamer Blue should it's presence be discovered, I feel that our concerns for this butterfly have for the present been adequately addressed. That's sums it up. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Do you have that letter Jim? MR. MARTIN -Yes, just received it tonight. MS. WESTA-Would you like a copy? COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Please. MS. WESTA-Okay, I have some extra ones. STEVE HUSKY-My name is Steve Husky from the Saratoga Associates, I'm the Project Engineer on the project. In front of you here we have the soils map of the site which classifies the various soils occurring within the property bounds. One of our first step in addressing the infrastructure needs of the project is to evaluate the soil types, particularly with respect to wastewater disposal and stormwater management. The soil conservation service has delineated the site to include the Oakville series throughout the entire development area. Now the Oakville series is a soil classification consisting of primary sands, ranging from fine sand to course sand. Very well drain material at very deep elevations. In order to confirm we went out and did a series offield tests or soil borings if you will to verify what the soil types are. We did seventeen various tests throughout the area to give us a representative indication of what the soil types would be. Each one of those tests revealed sand at depths of ten feet deep, very consistent throughout the site. No water was encountered within that depth and there were no clay or fine soils that would limit, for the instance the disposal of septic tank effluent. In addition to doing the test pits, we did a series of percolation tests that revealed the rate of percolation through the soil. In the majority of cases the perc rate was less than one minute per inch of depth drained. In several cases it was over a minute. I'll get onto the recommendations. We're proposing to have septic systems for each of the single family lots within the subdivision and for the cluster multi family housing in this area, we are proposing central collection in a cluster treatment system consisting of a subsurface sand filter. We've been in contact with the State Department of Health and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on our concept plans and have submitted our preliminary engineering report and we have even met with them and they are in agreement with our approach at this time. We understand that we're going to have to do some additional work, finalize the engineering report and substantiate a little bit further our approach. But they have no problems with our approach at this point. In fact, the regulations that the Department of Health has, makes provisions for the septic systems that we are proposing. Now it is true that the soil types that we have in terms of standard septic systems are a little fast in terms of the percolation rate. There are provisions in the regs to allow for modified soils to accommodate or to compensate for those rapid soils and that's what we are proposing. Water supply for the project and I'll move onto this other map, as you can see in the blue lines will be central water supply throughout the subdivision consisting of eight inch ductile iron pipe water mains and fire hydrants as appropriate. The Queensbury Water Department is very close proximity to the site and we have been in contact with the Water Superintendent who has assured us that the quantity available at the plant is sufficient to meet our needs. In fact when we contacted them which was only a month or two ago, they had an excess of six hundred thousand gallons per day capacity available. Our project has an average of .07 million gallons per day or seventy-two thousand gallons per day at maximum demand or full build out I should say. Our project will connect to the existing water main on Foothills Drive in this location where the green meets the blue and again we'll connect to the existing six inch main on Sherman Island Road. Now this does two things, it allows us to have an external loop within our subdivision but also provides a loop for the existing system that's currently serves the existing subdivision here. What that does is increase the liability and improves the flow characteristics of the existing water supply system. So we think it's a very effective means of getting the needed fire flow and peak flows that will be seen at the site. Our proposed method for disposing of stormwater or controlling stormwater, lends itself quite well to the soils that are on the site. The Department of Environmental Conservation considers infiltration and percolation of stormwater to be one of the most effective means for managing stormwater. It not only manages the quantity but it also manages the quality of stormwater that passes through the site. In many cases, in fact in some of the older subdivisions, stormwater was collected off the streets and drives and homes and discharged directly into drainage channels and then onto a larger stream. That process doesn't really allow for filtration and a recharge of the groundwater. With the soils that we have on this site we will be collecting stormwater from streets, drives and homes and directing them to catchbasins and dry wells and piping systems designed to let that water seep into the ground and not get off the site thereby controlling or maintaining water quality resources in the area. And that's basically our proposed concept plan for the infrastructure, the environmental infrastructure and I'd like to turn it back over to Rob Southerland. MR. SOUTHERLAND-I'd like to briefly touch on two additional issues that relate to the vehicular circulation. The first being our meetings with the Superintendent of Schools for Queensbury, Dr. Irion. We initially went to him in September of this year to review the plan to give him a sense of what the layout of the project was, to get his input into the street systems and also to work with the criteria for school bus pickup and as far as the maximum walking distance for children. We reviewed a plan with him at that point in time that did not have this access road, we were using Sherman Island Road. That plan was acceptable to him because it allowed for a bus to come in, make a loop and come back out service this particular subdivision as well as Hudson Pointe. Once the access road was relocated to this point and we no longer were using Sherman Island Road, he contacted via letter to the Planning staff and to the Town that solution was no longer as appropriate from their standpoint. The issue from his view was and from his transportation planners was that during the first phase of the project, children would really have to walk out to Corinth Road. This road would not be completed, the loop so children would have to walk out and they did not want school children really to be waiting on Corinth Road. We went back to Dr. Irion knowing that was an issue from his standpoint and looked at solution whereby we would develop a pedestrian walk during the first phase of the project, it would parallel Sherman Island Road so that children in the initially stages of the development could walk up and be at a safe bus stop not on Corinth Road. Correspondence from him subsequent to that, he finds that to be an appropriate solution from the school standpoint. It meets the criteria and provides for safe locations for children to walk to. The second issue is relative to emergency access for the fire department. The plan was reviewed by the Chief, Kip Grant of the West Glens Falls Fire Department and he found no problems relative to the road layout for the project. I'm sorry. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR -You've got it wrong, you've got it reversed. Kip Grant is the Fire Marshal. MR. SOUTHERLAND-Okay. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-You met with him and with the West Glens Falls Fire Chief, who is a different individual. MR. SOUTHERLAND-Thank you. Again, just a summary from that, the circulation system with the cui de sacs, with the roads, the layout, the radiuses met the standards for emergency access into the property. MR. OPPENHEIM-Okay, we're getting near the last loop of the presentation. I just want to give everybody a general overview our development and housing plan and we're going to open things up for comment of which I'm sure a few people have a couple comments to make. In terms of the proposed project phasing, what is certain is day one, what we're going to have to do is essentially, step one, is we will construct the cui de sac at the end of, the proposed cui de sac at the end of Sherman Island Road. We will also bring in the new access road from Corinth Road, bringing that in and essentially tying the loop back to Foothills, so that those access improvements will be made. At no point will any project related traffic use Sherman Island Road and not only is that true for project related traffic but that's also true for Niagara Mohawk traffic in terms of access, trucks, truck access down to the power facility which I think is an important consideration. In terms of how we're proposing to phase in the housing units, alot of that is going to be determined by the market place. Our goal would be to be able to offer as diverse a mix as possible at any one point in time. I think from a realistic perspective, the plan and location of the different home types precludes that to some degree in that the larger lots, obviously we have to build a certain amount of infrastructure to get down to the water and it's not anticipated that those are going to be brought on until the later phases of the project. Right now, we're projecting and projecting is probably the best term for it, a five to seven year build out. It could well be more, who knows today. I would anticipate that day one, once we bring in the roads and infrastructure, the smaller home sites we will bringing those to market early on in the process as well as our three-quarter acre, the larger home sites in the core area of the project, bringing the road in and perhaps developing out those cui de sacs. I think the market is going to dictate the rest, whether or not we want to bring in the attached housing early on in the project. In terms of the way the common lands are going to be laid out, as Rob mentioned we've got about two hundred thirteen acres in the project site. Approximately fifty percent of those lands, you can see here in green are going to be owned and maintained by a homeowners association. Typically for a project such as this where you have some different housing types, all home units would be members of perhaps a recreation association and the attached housing units which comprise forty units in total, they would have an additional association, some type of community association which would have budgeted items for reserves for the units as well as septic units, common septic systems. So that's really the way the maintenance of the common lands will be. The additional item obviously, the restrictions that are set up which will encumber those common lands such as the areas fifty feet in from the bluff, below the bluff, out on the point, those are restrictions, than an entity outside of the project, outside of the sponsor, outside of the homeowners association, an entity that's yet to be determined, whether it's the Town or another, a some type of an environmental entity will be responsible for ensuring that the restrictions, the conservation restrictions are set up, are properly maintained and enforced. Give you a quick look of some representative housing types. Typically, I mean every developer does it differently, these are not homes that have been specifically designed for this site, you know that's something that we would do later on in the process but these are representative homes that we're going to be bringing to the market shortly that I think would be appropriate for certain locations on the site. This is actually a ranch, we anticipate introducing some of those as well as obviously two story. It's a product that we're interesting now down in the Town of Halfmoon. Prices range one hundred fifteen to one hundred thirty range, it's a three bedroom ranch. I think it's got some contemporary features in conjunction with some more tradition features that would be appropriate for some of the smaller lots as well as the larger lots. I think on the larger lots, you'd probably see an expanded version of this. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Alan, fifteen to thirty, you said? MR. OPPENHEIM-Yes. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Is that on the third acre lot? MR. OPPENHEIM-This, today as a matter of fact in the project that this, that were introducing this on is a project by the name of Lexington Commons that will be coming on line this Spring down in Halfmoon, those lot sizes range from twelve thousand square feet to twenty-six thousand square feet which is quite similar to the lot sizes in this portion of the property. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-That's the house your going to be putting on the smaller of the lots? MR. OPPENHEIM-That's correct, that's correct. Now again, this is a ranch and we would probably do obviously some ranch styles in conjunction with some two story styles. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-One hundred fifteen to one hundred thirty? MR. OPPENHEIM-That's correct. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Okay. MR. OPPENHEIM-These are ball parks and I think obviously as we get further on in the process, we're going to have to refine that and come up with specific designs for the site. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Excuse me, but are you building all the houses or are people going to be able to buy the lots and put whatever they want on it? MR. OPPENHEIM-It's a good question. We, our intent currently is to be the primary builder in the site for projects of this size. It's not uncommon in certain if there are local builders who have interest in portions of the property and it works within the development scheme, it's not uncommon to sell off a block or cui de sac to a different builder. But that's, those are things that have yet to be finalized and I think any transaction that were to happen such as that, it's got to be compatible to the development scheme. There's going to be covenants, restrictions, design review guidelines, the whole works that are set up to really ensure the market ability of the project. Because, I think, given the fabric that we're creating with the open space and the cluster development, it's going to be very important that there's, not that all houses are going to look alike because I think there's going to be a nice mix but there's got to be some continuity in terms of materials used and design criteria. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Did I hear no? MR. OPPENHEIM-No, that's not the case, you didn't, it's just that it's not yet to be, that has not yet been determined. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-When will it be determined? MR. OPPENHEIM-Later on in the process. Well Nick the point is, let me, in any large project such as this there are instances. What I'm saying is and I can't tie myself in to say that a portion or a block of lots maybe sold off to a different builder. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Okay, sure. MR. OPPENHEIM-Okay, we, the current intent of the project team is that the Michaels Group will be the primary builder in the project. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Alan, if you sell off a block, the Michaels Group will be responsible for ... MR. OPPENHEIM-As the project developer. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-No, yea but I mean responsible for the block that they sell off, the type of construction that is done in that area? MR. OPPENHEIM-Well, what will happen and I think this may get at the root of the question, is during the site plan review process, we are going to be putting together covenants and restrictions, design review guidelines. Things that are going to help guide this project from a marketing perspective so that those are going to ensure that whatever happens in there, everything is going to be from the standpoint of continuity. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Yea, well what I'm asking you is, is the Michaels Group going to be responsible for anybody working in this project? MR. OPPENHEIM-Yea, as the project developer, if you were to bring in another builder, your going to want to be dam sure, that it's done with the same degree of integrity and quality as the remainder of the project. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-I guess what I'm saying is, is that, as this project develops and if this Town Board has a problem, we want to know who we can go and grab by the neck and say, hey what are you doing? MR. OPPENHEIM-You've got to have someone. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-And it will be you people, I gather? MR. OPPENHEIM-That's correct, that's correct. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Thank you. MR. OPPENHEIM-Okay and again, this is another representative home type, a larger home that we are also bringing on line down in our Lexington Commons project, four bedroom home. This home itself is about two thousand square feet, it's currently priced down in Halfmoon and this is a home that's also going to be placed down in Halfmoon on a third of an acre lots to half acre lots. I see this style as being appropriate for really all portions of the project and it's obviously going to be down scaled in size or perhaps increased in size depending upon the lot and the location on the site. But our goal and I think in creating a design type for the site is to introduce some contemporary features in conjunction with the traditionally field of the area. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Alan, guesstimate for selling price for that particular house? MR. OPPENHEIM-This particular house which I said is about two thousand square feet in size, this home is selling in the one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty's range and I think that price range is going to be most appropriate for the core, the inner part of the site. The half acre to three quarter of an acre, it's really half acre to one acre lots in the center of the property. As I think you get closer to the larger lots along the bluff we anticipate and again this is, these are projections at the homes but the homes that are going to be most suitable for those lots are going to be priced in the two hundred and up range, two hundred to two hundred and fifty and perhaps even further increasing over time. So we're going to open, I think Mike O'Connor had a couple of closing questions, I know that everybody in the audience has some specific questions and comments. Mike, I'll turn it over to you now. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-I think, if you analyze what has been submitted to you in documentation form and if you have also listened to the presentation, you will see that Niagara Mohawk has done it's homework and tried to answer the questions that have arisen or that might arise with this particular development. In my experience with what we've done, there have been no recommendations by the staff that has been put together, the homework, that have not been agreed to by the developer. Ultimately Mr. Tucker, I think the Town Board may look to the Michaels Group for responsibility in day to day implementation but if there's any void here, it also has Niagara Mohawk which is the owner of the development to look to and somebody whose going to be here for some time. There are a couple of questions I would address specifically. I've got comments maybe to everybody that spoke but I won't make those. Just a couple of different couple questions that have arisen, or at least understand might arise and one was, what's the likelihood if the Town Board approves this that Sherman Island Road would be opened up in the future for the development traffic which has been avoided by the proposal that has been put forth by the developer here. Our presentation to the Town and our presentation to the Town Superintendent of Highway, is that the connecting device between the cul de sac that is created for the termination of Sherman Island Road and our development, will be emergency access easement only. And the width that we have proposed is a twenty foot wide easement. If somebody tells us it has to be twenty-five feet, twenty-eight feet, that's agreeable and we can work that out when we get through our site plan review with the Planning Board. It's not our intention to offer a width of road or width of property wide enough for a Town road. My understanding is that the Town would have to have a fifty foot area and it would have to be ownership for them to, on their own unilaterally have to reopen that and create the traffic problem that everybody here has sought to avoid. I'm not saying that the Town couldn't, by eminent domain come along and create a road twenty years down the road there but the likelihood of that is very slim I think and very remote and something that we can't really build in any defense against any more than you could in any other development. I think good sense dictates though that once the development is established and once the homeowners association has an interest in the lands outside of this easement area and an interest in the fee of that easement area, they certainly would resist it as well as the neighboring neighbors would resist it. So I don't know what motivation any future Town Board might have if the future Town Board is made up of different personalities then what is presently before us this evening. The other question that has come is the use of conservation easements. This is really not unique, it is something that has been used in a development process. It is something that is coming to the forefront, maybe more so now then in the past but it's not unique to what we propose here. In 1984 a good portion of the environmental conservation law was revised to in fact allow this vehicle and develop this vehicle. Prior to then, conservation easements had to go to an adjoining landowner in order to be enforceable. They, in 1984 made it enforceable by to whom ever it was granted, whether there is an adjoining parcel that is served or simply they are the grantee of the grant. I've got copies of a portion of Article 49 in the environmental conservation law which I'll give to the Board which I think clearly set forth that and really give us the basis for making the offer that were making. It's kind oflike some of the other areas that we have and some of the other documentations that we have. It's not fine tuned, all we're saying is that we will offer a conservation easement that is acceptable to the Town. It's the same as some of the engineering questions. At this point we're asking and I go back to my initial presentation or my initial comments, we're asking for a planning designation here. We're not asking for a construction permit. We're asking for the Town Board to designate this a Planned Unit Development and we will then submit the actual construction plans to the Planning Board, as it's set up in your ordinance. I'll give you an example along with the conservation law which is even more specific and I'll read just a part of it for the record. In the event of the grantee which is the person who receives the conservation easement and our thought is that it would go to the homeowners association, it would go to the other individual lot owners within the development and it would either go to the Town Board or to some conservancy group if the Town Board does not want to have that grant given to them in the final result here. And I'm not sure if it would go into the Lake George Basin Conservancy or the Eastern New York Conservancy. There seems to be a little bit of a break between where they've actually been applying their jurisdictions and the other conservancy type groups out there that may be willing to take such an easement. In the event of the grantee, whoever it is, in addition to the homeowners who have an interest in enforcing this becomes aware of a violation of the terms of this conservation easement, the grantee shall give notice to the grantor at the grantor's last known post office address, and this would follow each lot owner and there is provisions in here that says that it would follow each lot owner, you give notice of the violation by certified mail, return receipt requested, and request corrective action sufficient to abate such violation and restore the protected property to it's previous condition at the time of this grant. Grantor agrees that the easement documentation report shall be deemed to provide objective information concerning the protected property's condition at the time of this grant. Failure by the grantor to cause discontinuance, abatement or such other corrective action as may be requested by the grantee within thirty days after receipt of such notice, shall entitle grantee to bring an action at law or equity in a court of competent jurisdiction to enforce the terms of this conservation easement. To require the restoration of the property to it's previous condition, to enjoin such noncompliance by X party, temporary or permanent injunction in a court of competent jurisdiction and or to recover any damages arisen from such noncompliance. In this language of this particular easement goes onto express the fact that in addition to actual money damage for restoration, attorney fees by the party who had to go out and seek reinforcement, it gives you a complete remedy, it gives you a complete restoration back to where you should have been in the beginning before the violation. I raise that and I will give you copies of this as part of our record simply because I understand some people have said, well, how are you going to enforce it? It's very enforceable. It's very easy to be done, it's done in other developments, done in other areas. We're talking about that along the buffs, we're talking about that in the areas of the wetland and we're talking about that in the areas of the archeological finds. In the intention of the project owner here is to cooperate fully with all concerns that are raised with any issue here and preserve the status quote of some of the unique features of this particular property. They in fact think that's what makes this project a doable project, a goalable project and a marketable project, some of the features. They would not want to destroy them or have others destroy them during the process of the development. The other comment I make and I guess you have to go back to what are you really considering even if you are going to go pass the designation business. The development of right here would be of one hundred and seventy units of residential units. We are proposing one hundred and sixty-three units under the present configurations with the exclusions of the sensitive areas and I'll just for the point of information tell the Board that seven of those units actually are replacing units that were in the McDonald subdivision that were already in the neighborhood. So we're talking about one hundred and fifty-six units as opposed to one hundred and seventy. Basically, that's our presentation. We do have a letter which we'll submit for the record from the Open Space Institute which supports the type of proposal we've made. We stand ready to answer any questions that you have at this point or I don't know your format. I apologize if you think we took too much time but I don't think we have made a formal presentation to this Board and made a presentation for the record before this evening. Our presentation before was to the Planning Board and I think it's important that you have a complete record of what is actually proposed on the site. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -I have one question of my own and that is, you talked or someone spoke of a recreation association and I'm wondering, specifically to the use of the river, what facilities that would encompass? MR. OPPENHEIM-I guess as far as river use Mr. Brandt, the one area that will be open to all members within the homeowners association will be the point area. Our proposal for that area is, as we said very passive in nature, hiking, picnicking. A seasonal, you know some type of cabin structure for canoe storage and some type of seasonal docks so that people can get in, in and out of the water for canoe use. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Your not talking power boats? MR. OPPENHEIM-We are not talking power boats, that's correct. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Or docks or that type of thing? Your talking about canoe access. MR. OPPENHEIM-No and I think, you know some type of maybe seasonal float that could help people get in and out in that area. But one of the things that's been brought up early in the process was a concern for alot of people with erosion on the buff were, for example, would these home sites be able to use and construct a stairway down to the river. And we've gone on the record saying that will not be the case for individual homeowners. In addition to this area, we'd like to leave ourself the flexibility in working with representative Town officials to identify one or two other areas, perhaps for an overlook or people to have the ability to walk down to the river but it's not going to be done on an individual lot basis. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Okay, so you could use the existing roadway that goes down or something like that, that's appropriate. MR. OPPENHEIM-That's correct. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Okay, thank you. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Alan, before you get away. On the point here, there is a roadway that goes down there at the present time. MR. OPPENHEIM-Yes. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-And up there in that ravine, there's another roadway that goes down. Will those when the development is done, closed off to motorized vehicles? MR. OPPENHEIM-Yes, absolutely. No there's, it makes no sense I think unless the roads were maintained properly, to have those open. I think it's going to be in the form of walking paths. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Thank you. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Mike O'Connor, just for clarification, the roads that you're talking about changing in the McDonald Subdivision, am I understanding that that's going to be the financial responsibility ofNIMO? NIMO will put those roads in and have them ready to be turned over for Town roads within the McDonald Subdivision? ATTORNEY O'CONNOR -Yes. As I understand it, the McDonald roads are already presently in and there are modifications of those roads that will have to be made. So this will become a cui de sac as opposed to a continuation out to Sherman Island Road, this will become a cui de sac and that will be done at the expense of the developer. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-So you will be responsible for doing that to Town standards? I mean, we're not going to have a divided responsibility here or anything? ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-No, we intend if we can get this rezoned if you call PUD designation rezoning, to simultaneously with our site plan applications to file a modification plan for the McDonald Subdivision. And we understand early on from discussions with staff and with the Planning Board is that neither will take place without the other. The same thing I think it has been made clear from the neighbors that, we have some neighbors that support what we propose because we will be cutting down traffic on their roadway that they would not lend us the support that they've lent us if we were going to try and do one separate from the other. MR. OPPENHEIM-And just one thing to add to that and that is, per the agreement with the McDonalds within six months of the start date of the project at which time we're going to be basically building the access road, at that point in time the reconfiguration and additional improvements will be made within the McDonalds Subdivision. So they're going to happen simultaneously, within a six month time frame. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Okay, we've been at this for just short of two hours and it's time for the public input. Do you want to take a five minute break or do you want to keep right on going? COUNCILMAN TUCKER-A five minute break. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I hear two people up here saying five minute break, what's the consensus, you're the public, you guys, that's what we're here for? AUDIENCE-Keep going. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Alright. Okay, the floor is open to anyone from the public that would like to address us. I'll ask you to do one thing, come up here, sit down, make yourself comfortable and talk to us. Identify yourself for the public record and your welcome to give us any input or ask any questions you'd like. PUBLIC COMMENT 8:55 P.M. ATTORNEY SANDY ALLEN-My name is Sandy Allen, I'm with the law firm Miller, Mannix and Pratt and I'm here tonight on behalf of the Brewers and the Akins who are neighbors of the proposed PUD. Before I go into, I have what I consider a very short presentation because there are alot of neighbors and I'd like you to hear from all of them. But I have a procedural question which actually it might got to Paul Dusek. My understanding is that as oflast week, the ninety-four acre recreational parcel was removed from the project. I have a concern, two fold concern. One is that the Warren County Planning Board and the Queensbury Planning Board have both reviewed this project with the ninety-four acre recreational parcel included. I'm concerned that this may be considered a material change in the project and that they should have a chance to go back and look at this again. My second concern is it has to do with the notice for this public hearing, which also describes a three hundred and seven acre parcel for tonight's discussion and also discusses two tax map parcels which includes that ninety-four acre parcel. My concern is that there are people who consider the ninety-four acre parcel important in light of the recreation and in light of the density proposed in the project. And a matter of fact, I believe I have Planning Board minutes which quote Mr. Brandt as thinking the ninety-four acre parcel is a very important part of the project. So I'm just throwing that out to you tonight, I think that we should investigate this. I truly think it should go back to the Planning Board and the Warren County Planning Board. ATTORNEY DUSEK-Ultimately it's the same type of consideration that you would have when we have municipal laws that come before you. If you recall, once in a while you have a law that gets changed and the question becomes whether or not the previous notices that were sent out were sufficient under the circumstances to account for the change. Ultimately it rests with your discretion as a Board as to whether you feel there's been a substantial change in the project or not a substantial change based on this. The things that you would take into consideration are whether anybody could claim that they were harmed by the fact that this particular parcel has been taken out or at this point. I spoke briefly, I think did we discuss this briefly at one point? JIM MARTIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-Yes. ATTORNEY DUSEK-And I don't want to put words in Jim's mouth so I'll let you say what you said to me about it. But that's the type of element you're going to consider here. Is there something that could be an impact? For instance, I'll just give you an example, there was one case where a Town Board was about to engage in a rezoning and they had several parcels in mind for the rezoning and noticed all the parcels and then took one parcel out. The parcel they took out belong to a gentleman who had read the notice, assumed his parcel was going to be rezoned if everybody else was and then he found out later it wasn't rezoned. Well in that case the court obviously saw the harm because that individual relying on the notice didn't come to the hearing. So that's what the courts have looked for and then they over turned that or actually in that case what they did is they made the Town rezone the whole thing as it originally was proposed. In another instance the Town changed some aspects of what type of words would be used in a forestry definition and in that case they said obviously there is no impact. So what your looking for is a harm of some kind that could come out of this situation and with that being said, let me just turn it over to Jim real quick because Jim also has evaluated it. MR. MARTIN-The only part that I would like to highlight is it that from a technical standpoint the ninety- four acres was excluded from the density calculation so therefore is not a part of the project from that standpoint. The only other remaining link from what was previously proposed is the use of that land as recreation area and only this Board can decide whether they want to actually take that or deny it. It would be my recommendation that it's not useful and I think we also have that recommendation from the Director of Recreation but again it's your call in that regard. So the only two links are, that as recreation area and that as density and the density issue has already been removed. So with that in mind ... COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-I recognize that as a lateral. MR. MARTIN-Call it what you may. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Now let me just say this. I don't know whether anybody else is going to speak about, on this Board, is going to speak about the fact that it is a major change and we should go on and on and on and it's possible that it is. But really all we're doing is delaying. We need to come to a conclusion here. These people want a conclusion, you want a conclusion and even though it may, if you stretch it, become germane I think we ought to get on with it. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I have no problem with getting on with it Nick but I will state for the record right now that I think it is a major change. This removal of the ninety-four acres came to me re: Warren County Planning Board, is it how I knew about it last week. I for this meeting reviewed all this pile of documents and I found it very confusing trying to read the material in here, the statistical material and in my mind saying but no none of this is right that I'm reading. There wasn't one page of statistical material that is right and we also are presented with a brand new EAF Part I tonight which I have a little problem with. We never would have done that in the past. So that's my reaction to it. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -I'd like to defer that decision later on, let the public give their input and then let this Board address that issue with all of the input. ATTORNEY ALLEN-Okay, certainly I think tonight with all the public here, I think it's very important to get their input tonight. Like I said, I'm just going to quickly run through some of my, the concerns that our clients have that I think are probably the largest ones and then let you hear from the neighbors who have a much better understanding I'm sure than I do of the every day operations of the neighborhood. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Sandy, excuse me a minute but I've sat in the back of the room and know how terrible the acoustics are so I'm going to ask the people back there, can you hear Miss Allen? ATTORNEY ALLEN-Okay, thanks. On top of it, I have a cold that changes my voice about every three minutes, so sorry about that. Basically in the Town of Queensbury Zoning Ordinance there are goals that are presented in the PUD section discussing what type of project is appropriate for a PUD designation. We have concerns that two of those goals are not going to be met with this proposed project as it stands tonight. The first one is and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, the outstanding, that it's going to preserve the outstanding natural topography and geological features, scenic vistas, trees and historical sites and prevent the disruption of natural drainage patterns. The second concern is that the development pattern, our concern is that the development pattern will not be in harmony with the landuse intensity, transportation facilities, community facilities, objectives of the comprehensive landuse plan. I'm pretty certain that most of you are relatively familiar with the site by now. As you know it is a piece of virgin land located along the Hudson River, it's bounded on the western side, I'm sorry on the eastern side and on the southern side by the Hudson River. In addition on the eastern side is the Clendon Brook which is another area that I know the Town of Queensbury in the past has been concerned about. I don't think I need to expound on the importance of the Hudson River in history in the State of New York. It's an area that's abundant with wild life at this point and one of the primary reasons being the bay located on the east side of the project site. There's numerous acres of wetlands, I believe about eighteen acres according the sponsor and there's all kinds of wildlife and birds located in that bay section. The property across the River on the southern side right now is currently undeveloped and that makes for this particular area stretch of the Hudson River to be particular pristine and enjoyable for people who are out paddling around because of it's natural setting right now. There's steep bluffs which were brought up by the Saratoga Associates located along, partially along the perimeter of the property but then also along the area of the wetlands. Those bluffs are just incredibly steep. If you have not been out to see them, I have no way of quantifying it for you, you have to see them yourself. There also very sandy and therefore any type of removal of any kind of vegetation or any activity on the site is going to cause major destruction to these bluffs. We are greatly concerned that these outstanding features of the Hudson River in this area and of the land formations in the area are going to be greatly impacted as a result of this project. In addition we're, because of this impact or which results in this impact is the fact that there's going to be extensive development along the River front property. The development is two hundred and eight acres, I guess they added their five acres in so two hundred and thirteen acres. A one hundred and eighteen acres is zoned single family residential one acre but ninety point three acres of the property is zoned waterfront residential three acres. The comprehensive landuse plan identified the, basically what's the one acre zoning as requiring some development limitations. However, along the shoreline they listed the property as having low development suitability which requires the lowest densities to be considered for areas to allow suitable uses for consideration. So this, even at the time of our zoning and our comprehensive landuse plan there was great consideration about this shorefront property. It's important to note that their zoning waterfront residential one acre zoning also available but yet the Planning Commission chose the three acre zoning for this area. By using, by having the PUD what in fact the developer has been able to do is shift the one acre zoning to the shorefront property and thus, they even said that they spoke with the Planning Board, I mean with the Planning Commission, Planning Department and that they went along with the waterfront one acre zoning specifications rather than the three acre zoning specifications. We just believe that because of this increased density that disturbance from the construction, the septic systems, lawn maintenance and residents accessing the river will upset the fragile area contrary to the objectives of the PUD. Another concern is that this site is not acceptable for septic systems. The soil on the site as was brought up tonight is very sandy and one of the concerns in the comprehensive landuse plan is that higher density projects be located on areas that have public sewers provided to them. Here we're talking about septic systems and my understanding is that the one acre lots along the bluffs are to have individual septic systems which again, their going to be sitting way up above the river on sandy soils and we believe the likelihood that there could be some problems with leaching is great. I believe, I can say that the commencement of archeological research on the project is something that we find very positive and we would encourage that investigation continue and that the Board do everything it could possible can to protect that for the future. I'm we're talking about sites that I heard tonight as far back as three thousand B. C. and I think that's very important for the Town of Queensbury to preserve those sites for the future. Finally, we get to the consideration of the endangered and threatened species on the property. We've discussed in great detail tonight the Kamer Blue Butterfly but it's very important, this has just been listed as a federally protected species which leaves all kinds of additional implications in regards to this project. There was concern about when the study was done for the Kamer Blue this Summer and whether it was done appropriately. It is my understanding that at this point of the year, we're not going to be able to discover if in fact the Kamer Blue Butterflies are located or have any presence on the site and this will not be able to be restudied until this Summer. We encourage the Town Board to keep this in consideration. In addition my understanding of the federal protection statue for the Kamer Blue is that they have approximately two years to set up designated protected sites and that these sites do not have to have presence of either Lupine or Butterfly, they just can be merely considered buffer sites and this should be taken into consideration in light of this project. Finally, in light of everything I've spoken about and everybody else I'm sure is going to speak about, we would like to request that the Board perform a Full Environmental Impact Statement in compliance with the State Environmental Quality Review Act. I'll turn this over to the rest of the neighbors. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Okay, who would like to speak next? MARGARET BURRELL-Supervisor Brandt, members of the Board and citizens my name is Margaret Burrell, I live in Queensbury and have lived there now for over twenty-six years. Although I am here because as a member of the Audobon Board, I have walked some of the property. What I want to address tonight are two main points, present need and feasibility. In a time of prosperity and growth, this project may become necessary and even in some measure admirable. But although the United States economy is presumably improving, there's not much sign of that improvement in New York State. At a time when we in this area are experiencing almost weekly closings of businesses and layoffs from others, I question that this is the time to go ahead. Yesterday's Post Star listed some ninety houses in the area already for sale. As for feasibility if as human beings we are supposed to do more than our fellow creatures, if we leam from experience shouldn't we consider what has happened in Queensbury in less than a decade with regard to developments. First of all, the West Mountain proposal that didn't come off the ground. The Earltown proposal now bankrupt. Hiland Park now bankrupt. How many more failed dreams must we witness before we learn? And another simple reminder increased housing always goes hand and hand with increases in taxes. We know from our President's address last week that we're going to have to expect other kinds of tax increases, perhaps we should bare that in mind. And finally in line with President Clinton urging us all to be more mindful of the welfare of our neighbors and our community, I urge that we exercise restraint until such time as genuine need forces our hand. Thank you. JOAN ROBERTSON-I'm Joan Robertson, I live in the Cleverdale area of Queensbury. I too have been a resident for many, many years. I have reviewed the file and I'm some what concerned from not an environmental perspective entirely, I'm concerned as a taxpayer. In reviewing the Master Plan the water resources map, this area is over an aquifer recharge and it's organic soil that's subject to flooding. We have had flooding problems in other parts of the Town and when this happens, the landowners come to the Town Board and say fix it and that's a taxpayer charge. This in fact happens it will be again, a taxpayer charge which as I say we have seen in the Town. The slope analysis is the steep bluff and that also is unsuitable. It's you know like something you have, a slope like this, I have walked the property and I'm really concerned the erosion. I go up in the mountains alot and I know how steep slopes can erode, ten trips up and down a bank in the same place will make a little foot path and that foot path is going to draw water and your going to have substantial erosion. I really am concerned that you can not keep people off this bank. If you have alot of people there, they're going to use it. I'm not saying that you should develop this because it's a lovely place, I walked out there and I said, gee I'd love to live here. But I do think that there are some restrictions that should be put onto the property. This is recommended for moderate density which is three acres rather than one acre. Now I understand with the Planned Unit Development you can, the clustering is a good idea, but I still feel that the Critical Environmental area along the river should remain at three acres, as a moderate density. I just don't feel that one acre is a good idea in this critical area. I think the construction will certainly alternate the drainage. You're going to have roads, you're going have driveways, you're going to have rooflines. If you have these rather large houses on lots, you're probably going to have tennis courts. You're going to increase the impermeable area of the land dramatically and I think that you are going to have problems with stormwater runoff. There are natural gullies along this property and the water is going to go to these gullies and you're going to have erosion siltation of the river. I think this is a serious problem. Now I know there are some mitigating factors that can be used but again it's, with one acre houses I think it's a real, it's a disaster waiting to happen. The Planning Board recommended a fifty foot buffer inland from the top of the bluffs. Now I have a question for the developers, if you look at the slope, the little picture up in the corner, now down at the bottom of the green, it says property line. Now, is that the property line of the development or is that the property line of the property owner who is going to own the upland property? Where is the property line, the acreage figured from? I guess I'm not clear about that. MR. OPPENHEIM-No, the property lines actually go down, down at the bottom. MRS. ROBERTSON-Okay right, look at the little picture on the top from the corner. MR. OPPENHEIM-It goes right down. MRS. ROBERTSON-If you were selling that property to some people, how can you, if they own it, how can you tell them, you may not walk down to the River and stick your hand in to catch a tadpole? They own it. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-The same way you tell them not to cut a tree. MR. OPPENHEIM-There are plenty of, this isn't the only project where those restrictions have been put in place. Why, I mean you've asked for it. Why would then the people own it and why isn't it owned by the homeowner's association because people generally would rather own it then not own it and even if it's got restrictions on it that severely minimum the use from other than just being able to look out and know that you own it. It's, you know those restrictions can be effectively enforced. MRS. ROBERTSON-Who enforces them? MR. OPPENHEIM-That's something that we are ... we don't have the, we've talked about them, we've proposed that perhaps the Town would be recipient of the conservation easement. The Town by no means agreed to that at this point in time and that's something that we feel that through the process, we're going to have to come up with a solution during site plan review for that enforcement process. MRS. ROBERTSON-Now some of the lots there are kind of skinny. I question if you can get your setbacks with a fifty foot setback from the bluff. I wonder if you can get your setbacks. MR. OPPENHEIM-Well, we certainly could demonstrate to you ... MRS. ROBERTSON-Oh, I used my little triangular ruler. MR. OPPENHEIM-We've gone through that exercise on all the lots. MRS. ROBERTSON-Well I ... MR. OPPENHEIM-In terms of placing the septic system... backyards. MRS. ROBERTSON-Okay, thank you. I'm also concerned with the, wait a minute until I get to my next place. Oh the Planning Board, okay. Now this is another point that was on the Planning Board, a recommendation. Intermittent streams that diverse the up ... stream section are susceptible to contamination, erosion and siltation. I think this is a serious problem. I think probably what I would respectfully request that the project be returned to the developer for a full environmental impact statement. I feel that the development needs to be scaled back, that the area along the river should be returned to a three acre moderate density with no disturbance of the bluff area and I do feel it can be developed in an environmentally sensitive manner but not with that density. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. ANN RUCHALSKI-I live on the Corinth Road. My house is like about a fifty foot walk to Foothill Road, so I'm definitely feeling that I'm being affected especially with the change in the traffic. However, traffic is not an issue. No, I don't want traffic driving behind my house. Right now, I look behind my house and I see wooded areas and I can walk through the woods and see the loop of the Foothill Road and I do like it the way it is. However, my main concern as Margaret stated, is whether the development is needed. On Sunday, I took a drive in my car from Peggy Ann Drive to West Mountain Road to Corinth Road via Founders Way and McCrea Street in Bedford Close. It's amazing the developments that are there that have lots for sale, houses for sale. I cut out Sunday's paper the same article and I highlighted all the Queensbury properties for sale not just properties, not just houses, but also lots for sale. I don't understand why we would jeopardize such a beautiful area filled with endangered species, even if they are not endangered with wildlife. I've walked back there, I've seen wild turkey, great Blue Heron, I've seen deer. It's just amazing. We take our dog out there, our beagle, we go rabbitting, not that we've got any, but just you know and it's gorgeous back there. It's just ridiculous that you want to even think of developing a land that obviously is not necessary to Queensbury or else we wouldn't have a full page of ads of places available. That's where I'm coming from. Also, I have a letter to read to you from a concerned citizen who couldn't be here tonight. His name is Kevin Campbell and also lives on the Corinth Road. The purpose of this letter is to voice my concerns regarding the Hudson Pointe PUD. I regret to say that I am unable to attend the meeting of 1-25- 93, due to my workshift. However, as a resident on Corinth Road, Queensbury, I felt it was necessary to voice my concerns. My main concerns regard my interest in the environment. As a form of relaxation I enjoy hiking and frequently choose this parcel of land to do so. I have walked nearly every square foot of walkable land on this property. I know the contours of this land from the wetlands to the top of the bluffs and every natural runoff in between. The natural contours of this land sustains itself. Any alternation of the land is going to create new erosion patterns. To make the property buildable many of the natural runoffs will need to be filled in won't they? As far as the stream corridors and the unregulated hundred foot buffer are concerned Clendon Brook does contain wetlands to the sides of the corridors and they need to be regulated. Wetlands are natural means of buffering against flood ties, spring melts and heavy rains. Clendon Brook does contain wetlands along it's banks much farther inland than just at the mouth of the brook. If you change the geography of this land erosion which will seriously affect the brook and it's wetlands cannot be stop no matter what manmade prevention is installed. The wetlands are my primary concern, however, I also have many others. The endangered Kamer Blue, the untapped archeological sites and the real purposes of this development. I am not anti-development, however. I see this project as being much to large for this property involved. Development needs to be kept back from point where the natural runoff and slopes occur. I am in construction as an electrician, I am not a preservationist, yes I know when enough is to much. I wish to say to the Town Board this is to much. Respectfully yours, Kevin Campbell. In just in closing, I have a little boy who lives up front who goes to Queensbury School. He just recently told me a story of sitting in a classroom on windowsills and sharing books. I have a real concern if we're bringing families into this area then we need to think about our schools. I'm a teacher so I have a great deal of concern for that. Also, as far as the traffic. I understand that your talking about looking at these homes at being only one car family that's very unrealistic. At the cost of these houses you know that these people are going to have more than one car. That's all I have to say, thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. CHERYL ZINK-I don't live in Queensbury, I live in Saratoga. But, I'm here to give my opinion on the Blue Lupine. I like to comment on the portion of this evening's meeting, I'm sorry I don't remember her name on some of the things the woman talked about with the Blue Lupine, Kamer Blue Butterfly. I was on the study which was conducted by five parties the Nature Conservancy, DEC, Town of Wilton, Wilmaright Corporation, National Audobon. The third week in August is definitely to late to find even for Laura Summers, who I know personally to find lupine plants. They are sanest at that point it is like finding a needle in a hay stack. I have been to the site. It is, of all the sites that I was in, the Ganesford Quadrant, Typographic Quadrant, that is an ideal site. I believe that is a viable corridor for the Kamer Blue Butterfly. I think that we just need, not to rush into things and move on like Nick mentioned to, just make a decision and move on. But, I think that there are some important decisions here, more important than just to get it over with and make a decision and move on. It was also brought up, if the recent federal protection under the endangered species act has been considered. I know that DEC's hands were very much tied in the past years because the butterfly under state protection you could not harm the butterfly itself, but you could harm the habitat of the butterfly you could harm the Blue Lupine. Under the federal endangered species act you cannot harm the habitat. So, I wonder if the information on this study is not a little out dated and I'm just concerned about that. The field study program that I worked on, I spent an entire month and half, nine hours, ten hours, eleven hours a day walking these sites, locating these sites, looking at Lupine, mapping Lupine and I can tell you it get's dam hard by the third week in August to tell a ... Lupine plant from any other dried up plant that's out there. So I just wanted to express my concern about that and I thank you. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Just for a second, just to make my position known. I'm not anxious to make a decision quickly, I'm anxious to move the process along. I've seen the Brewers hanging out for a year waiting for a decision. I've seen these people hanging out for a year waiting for a decision. I'm not for holding up the process of trying to make a decision for somethings that aren't necessarily germane to the prospect. I'm not here, in fact I don't even know if we'll make a decision tonight, I'm not anxious to do that, you can bet. MS. ZINK-Okay, Thank you. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO- Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Who else would like to speak here tonight? Come on right up. EMILY AKINS-I hope you'll bare with me, I'mjust old folk. Okay, the density of the land on the river bluffs of the planned unit development called Hudson Pointe is very alarming to me. Seeing this parcel of land contiguous to a freshwater wetland GF9, having one acre parcels sold for river front homes will eventually destroy the beauty I've seen for many years. This unique piece of land having Indian Artifacts, possibly many rare species of plant and wildlife, also a close habitant for the Blue Kamer Butterfly should not be washed down the river just for a developer that wants to come in, do his damage, take his money and be gone. What do they lose, nothing but much to be lost from this earth, not to be regained. The rare beauty of this point, it's Potter's Point as we all know it will be lost forever. I feel this should be a concern for our Town and State Officials. It well to remember the old ancient proverb, this land was not given to us by our parents but it was loaned to us by our children. And I sincerely hope that you leave this point untouched and not damaged. I'm asking for a Full Environmental Impact Statement to be done with our Region 5 DEC and neutral consultants to work together in the Spring and Summer of 93. I guess I didn't say my name did I? SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Not yet. MRS. AKINS-Emily Akins, Queensbury. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. MRS. AKINS-I hope you'll consider it please. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Okay, anyone else that would like to speak on this? LIND A WHITE-Good evening, my name is Linda White and I'm also representative the Audobon Society but I have a background in Natural Science, I've been working with Resource Management for twelve years with the National Park Service. I have also walked the site numerous times and I do feel that alot has gone into this project and for the most part I think it's very good except for the site along the bluffs and the point. I think more consideration should go toward the three acre zoning and toward the point itself. The archeological features are something that's very important and very integral to this area. I spoke with Robert Coon today with the State Department of Parks and Recreation and they also believe it's a very integral site and would hope that more would be done as far as archeological work toward that end. I would hope that you would just give more consideration to that. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. Anyone else who would like to speak? DR. MARILYN VANDYKE-My name is Dr. Marilyn VanDyke and I'm the Town Historian. I'm an appointed official of the Town and it's my job to collect, preserve and disseminate information related to the history of the Town of Queensbury. I have been following the proposed Hudson Pointe Development. The following of development plans by historians is a new role for historians and a very interesting one. I've been following the development with a real eye to the way the history of the use of the land has been addressed by the developers. In correspondence with the Michaels Group on January 13th, I said in part and I quote "since the area under question is presently in a relatively undeveloped state, it is an appropriate time to consider a more in depth historical overview of the land in question. The Town Historian would like to work with the Michaels Group to expand the work that has already been completed. To date the review has addressed very well the prehistory of the land along with the need to protect the sensitive archeological findings. However, the historical or written phase of the development from the arrival of colonist to the 20th century needs further research. Beyond the finding of the Potter House foundations, the abandoned realign and the overhead electric lines, there are questions of early settlement, agricultural and lumbering developments and the impact on the area of the building of the Sherman Island Dam", unquote. The primary reason for conducting an historical overview is to identify and to mark sites that are worthy of preservation. In addition there maybe produced a written history of the area which may be used by the developer in conjunction with future land or lot sales providing all new perspective owners with a sense of appreciation for the past use of this land. And the public at large may also benefit with a broader understanding of this portion of Queensbury's long and impressive history. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. Anyone else who would like to come and talk? ROBIN BREWER-Hi my name is Robin Brewer, I'm from Queensbury, Candleberry Drive. As I'm sitting here, I'm ending up changing everything I want to say a little bit so if I become unclear just yell at me. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-You've got all the time in the world. MRS. BREWER-Oh, that's great then. UNKNOWN-A little louder please. MRS. BREWER-A little louder, okay. I have a number of concerns but what I would really like to stress again is that the PUD in my mind does not meet all the requirements of a PUD zoning district. Again, like Miss Allen said, according to zoning ordinances a development pattern, it would consist of a development pattern which preserves outstanding natural topography and geological features, scenic vistas, trees, historic sites and prevents the disruption of natural drainage as well as a development pattern in harmony with the land. I feel as if anyone has walked the land, they would agree in that respect. By looking at the maps, I do not feel as though they really show exactly what's there. They don't outline the topography, the geography of that land. The steep bluffs as indicated by your map, are way off. They're much, much steeper than what's shown in that map. I feel that it's important for anybody really looking and making a decision, walk that land, walk the wetlands, walk the Clendon Brook, walk the floodplains and see what's there. That's really important to me. I think that would be really important to all of you who are going to be making decisions. I'd like to read a little bit of a letter that I've given to each of the Board members. This letter addresses the major concerns regarding this PUD. We believe and trust that the members of the Queensbury Town Board will seriously look at each and reflect upon the tremendous responsibility that each person has in preserving and maintaining a very sensitive and fragile echo system. I feel that many of the answers and suggestions provided by the Michaels Group are very vague. I feel that there's too many, listening to them speak tonight that too many things are going to be decided at a later point. I feel that working and developing on such a fragile piece of land that these answers must be addressed before there's any type of an approval or decision made by the Town Board. Just for a couple of examples of being vague in their last reports. As a result stormwater runoff the project site should not adversely impact the wetlands. As a result the trail should not adversely impact the wetlands. The one hundred and fifty-five acres should be enough to mitigate this potential. Development of this site should not have a negative impact. Here's a really good one. By importing soils with slower permeability, the applicant hopes to bring the percolation rate up to acceptable levels. And hopes and should not, are not appropriate at this time. Even though your talking on a conceptual level, again the fragile land is what's important and there needs to be more definite proof, more definite analysis. Another point I want to bring out is that I feel that outside neutral consultants and experts be brought in to look at the land. I'm going to bring up again which some talk has been, quite a bit of talk about the Blue Kamer Butterfly. On September 25th at a Planning Board Meeting, the Planning Board approved or accepted that this was enough information to send on to the Town Board. A verbal report was given stating there were no Karner Blue on the site. There were no documented reports given to the Planning Board at that time. Who, where, what, when, dates, how, were not there. Six weeks later the reports are materialized and it's not the Planning Department, it's outside people who are bringing to the attention, getting second opinions from other experts about the report. I don't know if it would have gotten there if it wasn't for me taking that information to Nature Conservancy and DEe. I would just like to stress, that's one report. I'm not an expert in any of these situations and I would feel alot more comfortable if other experts were brought in, even in the matter of archeological sites. Again, I know we have a good archeologist working on the project, but being one report that's having erroneous statements, what about other reports as well? There are five sites listed for the National Registrar. I heard Mr. Curtin talking about a couple of them being in the green space or the conservation easements. There are three others that are still located on lots or parts of them on lots that was not addressed. Once, that brings up the idea of conservation easements again. Yes, a person is responsible for paying or rebuilding the damage. How do you put back destroyed artifacts in the ground? You can't do that once the trees ripped up, once the trees cut down, it's not like building something over it. The trees, it's a wooded area, the trees would be cut down, the surface underneath would be dug up. I have a question, not being any expert, maybe Mr. Curtain would answer it. But how are the conservation easements, how are these sites, the boundaries for these sites determined? If you look at the maps although there's not one up there now, the conservation easements on these five sites are organic shapes. You know, there must be a way but physically just using common sense, you go down there and you look at the unit, there's one or two test shovel pits away from that site and that's it, as far as I can see physically walking there most of the time through the Summer and the Fall. How are those conservation easements boundaries determined? Hopefully that will be answered and solve my mystery but I think that alot of these reports need to be looked at by outside people. Not that I don't trust everyone, but I don't think that everybody's an expert in all issues. If I can just take a moment more just to bring up Blue Karner Butterfly one more time. If everyone bears with me. Again, much conversation and talk and discussion has been on preserving the area. The project ecologist will take a second look at the open areas on the project site at an appropriate time to be coordinated with the Nature Conservancy to determine if the butterflies are utilizing any of these areas, not just the pole line corridor but as well as the borrow pit and a couple of other open spaces. In your last statement and also which was re-emphasized here at the meeting, the only disturbance of the powerline corridor will be where the proposed road will cross. If I go back to Mr. Spider Barber's reports, he states, residential development increases the potential for off road vehicle damage, even to lands protected by conservation easement covenants. Open power line corridors and other sensitive habitats should be protected from dirt bikes and all terrain vehicles. Since it is difficult and expensive to police such use, posting has little effect on determined ATV enthusiasts and I wonder what educational pamphlets we have on them as well. Only effective barriers to these vehicles will keep them off sensitive natural areas. Damage can be devastating as it was at the Kamer Blue site 14 just south of Sherman Avenue about one mile north of the Hudson Pointe site. The potential for such damage should be carefully considered and mitigated in any development plan for this site. And that was all quoted except for the little part I put in about the educational pamphlets. I guess that's it for now unless I think of something else. I'll look in my notes. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Well, your welcome to come back if you see some more you wantto say. MRS. BREWER-I'm glad that I am. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Who else would like to comment on this? TIM BREWER-What a surprise huh. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-And your name is? MR. BREWER-My name is Tim Brewer and I live on Candleberry Drive. Everybody's been talking about the butterfly and I'm going to talk about traffic I think for a minute. Mr. O'Connor noted that he satisfied all the neighbors with the traffic and in my mind, I don't think he has. There's alternatives that could be done and I'd just like to show Mr. Brandt and the Board this petition in 1989. My wife and I wrote a petition when Mr. McDonald was putting his roads in and we submitted it to the Town Board at that time asking for another exit. For the developments there now, okay. We brought that up at the meeting the Michaels Group had with the neighbors and the Planning Board. And their solution was to block off Sherman Island Road at the very end. I suggested a couple of times to Mr. Oppenheim, not to Mr. uh, to Mr. O'Connor but if we were to block off Sherman Island Road at the corner where Corinth Road is and let the development that's currently there use one of their exits out. I'd like to know the answer if it's at all possible, if we can get an answer to that question. The reason being, I'm on the Planning Board and in previous applications we've asked such as Dexter to internalize roads for safety, for people that are already there. I think that ninety degree turn and their traffic engineer discussed the safety issues on that corner with the site, the ninety degree turn, I think it's a dangerous corner and sixty-five or sixty-six people also thought so in 1989. So this isn't something we're just dreaming up. I really think if we had an opportunity to use one of those roads and block the road off at Corinth Road, it would ease alot of the problems. Maybe block it off, I don't know. I'm just asking for an answer to that question why it can't be done. To give the people there, right now we're supposed to be planning for our communities and I think this is a way that we could accommodate that. For them to just go up and rip up Town roads, they don't own the roads but there just going to go in and rip them up and Mr. Naylor says it's okay. He really didn't, in my mind, I don't think he asked all the neighbors. He might have asked a couple of them but he didn't ask me. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-He meaning Naylor? MR. BREWER-He meaning Naylor, yea. I had discussed it with him but he didn't present any other alternatives to me. I presented them to him. I guess the only other thing I have to add is I also think that a complete EIS should be done and outside consultants should look into this project. Thank you and I would like an answer to that question if we could possibly could get it tonight. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Do you want to take that on now or do you want to ... MR. O'CONNOR-I'd like to try and address everybody down through if! can unless you want me to answer.. . SUPERVISOR BRANDT-No, I just as well let the public get all their input and we certainly want the answers but rather than keep everybody here all night. Anybody else that would like to speak to us? COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I have some comments Mike when the public is done. ROLAND AKINS-I'm Roland Akins, I live on the Corinth Road. I think this Town Board has got the knowledge, the common sense, the power and the know-how to take a look at this project. I think they should look, my main concern is the one acre lots on the bluff. I don't see how they can go against the master plan which was three acres. I really would like them to take a close look at that. I don't see how you can make any move on it until a full environmental impact study is done and checked into. Also on the road, like Tim said, has satisfied some people but it's still a safety hazard in there, it should be taken care of this time. I think Mr. Sutherland made a statement about Dr. Irion approving of the road which is not true. He can look back in his letter, Dr. Irion says one plan was better than the other. I know that the School Board and the Superintendent of Schools probably has no authority to tell you what to do but he did recommend, he made a recommendation. You better look back in your letter and see what is says. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Anyone else from the public who would like to speak to us? STERLING AKINS-Sterling Akins on the Corinth Road and I'd just like to reiterate a request for a complete impact study on this area before your go ahead and approve it. Also, I'm concerned again with the one acre lots on the bluff. In fact, it looks like they are hedging on the one acre even when they run that boundary line clear to the river which is an area that can't be used other than just owned that's all. I don't know how they can possible control somebody using that for their children to go down to the river to go swimming or whatever they want to do on it. I think that you've got to go back to the three acre the thing was set up for originally. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Just a comment. I just looked up in this packet that the Saratoga Associates gave us and Mr. Akins is correct. The letter written to Lee York, he doesn't like you, I guess from Dr. Irion is one sentence. It says, the enclosed letter suggest a plan that would be more appropriate for bus stop safety than the one last presented by the Michaels Group. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Anyone else who would like to talk to us? BARRY WHITE-Resident of Sherman Island Road. I've been there approximately twenty one years. I can only speak on the things that I know about. The traffic there once been from a dirt road to what it is now. I hated every house that moved in there, I've learned to accept them. Everybody has gotten by with the traffic that's there. I don't know of any serious incidents that have every happened on that corner. As far as the traffic problem, I think a whole lot of that has been alleviated now because of the Southern Exposure Development will not be using the Sherman Island Road. If anything this project from my point of view has enhanced where I live. I'm not going to have to put up with that traffic that's no longer a concern for me. As far as the PUD or the development of the land, I don't know a whole lot about that. The ecology of the land, I can't see where that's changed a whole lot in the twenty-one years that I've been there. The wildlife species are still there around the houses that have come in. They may have to move, they may have to adjust some, I believe they're going to stay there. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. Anyone else who would like to speak to us? Is there any... go ahead, nobody's asking to come up right now. MRS. BREWER-If there's somebody else, I mean, I'll wait. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-No, there's no one else asking, so go right ahead. MRS. BREWER-Again, on the traffic issue, which I don't believe is a really big concern at this particular time, I think the environmental issues need to be addressed. But I do want to say that traffic alternative plans other than what's there should be looked at. When we're talking about the neighbors being happy, it's not all the neighbors. If you look at the situation, as it is the map is kind of hard to see right now, but we have two roads connected from McDonald Subdivision onto Sherman Island Road. Really another answer to the question, another answer to the problem would be blocking it off on Corinth Road rather than blocking off at the center. If you're going to block it off then what's the difference if it's at one point or another when either one is going to cost more than the other. If it's blocked off at the point of Corinth Road, that get's rid of that point on Corinth Road where, number one, our children have to wait of our school bus if the bus does not come in, if it's not more than a half mile away also making left hand turns which many of my friends and relatives make left hand turns will be in a safer position, they will not have to use that exit any more. I feel that blocking it off there will give our development a safe exit and entrance into our subdivision ... a design for planning, it was not that we asked the Michaels Group to be separate. We did not ask them to be segregated, we asked them, we don't want three hundred plus cars going down Sherman Island Road. There are many ways to look at alternatives and it needs to be looked at creatively to find the best possible solution for everyone involved in that development. The way it stands now on the map is with that road cut off in the middle and then taking two other roads that give access to the subdivision from a safe entrance, cutting them up as well, does not, I have no understanding of that concept. I would like to know why do you decide to cut up two roads that flow into Corinth Road, when you can stop the traffic? We wouldn't have three hundred plus cars going down Sherman Island Road if it was blocked on the end. If it's not blocked off on the end, then I believe one of the roads in McDonald Subdivision should be left open. Not an easement for emergency but a safety entrance for myself, children, our families and relatives to enter. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Okay, anyone else who would like to speak on the record here? Come on right up. JOHN ARCURI -You'll have to excuse my attire, my name is John Arcuri, I stopped up after work. Can everybody hear me or am I okay? COUNCILMAN CAIMANO- Yes. MR. ARCURI-Okay, this is my first time speaking. I own a lot on Morningside Circle, I'm the vacant lot on Morningside Circle and I plan on being a neighbor over there and all these people here, someday hopefully I'll be your neighbor. I do respect all the things I've heard from the Akins, the Brewers, from Mr. Oppenheim, the Michaels Group, Mr. O'Connor. In my opinion it seems like, I've read alot of articles and I've seen, this is the third meeting and your getting back to the same old thing. You're nitpicking, people don't want it there, some people do. I think the Michaels Group has bent over backwards to please the people about the traffic condition and now people are saying they're not happy with it. Now they want some other, how much more can some people do? You can't please all the people all the time. You can please some of the people some of the time. The reason why I bought my property was because of the land. I like to hunt, I like the woods. I also look in the future. Now if, should this land ever be developed, I think the Michaels Group has done a good job. I do work for Niagara Mohawk. There's no conflict of interest there, I have nothing in this to gain. But I am in the line department and I've seen alot of other developments. I've been in houses, I've been allover Queensbury hooking up services and in my opinion this is a very nice setup, it's a nice plan. Should anybody every, should this be developed, I'd like to see the Michaels Group develop it. It's a nice setup, hopefully it's not going to be another Inspiration Park in my opinion, okay, I don't want somebody like that moving in. You know, that's just my opinion, that's all. Okay. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Sure. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-Thanks. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Let me ask, first time? I'd like to get everybody to speak for the first time and then you're welcome to come back and talk to us. Anybody else who has not had a chance to speak that would like to? Okay, come on. MS. RUCHALSKI-I'm Ann Ruchalski in case you don't remember. I just don't want this to end on the traffic issue because I don't think that's the issue. In my eyes, we shouldn't even have to worry about the traffic because I don't really want to see this development go in. Now, I know that might be too idealistic and I'm sure we're going to come to some compromise where maybe some of the housing will go in. But I really believe that we've got to look at the environmental issues. We've got to look at the wetlands, we've got to look at the bluffs, the erosion, the endangered species. All the environmental impacts on the river, on Clendon Brook, the archeological digs. These are very important issues and there shouldn't be should be's and could be's and want to be's, there's got to be definite answers to how we can preserve this. If they can give us definite answers, if we can prove that all of this is going to be preserved, then fine, put some houses in but not one hundred and sixty-two. We don't need one hundred and sixty-two new homes. And we need to come to some sort of compromise but please don't end this meeting on a traffic issue because it's not a traffic issue, it's much more than that. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Okay. Anyone else? I know you guys wanted to break a long time ago. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-I've got some questions when ever we come to our turn. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Well it's always your turn. Go right ahead. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Mr. O'Connor come on up to the mic and bring Alan with you. The, if and when the Sherman Island Road is shut off, there's a twenty foot emergency exit entrance at the end of the road, a grassy area. The question comes to mind, how is this going to be maintained in the Winter time? Because sometimes we get snow up here, we haven't lately but we will. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-I think as I've seen how it's been proposed to this point, is that your talking about basically an emergency type access. One that would be used when it was absolutely necessary by emergency type vehicles. Not by individuals on an occasional type basis. The connection point between the cui de sac that's created and the road system, would not be that great that emergency vehicles couldn't make their way through what we usually have for accommodation. That's what I've seen as far as proposal. The other part that is possible and could be a requirement under site plan review is that the homeowners association undertake the clearance of that on a regular basis as they would anything else that's going to be within homeowners association. That again is something that, and that should be worked out but will be worked out. The use of the word should is misleading, at least as it's been paraphrased here this evening. We have rules and regulations in the Queensbury Zoning Ordinance and the Queensbury Subdivision Ordinance that provide that the developer will take care of the concerns that many of the people have raised. And they also provide that it will not just be the developer and the developer's consultants telling you that those concerns have been taken care of, that at site plan review you will review, you will refer that out to your own independent consultants. I think you use on a regular basis, Rist -Frost as to the design of septic, as to the design of wastewater facilities and even groundwater drainage. So I don't know if that answers your question but that would be ... MR. OPPENHEIM - I have just one thing to add to that. We've done this is a number of projects where you have emergency access ways to make them an area that you can maintain. Basically is what you do is put down a crusher run and they, you can plant right over it so you can go over it with vehicles without severe problems. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-I was just concerned about the snow. MR. OPPENHEIM-By doing that basically your making a service that can be maintained. Your not going to get it down to the last inch, but certainly so you can get in and out for emergency access. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Another question I've got, maybe you can't answer it, yeah you should be able to. Infrastructure, is that going to be put in all at once? MR. OPPENHEIM-No. The answer is the infrastructure that will be put in day one will be what's been identified here tonight. It is the final cul-de-sac on Sherman Island Road, the extension from Foothills and the primary access from Corinth leading in through the McDonalds subdivision but, by no means as I mentioned and we have heard a lot of concerns here tonight about need. I think as we look around, there is no question that we have got a tough real estate market but believe it or not and I am not saying it has hit Albany, I mean hit this area, but there is, we have identified down in the Albany area there is a lot of pent up demand now. That demand may not be here today but this is a five to seven or even a longer term project, I am sure that we are going to be in the planning process, the site plan review process for upwards of another year. So, when you are planning a project of this size and scope it is important although today, there is not a need, there is going to be a need, there is going to continue to be a housing need in the future. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-The other part answer to that, is under the subdivision regulations, there are certain phasing requirements and we as a developer will have to abide by those phasing requirements and as we go to phase to phase the infrastructure related to that phase would be put in place. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Do you know how many phases you will be going? MR. OPPENHEIM-At this stage I do not, I think it is not, I would probably anticipate it is going to be a four or five phase project. But, how do you define that, its too early in the project. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Okay. The fifty foot buffer at the top of the bluff, I have had some conversations with Mr. Martin today and we were wondering how this was going, if it comes to be, how this was going to be marked so that five years down the road, an official from the Town goes down there and says to a guy, hey you cut a tree in that buffer and you were not supposed to cut the tree and the guy says well, where is it. Could there be monuments, surveyor monuments put in to mark the buffer all the way around the top of the bluff? ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Yes. The same thing about the archeological site that somebody else asked, they will be marked in a manner that is easy to identify them and be permanent that can be referred to. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Okay. Stormwater system. I heard the engineer talk about it. How much of a guarantee and I am going to tell you why I am asking. The Michaels Group did a development on Dixon Road and put in stormwater and everything else a year and a half to two years later the Town Highway Department was in there and spent thousands of dollars on doing drainage in that development. I questioned the Highway Department how much they spent, I never did find out, but in this particular case they spent this money in this development and there were areas in the Town that needed drainage and still need drainage and it did not get done. So, is there some kind of a guarantee that after this stormwater system is put together and it does not work quite the way it is supposed to work, will the Michaels Group and Niagara Mohawk be responsible to see that it ... MR. OPPENHEIM-Well, to start, in the design during site plan review, obviously the Town, their planning consultants, outside consultants are going to work with us in coming up with a final storm system that all parties feel is satisfactory and in addition just like you do with certain road improvements, it is possible, whether it's posting bonds or letters of credit or what have you, on a short term basis to ensure that the Town is not going to get stuck with a system that all of a sudden, you can establish a trial period for satisfactory maintenance. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Okay. Harry Hansen left, I got recreation down here, there was some question about ninety-four acres on the side of West Mountain up there. Three members of this Board made a tour with the Recreation Commission, we looked at ...along the river, we did not get up on the mountain because we run out of day light. But I have been up on the side of that mountain, and I am going to say this, right, good old plain simple english, the reason that ninety-four acres was put into the project was because it had no value to Niagara Mohawk whatsoever as far as building on it or anything else. Since, my brief ten year on this Board, and these developers are good fellows, but any land that, they want to give to the Town is land that they cannot use. It is worthless to them, so it is worthless to us. I do not know if Harry has had any conversations with you Allen about a boat launch on the Hudson River. Has he talked to you about that? MR. OPPENHEIM -Yes, he has talked to me about that and Niagara Mohawk has indicated an interest in working with the Town to establish a boat launch facility down there. But, just on comment on my part on the ninety-four acres. Number one, you could put in a limited number of homes sites there and also I would say, just for the record, there's value to that piece. There is timber value, so that it is not a valueless piece from our perspective to just put it in the project without having a lot of benefit from anybodies perspective to just put it in the project without having a lot of benefit from anybodies perspective made little sense. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Well, it makes little sense for us to take it for recreation being on the side of the mountain, where it is located. I guess that is it for you guys, I have got some questions for our Attorney over here and Mr. Martin. Paul, we are the lead agent for this project at the present moment and I want to know how we can stay involved in this project and I mean until it is either turned down or completed. Is there any way within the system that you can do this? ATTORNEY DUSEK-I gather you are referring to, when it gets to it's later stages even before the Planning Board. First of all, when you rezone you can always attach conditions in some fashion keep you involved, the other way of course is simply to monitor the progress of the development with the Planning Dept. and going to the Planning Board meetings, you would have just as much right to address matters at those. Your question is could you change something at that point, I would have to tell you it would be difficult unless you had a condition so some kind that they were not honoring in connection with the project. But, that would be your mechanism is to have covenants, conditions whatever it is that you feel is appropriate that you would be able to make sure that were adhered to at a later date. Once it goes on to the next review I mean, you do not have a right to sit in the place of the Planning Board and review what they are doing. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Paul, if! could add something to that. This is a little bit unique in that the Board will have a veto power until the final completion, at least, as I see it and I have explained it to the developer. The Town Board will be the one that has the last say as to the changing of the road system within the McDonald Subdivision and in fact the changing of Sherman Island Road. Sherman Island Road, extends further into the Development than what we propose it to expend in the final design. So, this Board will have to approve the abandonment of that portion of Sherman Island Road which serves at this point only the Niagara Mohawk parcel as far as what we are talking about the abandonment. And, it will also have to approve the abandonment of the two pieces of the McDonald Road system that are connected now to Sherman Island Road. The timing of that could be the last step of the approval by the Board. ATTTORNEY DUSEK-I certainly, you know, of course you would have that, but that would be only one element of the whole project. You could not use the road abandonment in a manner that's not properly used to review the rest of the project. You are going to be limited in what you can do, obviously in terms of traffic flows, configuration of the roads. There will be quite a bit of lee way in that range but there will be certain elements that are not to be connected to that, that you would not have a review over. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-Paul, do we have the right to require the full environmental assessment? ATTORNEY DUSEK-Well, that is going to be a determination you will be making obviously, as a Board. That is your call. You will make that based upon whether or not you feel SEQRA puts it, whether there will be a potential for an impact. It does not have to be an absolute it has to be that, there may be an impact on the environment. Part of the way that you will do that is, based upon the information that you have gotten here tonight at this public hearing, you will base it on, obviously what you have heard from your own Planning Department and as well as what you have received from the Developers. If you feel that you need more information as to whether or not you think you might or might not be a potential for an impact you can also request that from any source. So, that will be your call and you, here again, I do not think you anticipated on making that tonight, but I suspect you will be making that in the coming weeks after you have had a chance to digest the information you have gotten. If you do make a positive impact that will be what triggers the environmental impact statement or a study. If you decide that there is no environmental impact on the other hand you would conclude with a negative declaration or perhaps a conditional negative declaration and that would conclude your review and there would not be any environmental impact statement done. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I want to reopen it to the public in case anybody has any more to say it is still open to you, just raise your hand and come on up. MS. JOAN DOBERT -I have a question. Joan Dobert, maybe it is a legal question, but my question is to the Board. If after reviewing this, if you look at this and felt that one of the real concerns was the one acre vs. three acre lots on the bluff, is that Board able to make that suggestion, that this be changed to the group to the Michaels group or does this have to go back to the Planning Board then? ... another public hearing etc., how does that process work? How does that change the... ATTORNEY DUSEK-That Is very similar to the question brought up in the beginning and that is whether, if a change is proposed as part of the plan at this point whether it is substantial enough change that would warrant going back to the various boards and also redoing the public hearing. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-But, in fact, that is a very substantial change. ATTORNEY DUSEK-Well, that is what I was going to say, I do not think you have to be, that one, there is not a lot of judgement call there. I think it looks to me, that if you obviously change the configuration such that you were up to a three acre, that is probably going to change some people's feelings with regard to the project, especially from what we have heard here tonight. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-But the Board can also require that, that be done. I mean the change from one acre to three acres, that also is within our prerogative. ATTORNEY DUSEK-Well, that gets, part of that gets, I suppose picked up on through the environmental review. But the other part of it would be in your determination of the PUD according to the criteria that you have set forth in the ordinance and whether you feel, that it will really come down to a point that you feel the project that has been presented to you meets that criteria and passes and if it doesn't, then it is up to them to come back with something new. It is not up to you to suggest what the alternative would be. MR. MARTIN-The only thing I would like to bring up in terms ofPliney's question, in terms of the Board's ability to track through, even the site plan the Planning Board is bound if significant modifications are made which deviates from your approving resolution should it come to that point, they have to go back. It has to go back to the Town Board for approval. The other thing, in terms of phasing, as the PUD Section of the ordinance refers to what I believe is staging rather than phasing and separate site plan is going to have to be developed for each stage that requires twenty four, more than twenty four months. The other last area where the Town can ensure compliance even after construction is started the ordinance quotes, refers to the Senior Planner here shall review at least every six months all building permits issued and shall compare them to over all development phasing program. If it is determined that the rate of construction of residential or non residential structures substantially differs from the phasing program, he shall so notify the developer and the Town Board. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Just so we don't go off on a tangent here that may not be correct, I just read that too, and I read it a different way than you read it. It says, if the applicant wishes to stage his development and he has so indicated, he or she has so indicated as per then he or she may submit only those stages that he or she wishes to develop for site plan approval in accordance with his staging plan. Any plan and this is different from what you said, it is the other way around, any plan which requires more than twenty-four months to be completed shall be required to be staged, the staging plan must be developed, which is different from what you said. MR. MARTIN - I stand corrected, I did not read on, but that is right. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-And in that light, I will remind this Board what happened to the old Board, that the old Board approved a rezoning with a set of plans that were brought in front of them the Planning Board in their wisdom so fit to change those plans and treat the rezoning different and we ended up with a project entirely different. MR. MARTIN-That was a rezoning and a PUD, it was two entirely separate different matters. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-All right, but I just do not want to have anybody think there is a magic thing that once it leaves here we are going to have control over it. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Mr. Martin. ATTORNEY DUSEK-I think if! could just comment on what Councilwoman Monahan has raised and I think it is a point worth considering by the Board. And that is the project that she is referring to was a project, when it was approved, was approved with certain guidelines. The guidelines that were approved as part of the project gave the Planning Board some flexibility in how they dealt with that particular project and unfortunately the Town Board and the Planning Board did not necessarily agree on that in the end. Although, I should correct that, in the end they finally did agree I suppose to some extent. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Not really, we were just dumb enough to put so, we did not put enough restrictions in it, is what we did. ATTORNEY DUSEK-The bottom line is with reference to a project of this nature that is the key, is to give enough guidance within the project document so that the Planning Board is bound by what it is that you want done in the project. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Yes. MRS. ROBERTSON-Paul, Joan Robertson again. You said part A environmental assessment form I do not ...review but, in question number 9 about the aquifer it was checked no that there would not be any problem, threaten species again checked no, unusual and unique landforms, ..cliffit was checked no, this is impact, scenic views no, critical environmental area checked no, then in Part II ...1eft blank, number 5 the water quality surface ground water there is potential large adverse effect on the ground water, construction will like cause siltation, ...it will alter the drainage flow with a large potential for erosion, lets see, impact on plants and animals you have to put a large impact, proposed action requires removal of more than ten acres of mature forest, large impact, yes. ...1eft blank archeological effect, this was a large impact. I do not see that you have much choice except to.. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Did you take that out of book one? MRS. ROBERTSTON-No, it is just a regular environmental assessment form.... COUNCILMAN GOETZ-Was it the one that was attached to this, assessment part one? COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I have a feeling that you are reading from part two which the applicant filled out and should not have filled out, that is up to the Town to fill out and they were reprimanded by a previous director. MRS. ROBERTSON-Excuse me, I thought that perhaps the Town had filled this out. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -No, we have not done this. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-We have not done the SEQRA review yet. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-They were reprimanded by the ... MRS. ROBERTSON-You have not done the SEQRA? SUPERVISOR BRANDT-No, we have not. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-This is part of, ... SUPERVISOR BRANDT-We are getting the input now, what the citizens are concerned about then we get our shot at standing on the line and saying. MRS. ROBERTSON-When I read this, I assumed your SEQRA was filled out .... COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-No. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-No, we have not. MRS. ROBERTSON-With the large impacts that are indicated, I do not see how....environmental impact... SUPERVISOR BRANDT-It is still a public hearing and I want the public to have every chance. UNKNOWN-I have one comment. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Come on the record since you have not been there. GILBERT BOWEN-My name is Gilbert Bowen, I have heard reference to a homeowners association having certain responsibility. Now, there is a point at which, until you get a critical mass of homeowners, a homeowners association is in effect. Now, up until that point, who has responsibility? And I think you ought to very carefully insist that up until that point, since this is going to stretch over seven years presumably, there is going to be an open period in which somebody is going to be the stucky. I do not want the Town to be the stucky. That is all I have. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-What I would like to do, is let the public get their input and then let's come back and address some of these things. First of all, anybody that hasn't spoke who would like to speak. Tim, go ahead. MR. BREWER-I just was questioning, they talked about a boat launch with the Town down on the recreation area. How can, or can the Town, a person who owns property down to the river, how can they deny them the right to put a dock in there? Site plan review, is that the only option that they have? SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I think that can be, I think we could address that in the approvals. The boat launch that the Town was talking about is way up stream... MR. BREWER-...five acres, I guess what I am saying is ... SUPERVISOR BRANDT-It is beyond that, it is up near the base of Hartman Hill. MR. BREWER-What is to stop them from putting a boat in there and driving around, docks that they own right in front of the water, that is something. ATTORNEY DUSEK-There are two ways that, that occurs. One is, that conditions that the Board can put on but also covenants and restrictions that are placed on the property. It is much the same as in a subdivision for instance, when they say that you cannot pile your firewood in a certain location, you cannot put clotheslines in or something like that. Well, there are two sources of enforcement, usually. One is the neighbors themselves can enforce anybody in the complex itself can enforce it and frequently the Towns have the right to enforce it as a zoning matter. MR. BREWER-But if I go over to my neighbor and say your wood is in the wrong place you cannot put it there, what is he going to say? Go back in the house. ATTORNEY DUSEK-Then you can bring an action against him though. The courts will compel him to take that action. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Your money, Tim, your money. MR. BREWER-Why should neighbors have to enforce something that is being given to the Town? ATTORNEY DUSEK-What I am saying to you is, there are two mechanisms. One is, that the neighbors can, the other one is that the Town can. Frequently that is the way they are structured is that the neighbors have the security if you will in the event that the Town doesn't do it, on the other hand you can obviously come to the Town and request that they do enforce the zoning, which would be conditions of the PUD. COUNCILMAN TUCKER-Excuse me, Paul, Tim, what are you talking about, our boat launch? MR. BREWER-No, I am talking, they were talking about a boat launch and the thought came to my mind, what is to stop somebody from putting a dock on his property in the river? Is that something that the Town can do? If so, who will enforce it? SUPERVISOR BRANDT -First of all, it is an association's property it would not be private. MR. BREWER-No, he said they owned right down to the river. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Down to the water. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-He did. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -All right, there are two different places. I will go on the record one time. I have a lot of apprehension about deeding those slopes. You know you look at them as they are depicted there, I know the piece of land well and you cannot walk up and down those slopes. You have got to be a bit of a billy goat to do it. They are subject to erosion, there is no question of that. It is one of the most unique pieces of property there, in this Town, there is no question of that. MR. BREWER-Exactly. What I am saying is, if! own down to that river, I do not see a reason in the world that I should be told that I cannot walk down to the river... SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I have a major concern about, I personally think that, that slope should not be... MR. BREWER-Go up and down, go up and down the bluff, ten times and you are creating valley for water to go down and the water goes down and it is just going to wash away and that is a major concern. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -My concern is that, that not be deeded. I think that it is probably wrong to count that in the acreage, that is my concern, in the acreage calculations. I think that, that is my gut feeling of it. Which means that the section along the shore lines, is the same point that was made before, whether it belongs one acre, three acres or something like that. I think there is a sensitivity there, that we may be setting ourselves up with problems. To deed that slope off to a private owner and I certainly want that, wanted to address that. Then the density there of that point I think is another issue and the those are issues that concern me, also where you have an archeological site I have to agree to a point that it should not be on somebodies private property if it is going to be preserved. If it is found to be significant enough to be preserved then I hate like heck to see it, one, somebodies home site because I think that is a problem. Anyhow, those are concerns that I want to raise. I think. Yes go ahead. MR. STERLING AKINS-Listening to you fellows talk, about not letting the people go down the bank and so on, they only have access to river out on the point. That point has not been even touched as far as archeological down there and I know that, that has a lot more history in it, right out on the point there then up on the bank. Because we use to when we were kids go down there after a rain and pick up tobacco can full of flint and there was a sand hollow right in the middle of that. I have a picture of my wife in it just before we were married and it looks like sand dunes out on the beach someplace. UNKNOWN-In other words your, ah, you take that bank away from them lot size your lots are not going to be any bigger than the internal lots. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-The way it is laid out right now, yea. DICK SAGE-I am Dick Sage, Secretary of the Environmental Committee. The Environmental Committee was requested to visit this site and take a look at it and get some thoughts about feed back, for feed back to the Town Board, the Planning Board. We did send you a letter, I unfortunately, you didn't call for the letter to be read early enough and most of the comments that we got in here have already been expressed, but I think it is still worth while to mention it. We certainly agree with a great number of the comments that have been made about the uniqueness of the site its very evident though, that at the present time it has been ever misused. It is surrounded by no trespassing signs, nobody is to go in there, and yet it is pretty obvious that everybody has used it as their private park. Aside from the environmental concerns it seems to me that it is a private property concern that should be addressed in thinking about leaving this for the public to use. But, here are the comments that we made: The developer should justify his plan for installing individual septic systems for the single family dwellings. The multi family units will connect to a central system which could be expanded to cover the entire site. The rapid leach rate necessitates elaborate work to provide a suitable septic field and this could be avoided with a central system for the entire PUD. We are not naive enough to know that the developer doesn't want to put in the central system and then build two houses and then three houses but never the less that is something that should be thought about. Slope erosion on the point area will be a very serious problem, if suitable save guards are not specified. At the present the combination of brush and trees is barely holding the slopes and many small washes are evident even so. When the homes are constructed then the new owners will want to see the river and the brush and trees will go, if not protected. Homes should be set back from the edge of these slopes as far as reasonably possible, and I might add that I am sure the committee would agree that, that area, should not extend ownership down to the river, I think that's really asking for trouble. Residents will want access to the river for boating, swimming and for other purposes. This could result in many paths from each resident down this fragile slopes. It is recommended that a single, properly installed walkway, be provided for the use of all residents and individual paths be absolutely prohibited. For stormwater should be infiltrated and not run down the slopes into the river. Five, I guess this is almost inappropriate now, but I'll read it. The so called space conservation area is not contiguous to the housing area. Also it is certainly not developable and does not really constitute any concession by the developer. It is steeply sloped and accessible only by a discontinued path, discontinuous path that must cross a major highway. We question this as a sufficient open space in the usual context ofPUD's to justify granting this project. At this time the committee decided that since we are always in the business of making negative comments that we ought to try desperately to see if we couldn't find something positive. There are a lot of positive things in it, but we did want to note specifically that the interconnecting trail system proposed a great idea and it should be included in the final package and hopefully it will tie into the Queensbury Bike Path which will be a development next year. Thank you. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Thank you. Okay, is there anyone else that would like to comment? UNKNOWN-Can I speak from here? SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Go ahead. UNKNOWN-Just as I cannot see people spending a Hundred and Fifty Thousand, Two Hundred Thousand Dollars on a river front property and not having a clear cut view of the river and not being able to build a stair case down to the river and have a dock that they can put a boat on, I just cannot see it for ...ifthere are people out there I would not put money into a home that I wouldn't. I mean, it is like a tease, you have this gorgeous river right there and you cannot do anything unless you use the path that has been designated for you to use, I mean that is an awful lot of restrictions to put on somebody that owns a piece of property, and owns a wonderful, beautiful home. That is all. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Okay. Anyone else that would like to speak? MRS. BREWER-In response, just to add to what she just said. Here in the paper, since the Town has proposed to be the recipient of conservation easements in this area, conservation easements are wetlands, river bluffs, all within such a small area. They have the power....damage if the easements are violated after talking to Adirondack..... I mean, you guys are held responsible. You guys will be the ones that will be pulled into court and to be held responsible not just the homeowners. Not the neighbor going to the homeowner it's the town who has the power and that was made clear. I just feel it's such a small area why not leave that area undeveloped rather than take the risk. It's not that big of a area it's fragile leave it alone. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Jim, was this ever scaled out as a conventional subdivision for density? I'm looking not at just acreage, but actually you could put houses in, do the setbacks, roads and etc? MR. MARTIN-You would be subject to so many different designs variations. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I'm looking for instance, to that little narrow strip where the trail is going which I'm sure counted as part of the density. I doubt that it is wide enough to support housing. I may be wrong that's why I'm asking you this to support housing if that were a conventional subdivision. If it can't support housing in a conventional subdivision I'm going to question you using the density.... MR. MARTIN-I think it could be used in a conventional subdivision although it wouldn't be a real creative design. But, that was gone through the Zoning Board meeting the other night. The approach was simply the land area was taken and given the allowed zoning what that would yield and the number of building lots. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I'm not going to ask you to do it tonight because it's getting late, but I am going to ask you to prove those density figures, okay. Now, this is not a big point, I just want to bring it up because we're talking about land being contiguous. Mike brought up Hiland being on two sides of Haviland Road. I might point out Mike that this PUD is on two sides ofNIMO's right-of-way that they are going to retain the ownership. I'm not going to make a big deal of it, I am just pointing it out. There is one thing that concerns me very much looking at both the applicant and the staff reports and that is SEQRA. When they talk about SEQRA will be addressed under site plan review, etc. It's my understanding in this type of an action SEQRA cannot be fragmented. Yet, I saw our staff and I saw the applicant taking that avenue. I therefore, called DEC and asked to talk to Al Koechlein, he asked me to talk to a different person who he thought had a better answer who is Joe Prall. He told me SEQRA cannot be segmented we have to do all of it now when we're doing the rezoning or we lose our opportunity and that's his answer. I know there is going to be a fight about it, but I want to tell you that I went to the source. The other thing I'm concerned about is the EMF and the little attention that's its been given to, in this which is electromagnetic field. Jim, how much research did your staff do on that? MR. MARTIN-We basically took the findings of the applicant at their word, that the data was inconclusive to this point, as to there really being a harmful effect on your health from that. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Jim, in your office do you get the publication Zoning News put out by the American Planning Association? MR. MARTIN-Yes. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Let me refer you to January, 1992. What are the basic concerns for planners. Over the last several years the medical community led mostly by epidemiologists has raised a caution flag about electromagnetic fields as possible promoters of cancer, especially among children. Promoters do not directly cause cancer, may inhibit the body's immune system from preventing it. Articles on this topic have appeared in periodicals ranging from the British Science Journal Major to the Consumer Magazine Red Book. The public is generally aware and concerned about possible health effects from exposure from electromagnetic fields making the matter also a concern for public officials. Planners face a dilemma in determining the best response to an issue so much in need of further study. In attempting to regulate electromagnetic field policy analysts have advocated prudent avoidance. The concept which first appeared in the context of the EMF debate in a report published by Carnegie Mellon University's engineering and public policy department, is based on a doctrine in environmental law called the precautionary principal. The report described prudent avoidance as limiting exposures which can be avoided with small investments of money and effort. The logical extension of this is to consider approaches to mitigating public risk from exposure to electromagnetic fields besides the overriding concerns for public health and safety a little proactive regulation of EMF emitters may go a long way toward defraying future costs. One need not look much further than the local landfill to see how community facilities once regarded as benign, and I think Queensbury is well aware of this, have instead have turned into dangerous and expensive headaches. Policy-based approaches that are flexible enough to change with a growing understanding of risk can help stave off future difficulties. As public professional policy professionals planners have an important role in shaping these approaches. I therefore did a little research and at the public service commission office of Energy Efficient and Environment at the Empire State Plaza is a Doctor Driscoll and I spent about 1/2 hour in conversation with this gentleman. I have voluminous notes here, I'm not going to go through them all, I will tell you though so that NlMO is aware of it that he told me the question that I should be asking of NIMO and the profiles that we should be getting and the precautions we could take as far as the distance of the lot lines from their right of way edges and what should not be allowed to go on underneath those transmission lines. That is something in the future, I just want to put it on the record. I also want to say that this is the first time since I have been on this Town Board which is many, many, many years that a PUD of this magnitude has not had an outside consultant or done a full ElF and I do not believe that there have been any PUD's done by this Town of this magnitude before I was on the Town Board. I also want to read into the record or have the Clerk read into the record a letter from Region Five New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation so we know some of the other answers that DEC is looking for. Would you read that into the record please? DEPUTY TOWN CLERK MITCHELL-This is addressed to Mr. Michel Brandt, Supervisor, regarding Hudson Pointe PUD. Dear Mr. Brandt, The proposed PUD, by Niagara Mohawk, has been brought to my attention by the group of concerned residents. I am writing to request that the Town include and review the following issues I feel are particularly pertinent. First, is the reported survey of the site for the endangered species, the Kamer Blue butterfly. The survey, reported by the consultants, was conducted at the wrong time of year to get an accurate assessment of their presence or absence. It is of more particular interest since the Kamer Blue butterfly is now listed federally as an endangered species. I encourage the Michaels Group to reschedule an investigation of the site to coincide with one or both of the butterfly's flight periods. Second, I am certain both Town Boards are aware of how highly erosive the soils at Hudson Pointe are. I have not viewed the stormwater management plans, nor know the limit of clearing for each lot, but excavated cuts down either side of the point should be avoided. One only needs to travel south from Hudson Pointe to Spray Road to where a lane was cut from the bluff to the river to see the risks and difficulty in controlling erosion. I encourage the Town to obtain satisfactory language that will protect the slopes from cutting roads, paths, or any intrusions from future residents of the PUD. Third, it has been reported to me that the Michaels Group has excluded from SEQRA review that portion of the property that is proposed to be managed by a homeowners association. The lands are part of the total project and should not be overlooked in the projects evaluation of historical, cultural and environmental attributes. It is easy to anticipate, as the Town should, that recreation access to the Hudson River will become part of the subdivision's amenities. To postpone or avoid an adequate evaluation of impacts on the wetland or southern point of land because it will be turned over to a homeowners association, is avoiding the intent of SEQRA. The potential for greatest environmental harm is on the point, it's future needs to be decided as part of the full review. I hope its use will be limited in order to avoid the intense use that could occur form such facilities as a beach and/or boat docks. The very appeal that makes the site attractive could be lost. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Sincerely, Alan L. Koechlein Senior Wildlife Biologist COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Caroline, I am also going to give you a copy of this article for the record. I want to say that Dr. Driscoll is sending me a copy of the Camegie Mellon University's ....epidemiological study, a study done by the Swedish Government that he thinks is excellently done. And a New York State report on EMF and he also informed me that the National EMF Steering Committee that is two years old and under the new Federal Energy Act late last year, there has been a research program for five years set up. So certainly, other government bodies are not taking the EMF lightly. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-The floor is still open. I would love to close it if no one else..you want to go on record? ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-I would like to respond a little bit if I could. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -Sure. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Basically, I am not going to try and go line by line of every speaker, everybody has a little bit difference of opinion and I do not want to set the stage or the atmosphere it is we against them or it is them against us. As I said my marching orders from the very beginning when I became involved with the development team was to present a development that meets the developers needs and at the same time be compliant with the rules and regulations and one that would be acceptable on an environmental basis. Unfortunately a lot people give opinions and are giving opinions without real basis for their opinions. I am not urging that you make a decision tonight but in the line of some of the discussion earlier I think it is time that you get on to substantive determinations in regards to the project and let the process for forward. A lot of the issues that have been raised will be thoroughly looked at, at the point of site plan review. I am not talking about segmenting environmental review or SEQRA that is not permissible we are not promoting it as being the way to go forward. You can and it has been done very well, review the entire project from SEQRA point of view at this point we also have a secondarily review under article V of the Zoning Law or which has to do with the sum and substance of the project itself. And at that time is when you bring in outside consultants to see, the ground work, drainage, ..septic systems are correct and all the other concerns that have been made. Let me just answer a couple of questions if I can. Mrs. Monahan, well, Ms. Allen raised one question about the .....of going ahead on forward on a procedural basis because the ninety four acres has been deleted. We raised that question with the County Planning Staff, we raised that with the Town Planning Staff, our opinion directly from them is that, in fact, what we have done is made the project smaller, we have not prejudice somebody by taking the ninety four acres out. On that basis, it is not a substantial change of the project and not reason to begin again. If you say begin again, I go back to where are we? The only thing that has been done is that the Town Planning Board has said, the application was complete and should be considered by the Town Board for PUD designation. The County Planning Board has indicated that they do not want Lead Agency on the SEQRA process. They have also indicated that they were satisfied with the project to the point that has been developed and been presented to them. On that issue, they are willing to re-visit it and we understand that they would very likely, on very quick notice, come back and say the same thing with or without the ninety four acres. The Planning Staff at the County did not make the material change. Again no one was prejudice by the fact that it was taken out. On the question of the latest EAF Mrs. Monahan, that was submitted simply to try to avoid the confusion that you referred to. The earlier Part I EAF included the ninety four acres, we did not want somebody to indicate or believe that we were trying to mislead them with figures that were not any longer correct so that was why on Friday for your review a new EAF was submitted Part I. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I will say Mike, at the time we got it and you are in the middle of doing a review, it is pretty hard to switch gears. I mean you know, if this had come to us a couple of weeks ago, I would have been much happier. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Okay, I apologize for that but we did decide to revise it once we decided to eliminate the ninety four acres and we got it to you as quick as we could. Again, I did not anticipate that we were going to ask you for a decision this evening. It is a matter of making the package complete and making it clean, if you will, so you do not have to go back and forth between the different documents. We have mentioned many times tonight the question of the wetlands. If you look at the development program that we have set forth, we are not talking about including any portion of the wetlands within the development. The only mention of the wetlands is, we have talked about a nature trail through them and we have indicated that we would apply for and abide by whatever conditions were put on a permit to build that nature trail through the wetlands. Which would in effect connect this parcel potentially with lands of the Town of Queensbury that is to the south of this site, southeast of the site. I guess it depends on how you look at the, look at the, east, right Allen? MR. OPPENHEIM-Northeast. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Northeast, okay. That was the only, I think, consideration that you have if you get into the wetland. You have heard discussion about increased density I think this is an issue that has been gone over many times and our statue gives us the density and that's the density that was applied. In fact, we now have on record an affirmation of interpretation by Mr. Martin by the Zoning Board of Appeals as to what the density is. We heard some discussion about the strip ofland that on one of the maps I think is shown as parcel, C, which is the green area. The width of that was arbitrary, there are eighteen acres below that width that could easily the line could be dropped a few feet one way or another if that, if that were an Issue. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Then NIMO owns the land, I guess would probably be south of that, probably? ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Yes it does. NIMO has the feeling that the Town may want that for future expansion of the Queensbury Water Plant. There has been no negotiations I am aware of on that point but the idea was to leave it out. I, at one time, I still am of the belief, you said you could include it and market it for a potential water plant, you would have eighteen more development units because you would have eighteen more acres in there. That is one acre zoning. Lets make it as clean as you could possibly can keep it clean and keep it out and that is the reason it was kept out but I mention that. We talked about septic systems and some question has been said that we are not able to develop the site with acceptable septic systems. That is not a correct statement. That is a wrong statement. We understand that we cannot use the standard type septic system for the single family home but there is a permitted acceptable used often system that we proposed and that we will design. It is a modified fill, it is changing the existing area where you are going to have the leach area or the septic tanks. We have heard some question about why we do not use a central septic system for all the site as opposed to just the multi family. That is actually not the engineering type preferred method of design and that we have been told. I think this is what we are following. We are using the individual septic systems where the soils were permitted, we are using the central system where we are going to have very small lots where you would not be able to have individual septic systems. Probably if you had a centralized collection system for that whole development you would have a lot more clearance, clearing of site then what we proposed under our proposal now. We talked of a couple of issues, all of which are involved on a Town level and State level, I think if you look at the last correspondence from the State Office of Parks and Recreation you look at the last correspondence from DEC with regard to the Kamer Blue butterfly you will see that the developer has satisfied the questions with the proposal that the developer has in its final form on the table. Mr. Koechlein wrote his letter as of the 21st. he met with us this morning and he was satisfied after his meeting with us this morning. In his letter he indicates that he did not, he was not aware of the extent of site clearance he was not aware of the ground water drainage facility that would be provided. He also indicated that he was not even aware that his staff had been involved with the actual study of the Blue butterfly, Blue Karner butterfly. Again, there appears to be a willingness by others to put out opinions and put them out quickly and then retreat if you will once they know some of the facts as to the particular development. There was some question as to the sloping that was shown on the plans that we permitted, we presented, we have presented the results of actual surveys actual topographical findings. I do not know why they are not correct. To sit and say you do not think they are correct I think is a gross injustice, they are stamped by licensed professionals as being correct. I will stand by their stamps, I will stand by what has been presented to the Board. Again, I do not mean to put us in a posture of us against them or them against us, I am not going to try and respond, I think you have got to sift through their comments, you have got to sift through the documents that have been presented to you. I think that you have got to come to a conclusion that we have addressed all the concerns that had been raised in a professional manner, in a manner which leads you to the conclusion that there is no impact or will be no impact except what might very easily be mitigated through site plan review. I think that is where we really leave the project this evening. It is time to pass it on to site plan review to allow us to present the engineering detail that we offered to present to show that we will not have a negative impact in any manner. One particular question which I did not address, I guess, was the cutting off of Sherman Island Road at Sherman Island, having all that traffic come out though our development, we do not have any clear understanding that, that's actually what all the neighbors want. We've heard from two families that indicate that they do, Akins and Brewer's. ..wait a minute ... We have had the feeling from different neighbors some of whom have remained silent they are very happy with what we have presented. We in fact are going to lessen the impact on the existing road. We are going to take the McDonald's subdivision off we are going to take all the truck traffic that presently goes down to the Niagara Mohawk facilities off and we are going to leave them with, what they have and we are going to provide a possible secondary, emergency access, right now there is no emergency access to Sherman Island Road. If you have the accident that you do not want at the intersection of Sherman Island Road and Corinth Road there isn't a secondary way in there. What we are doing is talking about creating a secondary access. So, we are decreasing traffic, and giving them a secondary access. Our contractual agreements do not allow us to open that up to everybody. The people through whom we have arranged this secondary or this primary access have indicated that they would not allow us to have that primary access if it is open to not only what we propose but the entire area. I have no other comments at this point. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I just wanted to add just one thing, in adding to what Mrs. Ruchalski said and that is the impact on the school. Lets just for instance, everybody in the Townhouse doesn't have a child, but if there is just one child from the one hundred and twenty three units, thirty to a class room and that's considered very high and very hard on the teachers you are going to building four additional classrooms for this development. I just want that for the record. A minimum of four. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO- Y ou had something to add to the comment? Mr. Brewer-I guess what I'm saying, what Mr. O'Connor said about what the families want for the road, it is not necessarily what the families want for the road, it's what makes sense, I guess is what I am saying. If we are asking the developers to make internal roads for the safety of the people, it is an opportunity for the developer that is going to make the road anyway to make it safe for thirty five, not necessarily just for me but for my children and maybe the McEwens children and a bunch of other people, make it safe I think it is the sensible thing to do. I feel that if you do not do that or the Town doesn't do something with that and I ever get into an accident on that corner or anybody in my family ever gets into an accident on that corner, I will hold the town responsible because they had an opportunity to do something about it and they did not do it. It is not costing you a dime more it is not costing the town a dime. That is just my own personnel opinion. Thank you. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-Mr. Brandt, that part was a battle that took place and Mr. McDonald is here in 1988, I think, 1989 again in 1991 or something whether or not there would be access provided through the McDonald subdivision out the Corinth Road. Our, it is not a possibility within our development because we do not have the right to allow it. It is not something that we are saying that we will, that we have the right to, but, we do not care to do. We feel very fortunate to make the connection that we have been able to make for the amount of traffic that we are able to divert and put out through the McDonald Subdivision. We cannot go beyond that. ATTORNEY ALLEN-I actually just have a suggestion and a question, in reference to letters that Mr. O'Connor says he has been receiving or phone calls he has been making some of them do not appear to be in the record yet or a phone call we are not going to have anything in the record except your say and Betty's say about the letter and I am hoping that we can get the letters put into the planning dept. so we have them on record. Specifically I am talking about Mr. Koechlein's conversation with you this morning an also I understand that, there was a letter and additional letter from DEC about the Kamer Blue which I still have not seen. ATTORNEY O'CONNOR-That has been submitted. ATTORNEY ALLEN-Okay. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I just gave mine to the Clerk from Allen Koechlein. ATTORNEY ALLEN-Good. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I am sure she will make a copy for you. ATTORNEY ALLEN-Just so I can get as much as I can. The second thing, I am just wondering, where are we going to go from here? SUPERVISOR BRANDT -I am wondering the same thing. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-We are going to talk about that in a minute, I think. ATTORNEY ALLEN-Oh, Good, Thank you, just so the neighbors have an idea also, I mean they will follow the public notices but it is always nice to have an idea what the next step is. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I have been through all this on the other side of the fence once and it is hard enough to keep track oflet me tell you and on this side it is just as bad. You, know, I still have this problem with these, steep ridges, they are very steep and I know that they are delicate and I am afraid of when you deed them off to somebody privately that, then you, we all loose control and I mean, I do not care you know, who is going to point their finger at whom to stop but I can tell you one thing you cut a tree down on those slopes and you are not going to go in there and replace it, because those things are old and there are delicate and you are just not going to do it. It would take hundreds of years to replace it. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-And look at the damage you do even if you could bring in a tree that size. Just the equipment to do it, I mean it is impossible. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-You just could not do it. ... it is a matter of preventing it and if somebody does not own the land you know, and this is...on me I have been thinking about this a bit, I took myself out of the process for a while and forgot it all and now I am back in it. But it does bother me because I do not think we have control once we deed that land off and I like to re-examine that and I think of all the things I heard that, that and I did not know it was called Potters Point but I think it is a very, very unique piece of land and is there something that can be done there. It is not a lot of units of land of housing on the other hand, it may be I do not know the financial of the development it may be very, very important in the financial of the development but I would sure like to explore to see if there is a better answer to that than what we have seen so far. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Or there might be a possibility Mike of even trading density there into the interior more. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Just a couple of comments before we go any further here, one of the things that struck me was a very simple statement made by Mrs. Brewer and it bothers me a bit, Mrs. Brewer noted that the applicant has a bunch of outside experts and we expect that our Planning Dept. and our Planning Czar who will know all and I am not sure that is fair. Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Oppenheim have the benefit of College Professors and Traffic Experts and we haven't gone out and gotten experts to find out if what, I am not suggesting that you are liars, but to find out if what they say is absolutely true or is it refutable. I think that is a failing on our part I am not sure that we can do anything in this PUD but I suggest that from here on in ... COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I am sure you can. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-Why can't we? COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I am sure you can, I think that the magnitude... COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-I amjust suggesting that, that is...ha...1 am just suggesting that of all the things that were said by all the people here and all the good things that were said that was one of the things that struck out which was a very simple thing. I am sorry Betty go ahead. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-No, I am just saying that the magnitude of this it isn't so much the number of units I am saying magnitude because the sensitivity the uniqueness the fragility of the area and the fragility in many, many aspects. I just think that we are negligent to the taxpayers of this town and this is a cost that is borne by the developer actually that we do not bring in an outside consultant, its part of our rules and regulations and I feel we are being negligent in our duties. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Where do we go from here? SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Well, let me say something. I think you have to be very careful when you ask an outside consultant. If you want to bring in an outside consultant on EMF you can find thousands of them and you can hear that one until you turn blue. I am not satisfied that anyone knows the answer to that, probably nobody knows more about it than Niagara Mohawk. Probably they, know more about it in health standards with their people then anybody here and I would like to hear more about it, I do not know. I have reservations about it certainly you want to air in the safe side you got a major high line there and you got quite a few houses next to it. How close is right next to it? What is fair, I do not know, but I sure would like to have someone tell us more about that and then the slope situation bothers me a lot. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-My point was strictly on a philosophical one, you are right we could go on and on with experts vs experts the point is the one side has experts the other side doesn't. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I do not mind us identifying things that we want expertise in and asking for it I have no problem with that but I have a problem of unleashing experts on experts because that could go on forever. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-On no, no... COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-That is never what was done Mike, what was done was a multi disciplined firm that could look at many areas of this. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-I have been on the other side don't tell me what was done, I know. I paid for it. I mean, Christ, people come and ask questions that did not need to be asked and had nothing to do with it and all they did is build their own time clock and made alot of money and I know who paid for it and I'm still paying for it. But and I don't want that to happen to anyone else, that's just useless. But to answer legitimate questions, you bet, I have no problem with it and I think we ought to define those questions that we really have problems with and sit down and talk some more. And maybe the cost of going through all of that makes it, maybe the practical answer is to cut density somewhere and not have to go through all that. I don't know. I don't want to impose costs that don't need to be imposed but I'd like to find answers to a couple of these things. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-I think one of the critical questions is, when do we get the outside consultants? Is it going to be before it goes to the Planning Board? COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Oh, absolutely, before we make our decision. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-It has to be, it has to be. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-I wanted to emphasis that, though. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-You shouldn't even finish your ElF without them. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-Right. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Well, I think we need to talk about this among ourselves for a while. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-But I don't think maybe tonight is the time to talk, we've got another whole business meeting. SUPERVISOR BRANDT-Yea, we still have some business to do and I'd like to close the public hearing, adjourn this for a while and come back and revisit it. Think about it over a night or two and we may all come up with some ideas and then revisit it and look at what we're doing on the environmental impact statement and address that. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Before we all jump up out of our seats and we can't talk, I'd like to ask you a question and ask the Board members a question. It is a 11: 10, what's the propriety of adjourning this meeting to Tuesday evening at five o'clock for the rest of the agenda? Is that something that can be done or should we just continue to plot on until four in the morning? COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-I'm only free until about ten after six tomorrow, I've got to ... COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Well, the rest of the agenda is not going to take long. SUPERVISOR BRANDT -No, the items will move pretty fast. I have no problem with tomorrow. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Mike, do we have appointments set up for this week? Maybe we can combine two things at once. COUNCILMAN CAIMANO-Next week. COUNCILMAN GOETZ-It's next week. COUNCILMAN MONAHAN-Oh we don't have ... SUPERVISOR BRANDT -First of all, let's close the public hearing. Okay, so I'm going to declare the public hearing closed for today. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED 11:15 P.M. Discussion held on communications-Councilman Caimano and Councilman Monahan noted that there were communications that they had not received prior to the meeting, noted that they wanted to be informed of communications that come in... Discussion-TV Dish Laura Sipowitz Councilman Tucker-Noted that Ms. Sipowitz was promised a resolution within 30 days... questioned where the resolution is? Attorney Dusek-Noted that he had been tied up in litigation matters.... Discussion-Res. pertaining to letters of credit for roads Councilman Tucker-we have had conversations about getting cash or a certified check ... Attorney Dusek -lam working on a draft on that. RESOLUTION TO HOLD OVER MEETING UNTIL 4:30 p.m. JANUARY 26, 1993 RESOLUTION NO. 87a, 93 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Nick Caimano WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Michel Brandt Councilman Caimano-requested that we adjourn and the balance of the agenda until 4:30 P.M. tomorrow. Duly adopted this 25th day of January, 1993 by the following vote: ALL THOSE IN FAVOR: AYES ALL THOSE OPPOSED: NONE ABSENT: NONE Attorney O'Connor-I just asked that you closed the public hearing on the request for the PUD designation, I have heard at least one question saying and indicating that from somebody and I heard another comment from somebody else and maybe even a third party. I haven't necessarily heard from the Board on that side that what we presented can be approved with maybe some modifications. Maybe I'm reading too much into comments that I've heard. I would think that we ought to try and proceed. It's not an easy task to assemble the team to make the presentation that we've made to you tonight. I don't anticipate that we will have necessarily that type of lengthy presentation but I'd like to go forward. I'd like to get to a point where we actually are producing the engineering that we're talking about that we say will not have any impact. Councilman Monahan-Mike, I think there's alot of things we have to take into consideration and I'll tell you right now, I'm tired and frankly I don't feel like being pressured at eleven o'clock at night. Councilman Caimano-I'd like to have us discuss it further at the continuation of this meeting tomorrow and give you an answer. I know that you can't all be together but we can give you an answer and give Alan an answer tomorrow as to where we're going with this thing. I think you characterized it fairly but I think we all need to stand back and think about what we heard tonight, decide where we're going to go. Is that fair? We need to stand back a little bit. Attorney O'Connor-I'm not expecting a yes, no, tonight. I'm asking for some time table, some semblance of where we're going. Supervisor Brandt-No, what I'd like to do is, having never been on this side of it, what can we do in a process to try and set limitations, from my agenda, the slopes. Okay, I'd like to have you think about that. Attorney O'Connor-We've talked about ownership of the slopes and that may not be a monumental problem. Supervisor Brandt -See if we could address that type of thing, I'm not too, from my view point, I'm not too worried about contamination of groundwater because Department of Health rules are pretty strict on that and I think that's an issue that can be handled. I'm very concerned though about erosion of those slopes and the maintenance of them because I think if we screw that up, we're really going to screw it up. Attorney O'Connor-I honestly think that what I offer is the better of two worlds that you could have. There obviously is another alternative that we not retain ownership and pass it on with the individual lots. If that's your thinking as to the better way of handling it ... Supervisor Brandt-And that came to me tonight as I heard people talk, you know... Attorney O'Connor-I've seen conservation easements that, from a developer's point of view, scare you, okay. So I thought we were offering you the better part of both worlds. If you want to retain ownership or have that ownership dedicated to the Town outright and not reserve fee ownership, that's something we can talk about but I want to get to that forum and I want to talk. We asked for this public hearing, sometime in early December and at that time most of the documentation that you have was submitted to you. There has been some changes to it but it's all been restricting it, pulling it back a little bit. So, and it's a good size project and I'm not jumping on anybody at this particular point. I would just like to keep the ball moving and ask you how we can do it. Councilman Caimano-Well, I want to keep it moving too but I guess what I really want to do is to stand back just for a bit, think about everything that I've heard tonight and then go back at it. Not a lengthy period of time, I don't care if it's tomorrow night but I just want to digest what's been said. I think Mike brought up some good points. I think the Brewers, that side brought up good points, you brought up good points. It's time to sit back and think. I just want to, want to step back for a day, a couple of days and come back at it. That's what I want to do and I have an ulterior motive in that and I just as soon keep it to myself. Mr. Oppenheim-I think that's fair. I mean, I guess what my preference would be just knowing how difficult it is to set dates, whether it's tomorrow or a week from now to give ourselves something to work for ... Councilman Caimano-I'm not looking for a long term. Supervisor Brandt-In fact I don't mind setting a special meeting next week rather than jumping back in tomorrow. Tomorrow I'd like to take care of routine business, get that other stuff out of the way and a week from now, get back together. I don't care if it's a Tuesday night, maybe on a special meeting and just Mr. Oppenheim-Just a workshop more or less. Supervisor Brandt -A workshop, we've got this, we've got another one that we just heard we're going to have a workshop on and think our way through that one. They're both on the frying pan and we better get moving on them so, expeditiously let's just set meetings and start talking. Would it work next week Tuesday? Councilman Caimano-No we've got interviews. Councilman Tucker-We've got interviews next Tuesday. Supervisor Brandt-Yea, that's not too late though, that starts early. Councilman Caimano-Five-thirty to seven-thirty. Supervisor Brandt-Well how about seven-thirty? Mr. Oppenheim-That's fine by us. Attorney O'Connor-What's the date? Supervisor Brandt-That's Tuesday the ... Councilman Tucker-Are we going to sit down, Mr. Chairman, are we going to sit down as a Board, just as a Board and hash this stuff over? Supervisor Brandt-That's what I'm talking about, just do a meeting just for that. Mr. Akins-You closed the public meeting. Councilman Tucker-Not a meeting, a meeting between ourselves. Mr. Akins-You closed the public hearing, why ramble on here? Supervisor Brandt-Well by law it's a meeting. Mr. Akins-You guys sit down and talk it over but I don't see where he has... Councilman Caimano- That's what we're trying to do, right. Everybody can be there though, the public, everybody can be there. Supervisor Brandt -Yea, everybody can be at a meeting. Mr. Akins-Yea but you've closed the public hearing and half the people have left. Councilman Caimano-Let's do it next Tuesday, let's do it next Tuesday night, that's fine with me. Mr. Brewer-Yea, that's not fair. Councilman Caimano-What's that? Mrs. Akins-No workshops at ten o'clock in the morning. Mr. Brewer-Well no, what Roland said is you closed the public hearing, half the people have left and Mr. O'Connor is still up there talking to you about it. I think it's only fair that the Board should talk about it. Supervisor Brandt-But this isn't a public hearing anymore, we've got to work these things out and to now convene again next week. You know, we've got to find a way of working, God we can't just go in grid lock and do nothing. Mr. Akins-Work it ... you've got half the people here and half the people who aren't, work it out by yourselves. Attorney O'Connor-Public hearing is for public comment on the project. What I'm talking about is what's this Board going to do procedurally now that the public hearing has been closed. Supervisor Brandt-That's right. Attorney O'Connor-If I'm being criticized for that, I will step back and be a little bit offensive and say gentleman, you have a code. Let's look at the code, let's try and proceed according to the code. Councilman Caimano-I understand what you're saying. Supervisor Brandt-Let's go for next Tuesday night at seven-thirty and cut the BS here. Councilman Caimano- Tuesday night, seven-thirty, we're going to talk about it. Councilman Monahan-Okay, we'll give you a positive declaration right now. Attorney O'Connor-Pardon me. Councilman Monahan-We'll give you a positive declaration right now. Would you like that? Councilman Goetz-And there's more thanjust gentlemen up here too Michael. Supervisor Brandt-Okay, next Tuesday at seven-thirty. Councilman Monahan-Now come on Mike. Attorney O'Connor-Make your motion. Supervisor Brandt-We're going to reconvene for other business matters tomorrow at 4:30. Attorney O'Connor-And next Tuesday night at seven-thirty? Supervisor Brandt-Next Tuesday night we'll have it over there, that meeting will be in the little room. No further action was taken. On motion, the meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, DARLEEN M. DOUGHER TOWN CLERK-QUEENSBURY