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2008.04.22 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING SECOND REGULAR MEETING APRIL 22, 2008 INDEX Subdivision No. 11-1991 Gregg Brown 1. MODIFICATION Tax Map No. 239.7-1-6, 7 Site Plan No. 14-2007 Redbud Development 12. Tax Map No. 239.7-1-7 Subdivision No. 12-2007 Christine Germaine 29. PRELIMINARY STAGE Tax Map No. 301.18-2-34 FINAL STAGE Subdivision No. 13-2007 John Fedorowicz 37. PRELIMINARY STAGE Tax Map No. 265-1-19.11 Site Plan No. 4-2008 Scott & Jackie Wheeler 43. Tax Map No. 239.18-1-27 Site Plan No. 12-2008 Matthew Emmens 50. Tax Map No. 239.15-1-19 Special Use Permit No. 14-2008 J & D Marina 59. Tax Map No. 240.5-1-31.23 THESE ARE NOT OFFICIALLY ADOPTED MINUTES AND ARE SUBJECT TO BOARD AND STAFF REVISIONS. REVISIONS WILL APPEAR ON THE FOLLOWING MONTHS MINUTES (IF ANY) AND WILL STATE SUCH APPROVAL OF SAID MINUTES. 0 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING FIRST REGULAR MEETING APRIL 22, 2008 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CHRIS HUNSINGER, CHAIRMAN GRETCHEN STEFFAN, SECRETARY DONALD SIPP STEPHEN TRAVER TANYA BRUNO THOMAS FORD THOMAS SEGULJIC SENIOR PLANNER-STUART BAKER LAND USE PLANNER-KEITH OBORNE STENOGRAPHER-SUE HEMINGWAY MR. HUNSINGER-I’ll call to order the meeting of the Town of Queensbury Planning Board, Tuesday, April 22, 2008. The first item on the agenda is approval of minutes from thththth February 7, February 13, and February 7, February 13, and February 19 2008. APPROVAL OF MINUTES February 7, 2008 February 13, 2008 February 19, 2008 MR. HUNSINGER-Would anyone like to put forward a resolution? MOTION TO APPROVE THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING MINUTES thth OF FEBUARY, 7, FEBRUARY 13, AND FEBRUARY 19, 2008, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. HUNSINGER-The traffic study committee I thought we’d put off until the end of the meeting. The first item on the agenda is Subdivision No. 11-1991, Modification for Gregg Brown. SUBDIVISION NO. 11-1991 MODIFICATION SEQR TYPE II GREGG BROWN AGENT(S) STEFANIE BITTER GREGG & LIZABETH BROWN/DAVID BROWN ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 29 & 31 KNOX ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES A LOT LINE ADJUSTMENT TO THE SUNSET HILL FARM SUBDIVISION. MODIFICATIONS TO PREVIOUSLY APPROVED SUBDIVISION REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. CROSS REFERENCE AV WARREN COUNTY PLANNING N/A APA/DEC/CEA L G CEA LOT SIZE 0.62 AC., 0.63 AC. TAX MAP NO. 239.7-1-6, 7 SECTION A-183 JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-While the applicant’s coming up to the table, if Staff could summarize Staff Notes, please. MR. BAKER-Okay. This is a request from the Zoning Board for an advisory opinion, and that is the only action requested of the Planning Board at this evening. In the Zoning Board’s resolution, they stated they’re requesting commentary from the Planning Board in regards to whether the continued shared access point is more of less suitable to what is being proposed, that is the creation of two individual access driveway points to both of 1 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) those adjoining properties of the brothers Brown on Knox Road. The plan submitted to both the Zoning Board and the Planning Board for this proposed lot line adjustment does not show the proposed two separate driveways. To the contrary, the inclusion of a noted easement for ingress and egress across the David Brown property appears to indicate that they propose continuation of the shared driveway access point. However, the Site Plan submitted under separate application, Site Plan No. 14-2007, does show the location of a separate driveway for this project. It does not show, however, the existing driveway access to be retained and used by David Brown. Without that information, it’s difficult to know for certain how close the two proposed driveways will be to each other. It appears, however, just scaling it from the plans, that they could be as close as 10 feet apart. Current zoning regulations recommend at least 40 feet of road frontage for each individual driveway. This proposal would result in two drives, on a total of about 60 feet of road frontage. His final comment was that Staff recommends that the Board consider this proposal in the context of public health, safety and welfare purposes, as stated in the Zoning and Subdivision Codes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. MR. LAPPER-Good evening. For the record, I’m Jon Lapper with Gregg Brown and Jeff Reddick. So first we’re talking about this request from the Zoning Board for a recommendation on modifying the driveway, and right now the neighboring property owner, who is Gregg’s brother, has an easement for a shared driveway, and the modification that they’re requesting, the lot line adjustment that requires the variance, is 180 square feet. So it’s a very small amount of pavement that would change, in terms of the property line. This would allow the neighbor to own his own parking area, but in terms of the impact on the project, it allows a substantial amount of pavement to be removed. So it greatly increases the permeability, that the next project is the relocation of the driveway, with the Site Plan modification. So it’s our position that this is a positive impact on the neighborhood and the lake, because it’s going to allow for this whole paved area to be removed. The variance is just a minor change between the neighboring property owners to eliminate this parking easement of the neighbor on this property, and in terms of what the Staff Notes said about the distance between the driveway, that’s not true. There’s an existing curb cut for the neighboring property, and this, the new curb cut for this property would be at the far northern end of, it’s only 20 feet. It would be the, or 18 feet, it would be farther north than where it is now. Now the driveway enters on the neighboring property, and it would enter on this property. So the separation distance is, what, about 60 feet, approximately 60 feet between the two sites, but these are only residential driveways. So, obviously not a big impact, but it’s basically about eliminating pavement. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else? MR. LAPPER-Any questions. MR. HUNSINGER-Comments, questions from the Board? MR. TRAVER-During the Zoning Board review, there was some commentary regarding a visual impact, in that this conveyance would result in, it’s going to have some impact on some foliage, some trees and so on. Could you comment on that? MR. LAPPER-Yes. We have some unhappy neighbors to the north, and they raised a number of issues at that meeting. The visual impact that they’re talking about on the trees, the relocation of the driveway requires some scrubby underbrush and a few small trees to be trimmed on the property line. The neighbors have trees that hang over this property. So the Browns have the right to remove the limbs that hang over their property anyway. The variance doesn’t affect that. I mean, they can go in there tomorrow and trim the trees and hang it over their property. It’s a minor matter, as far away as you can be from the lake, on the property. I presume it’s just a way of the neighbors saying that they’re unhappy with this. Those really are not issues that relate to whether or not these people use a shared access. I think that relates to the Site Plan, which is the next matter on the agenda. GREGG BROWN MR. BROWN-You were talking about the driveway that exists for my brother’s lot. You can see the, I think his house was under construction at the time, there, there’s three cars parked on the right hand side, at my lot. That’s where his driveway enters is over on that side now. 2 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. LAPPER-Point out where your driveway would be and where his driveway is. So that’s the neighboring driveway, and all the way over. MR. BROWN-Currently the existing is here, the proposed is here. MR. LAPPER-So the proposed would be as far north as possible. So it would be farther from the neighboring driveway, and the other neighbors to the north that are unhappy, their driveway is nowhere near the property line. MR. HUNSINGER-So is the driveway for David Brown, is that an approved driveway? MR. LAPPER-Yes, that’s all existing. Nothing changes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. LAPPER-They just have a parking easement on Gregg’s property to park two cars right over the property line. MRS. STEFFAN-Each lot has an approved driveway then? MR. LAPPER-No. Right now this driveway goes over the neighbor’s property. The applicant’s driveway goes over his brother’s property now. The best, well, it’s all on the application for the Site Plan, but right now the driveway comes in across the neighbor’s lot and it’s this whole area of pavement that’s going to be removed for this project. This is where the driveway comes in. So the brother’s property is all the way up here, and so it comes in here, and after this it would come in here. This would be the boundary change so that the brother would actually own the area where he’s parking, rather than have an easement, but he eliminates having the right to park up here, and that allows us to reconfigure the paved area. He gives up that right. This is the existing driveway. You notice it’s over here, and this is the proposed driveway, and look at the area of pavement right now. This whole area, under the carport, this whole area is paved right now, and at the end it would only be this which would be paved. So it’s much smaller. MR. FORD-On a percentage basis, Jon, what kind of reduction? JEFF REDDICK MR. REDDICK-I don’t remember the exact reduction, but it’s approximately 40%. MR. FORD-Approximately 40. MR. LAPPER-Of the pavement would be removed. MR. REDDICK-Currently there’s about 4,500 square feet, and we’re going to end up with a total of about 1900 square feet of asphalt. MR. LAPPER-So that’s more than half. MR. SEGULJIC-But that does not include the pavement for the new driveway. MR. LAPPER-Yes, it does. MR. SEGULJIC-On the neighboring lot. MR. LAPPER-The neighboring lot stays the same. MR. SEGULJIC-It stays the same. So there’d be a net reduction, overall, after this project is done. MR. LAPPER-Of 2600 square feet. MR. SEGULJIC-Twenty-six hundred square feet. MR. LAPPER-Of pavement. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. Now, getting back to the trees. MR. LAPPER-Yes. 3 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SEGULJIC-I was trying to figure everything out when you were speaking. So the only difference in the trees is cutting down of some limbs, is that it? Or are you actually going to remove some trees? MR. LAPPER-I’ve got some photos. MR. BROWN-We would have to remove some undergrowth, rhododendrons that are in that space right now, some of which may be able to be transplanted, and then there is approximately four to six scrubby hemlocks in that space right now that are all of about, they range anywhere from about three inches in caliper to approximately six inches in caliper, and those would have to be removed. MR. SEGULJIC-I’m confused then. If you’re going to remove the amount of asphalt, in theory, why would you have to remove trees then? MR. LAPPER-In order to move the driveway so it’s on Gregg’s property, he has to clean up this little area. This is it right here. This is a photograph of the area right by the road where the trees would be removed, and it’s nothing significant. Right at the edge, and part of the Site Plan project, there’s a whole bunch more vegetation that’s being replaced on this site. I mean, this is mostly a landscaping project, especially after all the discussions we’ve had with this Board with the rain gardens and all of the vegetation by the lake. We’re substantially increasing the plantings on the site. There’s just a slight amount that has to be removed by the road to get the driveway in. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions, comments from the Board? MR. FORD-Just one, please. Again, the rationale or the reason for this request? MR. LAPPER-So that we can eliminate an easement for the neighbor to have the right drive over and park on this site, and so this site can have its own driveway access without having to drive over the neighbor’s property, and the result is that 2600 square foot of pavement will be removed from this site. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. SIPP-Now, what are you saying is going to be the total width, now, of the two driveways? MR. LAPPER-Well, the two driveways aren’t anywhere near each other, remember. The old driveway is eliminated. MR. SIPP-No, not eliminated, but each driveway has a width of what? MR. LAPPER-Here’s the new driveway. The new driveway is 18 feet wide, and when you say the other driveway, do you mean the existing driveway that’s used by the applicant? MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. LAPPER-Well, again, it’s that whole 4500 square foot of pavement. There wouldn’t be any entrance. It’s similar size to what’s proposed. I mean, that’s, this is similar to. If you look at the existing conditions plan, you can see that. Jeff can put up a map if you want to see the planting, the impact on what’s being removed and what’s being added. MR. FORD-That would be good. MR. REDDICK-Currently the driveway comes into the property here, and it crosses the neighbor’s property. So the neighbor’s property runs from here to here, and this is David Brown’s property here. What we’re proposing is to remove this entire stretch of driveway and relocate the driveway to here, which is shown on your plans. Now, the neighbor’s driveway, David Brown’s driveway, is actually off of this page, and comes into the property here, which is probably better shown up here. This is the driveway for David Brown currently. The existing driveway for Gregg Brown crosses over this triangular piece which belongs to David Brown. We propose to bring enough in to that very small piece up in here, which is about 18 feet wide. So we would be eliminating any access across this piece and only have access to this piece here up in that 18 foot section. So, again, the driveway, current configuration of the driveway actually has them fairly close to one another. We are actually going to be moving them farther apart from one another and also not crossing over the piece of property from David Brown. 4 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MRS. BRUNO-Either I’m not understanding this correctly, or the conveyance has little to do with whether or not you can put the driveways in. It’s more of a giving the easement back or giving the quantity of land back to your brother. MR. LAPPER-Right now the brother has the right to park over that two parking spots that go onto that whole paved area that we want to remove. So by giving, by eliminating that easement, it allows asphalt to be removed, because the brother has the right to park on that asphalt, farther down to where he is now. MRS. BRUNO-All right. Thank you. MR. LAPPER-I think that when I brought the map up to Tom and Don, it was easier to see, and you didn’t see that. MRS. BRUNO-Right. MR. LAPPER-But just comparing the two driveways, before and after. MR. SIPP-So, one driveway is 18 feet wide, and that’s Gregg. MR. LAPPER-That’s the proposed driveway. MR. SIPP-Gregg Brown’s driveway, and the other driveway is how wide? MR. LAPPER-The other driveway. Do you mean the existing Gregg Brown driveway? They’re both about as wide, but the existing driveway becomes a parking lot once you enter the property. It comes in about 18 feet, but then it becomes this whole big parking area. That’s the 4600 square feet of pavement. That’s shown on existing conditions map right here. This whole area is paved. MR. FORD-Would someone like to address safety relative to access to and from Knox Road and proximity of two driveways and the apparent curve there? MR. LAPPER-Well, right now, because this property is located on the curve, the existing driveway is on the curve, and this new driveway would be on the curve about 10 feet away, and the other brother, the brother’s driveway is 60 feet away. So it’s not near the curve. So Gregg’s driveway is now on the curve, and it’s going to be on the curve 10 feet away. So no significant difference either way. I mean, there’s no other way to get to his property, because his property is located at the curve in the road, but it’s a residential, you know, pretty, I’m sure you’ve been there. No one’s going to go fast around that curve. Tanya, you had a question? MRS. BRUNO-I know someone asked this earlier. I just want to ask it again. David’s current driveway is approved, where you can see the cars parked during construction. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. BROWN-That construction was done five, six years ago. MRS. STEFFAN-As I’m looking at all this, my note to myself on, as I reviewed was, how can I have an opinion on what I can’t see? And the map that you’re showing is not the map that I have, and so I don’t see the current driveways clearly delineated. I know you pointed them out, but obviously I try to do my homework before I come here. So that’s kind of confusing to me. I read the Zoning Board minutes, and Craig Brown actually had an opinion towards the end, and identified that there’s still the potential to have one curb cut off Knox Road, and then immediately, and then there’s some lost words, in different directions. There’s ways to only have one curb cut on the road which would be ideal. That said, from another point of view, I understand that if the brothers ever wanted to sell their property, at some point down the road, they would need to have different driveways in order for somebody, in order for the properties to be marketable. MR. LAPPER-I want to first apologize, Gretchen, because the map that was submitted for the variance is just showing this very small area of pavement for the boundary line adjustment and it doesn’t go into the whole issue with the driveways that are in the Site Plan drawings, but in terms whether or not they could have the one curb cut, we certainly couldn’t do that and eliminate all the pavement, but let me have Jeff Reddick address that. 5 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. REDDICK-There is no way to have one single curb cut to this property, other than the location of where we have it, unless we have to cross over somebody else’s property. MR. LAPPER-But David’s driveway is all the way up to the east. MR. REDDICK-Correct. So, if I understand what Craig Brown’s opinion was, that there was an opportunity for one curb cut to access both properties, that’s not correct. There’s only one location. There’s an 18 foot stretch of property that Gregg Brown owns, which abuts Knox Road, and that’s the only access point to his property. Otherwise we’d have to cross somebody else’s property to get there. MR. LAPPER-They’re not talking about whether you’d cross somebody’s property. They’re saying can you physically have one driveway and then have it split into two different parts to get to the two different houses? MR. REDDICK-No. MR. LAPPER-Why not? MR. REDDICK-Because of the current configuration of David Brown’s property, where his garage is located, where the driveway is, and where the general landscape components are currently, it’s not possible. MR. LAPPER-Because it’s on the other side of the property from where Gregg’s property, where Gregg’s house is. MR. BAKER-Mr. Chairman, if I could ask all Board members and the applicant to speak up a little bit. I know not everybody in the audience can hear the discussion. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Well, what’s the opinion of the Board? MR. FORD-Could I have that shown one more time by standing up there, the existing drives and why the single curb cut cannot work? MR. REDDICK-Currently, this is David Brown’s residence. His garage sits here, and it’s a side loading garage this way. So this is his property line here, and this is the property of Gregg Brown. David Brown’s current driveway comes in here, and he accesses his driveway here. He has landscaped elements here and here that essentially prevent him from having any other curb cut than which is logical and which is already here and approved. The current configuration for Gregg Brown to access his property is to come across this sliver of property which is David Brown’s and then to access his driveway here. Our proposal is to come in here. So the only way to access this property across its own line is here. Otherwise we’d have to cross. Is that making sense? MR. FORD-Speak to that vegetation or the landscaping that prevents the single cut and the right hand turn coming in off Knox? MR. REDDICK-This area here, which is approximately, this property line here is about 18 inches, or 18 feet wide, and there’s a triangular piece of land right in here that, due to the current configuration of the driveway, has some vegetation in there. There’s some rhododendrons. There’s some small hemlocks, again, approximately three inch to six inch in caliper, and there’s approximately four to six. To allow us to bring the driveway in here, we’d have to remove those pieces. Again, as the second part of the meeting will show, we have significant landscape elements in plant materials that we’re adding to the site to counteract anything that we might remove in that area. MR. LAPPER-Would you also point out the distance to the neighbor’s house from that area where the small vegetation is, not (lost words) the neighbor to the north. MR. REDDICK-Again, here’s the current location of where we propose to bring in the driveway, and this is the neighbor’s house here. I don’t know a distance, but it must be approximately 150 feet or more away. MRS. BRUNO-Mr. Lapper, could you just clarify the current property sizes and the proposed? I’ve got four different numbers, and I’m not, I’d just like to clarify without doing my own math, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page. MR. LAPPER-In terms of the variance and the impact of switching this property line? Is that what you’re asking about? 6 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MRS. BRUNO-Right. MR. LAPPER-Okay. MRS. BRUNO-I’m assuming that the survey map is the existing? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. MR. LAPPER-The different, what’s proposed to be switched from one side of the line to the other, is 180 square feet. MRS. BRUNO-Bringing the larger lot down to .63, deducting one one hundredth of an acre, and bringing the other one up to .62 from the .54. Okay. MR. LAPPER-I mean, just in terms of, they’re both undersized lots, but it’s a very minor number, 160 square feet. MR. FORD-Has consideration been given to sharing the single curb cut at the proposed location of the drive? MR. LAPPER-The neighbor wouldn’t agree to that, the brother, because it’s nowhere near his garage. It would be inconvenient for him. He’s not going to give up his curb cut. He’s not doing this. I mean, he’s doing this to accommodate Gregg, in terms of eliminating David’s rights to park on Gregg’s property, and to allow us to remove pavement. He’s not going to give up his convenient curb cut all the way to the east of his site, where his driveway is, to have a shared driveway so he’d have to come in and go across the front of his property to come around the other side. That’s just not practical based upon where the houses are. MR. HUNSINGER-I guess I’m really not clear what it is that David Brown is gaining. I mean, I understand he’s gaining this 180 square feet of area, but it’s essentially, you just commented, not you personally, but it was just commented by the applicant that because of existing vegetation you can’t move the driveway. So, David Brown, you know, it’s not like he’s going to gain use of this 180 square feet in property. So I guess in my own mind it seems like we’re. MR. LAPPER-The answer is to pacify David we’re letting him own this 180 square feet. So it’s conveying him something that he doesn’t have now. That instead of having the right to park on Gregg’s property, he’ll now own an extra 180 square feet, and we eliminate his right to drive across Gregg’s property. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I got that part, but I mean, in terms of the actual conveyance, the specific area that’s being conveyed is, I think, what I’m having a problem with, because it almost necessitates the relocation of the driveway, and I mean if I were to just. MR. LAPPER-Of which driveway? MR. HUNSINGER-The driveway for Gregg Brown. I mean, if I were to look at this and say, you know, what makes the most sense to me, I don’t think I would carve out that triangle. I would think I would, you know, swap a similar triangle from David to Gregg, so that you don’t have to add a new driveway, and then consider conveying some other property that has more value. MR. LAPPER-Well, let’s talk about that. I mean, in that alternative, if we still had to come in where we do, where we are now, there’s no benefit because they’re both essentially in the same place. It’s 10 feet away, but it doesn’t allow all this pavement to be removed. I mean, right now there’s this parking field, if you will, if it’s 4600 square feet, and at the end there would just be a driveway. So, if we have to maintain the existing space, then we have to maintain the existing pavement to get from that space to Gregg’s property, to his house. So it doesn’t have the benefit to the site of eliminating impermeable, because it’s not in a good location. It’s far away. MRS. BRUNO-I’d like to put out a possibility, and I don’t mean to preclude any future decision making, but if we put this forward to the Zoning Board as saying, you know, this looks fine, let them go ahead and do it, then it comes back to us for this next application that we’re going to be looking at and we decide that, no, we really don’t want to have 7 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) Gregg’s driveway moved, what will you do in that circumstance? Because now, you know, you’ve got the variance. You basically have to throw it away. MR. LAPPER-Yes, the boundary adjustment wouldn’t be helpful if we had to maintain the existing driveway location. MR. BROWN-If we don’t get approval to move the driveway after that, it just means that instead of driving across the section of land that I do now, the easement that exists, I would have to maintain the easement a little bit longer across the piece that I just conveyed to him, because the driveway wouldn’t move and I would then have to stay on that path with the existing drive, and drive across more of his land. Today there exists, and you see the easement that I have, and there’s an easement on his property that I have to drive across. So we have mutual easements. MRS. BRUNO-I guess I just wanted to put that forward because although one of the terms that was used this evening made it sound like perhaps this might be getting a little bit sticky between the two properties. MR. LAPPER-It’s not these two properties. It’s just that the neighbor on the north side, which you’ll hear at the next application, is opposed to the site changes that Gregg’s proposing. MRS. BRUNO-I was actually referring to a statement that you had made in terms of pacifying, in quotes, David. It just sounded like, I have to kind of agree with Mr. Hunsinger, that I think another portion of the property makes more sense, if you need to have that kind of financial plus and minuses to make it. MR. LAPPER-Well, let’s just talk about that for a second. When we looked at the map and said if we’ve got to give him something, we don’t want to make a change by the lake, because people would view that as more significant, in terms of changing the boundaries. So we tried to do it up by the road where it was as far from the lake as possible, and just give him this small amount of land. That’s where, all the property is narrow over there, too, and David’s house is a lot closer to the road. So getting a little piece of property by his house is more valuable to him. He’s got plenty of land down by the lake. So that was what he wanted, basically. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Thank you. MR. SEGULJIC-All right. I have to admit, I’m confused. David Brown currently has a driveway that more or less runs straight down to his house, and that is, you see the western edge of it on the drawing, I assume, this S-1, right below the S, is that correct? MR. REDDICK-Which drawing, please? MR. SEGULJIC-S-1. MR. REDDICK-David Brown’s driveway is not shown on any of these drawings. MR. SEGULJIC-Is not shown. MR. LAPPER-If you look on the photograph on the screen, his driveway is all the way to the east of this property line, of this property. MR. REDDICK-Can I approach? MR. SEGULJIC-Absolutely. This line here. MR. REDDICK-That is. MR. FORD-Is that the existing driveway? MR. REDDICK-This is the existing driveway into Gregg Brown’s property. David Brown’s property is not shown on here. This may be a curb cut, if I can borrow your pen. MR. HUNSINGER-It even shows up on that aerial. MR. REDDICK-If I extrapolate here, that’s approximately how the road would go, and his driveway would come in something like this, and then something like. 8 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, so this is the western edge of his driveway. MR. REDDICK-Correct. So that would be his driveway, but we’re proposing to come in here with the new driveway. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. All right. So that is the western edge. All right. MR. REDDICK-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-I’m confused. You’re saying that we need to move the driveway so you can reduce the amount of impervious area, but if you were just to flip the design, I think you could achieve that. Instead of a turnaround on the east side, have it on the west side. So, instead, coming in like this or something like that, that goes like that. MR. REDDICK-If we do this, then that takes up the area where the engineer has planned for the, that you’ll hear on the next application regarding the stormwater management controls. MR. SEGULJIC-So that’s not on this drawing, then. MR. REDDICK-Not on this drawing, no. MR. LAPPER-The stormwater management plan, that the stormwater basin is part of the area that’s being eliminated, 2600 square feet of pavement, and per the topography, that’s correct. That is located in the area of where the pavement is going to be removed. MR. HUNSINGER-Now the pavement that’s on the easement, and the pavement that’s on the land proposed to be conveyed, will that be removed as well? MR. LAPPER-A lot of it will be, but not all of it, because some of it is still a parking area, an auxiliary parking area for the neighbor, but the driveway part’s going to be eliminated. MRS. BRUNO-For the neighbor being Gregg? MR. LAPPER-No, David. MR. HUNSINGER-No, David. Now I understand why you want that piece of property conveyed. MR. LAPPER-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-Because David wants to retain that for parking. MR. LAPPER-Right, because he has an absolute deeded right to that, from when he bought the property, before Gregg bought the property. MR. HUNSINGER-So what will be the access to that parking area, the current existing driveway? MR. LAPPER-No. MR. BROWN-The new driveway. MR. HUNSINGER-So you’re going to drive across the lawn to get there? Or is it the new driveway? MR. LAPPER-How will he get to his parking, his two spaces? How does that work? Is that just an auxiliary parking if he has guests? MR. BROWN-Yes. MR. LAPPER-So it sounds to me like that’s something that’s only used when he has overflow parking and somebody would just drive over there to get there. That’s because it’s nowhere near his garage. It’s not where he would park. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MRS. STEFFAN-So on that corner you could potentially have two driveways and then another parking area. So there’s only 60 feet of frontage there, I think, in the minutes. 9 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. LAPPER-But anybody can pull off the road to park in front of these houses, if you’ve been there. MRS. STEFFAN-Absolutely, and I’m sure they do. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I’m sure. MR. LAPPER-It’s not the way you’d get into the house, or get into the garage. It would just be where a guest would park. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. LAPPER-I think it was an important point that Jeff made that eliminating this area of pavement allows for this new stormwater basin to be put in, and it’s more than 100 feet back from the lake. A lot of the new stormwater control is right there, because it complies with the Code by being away from the lake, and allows everything to, the driveway, which is now untreated and flows into the lake, could go into this basin. So that’s a big benefit for the neighborhood, and it’s also the sufficient distance from the septic field. So that’s the right place to put a stormwater basin. MRS. BRUNO-Not getting into the Site Plan issues of the future one, again, repeat that? You’re thinking of leaving the asphalt? MR. LAPPER-No, when the asphalt gets removed, not just in the triangle, the asphalt in that whole paved 4600 square feet that’s there now, that goes down to 1900, the area along the north side of that property is now going to be a stormwater basin, and it has to be in that location where there’s now pavement, because it has to be 100 feet from the lake, and it has to be 50 feet from the septic field, and that location complies with both, and that’s how we got the Town Engineer approval on the stormwater plan, that was a big component of it, to have that stormwater basin. MR. SEGULJIC-Is that basin shown on any of the drawings we got tonight? MR. LAPPER-Yes, on the Site Plan, and it may be in your other, it’s right here. It’s in Sheet Three of Four, Site Plan Grading and Sediment Control Plan, Paragon Civil Engineering. Do you have that plan? MR. SEGULJIC-Okay, where it’s the elevation 333? MR. LAPPER-Three thirty-four. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. Yes, I see what you’re saying. Yes. I was looking at the elevation right in the center of it. MR. LAPPER-So right now that whole area is paved, where the basin would go. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, what’s the will of the Board? We’re being asked to make a recommendation to the Zoning Board. MRS. STEFFAN-My opinion, I’m not comfortable making an advisory opinion to the ZBA, because I don’t have a map that identifies where the current driveways are, and I’ve read the minutes, and I know things have been pointed out to us on the board, but I’m not comfortable making an opinion to the ZBA. It’s too subjective. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else want to comment on it? MRS. BRUNO-Mine is actually giving a negative, I would not like to advise it. However, I think, like Mrs. Steffan said, that if we had clearer documents, it might change opinions. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else? MRS. STEFFAN-I guess to add on to what I’ve said, I would think that if the Zoning Board was going to make an opinion on this particular situation, that they would want to have a map that clearly delineated where David Brown’s current driveway is, so that they could compare and contrast to, you know, what Gregg Brown is going to do on his property, and then they conveyance just needs to be more clear than it is, in the map that we have. 10 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. LAPPER-And just, again, to apologize, the variance map just focused on that 180 square foot area and the Site Plan maps for the next application deal with the driveway issue. MR. HUNSINGER-But only on the one lot. MR. LAPPER-Right, and the reason it didn’t is because nothing changes on David’s lot, in terms of the existing driveway configuration. MR. FORD-I have a lack of comfort as well, proceeding with a recommendation for this, because to be consistent, we always are calling for some very specific delineation of what it is that we’re approving or disapproving, and we don’t have that before us. MR. LAPPER-I think what you have is a very specific delineation of Gregg’s property, but not David’s property. MRS. STEFFAN-Correct. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. FORD-Yes, and I am having difficulty seeing, I know that both are going to be impacted, but I can’t tell the total impact when I am confined to just one of the two parcels. MR. SEGULJIC-Conceptually, it all, I’m confused about what exactly is going on, but if I understand it correctly, conceptually, I don’t have a problem with it, given that Knox Road isn’t that busy a road, but I’m just, I don’t know if I see everything that’s going on, and I’m concerned about the trees that you would be removing, and so, I think, conceptually, it sounds fine, but you’ve got to clean up the details. MRS. BRUNO-Right now as it stands it seems very strongly that there could be an informal third driveway where the current one is, to clarify my earlier muttered statement. MR. TRAVER-Yes, I’m concerned because of how closely this is obviously all tied up with the Site Plan, and I know that the history of the property, and development in the 90’s related to preserving certain views that are right in that area, and the vegetation and so on. So it’s a very, very, it’s far more complicated than simply the 180 square feet. MR. LAPPER-Well, I think the issue with the vegetation will come up in the Site Plan. It’s really a very small issue of area of vegetation that’s coming out, but. MR. TRAVER-It’s all tied together. MR. LAPPER-It sounds like we need to table this at this point anyway, based upon what the Board’s saying, in terms of the recommendation. MR. HUNSINGER-Is this scheduled to go before the Zoning Board? MR. LAPPER-Not until May. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-I certainly think it would also be important to the Zoning Board, you know, as the Planning Board does, is to think about, you know, the Brown’s own these parcels right now, but as we’re talking about driveways and access management, some day, you know, they both may sell their property to someone else, and the solution that we come up with has to be reasonable for the area, and the right thing for the area. Because we’re not just talking about today. MRS. BRUNO-Do we still have in the Staff files the meeting minutes from ’92, from the original subdivision? MR. BAKER-The minutes from ’92? MRS. BRUNO-Yes. MR. BAKER-Yes, those are available. MR. HUNSINGER-I think they’re even on line. 11 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. BAKER-We do have the ’92 minutes. MR. HUNSINGER-Are those on line? I’m pretty sure they are. I think they go back to like early 80’s. MR. BAKER-I should be able to pull them up off the network. MRS. BRUNO-I can’t say I’ve ever gone back that far. MR. TRAVER-No. MRS. BRUNO-All right. I’ll look it up. Thanks. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we’re not required to actually put forward any kind of a formal resolution, because it was just a recommendation to the Zoning Board. So I guess I’ll just ask the Board sort of one last time if there’s anything else that anyone wants to get on the record on this application before we move on? Okay. If not, we will move on to Site Plan No. 14-2007. SITE PLAN NO. 14-2007 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED REDBUD DEVELOPMENT AGENT(S) REDBUD DEV. OWNER(S) GREGG & LIZABETH BROWN ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 31 KNOX ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF NEW RETAINING WALLS AT THE SHORE OF LAKE GEORGE, BLUE STONE PATIOS, LANDSCAPING AND STORMWATER CONTROLS. FILLING/HARD SURFACING WITHIN 50 FEET OF THE SHORELINE REQUIRES SITE PLAN REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE SP 44-92, AV 59-96 AV 9-08 WARREN CO. PLANNING 4/11/07 ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY YES LOT SIZE 0.64 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 239.7-1-7 SECTION 179-4-020 JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, if you could summarize the Staff Notes, please. MR. BAKER-Just a comment. My Staff Notes were written before the revised Town consulting engineer comments were received. So I’m going to be sort of amending my notes verbally on the fly here. MR. HUNSINGER-That’s fine. MR. BAKER-The project was last tabled in December of ’07, and subsequently tabled a couple of additional times. Generally speaking, there are a couple of outstanding issues, and in engineering there’s outstanding issues on VISION Engineering comments Number Twenty-Seven through Thirty-One. Additionally, Planning Staff comments note that the existing conditions plan and proposed conditions plan don’t show the location of overhead utility lines and poles, and that the existing utility pole at the northeast corner of the property has a support wire that’s currently anchored in the middle or near the proposed driveway, and that this guide wire or utility pole will need to be moved and the new location show on plans submitted for this Board’s review. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. MR. LAPPER-For the record, again, Jon Lapper, Gregg Brown and Jeff Reddick. We th have the new letter from VISION Engineering dated April 18, which has, I think, four open items, and our engineer’s in agreement. I mean, essentially these are to add notes for maintenance of the stormwater system to have a stabilization area during construction and there’s nothing that, our engineer has agreed that he’ll make these changes. We concur with that. Obviously we just got the Staff Notes, but there’s nothing that we can’t accomplish, or that the applicant is unwilling to accomplish. So it’s mostly some details, but we’re in agreement to provide that. We think it’s very close with the engineer. In terms of these comments, what happened last time, there were, the neighbor’s attorney raised a bunch of issues, and we submitted some, our response to that. One of them is the issue of relocation of the utility line, of utility pole, and the answer there is that National Grid has decided to eliminate the guide wire, the support wire to install another utility pole to provide support for the existing utility pole, and that would be on the Town right of way within a National Grid easement. So that’s not on this site. It’s just along the road, like other utility poles. So that’s not shown, and there was some issue with the neighbors, that the neighbors would have like to have seen the lines undergrounded, but the parties couldn’t come to an agreement on that. It’s a very 12 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) expensive matter. So that would require one more pole support, but that’s on the Town property, not on this property. I referred to before, in the last matter, I think you are all aware of the plantings that are shown along the lake and the rain gardens that, what the LGA had requested and we worked with the Planning Board to address those issues. A big issue earlier on in this project was compliance with 147, the stormwater regs, and we do have the signoff on all of those issues, except for these minor open items on the April th 18 letter from VISION. So what we have existing is a site that doesn’t comply with 147. This is a project, as we’ve discussed, to eliminate a substantial amount of impervious surface to do a substantial amount of planting along the lake, and in order to make this possible, we have to do some trimming and remove some minor scrubby vegetation along the road, but that’s more than offset, substantially offset by all of the planting along the lake, which is exactly what this Board has been asking for on this and other projects of late. So, you know, we think that because of the stormwater plan, because of the reduction in impervious, this is a very good project for the lake, and it complies with the goals that this Board has stated. The neighbors don’t like this, and you’ll hear about that, but some of the issues that they’ve raised, in terms of the view shed, right now, they have a view underneath the carport. If you’re looking at Sheet One of Four, the existing conditions plan, you can see where their house is on the photograph. They have some secondary view of the lake, underneath the carport, and if this is constructed as proposed, that carport would be eliminated, and instead they would have a view under the covered walkway, which is essentially the same view as they have now, under a carport, versus under a covered walkway, and the neighbors had raised an issue of replacement of the existing crumbling retaining wall along the lake at the north end of the site. We have a DEC permit to remove that. There’s a tree which is not healthy which has to be removed. The roots are causing some of the problem with the retaining wall, I believe, and the neighbors called DEC and asked them to reconsider that permit, and that permit, DEC did not reconsider it. That permit exists, and we’ve submitted that. We have an existing permit to replace a deteriorated area of the retaining wall, and that’s about it. Anything else that you feel should be mentioned, Jeff? Okay. Then we’re open to questions or public hearing. MR. HUNSINGER-Questions from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-I guess a general question. Maybe I’m missing something here. If you could help me out, Mr. Chairman. We approved this plan, if they didn’t get the lot line adjustment, can this plan still go forward, then? MR. LAPPER-I can explain that. The answer is that this plan stands on its own. We would have to then negotiate with the neighbor if we can’t, I mean, in terms of, there’s a private easement right that we have to extinguish to make this happen, and so if the variance isn’t granted, we have to deal with the neighbor in terms of that two parking spaces, but it doesn’t affect the Town zoning, in terms of the Site Plan. MR. SEGULJIC-So it wouldn’t affect? MR. BAKER-That’s correct. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. I recommend we open it up for public comment. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I had a question before we do that. Anyone else? MR. SIPP-I have a question here. On this Sheet One of Four, the bottom left hand corner, the northwest side, we have a listing of four hemlocks, one white pine, one black birch, one oak and one red pine. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. SIPP-On this, which is Sheet One of Three, which says full landscape plan, these trees disappear. GREGG BROWN MR. BROWN-Those trees still remain. They’re just indicated in a different fashion. Nothing is being removed in that area. MR. SIPP-Nothing’s being removed. MR. LAPPER-Yes. The difference is, is that one is the engineer’s plan and one is the landscape plan. 13 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SIPP-All right, but all those trees remain? MR. BROWN-Correct. MR. SIPP-The 16 inch hemlock and the 10 inch hemlock, all those trees in that corner? MR. BROWN-There’s one tree shown on this that, on Sheet One, by the deck on the north side, says a 26 inch hemlock. MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. BROWN-Approximately a year and a half ago a storm came out of the west, which is where the deck faces due west. It snapped that hemlock at the base and threw it at the house. It was a 26 inch hemlock that luckily pivoted about 10 degrees north missing the corner of the house and driving that retaining wall and the plantings about two feet into the ground, and crushing a corner of the porch. Luckily it missed the house, but that tree is not there anymore, and that’s part of the concern that drives the need to replace the retaining wall on the south side of the deck. The south side of the deck, the retaining wall is bowing out. The roots are being undermined, and I’ve had opinion from two professional engineers that those trees will come down. It’s just a matter of what storm event and when, and directly in the line of those trees is my daughter’s bedroom, and I just simply cannot have that type of risk, you know, Russian roulette with my child’s life, concerning what’s going on with these trees. I petitioned the DEC, with the help of Jeff, with designs for the retaining wall that would have built the retaining wall out toward the lake, you know, sort of creating structure at the base, that would have given more foundation to those trees, and we would have been allowed to keep them. I really would love to keep those trees. I do not want to get rid of the trees. The DEC, however, came to the decision that they do not want us building toward the lake. That is absolutely not something they’re going to approve. They required that we rebuild the retaining wall on the inside of the property, which requires us to take the trees down, and again, it’s not something I want to do, but it’s something the DEC has said, it’s the only way to get that retaining wall done. So it’s a Catch-22. If I don’t do the retaining wall, the trees are going to come down on the house. I have to do the retaining wall. The DEC says you have to do it on the inside, and therefore the trees have to come down and they didn’t seem to care one way or the other. MR. LAPPER-So in order to compensate for that, we have the landscaping plan that Don referred to, which has all of this added vegetation added along the lake. MR. HUNSINGER-So which tree, on Sheet One of Four, existing conditions, which trees are being removed? MR. BROWN-The two, in the existing conditions, directly south of the deck that’s above the word “Lake George” on the bottom of the drawing, there are two dark hemlocks, 24 inch and 12 inch, that sit directly on the retaining wall, north, to the left. Do you have the Paragon? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, dated, what’s the date on there? Am I missing something, Don? MR. FORD-Again, they’re right at the wall? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. BROWN-They’re at the wall. MR. FORD-And the diameters? MR. BROWN-They’re listed at about 24 inches and approximately 12 inches. MR. FORD-Well, not approximately, because according to this it’s very specific. Which ones are you referring to? MR. BROWN-Those two that are directly on the wall south of the deck, 12 and 24. They’re side by side. MRS. BRUNO-They’re not 28 and 16. MR. BROWN-This may be an old drawing. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SIPP-Well, you have a 22 inch hemlock on the dock, right near the dock, and the stairs down to the dock. MR. TRAVER-There’s two decks in the drawing One of Four. Are you referring to the southernmost deck? MR. BROWN-The northern most deck. MR. TRAVER-The northernmost deck. Yes, there are no, in the existing conditions plan, one of four, there are no trees shown in that area. MR. HUNSINGER-But the rest of those trees that Don had asked you about do remain? MR. BROWN-Yes, all those other trees remain to the north of the deck. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-May I ask what the rationale is for the differences in these renderings? MR. BROWN-In prior meetings, the Board had asked for renderings that showed the canopy and showed some of the other plantings in color coding, and that’s, I think, what Jeff attempted to do, but they are drawings from maybe two different sources. One is from Jeff and one is from the civil engineer that did all of the water, stormwater design work. MR. FORD-So when we look at Sheet One of Four, it all depends on who did Sheet One of Four? MR. BROWN-Yes, probably, because some show just a stick or a dot. Others show full canopy and. MR. FORD-Some didn’t show anything. MR. BROWN-And obviously you’ve got some that didn’t show anything, yes. MR. LAPPER-We stand by the landscape plan, the large one. That’s the proposed conditions. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-Just some clarification. On Sheet One of Four, in the northwest corner, you’re showing all the hemlocks. MR. FORD-But that’s not the appropriate one to be looking at. That’s not the right one. That’s not the existing one. MR. SEGULJIC-That’s not the existing. MR. FORD-No. It appears you’ve got the only existing one, One of Four. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, but that’s what raised the question from Mr. Sipp, is this map, this plan doesn’t show those, what was it, five hemlock, birch, oak and red pine. MR. LAPPER-And can you explain that? MR. BROWN-Yes. Due to the fact that we have two different entities creating these drawings, on this particular drawing, if you can see this general shape in here, this indicates the existing canopy of the vegetation that’s there, and again, all of that canopy is going to remain. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. BROWN-Nothing in that area is going to be removed, or pruned or anything of that manner. MRS. BRUNO-The stockpile area is for when the work on the retaining wall is being done? 15 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. BROWN-Correct. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Can you talk a little bit about the blue stone patio, the spacing, that’s considerably, and it’s considerably close to the lake. MR. LAPPER-I guess we’ve discussed that before, Tanya, and our position is that in exchange for that, we added all this landscaping along the lake everywhere else except for there, because that’s what the Board had wanted. So we compensated by, right now there’s far fewer vegetation areas than what we’re proposing. You wanted the whole lakefront vegetated, and it is, except for really in front of that there are still shrubs, but that’s, in exchange for adding the blue stone area, we’re providing all of this planting along the lake. MRS. BRUNO-Refresh my memory in how you’re planning on laying that. JEFF REDDICK MR. REDDICK-That would be a dry-laid application. So it would be over a compacted stone base with a dry laid blue stone. MRS. BRUNO-How close will you be laying the stones? MR. REDDICK-Approximately a quarter inch to half inch spacing between the stones. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. MR. SIPP-So you have this map in its colored? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. SIPP-The bottom left hand corner, where you show new plantings, where you show existing trees to stay, and you’ve only got four out of a total of eight that are on the other plan. MR. LAPPER-Okay. Let’s look at this. He’s saying that this plan shows eight. MR. SIPP-You’re showing, I assume, a red pine and a. MR. LAPPER-So, Don, I think the answer is, nothing is going to be removed, but this is shown in the canopy, and it doesn’t show the trunk, on the colored drawing, but it’s certainly the. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, I guess can we show these trees on Drawing, Sheet One of Four, the trees in the lower left hand corner, show them on your landscaping plan. MR. LAPPER-Yes, that would be the right, the answer. MR. SEGULJIC-There’s, as I see it, eight tree, eight hemlocks. MR. LAPPER-Right, because they will be maintained. They’re proposed to be maintained. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. Just show those on there. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-That’ll resolve that. MR. HUNSINGER-The question that I had for the applicant is from the engineering notes th from April 18, on the second page, Item Thirty, regarding the 10 year storm design for the parking area. MR. LAPPER-Bear with me a second, I have that. MR. HUNSINGER-Do you want me to just read it, Jon? MR. LAPPER-No, I have the response. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. 16 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. LAPPER-Number Thirty? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. LAPPER-The response is, drainage notation arrows and notes will be added to the plan to indicate that the path for the overflow from the uphill stormwater management facility currently, with no treatment or storage upstream, and a greater amount of impervious area, the site does not show any signs of concentrated storm flow, either flowing toward the lake or the house. The design and plan is such that the project has less flow toward the lake than in existing conditions for all storms. So right now there are no stormwater facilities. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. So the answer is there’s none now and there will be additional ones put in place after the project. So the situation is made better by the? MR. LAPPER-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-Overall, it looks good to me. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I mean, the landscaping along the lake looks great. It’s everything I think we asked for. I don’t know if anyone had any critical comments on that. MR. SEGULJIC-I think from the lake’s perspective, it’s what the lake likes to see. MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. LAPPER-That’s because you hammered this applicant for a few months until we relented. MR. SEGULJIC-We did it for the lake. th MRS. STEFFAN-There is a March 10 letter from, I think it’s Paragon Engineering, yes, th to Craig Brown, March 10. Number Twenty-Eight, you’re asking for a waiver. Is that still relevant? The infiltration basin, as designed, provides the DEC minimum required two feet of separation to groundwater and it goes on, we formally are requesting a waiver from this section based on site conditions. MR. LAPPER-I think that that, there was no choice other than that, with the two feet. MRS. STEFFAN-So you’re still asking for a waiver on that? MR. LAPPER-Yes, because it at least provided for infiltration, but there wasn’t any more than the two feet available. MRS. STEFFAN-Is the Board okay with that, because we’ll have to grant a waiver in any motion. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. FORD-That’s number, what, Gretchen? MRS. STEFFAN-Twenty-Eight. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. TRAVER-Twenty-Eight on Page Two of the March 10 from Paragon. MR. FORD-I’ve got it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Any other questions, comments from the Board before we open the public hearing? Okay. We do have a public hearing scheduled this evening. It was held open from the previous applicants. I would ask anyone that wants to speak that they address their comments to the Board, and before they speak, to speak their name for the record, and to try to keep their comments to within five minutes. It looks like you’re ready, so. 17 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) PUBLIC HEARING OPEN JEFF BAKER MR. BAKER-Thank you, Mr. Chairman. MR. HUNSINGER-You’re welcome. Good evening. MR. BAKER-My name is Jeff Baker. I’m an attorney with Young Summer in Albany, and I represent John and Carol Collins who are the adjoining property owners. This obviously, this is becoming a more complex project for a small project, and it’s getting a little more confusing, and the discussion you had earlier regarding the Area Variance and what I guess eventually is going to have to come in for subdivision approval, goes to the point of everything here is closely tied together, and has to be considered as a whole and not in some kind of a segmented and partial review, and my review of the file, as I’ve gotten looking at this, is I’m afraid that’s happened. I think you have been focusing, not inappropriately, on a lot of the stormwater issues, and the landscaping around the lake, some of those are being resolved. We have still comments about that regarding the infiltration basin, as to whether it warrants the waiver from the setback requirements and the distances, whether it actually is providing any of the benefits of an infiltration basin and any treatment of the pollution, but you really have to look at the broader Site Plan implications of what’s going on here, and it is not a minor circumstance, the impact on the views to the Collins’, and it’s not just the impacts to the Collins’ but it’s the impacts to the public who use Knox Road, and you have to look at the history of this project, and not just the history of the current application, but how Mr. Brown came here over 10 years ago and got the original variance to allow for the reconstruction of this house. When he came in, he got the variance to allow construction of the house within 50 feet of the lakeshore, basically rebuilding it on the original foundation, and the strong argument at the time for the variance is you already had an existing structure there that was impacting the views for the property to the north, and by building it in that location, you preserve the ability to have views to the east, basically to the back of the property, and if you were to have held him to, the ZBA were to have held him to the strict application of the Code at the time, it would have required the house to be moved back. It would have impacted that view, but it would have opened up the view to the south or to the west. The decision, at the time, to allow it to stay where it was, was not an inappropriate decision, and it was reasonable for a variety of reasons. Now we’re seeing an incremental intensification of the use of a substandard and small lot, where you’re putting in extensive new buildings that dramatically impact the views, again, from both Knox Road and the Collins’ property, and Dr. and Mr. Collins will talk more specifically about, you know, how that will impact their view, and how the existing carport really is not much of an obstruction, and that’s what they accepted when they bought the property. They were well aware of that. This is dramatically changing that whole character. So, you have to undertake your SEQRA review in sound planning, and there has been no argument shown as to why it’s necessary to increase the density on such a small lot with more buildings where everything taken together impacts the views of everybody onto the lake. You also have to look at a consideration that putting these buildings where they’re being proposed effectively eliminates any reserve area for the septic system on this property. The septic system was rebuilt, in my understanding, when the house was rebuilt in 1996, and we’ve seen references in your minutes to claims by Mr. Brown, and his representatives, that there was some kind of a waiver obtained at the time from the Health Department, on the requirement for a 50% reserve area for a septic system. We see no record and no proof that any such waiver was ever given, and it would be inappropriate to allow construction on an area that will preclude the ability to replace the septic system when it has to be replaced. It’s not a question of if the septic system’s going to be replaced. It’s a question of when it’ll have to be replaced, and that’s why the State Health Department requires that when you’re doing new construction that you maintain a 50% reserve area, and in fact, when you’re dealing with a Critical Environmental Area, and concerned about water quality, they often require a 100% reserve area, which is the reserve area required in the New York City watershed, and there are proposals at the State level to make the State wide requirement also 100% reserve area, but, be that as it may, you don’t have the basic minimum of a 50% reserve area, and this is not sound planning, looking into the future as to what’s going to happen if the concern is when other people buy this house or we know that it’s going to have to be rebuilt. These buildings have a significant impact on the area, and that has to be taken into account for the rights of the surrounding property owners. I think, if I may while we’re talking about it, because I think it is important, and I appreciate that you didn’t make any kind of. 18 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Do you have one final statement? MR. BAKER-Let me just try and wrap up quickly if I can, and I appreciate your indulgence. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. BAKER-This whole question of changing the driveway going back is, I don’t understand how it supposedly improves the local environment or reduces the impervious surfaces. There is no representation at all by David Brown that the existing parking area is going to be changed in any way to re-vegetate it or isn’t going to be used. He has a right to use his parking lot now, and he’s going to continue to use it. The issue is he doesn’t want to have it on an easement. There’s a fight among the brothers, but you’re going to have a new driveway coming in that’s going to be taking out the trees, affecting the view from the Collins’ property, and while we’ve heard today that the utility line, guide wire, is going to be relocated to some manner that isn’t going to affect the Collins’ property, we haven’t seen any details of that or how that’s supposed to happen. The fact that there are existing easements on that property, back and forth, parking easement on Gregg Brown’s property, driveway easement on David Brown’s property, is common, in something like this, and it’s common for homes to have to have a shared driveway. It’s not a cloud on title. There obviously hasn’t been much of a cloud on title since they’ve been able to get financing for their constructions on their properties. This is, again, this is a great intensification of the use of two substandard lots that have not properly been considered for the impacts on the area, and we strongly urge you to deny this application, and at a minimum, at a minimum, before you go forward, you have to require a full visual assessment under SEQRA so the supposed claim is that there’s not a visual impact associated with the construction of these buildings, we’re at least all working from a set of facts that are easier to do, and I will stop at there. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Mr. or Mrs. Collins JOHN COLLINS MR. COLLINS-Hello. My name is John Collins. I have a few comments, mostly based on what was said tonight by Gregg Brown and his representatives. First off, in many instances there was talk about, we need to grant this change of 180 square feet so that we can remove pavement. The pavement, if I can just go up to. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure, go ahead. MR. COLLINS-This whole area is paved. It can be removed whether they do anything or not. The current driveway comes in right here. There was representations that this is minor vegetation here. You look at that, that’s not minor vegetation. Yes, there are rhododendrons and some smaller trees, hemlocks, but there are also some leaf bearing trees, and we have very major trees along here which would have to be limbed, if the driveway was moved over, and there is no overriding need to do that. He could keep the easement here and still have plenty of parking for everybody. I just want you to look at our property. We live the values that we are trying to talk about here. Huge old growth trees, all through here, all along the bank, growth trees back here, back here. This is where our septic is. We have very little non-treed area on our property. Now you look at Gregg Brown’s property. He’s got some trees here. They’re going. He’s got a big tree here, that’s going. We’re going to put some small planting here. Now you’re go to Dave Brown, remember, this is all the family property before, let’s see how many trees we can find along here. This whole property is changing the character of this neighborhood, especially when we’ve built out the garage and the walkway, and there was also comment about how it’s not going to impact our view. I want you all to look at the elevation drawings and imagine our house, which is not 150 feet, because our whole property line is 204. So call it 85 feet from here to the property line. We’re going to have about a three foot section by, I don’t know, 15 feet, that we’re going to be able to look through, if we squint real hard. So it is going to impact our view by putting all this up here. It was disappointing, to say the least, in the discussions, and some of characterizations, about why this project needs to go forward. You go back to the ’96 minutes and you can read Gregg Brown’s words about the view. He talked to us about why there’s a carport there instead of a garage. Part of it was to preserve the view. Now that the house is built, they’re going to come in and build the garage. They’re going to ruin our trees. The visual, coming down Knox Road, there’s going to be no trees left in that property, other than the northwest corner of the property. Dave Brown, what’s important to him is that two car parking. If granting this 180 square feet transfer was going to allow for pavement to be removed, then, as I said before, you could remove the 19 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) pavement now without doing anything. Dave wants that parking space. He’s going to leave the pavement there. You’re going to have the new driveway next door. So instead of having, I don’t know, 15 feet of paved entranceway, you’re now going to have 35 feet of paved entranceway, and then you’re going to have David’s other driveway. As far as National Grid, they were going to put a second pole in front of our property. Carol went out and talked to them and they said the preferred thing to do with properties is put it right on the property line, but, since we’re now moving the Brown’s driveway over, it’s going to go right where that guide wire, the support wire is. So now, again, you grant this whole thing, we lose our view, our trees get cut significantly. We get an extra pole in front of our property. David Brown was talking about the big trees in the front and how he doesn’t want to endanger his daughter. Okay. If the trees are diseased, he could cut them down and not have to touch the retaining wall. They’re trying to make all these rationale to provide for the whole project, but when you look at each of the rationale and reasoning, one by one, they don’t hold water. The one tree did fall down and hit the corner of his porch. That’s part of the risk of being in the Adirondacks. You want to eliminate that risk, you cut all the trees down. Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-You’re welcome. CAROL COLLINS DR. COLLINS-I have a picture, I have a lot of pictures for you. MR. HUNSINGER-If you could state your name for the record, please. DR. COLLINS-I’m sorry. My name is Carol Collins. For the record, I do have these pictures here, you can see things and really understand them. They’re just coming back up again. I will say when the National Grid came to put that pole there, and I happened to be there, the whole, there was the big National Grid truck, the whole installation team, and I said what are you doing, and they said we’re going to put a thing right here in the middle of this whole, and I said, you’re not going to do that, and they said, yes, we think it’s the dumbest idea we’ve ever seen. These are the installation people, because it would be right in the middle of the road, you know, if you really see what Knox Road is, it’s like it’s in the middle of the road. They thought it was unsafe, unfair and impractical. They did not put it up. They left the pole there for another month and a half and then they took it away. There is no solution for this utility pole. It needs to be decided before that. We did bury our lines. They asked us to pay for burying theirs. I’m not going to do that, but the solution is not to put a pole in front of our house. National Grid will not do that anymore. They do not like to cause problems between neighbors. They’re not going to put it in front of my house. So I’d love to see where they’re going to put it. That’s what my point is there. This 50% thing. The reason why they don’t want this 50% rule is because they have very, if you look at all their percolation tests, they’ve got very little place on their property to percolate that would suffice for putting in another septic system. The only place that you could put it is where they want to put the garage, and because they want this garage, I don’t know why, they, it’s going to eliminate this. If you’re thinking that you’re doing a good project in a Critical Environmental Area without preserving the 50% for additional sewage thing which is required by New York State, then this is just totally wrong. It’s the most important consideration we can do on Lake George. As far as the infiltration, infiltrating something in a rain garden on the shore of Lake George that has to have a release into the lake, it’s going to be, what, five feet off the shore? What we want is 100 feet. We don’t want five feet. This is impracticable. We don’t know where those nutrients are really coming from. They keep saying they’re not bad nutrients, but we don’t know it. Well, what’s good nutrients? I don’t know. I can tell you what they are. There’s going to be phosphorus, nitrogen. There’s going to be toxins and heavy metals in that, because that’s what’s on any building site. So that’s what you’re going to have, and it’s going to go to an infiltration site that is not an infiltration pit because it has a direct outlet into Lake George. I usually have more to say. MR. HUNSINGER-You said you had a picture to show? DR. COLLINS-I do. It’s coming up right now. I want to remind you about this property itself. If you go back to 1991 minutes, in front of the Town Board, when this was a, there was two nonconforming lots. When they got brought together by one ownership, the Browns actually felt that they were merged, and if you go through that, we cannot see anything at that point where they went through a subdivision to create these two properties again, and if you look under Town Code, Letter E, Section 170-20, you’ll see that these nonconforming lots should have been merged and treated as a lot. So now you’re compounding nonconforming, nonconforming into, and what we want to do is make things more conforming, and every aspect of this project is making this lot more 20 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) and more nonconforming, besides the fact it may actually be part of a larger lot, and I think that’s something the Town Attorney needs to investigate. All right. I took these today. Here we go. Can I approach? MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. DR. COLLINS-Okay. This is the driveway that will remain, and there’ll be some reconfiguration back. The driveway that will remain is right here. That’s the existing one. This is the stuff they’re going to be taking down to put in the additional driveway. This is, that’s Dave Brown’s. Okay. There you can see, this is Dave Brown’s driveway right here. So then there’ll be this driveway right here and this driveway right there. Okay. This utility line right here, they wanted to put the pole right in front of me over here. Here’s the guide wire. So, it’s impractical. The only place you could actually put this pole right now is over here, because you have to keep it lined up with the other property, you know, the other lines. Okay, and it’s not going to go in front of my house. So I want to know where that’s going to go before anything happens, and also, if you were to look at this building right here, and I have a better view of this, this building right here, the covered walkway and the covered boathouse, which is a two story boathouse, this is a 350 foot wall of buildings, it will look like Wal-Mart on Lake George. We will need a big, we’ll have another big box on this. It’ll be a wall of buildings. I think there’ll be two feet that I can see it through. There’s no seeing through this covered boathouse, this covered thing. So it’s a wall of buildings starting from 40 feet out into Lake George all the way over passed Brown’s house. There’s nothing like that on Lake George. MRS. STEFFAN-Do you have a picture of David Brown’s driveway? MR. BAKER-Mr. Chairman, just to comment. One of the perils of this digital age is while the Planning Board is taking a look at a photograph or photographs, we do not have print outs for the record, and I would ask Dr. Collins to submit printouts for our record. MR. COLLINS-Here’s a partial one to show some of this. MR. HUNSINGER-Your time is up, Dr. Collins. DR. COLLINS-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, did you get a copy of the written comments? MR. BAKER-Yes, I did. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else that wanted to address the Board on this application? Yes, Chris. CHRIS NAVITSKY MR. NAVITSKY-I have written comments. Should I pass them out? MR. HUNSINGER-Only if you have copies for everybody. MR. NAVITSKY-Yes, that I do. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MR. NAVITSKY-Good evening. Chris Navitsky, Lake George Water Keeper. We have reviewed the submission material regarding the Site Plan application. We’d like to recognize the fact that the applicant has proposed increasing types and numbers of native species in the Site Plan. However, we’d like to offer the following comments. The proposed development increases impervious coverage within 100 feet of Lake George, sacrificing lakeshore areas which should be used for buffering. The existing development contains a house over the lake, a large dock complex, a large house with a deck overlooking the lake. The proposed development proposes to add a blue stone patio on the shore as well as a deck extension from the house. The entire width of the site will be developed at the expense of open space critical for buffering and protecting Lake George. The Board should be restricting increases in development within the shoreline setback and preserving the natural soils and vegetation to the greatest extent possible. I simply would like to ask when is enough enough? And when they’re compensating and removing impervious blacktop far away from the lake, and increasing impervious surfaces near the lake, I don’t think that benefits the lake. Regarding the construction of the proposed retaining wall will have adverse environmental impacts on 21 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) Lake George. In a February 1 letter, Attorney Bitter states “….(the) replacement wall will be constructed behind the existing wall that will be above the mean high water line.” th Based on drawings submitted on March 17, this indicates the construction and excavation of the wall footings will extend below the mean high water mark listed as 320.805 and the current water mark 319.73 as well as being moved closer to the lake. This will result in concrete being placed below the lake level of Lake George. How will the lake be protected? Currently, Lake George has calcium levels which are just below the threshold to support the development of adult zebra mussels. However, calcium leaching from concrete materials can create micro-environments which will aid in the development of zebra mussels and there have been discoveries at various locations around the lake, including the Cleverdale shoreline. Number Three, regarding the proposed rain gardens behind the retaining wall, if you look at the detail of the retaining wall, there’s a twelve inches of gravel to provide drainage behind the retaining wall. If you stick your rain garden right above that gravel drain, you’re just going to short-circuit the water, which should be getting filtered by at least two feet of soil, right behind the drain and having it go right into the lake. So that is one of the reasons that we need to have those setbacks from the lakeshore. Regarding the proposed access, the proposed access drive will produce higher runoff levels and reduce infiltration due to compaction of soil. As you know, there’s a drive proposed to access the construction around the house to the shoreline. Construction equipment such as concrete trucks, excavators, dump trucks, will utilize the drive creating a need for stabilization. In addition, equipment activity will compact the existing soils greatly reducing infiltration rates. There’s been studies that show equipment activities eliminates soil pores six to eight inches deep, and depending on the soil type and the weight and axel loads of the vehicles, you can have compaction as deep as three feet. Therefore we feel that the runoff calculation should reflect these conditions which would further increase runoff and reduce the effect of vegetated areas for infiltration. Regarding the retaining wall, again, if you take a look at the detail, they have an under drain behind the wall. That under drain is actually at an elevation below the lake level. So I don’t know how that will work. My last point is, again, regarding the septic system which has been touched upon. Absorption fields require a 20 foot separation from building foundations, and it appears the garage location may not be compliant. In addition, there’s concern on how they are going to protect that existing field. That appears to be about five feet from where the existing leach lines are. I don’t know how you can protect that when you’re, during construction, and again, regarding the 50% reserved area for placement. In closing, our opinion is that the potential impacts to the lake outweigh the benefits to the applicant, and request that the Queensbury Planning Board deny the application as presented. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. We will conclude the public hearing for this evening, but we will leave the public hearing open. If the applicant would like to come back to the table. Any questions from the Board? Any comments from the applicant? MRS. BRUNO-I’m sorry. I actually do have two. MR. HUNSINGER-Go ahead. MRS. BRUNO-Did you end up addressing the maintenance schedule for the rain gardens? MR. LAPPER-Yes. I had just said that we agreed that we would comply with all the comments in the letter from the engineer that you don’t have yet, that I read. The response to Chris also said we’ll add all those notes to the plans. MRS. BRUNO-And the other question is, do you have a copy of the waiver that the public spoke of, that Mr. Collins spoke about regarding the 50% reserve area for the septic? MR. LAPPER-All I can tell you on that is that the septic system was approved in 1996. It’s a compliant septic system, and there was no requirement in that permit for any kind of reserve area on this site. If this has to be replaced, the soil is going to have to be removed. That’s the only, I mean, in terms of where the stormwater control is, there’s not going to be anywhere else to move the leach field. So it would have to be replaced in its location, and the soil would have to be replaced. On this lot there’s just, it’s a triangular shaped lot. You can’t go any closer to the lake, and it can’t go closer to the stormwater management facility. So the only thing to do is to replace it in its current location by removing the soil. MRS. BRUNO-And this is year round, right? 22 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. LAPPER-Yes. I guess, I just wanted to make a few comments. The neighbor’s comments are a little contradictory, because they’re talking about the views at one point, which means not having trees, and then they’re complaining that we’re proposing to take out trees. I think the picture that Mrs. Collins showed you is exactly the same as the one that we took, in terms of these scraggly trees by the edge of the property are not significant trees, and we’re more than compensating by doing what this Board asked for, as I stated previously, in terms of all of the plantings along the lake. In terms of the design of the retaining wall that is a safety issue. We have the permit from DEC. Not that this Board doesn’t have jurisdiction also. Of course you do, but we, that design is what DEC approved, and the issue of taking down these two trees that they’re afraid of, that Gregg is afraid of falling, is more than compensated with all the plantings that we’re doing. I think that, in general, I would expect that Chris Navitsky would be very supportive of all the planting that we’re doing on the lake, but, you know, obviously we have a neighbor here who’s very dissatisfied. In terms of the view issue, right now, if you look where their house is, their view is right out from their house, looking west across the lake. They have some minor auxiliary view looking in between these two houses of the Brown brothers houses, and right now, from their house, they’re looking, essentially, through the carport. So the fact that the carport would be replaced with a covered porch doesn’t change their view. They would be looking through the carport or they would be looking through the covered porch, but in general, the site will be greatly improved because of the vegetation that’s being added. The vegetation that’s going to be added is going to hurt their view as well, because we’re planting a lot more trees, but their view is looking across their property to the lake, not looking to the south across this property. I just, I don’t think that’s a genuine complaint, that people don’t have the right to look over their neighbor’s property unless they have a view shed easement. We’re certainly trying to make peace with the Board and do what the Board has asked for all along, and it’s obvious we’re not going to make the neighbors happy, but we’re trying to make the Board happy. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Where do we want to go? MR. SIPP-Is it possible to move that one rain garden? MR. LAPPER-How far? MR. SIPP-Well, it would have to come back in order to get to a place where it would drain properly into the soil and not into the lake. MR. LAPPER-Yes, of course we would agree to that. How many feet off of the lake would you like it? MR. SIPP-I don’t know the soil condition there. MR. BROWN-What would you propose, five feet, ten feet further from where it sits now? MR. SIPP-At least, probably. Yes, I’d say somewhere in that area, if the soil is, you have enough soil to properly drain. MR. LAPPER-We could agree to 10 feet off of, from where it is now. MR. SIPP-Don’t leave that hole there without something being put into that, in its place. MR. LAPPER-And re-vegetate. MR. FORD-Could we have agreement to bury the electrical wires? MR. LAPPER-The issue is that Gregg feels that it’s like a $15,000 number. That’s what he’s concerned about. MR. FORD-For how many feet? MR. BROWN-Burying a line, I mean, from the property line to the lake is 200 feet, and the pole that actually holds, you know, where it comes in high and then drops to the meter, is probably half that distance. So it’s at least 100 feet of line from the existing pole. So, I mean, I don’t know, the number’s very high. I don’t know the exact cost because I don’t have the engineering estimate right now, but I do know electrical pull through conduit, buried wire, is very expensive. I mean, I just know what Niagara 23 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) Mohawk wanted just to remove the cable from the location. I can’t imagine what they’re going to do when they have to bury the whole line, it was over $3,000. MR. LAPPER-To move the guide wire? MR. BROWN-Just to remove the guide wire and put up, you know, what their solution was at the time, which was the second pole next to first pole, in order to take the strain off the main line. MR. LAPPER-What else do we have? MR. FORD-I’d like to go back to that issue. Who quoted you the price for burying the electrical line? MR. BROWN-Nobody quoted me the line. MR. FORD-That’s just off the top of your head? MR. BROWN-That’s just my estimate. I’m an engineer and I’ve been in construction. I’ve built plants, you know, for factories around the world. MR. FORD-And I’ve buried hundreds of feet of electrical cable. MR. BROWN-Did you? In conduit? MR. FORD-No. MR. BROWN-Or just bare, yes. MR. FORD-According to National Grid specifications, two feet of sand below and above. MR. BROWN-What do you think it would cost? That’s me because I’m used to dealing in conduit systems. MR. FORD-Well, I would advise you to do what I did, and that is find out what it’s going to cost. I wouldn’t guesstimate, if that’s what you’re doing. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other comments, questions from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-Well, one of my concerns is how the, and I wasn’t aware of this, I should have picked up on it, but the location of the proposed garage to the septic system. MR. LAPPER-That’s not at issue because the garage doesn’t have a basement and I’ve dealt with that many times, the distance between the septic and a structure doesn’t count for a garage that’s built on a slab. That’s not an issue. The engineer would have picked up on that if it was. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, I guess, I mean, we should really verify that, given, once the garage goes in, there’s no reserve area left. MR. BROWN-Well, that’s a, it’s a building permit issue, you know, for Dave Hatin, the separation, but I can tell you on the record that that doesn’t count for a slab garage. It’s not living space and it’s not the basement. MRS. BRUNO-I’m sorry, I should have been listening to that. What was the question? MR. LAPPER-The issue was that you would have a separation distance requirement from a structure, from a home, and septic system, a leach field, but not from a garage that’s built on a slab, because the garage is not living space, and because it’s built on a slab, it doesn’t have the basement. MRS. BRUNO-Anything that’s built on a slab has less of a separation, whether it’s living space or not. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-I was going to say, we have heard that comment on other applications. 24 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SEGULJIC-There is no separation distance on a slab? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I don’t know about none. MRS. BRUNO-No, it’s less. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s less. MRS. BRUNO-I forget what it is off the top of my head, but. MR. LAPPER-Yes, we have 10 feet on the plan anyway. MR. HUNSINGER-I think it’s 20 feet from a house. MR. LAPPER-Yes, it is 20 feet from a house. MR. HUNSINGER-Twenty feet from a house. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. FORD-Let me go back to that amount of sand. It was six inches above and below, not two feet, and 800 feet of it was in that configuration, and the remaining 100 feet was in conduit. MR. BROWN-Okay. MR. FORD-But it didn’t approach $15,000, for 900 feet. MR. BROWN-Okay. I’m not sure, also, which piece of line you’re talking about burying, because the line that comes down from the north, on the road, hits the pole at the corner of the lot, right at that northeast corner of the property, you know, right where the triangle is, just on that north property line, and then it turns 90 degrees and runs right down the fence line, back to where the house is. So that’s the area I’m talking about burying, if that’s your question, but that, the need to remove the support wire, is because of the line that comes from the north to that pole, and then it turns. So, if I bury it from that pole and it still doesn’t negate the need to take the cable out. They’d still have to move the pole to create a new support line to hold that wire back from the north. MRS. STEFFAN-The other issue is, if you run underground lines like that, you’re going to have to dig down on the root systems of those trees that border the property, and then they’ll die. It’s going to happen. MR. BROWN-Yes. Again, I’d rather avoid that, killing the trees, too, but. MRS. STEFFAN-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-What other issues do we have remaining? MR. SIPP-I would like to have you address some of this construction of the retaining wall and the adverse environmental impacts that that would have upon the lake, that is the addition of calcium, possible addition of calcium, and the, even though DEC has signed off, I think that there are problems with it, and also the retaining wall drain behind the wall, placed below the level of the lake. I’d like to see those issues addressed. MR. LAPPER-Okay. Well, in general, there’s a concrete retaining wall there now, as there is lots of places on the lake. Mrs. Collins talked to DEC to talk to them about getting them to pull the permit based upon the impact of concrete on the lake, and they didn’t pull the permit. So I don’t think there’s anything unusual about this. I mean, it’s better to have natural ground than to have concrete obviously, but there’s a grade issue here, and it’s really the question of replacing a concrete retaining wall that’s in poor condition, structurally not secure, with a new one. You have to take construction measures as required to prevent sedimentation into the lake, and that’ll be done. In terms of the issue of backfilling with the stone behind the retaining wall, that’s also a construction, that’s a structural issue, and I think that moving the rain garden 10 feet away addresses that issue. I mean, that’s a legitimate issue that you’ve asked for, and the applicant’s willing to concede that, but there’s nothing remarkable about building a retaining wall along the lake. It just has to be built carefully. 25 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. FORD-Could you address the issue Chris mentioned about actually adding impervious area closer to the lake? MR. LAPPER-Yes. What he’s talking about is the blue stone, and, which is not a very large area, but right now everything is draining into the lake without any controls whatsoever. So I think that what the stormwater management facilities that we’re proposing, right now the driveway, no control, right into the lake, right off the driveway into the lake, and now it’s going to be treated in a basin, and we’ve got all the stuff along the lake, in terms of the plantings and in terms of the rain garden. So the fact that he wants a blue stone patio that’s not going to have mortar that will allow water to infiltrate in between the stones and around it. It’s not up next to the lake, and there’ll be vegetation between the blue stone and the lake, so, you know, yes, that’s correct. There’s slightly more impervious in that one location, but there’s nothing remarkable about a patio, and the vast majority of this lakefront is all grass now and it’s going to be vegetated better than grass with what the Board’s required, in terms of all these plantings. MR. FORD-So the answer is yes. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. FORD-Impervious surface is being added close to the lake. MR. LAPPER-Yes, that patio is. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-What else? My sense is that we’re moving towards a tabling resolution? MR. SEGULJIC-I think so. MR. HUNSINGER-I’ve only written down four items. Let me just run through them quickly. Applicant to move the rain garden 10 feet, I didn’t catch in which direction. Update the landscaping plan to show the remaining eight trees in the northwest corner. Address the engineering comments, verify separation of the existing septic system from the garage. What else? MR. SEGULJIC-One of the concerns with the lake these days is the zebra mussels, and I think they should look to see if they can do an alternative construction method to reduce the use of the cement concrete. I don’t know, encase it in something. MR. LAPPER-Zebra mussels come in from offsite. It’s not created by the concrete. I guess what I would wonder, if we agreed, as a concession, to get rid of the blue stone patio, would the Board consider a conditional approval tonight, so we don’t have to come back, and we’d agree to everything you’ve said as a condition, including the engineer final signoff? MR. HUNSINGER-We haven’t talked about the driveway, land swap stuff either. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that’s something we need clarification on. I think I understand what’s going on, but it’s confusing. MR. LAPPER-And again, if the land swap doesn’t happen, we can still go forward with the project. We just have to deal with the brother. MR. FORD-Could you just one more time, Jon, briefly address the impact of views? MR. LAPPER-If you look up at the photograph on the board, Stu, could you move that down just a little bit, so we could see the house next door? MR. BAKER-Yes. MR. LAPPER-The Collins’ principal view is to the lake, to the west right here, and right now, they’re house is here, and they have considerable vegetation here. So their view, if they want to look at the lake here, they’re looking underneath the boathouse. This is where we’ve got the boathouse, that’s the boathouse, excuse me, the carport, and the carport is going to be removed, and instead there will be a covered porch here. So instead of looking underneath a carport to look at the lake here, which is obviously a 26 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) secondary view, they would be looking underneath a much narrower covered walking area, and again, they’re looking this way. This is on their property. This is looking across between the brother’s house, which is here, this house here. There’s a little bit of a view here, and there will still be a view under the covered walkway. MR. TRAVER-Excuse me, Jon, isn’t there also a proposed shed in that area? MRS. BRUNO-Yes, a 10 by 12 shed. MR. TRAVER-A 10 by 12 shed. MR. LAPPER-Let me take a look at the map. MR. TRAVER-Sheet Two of Four, proposed conditions plan. MR. LAPPER-Yes, there is a proposed shed. MRS. BRUNO-What is the intended use of that, since you have a new garage going in? MR. LAPPER-What’s the intended use of the shed? MR. BROWN-Primarily, the usual things, rakes, landscape stuff. There’s an existing one today. MR. FORD-Jon, can you show us that on that map? MR. LAPPER-There it is. There’s an existing shed, if you look on One of Four, and Three of Four. MR. FORD-Can you show us up there, please. MR. LAPPER-Do you want to point it out? MR. TRAVER-There is no shed there currently, correct? MR. LAPPER-There is. MR. BROWN-There is. Not in that location. MR. TRAVER-Not in that location. MR. FORD-Where is the current shed, and where will the new shed be? MR. BROWN-This is the current shed here, directly behind the carport, and that’s the same location of where the new shed would go. MR. TRAVER-On the Sheet One of Four, Site Plan existing conditions, I don’t see that on the plan. MR. LAPPER-I’m looking at One of Four, and I see it. MR. TRAVER-You see it on One of Four. MRS. BRUNO-So we don’t even have the right drawings for this application. MR. TRAVER-It could be this is, even though they have the same date, November 14. Does yours say November 14 ’07, Jon? MR. LAPPER-It does. MR. TRAVER-Okay. Well, Mr. Chairman, that’s one issue. There appears to be two sets of drawings. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, I think that’s one of the issues we talked about a little earlier. We have to determine what set of drawings Bruce Frank would use to do his site inspections. Just because some of the issues we’ve had tonight are going to be a problem for Code Enforcement, you know, to make sure that the site is being developed according to the plan, we need to identify what plan, or which plans. 27 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MRS. BRUNO-I would suggest, too, if you need to go back to update your survey for the other application, I think it would be a good idea to also have them mark where your basketball court is, just because that’s solid impervious. MR. BROWN-That’s not mine. MRS. BRUNO-That’s not yours. Perhaps you could. It could be suggested to your brother, maybe. MR. SEGULJIC-One last thing. The retaining wall. That’s rock now, I believe. MR. BROWN-Yes, it’s rock and cement. Concrete, mortared rock. MR. FORD-Mortared rock, yes. MR. SEGULJIC-I mean, you’re going to replace it with a concrete wall with veneer on it. Could we look at alternatives, then? MR. LAPPER-So what are you suggesting? MR. SEGULJIC-I have no idea, something with no calcium in it. MR. BROWN-I don’t think that exists. MRS. STEFFAN-Concrete would have the best staying power over time, I would think that that’s the most reasonable solution. MR. SIPP-I don’t know. There was a time when they were using epoxies on concrete to prevent deterioration. I don’t know if they’re still in use and how useful they are. They used to be used on farm silos because of the acid of the silage eating into the concrete blocks, they epoxied them, which prevented the erosion, but I don’t know if that such a thing is possible. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay, what other issues? Okay. In the effort to move this forward, I’ll make a motion to table. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 14-2007 REDBUD DEVELOPMENT, Introduced by Chris Hunsinger who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: th Tabled to the first meeting in June, which is June 17. Submission of information by May th 15; pending the submission of revised plans: 1. Applicant to provide one set of final site plans, so that we don’t have two separate plans that we’re looking at. 2. That they show all of the current existing conditions, including all structures on the property. 3. That the applicant investigate alternatives to the cement wall, including any epoxy coatings to minimize contaminations into the lake. 4. That the applicant move the rain garden approximately 10 feet further away from the lake. 5. They update landscaping plan to show the existing eight trees in the northwest corner. 6. The applicant addresses the engineering comments. 7. The applicant shall verify the separation of the septic from the proposed garage. 8. And the applicant consider reduction of the impervious area near the lake. 9. The applicant will get more information regarding the comment regarding consider burying the electric line, and identify the consequences of burying that line and where you would put it. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: 28 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. BAKER-Just a recommendation on those conditions for the revised set of final plans, those should have a current date on them, so they don’t get confused with the multiple November of 2007 ones. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Yes. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. TRAVER-Just a suggestion for the applicant. On the revised plans, if you can move the proposed location for that shed, you’ll reduce the visual impact. MR. LAPPER-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-There was a comment regarding consider burying the electric line, if you could get us more information on that. MRS. STEFFAN-I just want to make a comment. I think you should identify the consequences of burying that line and where you would put it and the impact on the trees. MR. FORD-Yes, I concur with that. Yes, that was one of my big issues, but I agree. I don’t want to be killing trees to accomplish that. MRS. STEFFAN-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. LAPPER-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-If I could add a clarification, and our Secretary just reminded me, I didn’t specify a date that we would table this to. First meeting in June, which is June th 17. th MR. LAPPER-We have to submit by May 15. th MR. HUNSINGER-By May 15, and for the record, we did leave the public hearing open. MR. LAPPER-That’s correct. MR. SEGULJIC-And then if I could just make one other point. Under 179-6-060 D(2)(e)(3), which talks about retaining walls, and I’m remiss I didn’t point this out earlier, I forgot about it. It states retaining walls shall be constructed of native stone or wood. So maybe you want to look at that, 179-60-060 D(2)(e)(3). MRS. BRUNO-It also mentions a maximum height, too, doesn’t it, of 18 inches, usually? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, I think it says 16. MRS. BRUNO-Sixteen. Just in terms of the give and take, I’m just thinking. MR. LAPPER-Yes, if it was less, everything would run into the lake. MRS. BRUNO-Right, no, I’m just considering, like I said, the give and take. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. SUBDIVISION NO. 12-2007 PRELIMINARY & FINAL STAGE SEQR UNLISTED CHRISTINE GERMAINE AGENT(S) NACE ENGINEERING OWNER(S) C. GERMAINE/D. BEATRICE ZONING SR-20 LOCATION 709 SHERMAN AVENUE APPLICANT PROPOSES SUBDIVISION OF A 8.68 ACRE PARCEL INTO 10 29 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) RESIDENTIAL LOTS RANGING IN SIZE FROM 0.46 TO 3.10 ACRES. SUBDIVISION OF LAND REQUIRES REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE PLANNING BOARD. WARREN CO. PLANNING N/A LOT SIZE 8.68 +/- ACRES TAX MAP NO. 301.18-2- 34 SECTION A-183 TOM NACE & LARRY CLUTE, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, if you could summarize Staff Notes, please, when you’re ready. MR. BAKER-Okay. Our remaining information needed includes data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the New York State DEC verifying their answers regarding rare and endangered species on Item A-11 of the SEQRA Long Environmental Assessment Form. Item C-7 on the Environmental Assessment Form also had not been amended to note the junkyard on the adjacent property to the east, and just a reminder that the applicant had requested waivers from the stormwater management plan and the grading plan. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. MR. NACE-Good evening. For the record, Tom Nace, Nace Engineering, and Larry Clute, Clute Enterprises. Okay. I guess the first thing is we got Staff comments and engineering comments Friday and Monday. We did react to those. I made a submittal this morning, 15 copies to Staff, of a response letter, I can read it into the record, if you’d like, but that responded to those two Staff comments that were just brought up. The Fish and Wildlife letter. We’ve requested information from both Fish and Wildlife, Federal Fish and Wildlife, and from DEC. We’ve received a response from Federal Fish and Wildlife, sending us to a website for the local. That website gave us three species, the bog turtle, the Indiana bat and the Karner blue, none of which have applicable habitat on this piece of land. We’re still waiting for any response back from DEC, but I expect that it would be the same, you know, three species that are indigenous to Warren County. As a whole, that’s about as specific as they get at this point, but again, those three species don’t have any habitat that we can determine on the project site. We have amended the Long Form EAF, including the junkyard as an adjacent use. We also have engineering comments from VISION Engineering. I think there was only one real issue to be cleared up, and that is they indicated a shallow septic system might be required on Lot Number 10. So we have provided details on the plans for a shallow absorption system, and have indicated that a site specific test pit is to be dug on Lot 10 prior to the issuance of a building permit for that lot. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Anything else? MR. NACE-That’s all. MR. HUNSINGER-Questions, comments from Board members? It’s too bad you didn’t have the Staff and engineering comments a week earlier so that you could have submitted and. MR. NACE-Well, we did submit this morning. That’s as quickly as we could possibly turn them around. I mean, we got Staff comments Monday and engineering comments faxed to us Friday noontime, and they were very minor comments. So we felt we could respond and hopefully the Board would consider that response. MR. HUNSINGER-So just to elaborate on the Fish and Wildlife and DEC comments, you didn’t really get a signoff from those agencies, but they just directed you to a website? MR. NACE-There is no such thing as a signoff anymore from Federal Fish and Wildlife. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, okay. MR. NACE-They sent us a form letter that says, in essence, that they receive so many requests these days that they simply direct you to a website. You’re to determine from the species that are included on that website, and the website, you know, it’s Warren County. So it’s a fairly broad area, indicates what species are known, threatened or endangered species are known to exist in that general area of Warren County, and then you’re to determine, from that, whether or not you have any habitat applicable to those species. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Okay. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SEGULJIC-So this is for Preliminary, correct? MR. HUNSINGER-This is for Preliminary. MR. SEGULJIC-So we’d have, to approve Preliminary, we’d have to do SEQRA, correct? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, we don’t have any, as far as the endangered species go, we don’t have a definitive answer yet. MR. NACE-This is as definitive as you’re going to get from Fish and Wildlife. MR. FORD-And from DEC? MR. NACE-This is Federal Fish and Wildlife, and it’s simply a form letter. You’ll see they fill in the project they’re talking about, and tell you to go to the website, and look at the species for your general area, which is Warren County in this case. From the website they’ve got a list that says Warren County, here are the endangered species. I mean, if we had any habitat out there that looked like it would support, you know, a bog turtle, we don’t. That’s high and dry. Indiana bat is, you know, the nesting place, we’ve been through that down in Saratoga County. They require large, mature stand of hemlocks for nesting, roosting places, and the Karner blue butterfly requires, you know, open space, and this is forested. MR. SEGULJIC-This is mainly trees. Okay. All right. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Other questions, comments from the Board? Hearing none, we do have a public hearing scheduled. Is there anyone in the audience here to address the Board on this application? I will open the public hearing, and since there are no takers, I will close the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING OPEN NO COMMENT PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. HUNSINGER-Do people feel comfortable moving forward with Preliminary? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. MR. FORD-I do now. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Long Form. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action result in a physical change to the project site? MRS. BRUNO-Yes. MR. TRAVER-No. MR. BAKER-Mr. Chairman, excuse me. I’m sorry, we did receive one piece of written correspondence for the public hearing. If you could re-open the public hearing. MR. HUNSINGER-I’m sorry. I will re-open the public hearing so you can read the letter into the record. PUBLIC HEARING RE-OPENED MR. BAKER-Thank you. I apologize for the oversight. This was received today from Mary Brown of 706 Upper Sherman Avenue. “Concerns I want addressed to the Board and answered. 1) Water concerns. The Town of Queensbury Highway Dept. and Town Board is currently dealing with water problems on Sherman Avenue and down Michaels Drive which is right across from the proposed development. I have been a resident for 14 years and over the past several years the water problems have increased significantly due to all of the recent developments. With the addition of houses and the loss of trees, the groundwater has less surface area to be absorbed. I feel this development may 31 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) increase what is already a very serious situation that is affecting all houses in the Sherman Ave./Michaels Drive area. We have 3 sump pumps that run constantly and until the Town/Highway Dept. can remedy this existing situation, I oppose this development. 2) I question where the driveway or road will be to enter the development. I live @ 706 Upper Sherman Ave., across from proposed development and I don’t want headlights in my living room picture window every time somebody enters/exits. 3) My current mailbox location. Will this be affected? 4) I am concerned about the extra traffic. We have had 4 recent developments in the area already and the traffic has increased tremendously. I am also concerned with the traffic directly in front of my house, as it is also a bus stop. The meeting from 2/19/08 was tabled to 4/22/08 for which I will attend and want my questions/concerns addressed and answered. Thanks. Mary Brown 706 Upper Sherman Ave. Queensbury, NY” And don’t know if she’s still here. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MR. SEGULJIC-Could we identify, what was it, 422 Sherman Avenue? MR. BAKER-It is 706 Sherman Ave., Upper Sherman, and if you’ll give me a moment, I’ll find that for you. Continue on. I’ll find that momentarily. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think we ought to hold off on the SEQRA until we deal with the comments. This Board is aware of the drainage issues off Michaels Drive because we dealt with those on other applications, other subdivisions. MR. NACE-Sure. Those are down lower across the street. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. NACE-We’re up the hill a little ways from there, and I might add, we’re not proposing any new roads. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s just driveways. MR. NACE-It’s just driveways, existing lot development. MR. HUNSINGER-So it’s at the corner of Michaels Drive? MR. BAKER-Just a minute, please. Yes, it is the corner of Michaels. I’m zooming out for the larger view. Here’s the project property above it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. BAKER-Yes, the project property is here directly to the north, and this is the Brown property. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. So as far as headlights and things like that, there shouldn’t be any issue. MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Plus the test pits that were done, I mean, the four test pits that we’re looking at, is mostly sand. MR. NACE-That’s right. This area is well draining. MR. HUNSINGER-Is there anything in those comments that would cause the Board to not want to move forward now? MR. SEGULJIC-Not for me. MR. FORD-Not for me. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Because, you know, we changed driveways. We did a couple of things already, you know, in our earlier discussions, to address some of these issues. 32 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Then I will, once again, close the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. HUNSINGER-And we will move forward with the SEQRA. Thank you, Stu. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. BAKER-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action result in a physical change to the project site? MRS. BRUNO-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will there be an effect to any unique or unusual land forms found on the site? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect any water body designated as protected? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect any non-protected existing or new body of water? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect surface or groundwater quality or or quantity? MR. SEGULJIC-No. MR. SIPP-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action alter drainage flow or patterns, or surface water runoff? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect air quality? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect any threatened or endangered species? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MRS. BRUNO-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action substantially affect non-threatened or non- endangered species? MR. HUNSINGER-No. 33 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect agricultural land resources? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect aesthetic resources? MR. SEGULJIC-No. MR. HUNSINGER-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action impact any site or structure of historic, pre- historic or paleontological importance? MR. FORD-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect the quantity or quality of existing or future open spaces or recreational opportunities? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action impact the exceptional or unique characteristics of a critical environmental area? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will there be an effect to existing transportation systems? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will proposed action affect the community’s sources of fuel or energy supply? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will there be objectionable odors, noise, or vibration as a result of the proposed action? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect public health and safety? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Will the proposed action affect the character of the existing community? MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-And is there, or is there likely to be, public controversy related to potential adverse environmental impacts? 34 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-No. MRS. BRUNO-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Then I’ll make a motion for a Negative SEQRA declaration. RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE RESOLUTION NO. 12-2007, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for: CHRISTINE GERMAINE, and WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning Board action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: 1. No Federal agency appears to be involved. 2. The following agencies are involved: NONE 3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury. 4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant. 5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental concern and having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a significant environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this Board finds that the action about to be undertaken by this Board will have no significant environmental effect and the Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby authorized to execute and sign and file as may be necessary a statement of non-significance or a negative declaration that may be required by law. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. HUNSINGER-Now one of the things that we can do is approve Preliminary, and then it would be, you know, up to the applicant to, you’ve already submitted your comments and your thoughts, for Final. MR. NACE-We’ve already submitted a response, so, yes, that’s correct. MR. HUNSINGER-But we could then do the Final at a future meeting. MR. NACE-Next month. Okay. Could that be scheduled for next month, then? MR. HUNSINGER-What’s the feeling of the Board? Since they’ve already submitted the response. MR. SEGULJIC-I’m fine with that. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you submit revised drawings as well? MR. NACE-That we did. 35 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Comments from Staff, any concerns? MR. BAKER-I’m sorry, what’s the proposal? MRS. STEFFAN-To bring it back next month. MR. HUNSINGER-For Final. MR. TRAVER-Preliminary tonight and Final next month. MR. BAKER-Yes, it should be short action, and there aren’t any hearing requirements. Yes, that shouldn’t be an issue. MR. HUNSINGER-Because there’s always a concern when we have a special submission deadline, but they’ve already submitted the revised, you know, the updated materials. MR. BAKER-Yes, at this point it’s just a matter of final engineering signoff, which I’m certain we would have by a meeting in May. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I think we’re all of like mind, then. MRS. STEFFAN-They’ve already submitted the materials, but we need to give them a nd submission deadline to come back. So do we want to make it Friday, May 2? We’re at nd the 22. MR. HUNSINGER-They’ve already submitted. So we don’t need to give them a submission deadline. MRS. STEFFAN-So it will satisfy VISION Engineering comments. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. th MRS. STEFFAN-All right. So we’ll put them on the May 29 meeting. Okay. MOTION TO APPROVE PRELIMINARY STAGE SUBDIVISION NO. 12-2007 CHRISTINE GERMAINE, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: 1. A subdivision application has been made to the Queensbury Planning Board for the following; Applicant proposes subdivision of an 8.68 acre parcel into 10 residential lots ranging in size from 0.46 to 3.10 acres. Subdivision of land requires review and approval by the Planning Board. 2. A public hearing was scheduled and held on 2/26/08 tabled to 4/22/08; and 3. This application is supported with all documentation, public comment and application material in the file of record; and 4. Pursuant to relevant sections of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Code [Chapter 179], the Planning Board has determined that this proposal complies with the requirements as stated in the Zoning Code; and 5. The requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered and the Planning Board has adopted a SEQRA Negative Declaration; and 6. NOT APPLICABLE If the application is a modification, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered, and the proposed modification[s] do not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts, and, therefore, no further SEQRA review is necessary; and 7. Final approved plans, in compliance with the Subdivision, must be submitted to the Community Development Department before any further review by the Zoning Administrator or Building and Codes personnel. The applicant must meet with Staff after approval and prior to issuance of Building Permit and/or the beginning of any site work. Subsequent issuance of further permits, including building 36 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) permits is dependent on compliance with this and all other conditions of this resolution; and 8. The applicant will provide as-built plans to certify that the subdivision is developed according to the approved plans prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and 9. NOT APPLICABLE If applicable, Item 8 to be combined with a letter of credit; and 10. NOT APPLICABLE The Sanitary Sewer connection plan must be submitted to the Wastewater Department for its review, approval, permitting and inspection; and MOTION TO APPROVE PRELIMINARY STAGE SUBDIVISION NO. 12-2007 CHRISTINE GERMAINE, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. Paragraph Four complies. Paragraph Five, Negative. Paragraph Six, Nine, and Ten do not apply. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. NACE-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Now we can table the Final. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MOTION TO TABLE FINAL STAGE SUBDIVISION NO. 12-2007 CHRISTINE GERMAINE, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford th It will be tabled to the second Planning Board meeting in May, which is Thursday the 29 of May. Tabled so that the applicant can provide updated drawings to address the most recent VISION Engineering letter, and also to obtain a VISION Engineering signoff. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mrs. Bruno MR. HUNSINGER-Good catch on that. The fourth Tuesday of May is tax grievance day. th So our second meeting in May is actually the 29, on a Thursday. Okay. MR. NACE-Thank you. SUBDIVISION NO. 13-2007 PRELIMINARY STAGE SEQR TYPE UNLISTED JOHN FEDOROWICZ AGENT(S) B P S R OWNER(S) JOHN & LAURA A. FEDOROWICZ ZONING RR-3A LOCATION 1433 BAY ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES SUBDIVISION OF A 10.14 ACRE PARCEL INTO 2 RESIDENTIAL LOTS OF 3.7 AND 6.44 ACRES. SUBDIVISION OF LAND REQUIRES REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE SUB 1-2000 WARREN CO. PLANNING N/A LOT SIZE 10.14 +/- ACRES TAX MAP NO. 265-1-19.11 SECTION A-183 JON LAPPER & KEVIN HASTINGS, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, if you could summarize Staff Notes, please. MR. BAKER-Yes. The application was tabled by the Board at the February 19, 2008 meeting for a number of conditions. In response I would direct the Board’s attention to st the APA nonjurisdictional letter that was received on March 21, the VISION Engineering comments. The applicant has also responded to some Staff comments by requesting 37 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) waivers from a number of the submittal requirements which I outlined in my Staff Notes. Regarding the requested comments from the jurisdictional emergency services, the applicant did submit a comment letter from Bay Ridge Rescue Squad, which the Board has received. However, we’ve not received any comments from the Bay Ridge Volunteer Fire Company. Additionally, just a reminder for the Board on procedure. Approval of this proposal would require ultimately five actions by the Board. The first being modification of the 2000 subdivision approval to remove the no further subdivision condition. The second is approval of the SEQRA Negative declaration. The third is approval of a stormwater management application major project, as per Chapter 147, and then Preliminary and Final subdivision approval. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Good evening. The floor is yours. MR. LAPPER-For the record, Jon Lapper, the applicant’s name is pronounced John Fedorowicz, and Kevin Hastings is the project engineer. We’re simply here tonight to address the issue of our request to waive that condition of the approval from 2000 to allow this second lot to be subdivided. There are still a number of design issues that we view as required for Preliminary approval that we have no problem with, but those are fairly technical. At the last meeting, as the Staff Notes indicated, we were asked to address the public safety concern, to make sure that the driveway was serviceable and we did send letters to the fire and EMS, and we only received a letter back from EMS. Stefanie, my law partner, had a discussion with the fire people but they didn’t put anything in writing. They said there was no problem, but we do have the letter that’s in the record from Bay Ridge Rescue Squad that they don’t have a problem. We were asked to get confirmation from the APA that this two lot subdivision would not be th jurisdictional, and as Stu said, we do have that letter dated March 18. Essentially, a review of the record indicates that there were two reasons that the Planning Board originally imposed the condition of no further subdivision. One was the concern that there may be an intermittent stream on the property, and the second was because of the topography, the grade. So with respect to the first issue, we submitted a letter previously th in the record dated November 28 from DEC which confirms the office, this office has conducted a review of potential DEC regulated natural resources on your property and offer the following determination. There are no DEC regulated streams on the property. In fact, there are no mapped streams on the property. See attached map. So that one issue of concern that there might be a stream, there was just a drainage ditch on the property with the existing house, not a stream. So that has been documented, and the issue of topography, that has been addressed, because the proposed subdivision now has been designed in accordance with the topography, to minimize the slope to get the driveway at 9.2% and the proposed map has a road profile which shows that it’s 9.2%. We realize that there are a number of subdivision issues that we still have to finally address, such as the stormwater management report has to be reviewed and approved. We don’t have any problem with the technical issues, but we’re asking for the vote on waiving this condition. There’s absolutely nothing that would require a variance. This is a conforming two lot subdivision which has more than enough acreage, and we think that this driveway profile, while it’ll be expensive to construct, it addresses the grade issue. So we hope the Board will vote to waive this condition so that we can come back with a response to the subdivision issues. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Comments from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-As I stated before, I’m uncomfortable with lifting a no further subdivision, for a number of reasons. MR. HUNSINGER-With or without the questions addressed? MR. SEGULJIC-I’m uncomfortable, in general, with lifting the no further subdivision. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-It was agreed to, and. MR. HUNSINGER-Other members of the Board want to comment? MR. FORD-Only to say that I concur with that, as I have in the past. MR. TRAVER-I think we have to be concerned about the precedent. I agree. MRS. BRUNO-I have one quick question for Mr. Hastings. I find it curious that the ambulance service said, the Bay Ridge Rescue Squad said to please make sure the 38 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) driveway is wide enough for our ambulances. In a way, that was kind of what we were asking them. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s really a non-answer, their letter. MRS. BRUNO-Right. What is the standard for ambulance passage, you know, is it usually wider if it’s on such a, you know, considering the contour, not the contour, the radius and the height? MR. LAPPER-What’s proposed for the width of the driveway? MR. HASTINGS-The width of the driveway is 12 feet. MR. LAPPER-And would that be sufficient for an ambulance? MR. HASTINGS-We would have to check on that. I’m not sure there’s a standard. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, it seems slight. MR. HASTINGS-Again, I’m not sure there’s a standard for that, but if the vehicle is 14 feet, then I would assume this driveway could be 14 feet. MR. LAPPER-Yes, the answer is that if the driveway had to be made two feet wider because somebody wanted it, that certainly can be done. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, it definitely seems like Mrs. Steffan just said, it’s a non-answer, and that was one of the issues that I had raised before, and I’d like to see something in black and white. MR. LAPPER-Well, I think they would, they were addressing the issue of the slope, and they said, they’re saying that the slope is okay. They want to make sure it’s wide enough, and if it needs to be wider, it can be made wider. Mr. Chairman, I just have a comment, and, you know, the standard for reviewing this request is the same standard for any action by this Board, not to be arbitrary, and so, you know, I understand what Tom and Steve are saying about precedent, but if the record shows that there were these two issues of concern that had to do with an intermittent stream and a grade, this condition was agreed to by a prior owner, and, you know, every time somebody agrees to a condition, yes, this Board doesn’t want somebody to come in, two days later, and ask for it to be waived. This is a case where we have a new owner who has a conforming subdivision, and you have to ask yourself, would it be arbitrary to deny this request, to mandate that this has to be one lot, when the Town zoning says that it can be two lots, unless there’s some, you know, practical reason related to the site that it’s not. Whether you believe this or not, I take no pleasure in having to get land use approvals through litigation, but we see this as a very straightforward issue that if it was denied, it would be arbitrary because there’s nothing in the Zoning Code that would mandate that this can’t be two lots. So I certainly don’t want to go this way. There’s, you know, obviously a lot in this beautiful part of Town, has a value, and is a value to the applicant, and, you know, certainly shouldn’t take it personally, and it’s never meant that way, if we have to ask a higher authority to determine whether it’s correct, but I don’t want to go there, and I hope you don’t want to go there. So, you know, in terms of, if you look at the record, we’ve addressed the slope issue. There is no stream, and therefore I think there’s no justification at this point for that condition. So I would ask you to please reconsider, you know, what we’ve heard tonight, so that we will address all the issues in Site Plan, but I certainly don’t want to have to go to litigation to address this. MR. FORD-May I respond to that? In our previous meeting which you did not attend, your colleague did, there was a certain grasping in an effort to come up with some way to possibly grant approval to this, even though it had been stipulated otherwise before. There was an acquiescence on the part of some of us, and an agreeing to that, and I don’t, but basically there was a reluctance on this Board to go in that direction, but we decided to give you another opportunity, and I think we probably made the wrong decision at that time. MR. LAPPER-But I guess, in my mind, Tom, there has to be a legitimate reason to turn it down. At the time, the prior applicant was happy to get their approval and they didn’t care, so they agreed to it, but there were reasons in the record for why that was granted, why that was imposed, and I’m saying that those reasons are not valid, and, you know, your job, in terms of giving this a fair review, is to say, is it arbitrary to say, just because there was a condition, someone’s making a legitimate request. I understand, in the last 39 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) meeting, you didn’t promise anything, but I’m saying, you know, then or now, the answer is just to review this based upon the subdivision code, and that this lot is a conforming lot, and on that basis, you know, it’s plenty big, plenty of separation distance, and there’s sight distance and everything. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, if I just may, for a second, part of the reason why I asked the clarification from some of the members is because in my mind, I think the Board has already shown a willingness to consider the subdivision. Otherwise, you know, we would have rejected your application when we first heard it in February. In my mind, I can’t separate the, you may want to call them Site Plan or engineering concerns, but we have to be able to determine that the lot, the new lot that’s created is a buildable lot. MR. LAPPER-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-And in my mind, I can’t separate out the prior site restriction to say no further subdivision until it can be demonstrated that the lot is buildable, and, in my mind, I don’t think you’ve met that test yet. MR. LAPPER-That is a totally rationale position, and if the answer is, go back and get all of these technical issues resolved and then come back, that is totally fair, but what the majority of the Board is saying is that, because it’s a condition, you don’t want to be setting precedent to have people ask you to change conditions, and I think that your responsibility is to say, you know, when you’re asked again were those conditions reasonable, and in this case, based upon this application, it’s not. So we would have no problem going back, you know, spending the money to finish the engineering and responding to the engineering comments and satisfying the engineer, in terms of that, which Kevin has assured us he can do, but what I’m hearing is that the answer is that the majority of the Board would rather just not overturn a condition, and I don’t think that’s the right position legally, and I’m hoping that the Board would reconsider that. Your position is fine. MR. HUNSINGER-My position would be that there’s, you know, 15 significant comments from the Town Engineer that need to be addressed before we can even begin to determine, and I guess I would just go a little step further, and I think this is really what maybe you should have heard, or maybe what members meant to say, is that there were legitimate reasons why the prior Board requested no further subdivision. You’ve hit on a couple of them, specifically, that you have, and have addressed. I guess it’s up to us to determine if, you know, you’ve addressed them satisfactorily, but the burden still is to show that the lot is buildable. I don’t think that burden’s been met. MR. LAPPER-Okay. I do not disagree. MR. HUNSINGER-So you are, in some sense, starting from, you know, maybe a point to prove that it’s buildable, whereas if it were just a clean slate, and they hadn’t been before the Board before, maybe it would be an easier test. MR. LAPPER-Chris, I accept that. I think that in the record, the two issues that we addressed, the stream and the slope, were the issues that were in the record, but in terms of, there’s nothing in the engineering notes that are inappropriate, and we can address all that. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, and one of them still is the slope issue on Item Seven. MR. LAPPER-But that’s really dealing with stormwater issues and grading issues, you know. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay, I mean, we can argue what, yes, okay. MR. LAPPER-It has to be engineered. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, and Item Six in the tabling motion, the applicant understands that meeting the conditions does not ensure that the applicant will obtain a favorable outcome to no further subdivision condition from 2005. One of the reasons why that was put in, and I think I authored that, was because of the slopes on the property, and that the applicant would have to invest a great deal of money to be able to provide enough information for us to make a decision on whether it was subdividable or not, but it would be a significant investment of time and resources to do that, and so Item Six was just to let the applicant know that they had a decision to make of whether they wanted to invest that, for maybe not a favorable outcome. 40 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. LAPPER-Well, I guess it’s our view that we can satisfy that, then legally they have the right to the second lot, but the applicant is willing to spend the money on engineering, if a majority of the Board agrees with what Chris said, that they would still consider waiving the condition if we satisfy the engineering concerns, but I didn’t certainly hear that from a majority of the Board tonight. MR. FORD-May I just ask a question of you, Jon? Have you researched this sufficiently to know what the rationale for that original determination was? MR. LAPPER-I’ve reviewed all of the minutes, the notes, Marilyn Ryba’s notes at the time, that original, that because of the slope it was requested, and Matt checked with the client and they conceded it, but as far as I can see, it was just the slope and the intermittent stream that were the two issues in the record from that original condition. MR. SIPP-Well, my concern is maybe the safety of the people using this road. This road is going to have to be constructed completely before you can even get in there to start building any house. Am I correct in that? MR. LAPPER-Well, the road would have to be constructed, but you would never pave it if you were going to have construction vehicles. MR. SIPP-You wouldn’t pave it? MR. LAPPER-You wouldn’t pave it during construction because you would ruin the road by having cement mixers, but it would have to be constructed in terms of the sub base of stone and graded, sure, and the stormwater could be implemented as well. MR. SIPP-Now, taking the winter we just went through with the ice storms and so forth, in an emergency situation, are we going to have this road open? MR. LAPPER-It’s a driveway. It’s not a road, and it’s 9.2%, and that’s not unusual in Queensbury. MR. SIPP-No, but it is also very dangerous in an ice storm. MR. LAPPER-If it’s not maintained. MR. SIPP-Right, and in the middle of the night, when we have an ice storm, and somebody needs a fire or ambulance. MR. LAPPER-The answer is that 9.2 is permissible in the Town for a road, let alone a driveway. MR. SIPP-Yes, but you’re right on the edge, you’re right on the edge, that’s for a short driveway. We’re talking 20 feet here. MR. LAPPER-I don’t think the regulations distinguish the length. They just have a maximum grade. MR. SIPP-But I think safety ought to be a consideration. Even the person living in that house, coming down that slope, in a storm. You can’t maintain a private road like that, like a Town would. MR. LAPPER-Do you want to address that? JOHN FEDOROWICZ MR. FEDOROWICZ-Actually, I do. I have a camp in Sacandaga that has a driveway steeper than this. I plow it all winter. I don’t have a problem getting up there. MR. SIPP-Of this length? MR. FEDOROWICZ-Yes. Longer. It’s almost 1200 feet. I maintain it all winter, and I had service trucks up there. As I say, it’s just a matter of maintaining it. I mean, anybody in this area, if you have a driveway that’s off the main highway, you have to maintain it. I don’t care who you are. 9.2% is not a real steep grade. I mean, you look at the way it shows on the print here, yes, it looks steep, but the way we have it graded, I mean, I built roads all over the country, and 9.2% is really not a bad grade. 41 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SIPP-If you get into the construction of this road, I do not like is sloping outward. I think it should slope inward. MR. FEDOROWICZ-Well, you have to crown the road, of course. I mean, that’s. MR. SIPP-Yes, but you don’t show a crown. MR. FEDOROWICZ-Well, it slopes in. You have a ditch on the inside. You can slope it anyway you want, and that’s a question of stormwater. MR. SIPP-Yes, but the way you’re sloping it, the water runs off to your, as you call them, your. MR. FEDOROWICZ-Well, it would be the inside. MR. SIPP-It doesn’t slope to the inside. MR. LAPPER-It does slope to the inside, and that’s so the water can be collected and treated to comply with the stormwater requirements. MR. SIPP-I think this is something that you’ve got to show us that this is a safe road. MR. LAPPER-We agree, we have to show you that. MR. SIPP-Or drive, actually it’s a driveway. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Any other comments from the Board? We did leave the public hearing open until this evening. Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to address the Board on this application? PUBLIC HEARING OPEN MR. HUNSINGER-I will open the public hearing and will leave the public hearing open. Any other questions or comments that the Board wants to make, or the applicant? Are there any other tabling issues other than the engineering comments? MRS. STEFFAN-And the Staff comments. MR. HUNSINGER-And the Staff comments. MRS. STEFFAN-I would certainly not be willing to grant any of the waivers that, in the Staff Notes, waivers have been requested for the following submittal requirements. MR. HUNSINGER-How do other Board members feel about the waiver requests? MRS. STEFFAN-Those are requirements, they’re requirements, and Staff has identified Code sections. MR. LAPPER-We do certainly agree to withdraw the waiver requests and submit those. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. TRAVER-I think the modification to the condition really proceeds everything else. I mean, the conditions are only relevant if it’s subdivided. MR. HUNSINGER-I think all the Staff is saying here, I don’t mean to speak for Staff, is that prior to any formal action, we would have to take a vote to modify that clause. Okay. Is it the will of the Board to table this? MR. SEGULJIC-I guess so. MR. HUNSINGER-Would anyone like to put forward a resolution? MRS. STEFFAN-I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO TABLE PRELIMINARY STAGE SUBDIVISION NO. 13-2007 PRELIMINARY STAGE JOHN FEDOROWICZ, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: 42 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) th This is tabled to the June 17 Planning Board meeting, with an application deadline of th May 15. So that the applicant can address the Staff comments and also address the VISION Engineering comments, so that the Planning Board can weigh and consider the application based on valid criteria. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: MR. FORD-I am feeling uncomfortable voting on this, as I would any proposal, where the threat of litigation has been proposed if we do not vote the way you want us to, Jon. MR. LAPPER-I just don’t want you to make the wrong decision because a condition is a condition. MR. FORD-Do you think we want to make the wrong decision? MR. LAPPER-No. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. The caution’s been put on the record. Mr. Ford’s comment’s duly noted. Thank you. AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. LAPPER-Thank you, and we really appreciate the courtesy on this. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. SITE PLAN NO. 4-2008 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED SCOTT & JACKIE WHEELER AGENT(S) HUTCHINS ENGINEERING OWNER(S) SAME ZONING WR-3A LOCATION 3300 STATE ROUTE 9L APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 3580 SQUARE FOOT DRIVEWAY TO SERVE EXISTING RESIDENCE AND GUEST COTTAGES. SITE PLAN REVIEW AS A MAJOR STORMWATER PROJECT PER CHAP. 147-12C IS REQUIRED DUE TO CEA LOCATION AND SLOPES IN EXCESS OF 15%. CROSS REFERENCE SP 8-04, AV 55-06 WARREN CO. PLANNING 2/13/08 APA/CEA/DEC L G CEA LOT SIZE 1.43 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 239.18-1-27 SECTION CHAPTER 147-12 MICHAEL O’CONNOR & TOM HUTCHINS, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, if you could summarize the Staff Notes, please. th MR. BAKER-Yes. This application was last tabled at the March 18 Board meeting for submittal of a number of items, including reduction of the driveway width. Staff comments note that the driveway width was reduced to 16 feet for only a section of the driveway, that from the curb to the garage. Also the Planning Board had been looking for incorporating an arched culvert and none were shown on the revised plans or mentioned in the discussion in the revised stormwater plan submitted, and a reminder the applicant has requested waivers from the lighting plan and landscaping plan requirements. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Good evening. MR. O'CONNOR-Good evening. Tom is going to make this presentation. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. HUTCHINS-Tom Hutchins, Hutchins Engineering, and Michael O’Connor, of course. Based on our discussions last month, I believe we have done everything, with the exception of the culvert issue, and I do want to discuss that. At the last meeting, I agreed to at least attempt to incorporate an open bottom arched style culvert for this application, and it didn’t take me a whole lot of hard thought to realize that was not a very good idea in this case. It’s too steep. It’s going to do more to promote erosion than it is to promote infiltration, which was why it was brought up, and I can’t comfortably, absent pouring concrete footings underneath both ends of the open bottom culvert, I cannot comfortably design it in this, and that’s why I didn’t do it, and we can discuss that, but with the exception of that, I think VISION Engineering comments are all addressed. I have, we’ve narrowed the width of the driveway, as discussed at the meeting, to 16 foot 43 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) for the straight section. We’ve incorporated a vegetative slope, in lieu of the rock slope that we had shown previously. In order to do that, I have lessened that slope slightly, so it’s not quite as steep. We have brought the culvert slightly further away from the lake, the discharge of the culvert, and we have minimized riprap use on the site, and I believe all of those were concerns addressed at the last meeting. In lieu of riprap, we have shown randomly placed natural boulders, not manufactured, crushed, but natural rounded boulders, randomly placed around, in lieu of riprap within channelized area, and with that, I believe I’ll try to address your comments and questions. MR. HUNSINGER-Questions, comments from the Board? MR. O'CONNOR-I guess I will make one comment. While we were waiting for the agenda to move forward, Chris Navitsky met with us and spoke to us, he and Kathy Bozony, about the vegetation, planting and what not, and what we’ve shown on the plan, we are willing to stipulate that for the trees, they will be a mixture of the native trees that are shown on the brochure that the LGA has put out, and we’ll make a copy of this, so you have a copy of that, as opposed to what we show there, and as to the smaller shrubs, again, that will be a mixture of what’s shown on here, for shrubbery, and for the ground cover, they have a concern, apparently because there’s a mixture that calls for a vetch, and we will remove that from the mixture, the seed mixture, if it is an invasive vetch. If it’s not an invasive, we’ll leave it in the mix, and they appear to be happy with that, and I don’t know what else. I think those were the comments that they had. MRS. BRUNO-Did they suggest at all the caliper of the new trees going in, so that we don’t? Like if you’re cutting mature trees, versus putting in seedlings, or do you know what the applicant might prefer? MR. HUTCHINS-The applicant? I believe we’ve shown two gallon size, is that correct? Two gallon (lost word) size, and the spruce we’ve shown are five to six feet in height. MRS. BRUNO-All right. Thank you. MR. HUTCHINS-So, we would probably (lost words) like a spruce, if we want to go to a, we were talking about going to a white spruce, and a balsam fir, a mix, and we would keep those in similar height, in lieu of the Norway spruce that we had shown. I’m not a tree guy. I had the landscape architect help us out with some plantings. My concern is stabilizing the slope. It really doesn’t matter to me what we plant, as long as it grows deep roots quickly. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else from the Board? MR. SIPP-It may be unrelated. What is the blockage going to be for the old driveway. What are you going to put in there? Just that boulder wall? MR. HUTCHINS-Well, the boulder wall, it’s going to outline the turnaround, and then we’re going to pull out the old asphalt and just allow it to go natural. I don’t know that I show in particular plantings there. MR. SEGULJIC-I don’t think you show anything there. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, I do. I show plantings across the top of there, a row of spruce. MR. SEGULJIC-Right, but you don’t show any in the other area. MR. HUTCHINS-The other area. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, you said you were going to take the asphalt out of that area. MR. HUTCHINS-Right. I don’t show anything in the right of way. I can’t plant within the right of way. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. That’s the right of way. Okay. MR. SIPP-All right. Number Two, the one story wood frame house on the, where’s the septic system for this house? MR. HUTCHINS-To the best of my knowledge, it’s almost right underneath it, right to the front. The building is on piers. It’s pier construction. 44 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. SIPP-But that’s, the front of the building is 60 feet from the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-That may well be. MR. SIPP-All these buildings now are going to be hooked to a new septic system which is going to have an absorption field where you’ve got test pit and percolation pit. MR. HUTCHINS-That is, we have outlined that area for, to be reserved to replace the system in the future. We’re not proposing to replace the system as part of this. We’re proposing to get a driveway in, but that’s the area that we will replace the system. The test pit information is there, because I had done it, actually before we started this driveway project, and I showed it. MR. SIPP-The other buildings then have the holding tank? MR. HUTCHINS-They have existing systems. The details of construction are somewhat unknown. I would presume them to be seepage pits. They’re not in failure, and they’re existing. MR. SIPP-Yes, but they’re, you don’t know where they are. You don’t know how close they are. MR. HUTCHINS-We know where, for the main house, where it shows two underground tanks. That’s where they are for this house, and for the other house, we’re presuming it’s in the area in front of the house, because that’s where the drainage pipe comes out and drops. MR. O'CONNOR-And the cabin most to the west also has a, it’s right in front of it. MR. SIPP-With these, do you draw the water from the lake, or is there a well? MR. HUTCHINS-No, they draw water from the lake. MR. SIPP-Test pit data, that one test pit you took, what did you find when you took your soil sample. MR. HUTCHINS-The data is on the, it’s somewhere on the first page. Medium, fine sandy loams of 32, 32 to 60 was dark, brown sandy loam, some boulders. I found evidence of seasonal high water by mottling at 48 inches. MR. SIPP-That’s all I have. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else? We do have a public hearing scheduled this evening. Is there anyone that wanted to address the Board on this application? Mr. Navitsky. I will open the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. I will make one more comment while he’s on his way up here. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. O'CONNOR-We also agreed, on the lower part of the drainage swale, or whatever we’re calling that, we will put in additional hay bale damming during construction, so that there’s no, it’ll be an additional protection as to what we’ve shown that’s on there. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. MR. NAVITSKY-Good evening. Chris Navitsky. We just wanted to thank the applicant. We did have a meeting and discussed our concerns, and we’ve reached, we appreciate their insight in accepting that. I also would like to thank Tom. I did recommend or ask him to take a look at a bottomless culvert, and with the slopes there, it is not good. I think it could result in erosion, as Tom said. So I also just wanted to say on the record that this is not a good instance, and we appreciate that they did take the time to investigate that. So, with that, and with the discussions we had, we support their application. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. 45 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. NAVITSKY-Thanks. MR. SIPP-Do you say crown vetch is invasive or not? MR. NAVITSKY-I believe Kathy did. I’m not the plant guy, but there’s particular vetch that is. I imagine it can overtake. MR. SIPP-Well, it is, it spreads. MR. NAVITSKY-Yes, and they were willing to take a look at that. MR. SIPP-It’s a good soil holder, but it has it’s problems about the way it takes over. MR. NAVITSKY-Yes, thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. I’ll close the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. HUNSINGER-And if the applicant can come back. Any other questions or concerns from the Board? I neglected, again, to ask Staff if there were any written comments. Apparently not. MR. BAKER-No written comments submitted on this application. MR. HUNSINGER-Is the Board comfortable moving forward? MR. FORD-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-How do we word the changes, the amendments to the trees and shrubbery? Because if we’re general, then Bruce can’t enforce it. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. O'CONNOR-My suggestion would be that the large trees will be a mixture of those that are shown on the pamphlet that has been put out by the Lake George Association. MR. HUTCHINS-Native Plants for Lakeshore Buffers and Landscaping. MR. O'CONNOR-And the smaller trees and shrubs will also be a mixture of those that are shown on this, based upon what our landscape architect thinks is best for the site, and they will be of the same size as were shown on the plants that we showed on the submittal, and the same number. Is that satisfactory, Stu, for enforcement? MR. HUNSINGER-So basically we’re saying, what was submitted, the size is okay, but you just need to modify some of the species. MR. O'CONNOR-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-To conform with the Lake George Association plantings brochure. MR. O'CONNOR-Yes. MR. BAKER-I would just ask that a revised final plan with that notation be submitted. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. TRAVER-And perhaps rather than say conform with the LGA, perhaps accept their recommendations. MR. HUNSINGER-I’m sorry. MR. TRAVER-Perhaps rather than say they need to conform with something that the LGA is generating, perhaps instead say that they accept the recommendations of the LGA for species. 46 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MRS. STEFFAN-How fast could you turn those plans around? MR. O'CONNOR-I think you’ve got to find out from Miller. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, I’m going to have to turn them around relatively quickly, but what, I don’t know, a couple of weeks that will be done. We’re okay with, and I think the simplest way is to reference this. I mean, we’re okay with picking our plantings from this list of native species. MR. TRAVER-That’s fine. MR. HUTCHINS-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. That’s easier than what we were saying before. MR. HUTCHINS-Then we don’t have to get into what’s what. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SIPP-Also, let’s specify the width of this planting. MR. O'CONNOR-It’s as shown on the plans. The planting as shown on the plans, in quantity or quality, hasn’t changed, or we’re not suggesting it change. All we’re changing is the species. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. All we need to say is that the species shall conform with the native plants as listed in the LGA brochure. MR. O'CONNOR-The species will include plants, instead of saying conform, will include plants as shown. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Will include plants as listed in the LG A brochure. MRS. BRUNO-I’ll throw my two cents in. If it’s include, that makes it sound like it’s only a partial. MR. HUNSINGER-Plantings shall consist of plants as listed in the Lake George Association Native Plants brochure. MR. FORD-If only that meeting could have occurred earlier. MR. O'CONNOR-Does the Board have a problem with us doing an as built plan? MR. HUNSINGER-I think we have it covered. MR. O'CONNOR-No, no. I mean, it sounds like Stu wants us to submit a plan. MR. BAKER-No, I wasn’t suggesting a tabling. I was just suggesting a, the Board seems to be leaning towards approval with this condition. Just submit the final plan with the condition noted on it. MR. O'CONNOR-Do you want it as built, or do you want it? MRS. BRUNO-No, prior, so that we can be sure that it’s built as specified. MR. O'CONNOR-Okay. We can submit the plan for Staff to look at, to verify that it’s in conformance with the condition. Is that what you’re saying? MR. BAKER-That’s correct, and then we have a clear copy in the file. MR. FORD-I feel more comfortable that way. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. BRUNO-You can do an as built, too. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. We need to do a SEQRA Short Form. 47 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. “Does the action exceed any Type I threshold in 6 NYCRR Part 617.4?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“Will the action receive coordinated review as provided for Unlisted Actions in 6 NYCRR, Part 617.6?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“Could the action result in any adverse effects associated with the following: C1. Existing air quality, surface or ground water quality or quantity, noise levels, existing traffic patterns, solid waste production or disposal, potential for erosion, drainage or flooding problems?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“C2. Aesthetic, agricultural, historic, or other natural or cultural resources; or community or neighborhood character?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“C3. Vegetation, fauna, fish, shellfish or wildlife species, significant habitats, or threatened or endangered species?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“C4. A community’s existing plans or goals as officially adopted, or a change in use or intensity of use of land or other natural resources?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. SEGULJIC-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“C5. Growth, subsequent development or related activities likely to be induced by the proposed action?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“C6. Long term, short term, cumulative or other effects not identified above?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“C7. Other impacts (including changes in use of either quantity or energy)?” MR. FORD-No. MR. HUNSINGER-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“Will the project have an impact on the environmental characteristics that caused the establishment of a Critical Environmental Area?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. 48 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-“Is there or is there likely to be controversy related to potential adverse environmental impacts?” MR. HUNSINGER-No. MR. FORD-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Then I’ll make a motion for a negative SEQRA Declaration. RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE RESOLUTION NO. 4-2008, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for: SCOTT & JACKIE WHEELER, and WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning Board action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: 1. No Federal agency appears to be involved. 2. The following agencies are involved: NONE 3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury. 4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant. 5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental concern and having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a significant environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this Board finds that the action about to be undertaken by this Board will have no significant environmental effect and the Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby authorized to execute and sign and file as may be necessary a statement of non-significance or a negative declaration that may be required by law. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 4-2008 SCOTT & JACKIE WHEELER, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: 1. A site plan application has been made to the Queensbury Planning Board for the following: Applicant proposes construction of a 3580 square foot driveway to serve existing residence and guest cottages. Site Plan review as a Major Stormwater Project per Chap. 147-12C is required due to CEA location and slopes in excess of 15%; and 2. A public hearing was scheduled and held on 3/18/08 tabled to 4/22/08; and 3. This application is supported with all documentation, public comment and application material in the file of record; and 49 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) 4. Pursuant to relevant sections of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Code [Chapter 179], the Planning Board has determined that this proposal complies with the requirements as stated in the Zoning Code; and 5. The requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered and the Planning Board has adopted a SEQRA Negative Declaration; and if the application is a modification, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered, and the proposed modification[s] do not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts, and, therefore, no further SEQRA review is necessary; and 6. Final approved plans, in compliance with the Site Plan, must be submitted to the Community Development Department before any further review by the Zoning Administrator or Building and Codes personnel. The applicant must meet with Staff after approval and prior to issuance of Building Permit and/or the beginning of any site work. Subsequent issuance of further permits, including building permits is dependent on compliance with this and all other conditions of this resolution. 7. The applicant will provide as-built plans to certify that the site plan is developed according to the approved plans prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and 8. NOT APPLICABLE If applicable, Item 8 to be combined with a letter of credit; and 9. NOT APPLICABLE The Sanitary Sewer connection plan must be submitted to the Wastewater Department for its review, approval, permitting and inspection MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 4-2008 SCOTT & JACKIE WHEELER, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. Paragraph Four complies, Paragraph Five, Negative, Paragraph Eight and Nine do not apply. This is approved that the conditions that the applicant will submit a revised final plan that will identify that the plantings on the landscaping plan will consists of plants as listed in the Lake George Association brochure, which identifies native species for the area. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. O'CONNOR-We thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-I just want to clarify they are the same size and type. I didn’t put that in the motion. MR. HUNSINGER-I don’t think it was needed. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. MR. O'CONNOR-We thank you. We also thank Chris and Kathy. Maybe we will develop a system where they give us their comments before the night of the meeting. SITE PLAN NO. 12-2008 SEQR TYPE II MATTHEW EMMENS AGENT(S) JARRETT- MARTIN ENGINEERS CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION ZONING WR-3A LOCATION 2 HIGHVIEW ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES THE CONSTRUCTION OF A U-SHAPED DOCK ALONG WITH AN ADDITIONAL U-SHAPED DOCK WITH A BOATHOUSE AND SUNDECK. BOATHOUSES AND SUNDECKS REQUIRE SITE PLAN REVIEW AND APPROVAL FROM THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE AV 60-07, SP 49- 07, SP 12-95, 57-93, 39-88, AV 1414 WARREN CO. PLANNING 3/12/08 APA/CEA/DEC L G CEA LOT SIZE 0.97 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 239.15-1-19 SECTION 179-4-020, 179-5-050 TOM JARRETT & BILL DEAN, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT 50 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, if you could summarize Staff Notes when you’re ready, please. MR. BAKER-Yes. The plan submitted indicates that the two docks will meet the setbacks and area requirements for docks, and the proposed boathouse appears to meet the height requirements for boathouses and sundecks. The applicant has submitted renderings showing the proposed decks and boathouse, along with renderings showing the view of the proposed docks from Lake George. The proposed boathouse also includes lighting on the sundeck. The proposed lighting appears to be very low wattage and down lit. However, will there be any lighting visual impacts on surrounding properties, or from the lake? We also have comments from VISION Engineering. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have additional comments, Stu? I’m sorry. MR. BAKER-No. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. JARRETT-Good evening. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. The floor is yours. MR. JARRETT-Tom Jarrett of Jarrett-Martin Engineers. To my right is Bill Dean of Creative Construction, the project manager. To my left is Gabe Hodge, the project architect of Balzar, Hodge, and Tuck. If you recall, several months ago we were here for the residential changes, and we went through Site Plan Review process for the septic system, stormwater and the residence, and we promised at that time we’d be back for the boathouse, and it is before you tonight. What we’re planning to do is remove a noncompliant boathouse and slip in an E-Shaped configuration, and replace it with a more aesthetically appealing compliant boathouse and slip in a configuration of two U- Shaped slips. Essentially the architecture will match the house or be complimentary to the house, and I believe that it offers a lot of positives to the lake community as well to the owners. I will let Bill and Gabe give you some details. In fact, Gabe can walk you through the architecture and the design of the project right now, quickly. GABE HODGE MR. HODGE-We’ve provided a slideshow, if it would be okay to show. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. Yes. MR. HODGE-Some of the drawings that were included in the submission. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. HODGE-You’ve seen this Site Plan before, the approved planting, septic and residence changes to the left, and the boathouse in the double U-Shaped configuration to the right. The elevations which you’ve seen in the application as well. So in materials and structure, etc., are in keeping with the proposed residence. So the materials, the color palette, the structure, are all in keeping with the residence that you had seen previously. As you can see here, the boathouse with the residence in the background, as viewed from the water, and here we have a slide of the before and after of the property, the before being the lower photograph, and here’s a Site Plan, sort of describing the extents of the existing to be demolished and the overlay of the new, in relation to the house and neighboring wharf system, and then the last two slides are the lighting plan and lighting cut sheets that were also included in the package. So that’s basically where we are. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else? MR. HODGE-Not from me. Anything you’d like to add, Bill? MR. DEAN-We did already apply to the Lake George Park Commission for the permit through them, contacted Molly Gallagher today. Today was the end of the comment period. There was no comments, and she figured to issue a permit tomorrow, as far as the Park Commission. MRS. STEFFAN-So that means, if the permit’s issued, that you comply with all the requirements? 51 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. DEAN-Yes, and there were no variance applications in front of the ZBA for this project. MR. JARRETT-We received the VISION Engineering comment on Friday afternoon, and did prepare a letter that we’re, we have available to hand out to you tonight if you wish to see it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Questions, comments from the Board? MRS. STEFFAN-The only comment that I have on the project is the land bridge. It’s just, we’ve talked a lot about precedent tonight, and we’ve had issues with land bridges in the past. So I’m bringing it up so that the Planning Board can talk about it. Chris, do you know the history on land bridges, Tom, maybe? MR. HUNSINGER-All I know is it’s always been discouraged. MR. HODGE-This project in particular has an existing land bridge that connects to the landing of the stair. So we’re in effect I guess replacing it in kind, for the most part. The land drops fairly steeply at that point, so it’s sort of the logical approach to accessing that boathouse. MR. HUNSINGER-Some of the questions that I had to me seemed extremely basic, and I looked through the plans, and I didn’t know if maybe I missed something, but the first question I had was, you mentioned a couple of times in the application how it was a nonconforming structure and how you’re going to bring it into conformance, but I didn’t see any reference to the size of the existing boathouse and/or sundeck, or size of the proposed boathouse and/or sundeck. MR. HODGE-The existing is wharf, it’s noncompliant, I think, in three ways. It’s MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I saw where it was noncompliant in the length. MR. HODGE-Okay. In the length. The width of that one wharf is, I think, 11 feet. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. DEAN-And the area, the overall area of the E-Shape is over 700 square feet. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay, and the proposed total wharf area is under 700 square feet? MR. HODGE-Yes, each individual U-Shape is 700 feet or less. MR. HUNSINGER-And that includes the walkways? MR. HODGE-That includes the walkways, yes. Anything, well, actually what it includes is the actual deck surface, the wharf surface, on the lakeside of the mean high water mark. MR. HUNSINGER-What’s the total length of the lake frontage? Again, I didn’t see that anywhere. MR. HODGE-Yes. The lake frontage on the property is 211 and a half feet, and from the chart, you’re allowed two U-Shapes between 151 feet and 250 feet of lake frontage, two wharfs and two moorings. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. The only other question I had is on the lighting of the sundeck. Can you speak to that? MR. HODGE-Yes. What we’d like to do is put low voltage, recessed lighting in the solid wood posts, oriented on the deck side of the posts, and they would be shielded downcast low voltage lighting. MR. HUNSINGER-How do you define low voltage? What’s the wattage? MR. HODGE-It’s not a line voltage application, meaning it’s, yes, it’s a lower, Bill, maybe you can. MR. JARRETT-Typically 24 or lower is what I consider low voltage. 52 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. DEAN-Yes, run through a transformer. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Okay. So it’s like something that you would see like on a walkway, kind of, very dim? MR. HODGE-Exactly, yes, it’s a far dimmer output. MR. TRAVER-Shoreline measurement is noted on Plan A-101 in your packet. MR. HUNSINGER-I knew it was in there somewhere and I just couldn’t find it tonight. Yes. Okay. Thank you. MR. FORD-I just want to follow up on one of Chris’ questions. Can you help me understand the comparative width, height and area of existing versus proposed? MR. HODGE-The height of the existing, up to the top of the rail, is 13 foot, actually I think it’s 13 foot 11, and the new is at 14 feet to the allowable. MR. FORD-Okay. MR. HODGE-The width, the overall width, is, I believe, if you take the overall width of the current E-Shaped wharf, when we reconfigure and go to two U-Shaped, we are something like 14 and a half or 15 feet wider on each side. So we’re basically keeping the same centerline, the old centerline of the E-Shaped, keeping that, and the wharf, the two E-Shapes, grow to the north and south by 14 and a half or 15 feet. MR. FORD-Total or on each side? MR. HODGE-On each side, so 30, 29 feet. MR. FORD-You’re expanding the width by 29 feet? MR. HODGE-Correct. MR. TRAVER-The length out into the lake is lengthened. MR. HODGE-Right, from the shoreline out. MR. JARRETT-We’re squashing it in against the shoreline is what we’re doing. MR. HODGE-Right, it’s pressing back into the shoreline a bit by, I want to say, nine or ten feet. MR. FORD-Okay. Compare current, please, with proposed. MR. HODGE-Okay. Current we have a nonconforming. The southern deck in the E- Shape is something like, I’m thinking that it’s, I think it’s 12 feet further into the lake than the proposed boathouse wharf, okay. So we’re pulling the whole thing back by 12 feet. MR. JARRETT-Again, if you look at Drawing A-101, the two are superimposed together, the dashed lines are the old configuration. MR. HODGE-I can point it out to you. MR. JARRETT-It’s right on the screen. MR. HODGE-If you look right here, here’s the existing. This is the 40 foot offset from the mean high water that you’re not allowed to build beyond. This is the existing to be removed. So we’re pulled back by that dimension. That’s eight feet. So that’s actually more like 20 feet further back. So this is the existing to be demolished. MR. FORD-So it’s wider but not as deep. MR. HODGE-It’s wider but not as deep. MR. FORD-Thank you. 53 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. JARRETT-And by the way, the areas of each configuration are shown on that same plan, it’s 700 square feet listed on the boathouse. It’s 697 listed on the open U-Shaped slip, listed on that plan. MR. HUNSINGER-You couldn’t push it out three more square feet? MR. HODGE-It’s partly engaged to the property. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions or comments from the Board? MR. SIPP-What is the definition of a land bridge? MR. BAKER-I don’t believe we have that term defined in our Code. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s not. MR. SIPP-In other words, can this be construed as a land bridge, the walkway to the? MR. BAKER-The issue, as I understand it, is that this type of elevated walkway has been construed by the County Planning Board as a land bridge. MR. SIPP-I was wondering, does the Park Commission have a definition? MR. JARRETT-I don’t recall seeing one. MR. HODGE-Yes, not that I know of. MR. JARRETT-I don’t know how far above the water you have to be to be a land bridge. I’ve never seen that well defined. MR. SIPP-Well, I mean, unless you get a good definition, you know, that could be called a land bridge. On the color scheme, why is east and west a brighter yellow or maze color than north and south? MR. HODGE-Because of shadows. MR. SIPP-Shadows. Okay. I would like to see that color kind of dampened down, because in your photograph it makes it stand out, and I don’t think it’s necessary. See right there, projected, sort of the color stands right out there. MR. HODGE-You’re looking at the door, I think. It’ll most likely be a darker orange color. It’s intended to be a Douglas Fir color, similar to the color of the doors behind you. MR. SIPP-That’s just kind of bright. MR. HODGE-It’s kind of bright in the computer model. MR. SIPP-I mean, the rest of the building is muted. The brown blends in quite well with the background. That bright maze in yellow stands right out. MR. HODGE-It’s intended really just to show that it’s natural wood material, unstained. So it’ll be a darker orange. MR. SIPP-But it’ll weather. MR. FORD-It’ll weather, because you’re not going to treat it. MR. HODGE-It’ll weather to more of a gray, but. MR. FORD-Will it be treated? MR. HODGE-Will the wood be treated? Pressure treated? MR. FORD-No, treated in any way. MR. HODGE-No. It’ll be sealed, to protect it somewhat from the sun, and extend it’s life, but it’ll be a natural, clear finish. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other comments from the Board? 54 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MRS. STEFFAN-We did talk about the lighting, but the question in Staff Notes is will there be any lighting or visual impacts to the surrounding properties? MR. JARRETT-No, it’s all downcast. MR. HODGE-It’s all downcast lighting. I suppose from different angles you might see a light or two, one of the low voltage peaking out from around the corner, but again, they’ll be mounted on the back side of the posts, sort of on the livable area on the deck. MRS. STEFFAN-Inside. MR. HODGE-Yes. Other lighting, there’s going to be recessed lighting inside the boathouse, which will be out of view. MR. FORD-What will be the height of that post? MR. HODGE-The height of the post is guardrail height, three feet. So the light will be mounted down two and a half feet or so off of the deck. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else? We do have a public hearing scheduled this evening. Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to address the Board on this application? Yes, we do have one taker. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED KATHY BOZONY MS. BOZONY-Good evening. Kathy Bozony. I’m working with the Lake George Water Keeper, and I was curious, and I didn’t know if, Stu, you wouldn’t mind putting back some of the pictures. As far as aesthetic and environmental aspect, I’m curious why there is wood coming off of the dock? All the decks, it looks like they’re filled in. I’m not really sure. Maybe, are those the cribs? Are those all structures? MR. TRAVER-Those are the cribs under water. MR. JARRETT-Those are the cribs underneath the water line, basically. MS. BOZONY-So those are all structural. None of them are aesthetic? MR. JARRETT-Yes. MR. HODGE-Correct. MS. BOZONY-Okay. All right. MR. HODGE-And all of them will be under the water line. MS. BOZONY-Yes. Okay. That’s all I was curious if those were facades of some sort. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Written comments? MR. BAKER-We did receive written comments addressed to Gretchen Steffan, Secretary, and the Queensbury Planning Board from Robert Rasmussen, subject: Application of Matthew Emmens for construction of two U-Shaped docks, one with boathouse and deck, at 2 High View Road “I write as the treasurer of the Joshua’s Rock Corporation, a family land owning group which owns the adjacent property. This property which comprises the feature known as Joshua’s Rock is located immediately to the South of the Emmens’ property.” And you can see him right there to the south. “ We have no objection to the proposal for two u-shaped docks because the lake frontage clearly permits this. What we find objectionable is the construction of the dock nearest to our property which is proposed to comprise a dock and an enclosed boathouse with roof top deck. This construction, where sited, would substantially and negatively impact the view of the lake from the Joshua’s Rock property. Therefore, we object, not to the dock, but emphatically to the enclosed boathouse with roof top deck. The view as it is now is a delightful one of the beauty of the lake. The proposed construction would significantly 55 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) impede this, and replace it with a view of whoever occupied the sundeck. Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the notice. If anyone would like to personally review our property to see the situation I would be pleased to arrange this. Sincerely, Robert B. Rasmussen” MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Any comments? MR. HODGE-There is an existing deck that’s roughly in the same location, although we’re rotating the orientation of the thing 90 degrees. We actually feel that by pulling it back that 12 or so feet, that we’re potentially moving it away from their view shed in a way. MR. JARRETT-We’re the same height. MR. HODGE-Same height. MR. JARRETT-But we’re tighter to the lakeshore. So we’re not sure why the view would be impeded. MR. FORD-Well, there’s going to be some solid structure in the walling of there, right? MR. HODGE-Yes, there is. MR. FORD-The walls. MR. HODGE-But actually that will take the clutter away. MR. FORD-There will be walls which do not exist in the present structure. Right? MR. HODGE-That does not exist in the current structure, that’s correct. MR. FORD-So that would naturally block the view. MR. HODGE-It’ll block the view to the boathouses underneath it, we feel. MR. JARRETT-The boathouse right now blocks any view they might have, unfortunately. So, I don’t think the new structure is going to be any different than what’s there now. MR. HODGE-Yes. We feel that it’ll contain the clutter. It’ll clean up the view down at Mr. Emmens’ property, but we also feel that we’re not doing anymore harm to the view shed than currently exists, because I think largely it’s looking over from up on the rock. MR. HUNSINGER-How about the orientation of the opening, though, of the boathouse, towards the neighbor’s property? How may that limit their use of their property or their ability to build a dock or deck in the future? MR. HODGE-On the Joshua’s Rock side of the property? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, on the southern side. MR. HODGE-I don’t know. I think it’s fairly steep there. MR. DEAN-Yes, I think it’s all ledge right in there. MR. JARRETT-We’re compliant. I don’t think, I think we can certainly navigate a boat in there, and they can certainly navigate a boat in there without any hardship. MR. HODGE-Right. We’re compliant by a decent amount off of the setback. MR. HUNSINGER-No, I understand that, but I’m just saying because of the opening on, you know, being parallel with the land instead of perpendicular, like the current situation. MR. JARRETT-I think most of you were at the property when we were reviewing the house. MR. HUNSINGER-And we were all there recently, too, yes. MR. JARRETT-If you recall, there’s a ledge immediately to the south of the Emmens’ property, where Joshua’s Rock is. So their access to the lake immediately along that 56 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) property line is very difficult, and it’s also high, quite a bit higher. So we don’t quite understand the comment, to be honest with you. MR. HODGE-Well, and if you project the setbacks, if you were to sort of plan a project for a wharf on their property, if you took the setback on that further side, I think you’d find that there’s quite a great distance between the two. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. HODGE-I’d venture to say 150 or more feet between the docks. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Any other questions, comments from the Board? MRS. STEFFAN-I’m satisfied with that response. I think moving it in is reasonable. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Okay. This is a Type II action. So no SEQRA’s required. I will close the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. HUNSINGER-Members comfortable moving forward? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. MR. FORD-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. The floor is yours. MR. FORD-May I ask one additional question? MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. FORD-To what extent will the greater width be impacted by stormwater runoff? MR. HODGE-What impact on the dock system will the stormwater runoff have? I don’t think any. MR. JARRETT-Actually, considering the containment systems we’ve got, I think there’ll be a lot less impact on boats, boathouses and shorefront than there is now. So, maybe I don’t understand the question, but I think there will be less impact. I obviously don’t understand the question. MR. FORD-Stormwater runoff right now is rather substantial, correct? MR. JARRETT-There’s no stormwater management right now at all. MR. HODGE-Yes, because it’s unimpeded. MR. JARRETT-And the proposal that you approved recently, we’ve got substantial stormwater management included with the project. So I think that’s going to greatly reduce the shoreline impacts, as well as any potential impacts to the structures along the waterfront. MR. FORD-Well, it was that new improved program I wanted to see if it was going to be impacted, or vice versa, you know, with the new construction. No? MR. HODGE-I don’t think so. MR. DEAN-I think there would be no impact, really. I mean, what’s being done here was planned into the project as we were going forward with the other part, and if that answers your question, I think that’s. We already knew kind of where we were headed with this. We just didn’t have all the details worked out to bring it to you at that time. So, I mean, I think all the conceptual stuff was in place. MR. FORD-Okay. MR. DEAN-Also, if I can, too, just one thing in regards to visual on the new boathouse. The existing boathouse has a wooden rail system with balusters that is very obtrusive to site. The new rail system on this is made up of stainless steel cables that are three- 57 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) eighths inch in diameter, which you would readily look right through. That’s the whole concept of the rail system. So I think that would minimize, to one more extent, blocking their view, you know, we’ve pulled it in and we’ve lessened the highest point that would block their view. We’ve lessened that. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 12-2008 MATTHEW EMMENS, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: 1. A site plan application has been made to the Queensbury Planning Board for the following: Applicant proposes the construction of a U-shaped dock along with an additional U-shaped dock with a boathouse and sundeck. Boathouses and Sundecks require Site Plan Review and approval from the Planning Board; and 2. A public hearing was scheduled and held on 4/22/08; and 3. This application is supported with all documentation, public comment and application material in the file of record; and 4. Pursuant to relevant sections of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Code [Chapter 179], the Planning Board has determined that this proposal complies with the requirements as stated in the Zoning Code; and 5. NOT APPLICABLE The requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered and the Planning Board has adopted a SEQRA Negative Declaration; and if the application is a modification, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered, and the proposed modification[s] do not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts, and, therefore, no further SEQRA review is necessary; and 6. Final approved plans, in compliance with the Site Plan, must be submitted to the Community Development Department before any further review by the Zoning Administrator or Building and Codes personnel. The applicant must meet with Staff after approval and prior to issuance of Building Permit and/or the beginning of any site work. Subsequent issuance of further permits, including building permits is dependent on compliance with this and all other conditions of this resolution. 7. The applicant will provide as-built plans to certify that the site plan is developed according to the approved plans prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and 8. NOT APPLICABLE If applicable, Item 8 to be combined with a letter of credit; and 9. NOT APPLICABLE The Sanitary Sewer connection plan must be submitted to the Wastewater Department for its review, approval, permitting and inspection MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 12-2008 MATTHEW EMMENS, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. Paragraph Four complies. Paragraph Five, this is a Type II. Paragraph Eight and Nine do not apply. It’s approved with the following condition: That the applicant will satisfy the VISION Engineering comment letter of 4/18, and will obtain a final signoff. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Ford, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. JARRETT-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Good luck. You’re all set. MR. HODGE-Thanks very much. 58 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. SPECIAL USE PERMIT 14-2008 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED J & D MARINA AGENT(S) LNNY CHASE, CHASE ENG. OWNER(S) SAME ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 2585 ROUTE 9L APPLICANT PROPOSES OUTDOOR BOAT AND EQUIPMENT STORAGE. MARINA USES IN THE WR-1A ZONE REQUIRE SPECIAL USE PERMIT APPROVAL FROM THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE NOA 5-06 WARREN CO. PLANNING 4/9/08 APA/DEC/CEA L G CEA LOT SIZE 13.48 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 240.5-1-31.23 SECTION 179-4-020, 179-10 JOHN MATTHEWS & LONNY CHASE, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, if you could summarize Staff Notes when you’re ready. MR. BAKER-Yes. The applicant has requested a waiver from providing a stormwater management plan and has indicated that no new lighting will be installed, and as a result they’ve also requested a waiver from the lighting plan. The applicant has submitted information regarding previous test pits taken on the property. The test pits were part of an investigation of soil conditions related to a previous filling operation at the site. The findings discussed different debris that was found that state that these materials would not have the potential to adversely impact adjacent soil and groundwater resources. However, it appears that the stability of the soil in this area is not discussed. The Planning Board should determine the stability of the site to support multiple boats that are proposed to be stored on site. the applicant has proposed berms and plantings near the front of the property to provide screening and buffering. Will the berm height and height of the proposed plantings adequately screen the boats that are being stored from adjacent properties. It appears there may still be some visibility of boats from adjacent properties, and consideration should be given to using other evergreen species such as spruce that will provide more screening than the pines that are proposed. As mentioned, the applicant is seeking waivers from the stormwater management plan. In considering whether to grant this waiver, the Board should determine if there will be any contaminated runoff from washing of boats, fluids from boat engines or any other polluted runoff from the proposed use that may run off into adjacent water resources. There is also comments from VISION Engineering. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. The floor is yours. MR. MATTHEWS-Thank you. John Matthews, J & D Marina. We’re proposing to just utilize the property as it exists for the storage of summer trailers for boats that we’ve launched in the lake and we store for people that don’t have adequate space at their camp, and winter storage for boats of our customers in the rear parcel of the property. There’ll be no repair work done, no boat washing. At this point in time, we’re going to utilize the lighting that is there now, which will be just on if we need to go there at night. Don’t plan on leaving any lights on on a daily basis. It was our good fortunate at the time last Fall that the State had some work done on the road and they were able to get permission to dump the fill that they put in there so I’ve got some berms started that they seeded for me and we’re going to plant trees as per our Site Plan. That’s basically, we’re a very low key operation. We’ve cleaned up the property. We’ve removed all the debris and left over stuff that was there from the previous owner, painted the buildings, and I propose to rent the existing home, once we get it remodeled. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Anything else? MR. CHASE-Lonny Chase from Chase Engineering. I think from an engineering standpoint at this point it’s pretty simple. I don’t expect any additional runoff from the parking of boats. They’d probably be shrink wrapped or covered up in the winter. So any water that concentrates on the covers of the boats would run down on the ground, redistribute and re-infiltrate into the ground. I guess for that reason we’ve asked for the stormwater waiver, because pre and post conditions I would expect to be the same, and I think he’s explained the lighting, and that’s pretty much it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Questions, comments from the Board? MR. TRAVER-Do you expect much traffic entering and exiting the site? Obviously not much in the wintertime, if any, but what about during the summer boating season? MR. MATTHEWS-The traffic in and out will be conducted by we, us at the marina. It’s not a public facility. It will be units that we have to move over there to make space on the property. It’s not going to be open. There’ll be a chain or a gate accessing the storage 59 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) portion, and, I mean, it will be our truck or tractor or vehicle which will move a boat or a trailer over there and position it. MR. TRAVER-Okay. What I’m wondering about is the frequency of that movement. Do you anticipate that you would be, would this be something you would be doing on a fairly frequent basis daily perhaps, adjusting where vehicles are from the lakeside to this? MR. MATTHEWS-Yes, I would say on a daily basis, maybe two or three times a day. Maybe, this time of year, when we’re launching boats, and putting trailers away for people for the summer it would be more frequent, maybe, you know, 15, 20 times a day, but I would say that it would not interrupt the flow of traffic. I mean, it’s a short run. It’s not that we’re going to be blocking traffic in order to make egress or what not there. There’s good visibility from both directions. The site was used for many years by the previous owner with the heavy trucks and trailers and bulldozers and what not being moved in and out of there, and I don’t believe they ever had any issues with traffic on the highway. MR. TRAVER-Thank you. MR. FORD-Just a follow up point of clarification, please. It will be used for storage of boats and trailers and it will be to allow you to do quick launch? MR. MATTHEWS-Not necessarily, no. We don’t do quick launch right at this point in time. It probably will accommodate trailers and what not that are now taking up space on our facility across the road, so that in the event that we do end up doing some quick launch, we’ll have more room on the other side of the road, but we won’t be doing it from this site because time wise it just wouldn’t work out. By the time they call and you have to go there to get it and bring the boat over and what not, it wouldn’t be as efficient as if we had them on the site. MR. FORD-How far is the distance? MR. MATTHEWS-Thousand feet maybe. MR. SEGULJIC-So the intention of the site is seasonal storage? MR. MATTHEWS-Correct. MR. FORD-It sounds like 12 month storage. MR. MATTHEWS-Well, there’ll be storage there. Storage, during the winter, from November through April, May, there’ll be boats parked there and what not for the off season, down in the back. During the summer season, when the boats are in the water, the empty trailers will be parked either in the same spot the boat was or up close to the road. MR. SIPP-Will these boats be shrink wrapped? MR. MATTHEWS-Winter storage boats will be either shrink wrapped or the customer’s cover will be put on the boat, yes. MR. SIPP-Now, have you thought of anything of changing species of trees on top of the berms? The white pine, once they get up a little ways. MR. MATTHEWS-I don’t have any problem with changing any of that. We put that on there because I know white pines are a nice fast growing tree. MR. SIPP-Yes, but the lower branches die off once they. MR. MATTHEWS-That’s fine with me. MR. SIPP-A spruce might be a. MR. MATTHEWS-I’m very comfortable with mixing in some spruce and some hemlocks, which are native to the area. MR. FORD-Have you see VISION Engineering’s comments? MR. CHASE-Yes. 60 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. FORD-Could we go down through those, please, and get your responses? MR. CHASE-I guess on the septic system comment, Number, well, we addressed Number One, I guess, already. MR. FORD-Yes. MR. CHASE-Number Two, the septic systems. Certainly we can show that on the drawing, and I think a natural place for that is south of the existing garage and east of the existing house, you know, making sure that we meet our setbacks for the well. The septic would be down gradient. So I think we’ve got to keep it within 100, keep away from that well at least 100 feet, and I think we have adequate space to do that, and possibly removing a couple of the trees to the south of that south berm that we have installed right now. So I think we do have room to accommodate that. MR. TRAVER-I’d like to re-visit, if we could, the issue of the frequency of traffic going from the marina facility to this storage facility, and the term quick launch was raised. Can you appreciate that, to this Board, there’s quite a significant difference between the traffic going to and from the two sites, if you’re simply moving empty trailers that someone has launched their boat for their camp in the summer, and moving this empty trailer because it’s taking up ground space at the marina facility, versus a quick launch operation where you could conceivably have 100 or more boats on some, with some frequency, being moved on this stretch of highway, between this proposed storage facility and the marina facility. There’s a huge difference in terms of impact, traffic impact, all kinds of impacts. Can you, and I thought I heard you raise the possibility that you might propose quick launch for this storage area. Could you clarify that for us? Because it does have a huge impact. MR. MATTHEWS-I don’t believe I did say that we would use that facility for quick launch, but that facility would enable us to possibly in the future do quick launch because the units that we normally would have stored, that weren’t being used, like trailers and, we’re freeing up space. MR. TRAVER-You’re freeing up space. Okay. MR. MATTHEWS-That’s basically what we’re doing. MR. TRAVER-Hypothetically, would you have a problem with restricting the use of this space, so that the actual, if you were to being performing a quick launch service, that the vehicles, I’m sorry, the vessels that are used for this quick launch service not be on this site? In other words, you can store the empty trailers to make room for them on the marina side, but you’re not going to be going and getting quick launch vessels back and forth from this site. MR. MATTHEWS-That’s what I implied. MR. FORD-Was that what you’re agreeing to? MR. MATTHEWS-Yes, I’ll agree to that. I don’t have any plans to do that at this point in time. MR. FORD-At this time. MR. MATTHEWS-Yes, but I mean, if I have to do it, I’d have to change my permit with the Park Commission and what not, and I haven’t asked for that. MRS. STEFFAN-And remember, Planning Board members, with Special Use Permits, they can be permanent, temporary, or renewable, and the criteria to consider is the harmony and compatibility with the area, the positive and negative impacts regarding traffic and congestion, the positives and negatives regarding environmental impacts and the long term economic stability of the enterprise. So those are the criteria we should be looking at with Special Use Permits. MR. TRAVER-Is it possible for this Board to approve such a permit with this stipulation that this part of the property would not be used for quick launch? MRS. STEFFAN-That can be a condition of approval. 61 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. TRAVER-That can be a condition of approval. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. FORD-Steve, thanks for following up on that, because you know that’s where I was going. MR. TRAVER-Yes, that’s really only my concern. We visited the site and we were familiar with, when we conducted our site visits, we were there. I think the concerns regarding servicing and cleaning and so on you’ve addressed that, and were the use of this property restricted in that way, in that no quick launch, it would minimize the traffic on that section of road, and yet free up your, however you want to think of it, square footage or whatever because you’re able to move those empty trailers, which, I think I can support that purpose. MR. MATTHEWS-Well, that was basically my intent. The logistics to move boats from there, as a quick launch, it’s just too far, in my opinion. MR. TRAVER-I agree. MR. MATTHEWS-But to have unused units sitting there out of the way would be good use for the property. It’s really not out of character for the neighborhood. I mean, we have boats stored on just about every parcel in either directions, all winter. MR. TRAVER-As I recall, and prior to your cleaning up, as you put it, of that area, I can recall an unused boat being there for decades. One that I would like to have restored and be able to use on the lake. It must have been quite a vessel in its day. MR. MATTHEWS-Yes, I think it probably was. I know they stored several boats there over the years. MR. TRAVER-That one stands out in my mind, that large. MR. FORD-Could the engineer please address Number Five in the engineering comments, about the existing site containing landfill debris and the recommendation? MR. CHASE-I guess, based on the soil type that’s there being, you know, the top surface is a course gravel, you know, just looking at that, I wouldn’t be terribly worried about parking boats on it, especially considering the fact that if it starts to settle or something, we’re just going to move the boat away. It’s not a permanent structure. I mean, if this were a house and we were doing foundations, I would definitely be very concerned about it. MR. FORD-But driving of vehicles over it wouldn’t cause you concern? MR. CHASE-I wouldn’t think so. I mean, especially, I guess, based on what was there previously, heavy equipment and the things that were there years ago. I would think that that’s, you know, compacted. MR. FORD-Pretty compacted then. MR. CHASE-Yes, and I mean if the environmental testing had turned up a lot of decomposing garbage and stuff, I think there’d be greater concern as well, you know, and it looked like what they mostly found was construction debris, and, you know, stuff that wasn’t going to be collapsing. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions or comments from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-A question for Staff, wetland setbacks. Since this is, I guess, temporary, there’s no buffer requirements? MR. BAKER-There’s buffer requirements for structures. MR. SEGULJIC-But not for boat storage, I assume. MR. BAKER-Not for boat storage, no, but certainly as part of this Board’s consideration, you could require what you deem to be appropriate setbacks from the wetlands. 62 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have something in mind, Tom? MR. SEGULJIC-Well, I was just, because usually it’s 100 feet. Typically wetland setbacks are 100 feet, and there was no wetland setbacks on these maps. That’s because Queensbury doesn’t require it because it’s not a permanent structure, setbacks. MR. CHASE-And the APA agreed with that, it’s a non-regulated activity. So we, therefore, don’t have to conform to their 100 foot setback, and if you’re within that, then there’s additional permits and what not with both you and the APA, and that also kind of goes back to VISION Engineer’s Item Number Four with respect to stormwater plans and erosion and sediment control and future monitoring. I mean, it’s kind of a Catch-22. If you don’t do anything, you know, I don’t think we’re harming the wetlands and like we say, it’s not a regulated activity, as far as the APA is concerned, and in talking with DEC, they had a similar opinion, although they’re not the regulating agency. They don’t take jurisdiction on this project. As soon as you start building filter strips or trying to mitigate stormwater, you know, certainly you’re getting into lots of additional permits and with both you guys and APA, not that it wouldn’t be controlled properly with filter fabric and silt fences and etc., etc., but it’s their opinion, I guess, on paper, anyway, is that it’s a non- regulated activity so therefore we didn’t have to worry about it too much. MR. MATTHEWS-Basically, when we did the, when we had the topographical map done, we found that there was actually a natural buffer in the, the way the land slopes, so that where we would be parking vehicles, the water takes the long path to the wetland area. It doesn’t just go right over there bank. It kind of slopes up at the bank. MR. HUNSINGER-Stu, did you have a comment? MR. BAKER-I do have a letter to read at the public hearing point. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. We do have a public hearing scheduled this evening. I imagine there’s some people here that wanted to address the Board. I will open the public hearing. I would ask that anyone who wishes to address the Board to state their name for the record and to address their comments or questions to the Board for our consideration, and I would ask, you know, given the late hour, if people could try to keep their comments brief, to the extent they can, and we certainly will have a five minute limit on any one commentor. Did anyone want to address the Board? Who wants to go first? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED HAL HALLIDAY MR. HALLIDAY-Good evening everyone. My name is Hal Halliday. I live next door to the J & D Marina proposal. I live at 2599 Ridge Road, the house closest to the firehouse, if you’ve been up to the property. My home looks directly on to this property. To give you a little bit of history, my wife and I have lived there for 37 years. I don’t know if you’ve been around long enough. It used to be the burned out Laundromat and liquor store, and we bought a burned out building. We converted it into a beautiful home, and we’ve been there and we love the area. Unfortunately, I know John for 30 years. He’s a great businessman. I think he runs great businesses. I’ve been down to his property has now. He really keeps it nice and clean. The problem is we don’t want it next to us, and I’m here tonight to ask to please think about statements that were made tonight, that this will be no impact on the neighborhood. This will have a major impact on our neighborhood. Some of the statements that have been made I don’t believe are correct. I don’t know who made errors, but if you look at that map there, we’re told that this driveway is, in one of the applications, I believe it was the APA, it’s hand-written in there that it’s almost across the street from Castaway’s. It’s not across the street from Castaway Marina. It’s up the hill, around the curve. There is no line of sight from one driveway to the other, and anyone that has gone up to the property could clearly see that. These boats will be traveling up or down a hill on a dead curve. You cannot see one driveway from the other, and I think that’s really important. Others in the neighborhood, in this same strip of land from Castaway Marina to the Cleverdale Store, have tried to do things in this zone. Mr. Munoff is here tonight, and I remember sitting in this same room when he wanted to put an ice cream stand in, over a decade ago, and we told him, sorry, it’s not zoned for it, you can’t have it, and he went home and we didn’t have an ice cream stand. My wife and I wanted to put a 1200 square foot garage on our property, next to this proposed boat storage facility, and we were told it was too big, you can’t have it, and we don’t have a garage. We accepted it. A few months ago, and I lost track of time here, Mr. Dator was in here and wanted to put an indoor boat storage facility 63 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) in, so we didn’t have to look at the boats, and all of the neighbors were sitting in the same room, and I believe it was before this Board. It might have been before the Zoning Board, and we were told he couldn’t have it because it wasn’t zoned for it. Now we’re back here again, after several people have been to the Board and questioned the same exact use, including Mr. Salerno from the Lake George Boat Company, who happens to be an indirect family member of ours. He came to my wife and I and he said he wanted to do this exact same thing. He came to the Planning Board and someone down here, and they said, no, you know the neighbors don’t want it, and he backed out of the project, and he is now building two boat storage buildings, I believe, on Route 149. Many, many things are wrong with this property, and one, we should be concerned about the stability. Anyone that has any knowledge of this property over the last 30 or 40 years knows that it has been a landfill, and I’ll be general. A lot of things were dumped there. Many things were dumped there, and before John brought, before Mr. Matthews went to buy the property, I personally went to him, at his business. I told him my concerns. I told him my concerns about the property, what was dumped there, and what was he going to do with it. He told me what he was thinking about doing with it, and I told him the name of every neighbor that had a concern about it, and I pleaded with him not to buy this place, because we would fight a boat storage place on the property. So I don’t want to hear anyone say that there’s a hardship because before it was done, we tried to reason and say that we didn’t want it. We’re concerned about the hazardous conditions. Like I said, it’s on the turn going down or up a hill. It’s not across the street, and we think it would be a hazardous condition, and definitely a safety concern. We’ve been very fortunate that we have not had accidents on that section of the road. I will not say it’s that bad, but it is a bad turn, okay, it will change the character of our neighborhood drastically. We will have bad visual impact. We’re going to have more noise with 200 boats now that want to be stored there. There will definitely be more activity, even if it’s only from the people from the marina. We don’t have any activity now. It’s zoned Waterfront One, Residential, and we like it that way. If somebody wants to put houses in there, we have been told that that is an allowed purpose, and we’ve accepted that. You want to put a mini Ridge Knolls there, I think a lot of us would give a blessing. It would bring up the character of the neighborhood. We would not have 20 vehicles a day coming in and out of that property. We’d have maybe ten residents coming in and out. Now all I ask you to consider is that you do not give any waivers to this property. I’m concerned about the boats being stored there and the safety concerns. No lights. I’m concerned about protection. What about security? I don’t want to take up anymore of your time. I’m just seriously concerned. I’m going to ask you to please do your job. I brought pictures if you’d to see them. I don’t want to waste a whole bunch of your time because there’s other neighbors here, but I’m really concerned about this, that how come somebody comes in now and tries to get this approved, when others have tried to do the same thing and have been denied? MR. HUNSINGER-If you want to pass the pictures you can start down there. MR. HALLIDAY-Yes, and I will gladly makes copies for anybody that wants these. These are pictures from our home, taken today, looking directly into the property, and these are pictures that I took with the owner’s permission at the time, showing why we’re concerned about what is being stored there and the runoff. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MR. HALLIDAY-Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else? MICHAEL MC LAUGHLIN MR. MC LAUGHLIN-Good evening. My name is Michael McLaughlin. I live directly across the road from the proposed project. I was member of the LLC that sold the property to Mr. Matthews. I am the only member of the LLC who lives adjacent to the property, so I felt that it was not a conflict of interest to voice my opinion, not so much on whether or not I approve having boats, because anybody with any kind of reasonable intelligence can assume that I sold the property to Mr. Matthews with the intent of him putting in a controlled boat storage facility. The point I’d like to make to this Board is, is that this neighborhood started in 1951 when my father cleared this property, the first piece of property to be cleared, and to be built on, and the first thing he did was saw down the logs and have them cut up and built a house out of them. He sawed down an additional amount of logs to pay for having the original logs sawed out, and brought them down to Alden Mead. The remaining lumber from the house he built a garage and put a construction company in. That’s the initial, and we’re talking about the transformation of 64 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) this area. Mr. Halliday’s house, originally, as he states, was a Laundromat. It was also a, it was a Laundromat with a diner next door, the East Shores Diner, which my mother operated, and my father, Bill Gazeley, operated the Laundromat facility. When my mother shut down the restaurant, it was a liquor store there. Now also down the road, in Mr. Matthews’ old garage, there was a snack bar. There has been a bus service in the neighborhood. I know that there’s, you know, a variety of commercial industries have been successfully concluded in the adjacent properties, not to mention the fact that we ran a construction business for 42 years out of this property. Rented the property for an additional nine years, stored boats there. I got in trouble when I was eight years old for breaking the window on a boat that I thought somebody was throwing away because it was parked out in back of the garage. That was around 1963. That’s my earliest recollection of boat storage. Now, we stored boats in a modest way over the years, but the contention I’m making is that everybody in this neighborhood, with the exception of me, that’s directly adjacent to this property, is in a commercial venture of some sort that has its basis or has been in a commercial venture of some sort that has had its basis in this neighborhood. It’s a very commercial neighborhood in that respect. Now, a lot of them are mom and pop businesses, yes, and I’m not going to say that we ran the tidiest operation in the world. It was an embarrassing eyesore, and it cost a lot of money to clean it up, and I, for one, would rather have boats stored over there than have houses, and I’m sorry to disagree with you, Hal, but, you know, I would rather just have a minimal use facility than more neighbors to create more noise, and in my estimation I think housing and, you know, three or four more houses would be more harmful to the neighborhood from a runoff standpoint, from a septic system standpoint, from a cleared area standpoint, and I respectfully submit to my neighbors, we’ve had a liaise faire attitude in this neighborhood for many years, I’m not trying to throw anybody under the bus. I love my neighbors, but I have to respectfully disagree. This has always been a commercial enterprise, in one form or another, and we ran a sugar shack and made maple syrup. I mean, there’s been a million different things that have been done on a commercial basis in this neighborhood, and it just simply is not true that it’s just a peaceful, residential area. That’s just simply not a fact, and I am not saying this to, like I say, to be vindictive or whatever, but we sold this property in good faith because we thought this was a good for a land that’s been filled for many years. I can tell you there’s not going to be any settling. That property hasn’t settled six inches since we shut the construction company down in 1992. I run 30 ton bull dozers over there as demos for my father’s business, Scott McLaughlin’s Trucking Equipment on Route 4. This business was taxed as a commercial entity, a repair garage facility because we stored parts and equipment. They parched out, basically cannibalized the stuff that was out in back and around, and, you know, it has had many commercial uses over the years, as have most of the neighbors, and it’s my contention that as long as this is reasonable, and I was very glad to hear Mr. Matthews say it was not going to be used for a day launch operation, I think the Planning Board can make some reasonable proposals to Mr. Matthews to hide the boats to minimize the impact on the neighborhood, and as far as I’m concerned, I have no objection, and I’m looking directly at it. Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. KEN KAMBAR MR. KAMBAR-Hi. My name’s Ken Kambar, and I live on 27 Hanneford Road. Hanneford Road would be the upper right hand part of that drawing. I’ll just point it out. Over here, and we look directly across. All of this, even though this is private land, all of this up here is forever wild. It’s marshland and it goes up the hill. There is nothing there that we can see. I can see one building in the wintertime, part of a building, in the summer, I can’t see the building on top, but if you were to put 200 boats there, it would just destroy that whole view. There’s a lot of wildlife in there. There’s beavers and muskrats, geese and ducks and I don’t know what the environmental impact with that. That’s for you people to decide, but the visual impact would be very detrimental. Mr. McLaughin mentioned that that property’s been used commercially over the years, and going by what he said, it was before zoning, when the businesses were originally formed, and currently we have to go with the current zoning and the current appearance of the area and neighborhood, which is, except for the marina, not too commercial, and so we spent most of our life savings building that house over there, and I’d hate to see, I think it would take our property value down, too. As far as the traffic goes, I can tell you because I hear it and I watch the traffic both on Pilot Knob and Ridge Road, and they come around those turns at high rates of speed. I launch my boat at Castaway, and I usually come from the Pilot Knob side, and to make the turn into the Marina, I have to cross on the other side of the road because it’s a tight turn, and I hope that nobody’s coming down that hill around the turn, and so far I’ve been lucky, but you do take a chance when you do that. So to go in and out of that Marina, and you cannot accelerate 65 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) with a boat behind you. So you would be coming out slow, going in slow, and also entering the lot across the street. So it’s more than a dangerous situation, as far as handling boats and trailers. That’s about all I have to say. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MR. KAMBAR-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else? JIM SCHOONOVER MR. SCHOONOVER-Jim Schoonover. I live basically right next door to Michael McLaughlin, which is sort of across the road from this piece of property. I am under the assumption that this has all gone back to residential, and therefore we should eliminate the commercial parts of it. The thing that concerns me is what is it going to look like when I’m sitting in my front yard looking at all those tarps over there, flopping in the breeze? It’s going to look just like the Harris Bay Yacht Club, with 200 boats, and I don’t think they have 200 boats at the Harris Bay Yacht Club. Two hundred boats, it’s going to be a lot more than that. So if you go up through there, take a look, and how would you like that in your front yard? Which is what is going to happen. I like John. John is a great businessman, but I just don’t want to see this in this particular case. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. JOHN ALDEN BEALS MR. BEALS-Good evening. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. MR. BEALS-My name is John Alden Beals. I’m a graduate engineer. I live adjacent to Mr. Kambar, and we call the road over by our place the Indianapolis Speedway. I moved over there from Assembly Point. My father had a home there. I was an inspector for the Lake George Association for many years, and went all over the lake, and I’m concerned, not only of the traffic on the road, and I might tell you I’ve lived on the cliff there overlooking the Pilot Knob Road since 1973, and we average about five to seven accidents there a year. They come down off the Pilot Knob Road at a high speed, and they come down Ridge Road at a high speed, but aside from that fact, I’m concerned about the traffic, with the boats on the bay. The bay is very busy as it is now, and if you add all these boats coming in for weekends or any length of time, it’s going to increase the traffic there, and we’ve had several bad accidents at entrance to the bay, and we’ve had at least, I can think of at least five people who have been killed there since I have lived there, and I moved there in ’73, and I’m concerned about that road. They go around not only do we have the motorcycle meet. We have a lot of people coming from down in Glens Falls on their way to Cleverdale, or Assembly Point or Lake George, and the traffic has done nothing but increase and the danger has done nothing but increase since I’ve lived there, and I hope you people will take this as a consideration, but we don’t want to look across at more industrialization. My family moved to the lake in 1854, and I moved there after I got out of the Navy. I was a Navy officer for many years, and it’s done nothing but increase. You used to, when I was a kid, you hardly would see a boat on Harris Bay, and now it bounds with boats from the two or three boatyards in the area up and down the bay, and you take and add another 100 or 200 boats moving in and out of that bay a day, and it’s going to be a nightmare. I hope you’ll take all of this under consideration. Thank you very much for listening to me. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Yes. KATHY BOZONY MS. BOZONY-My comments would be on the fact that this property is surrounded by wetlands, and although there looks like there’s vegetation going on the down slope, I don’t know, I haven’t had the opportunity to be on the property. Is it cleared right to the edge of that slope? Anybody that’s on the property, I’m curious, or are these limits of clearing that are on the site map proposed? I couldn’t tell. So my thought is, if, in fact, it is being cleared to the elevation change where it drops down 20 feet, and maybe that is vegetative buffer. If you go do with this boat storage facility, again, the neighbors that are looking on it, if there’s no vegetation other than on the down slope, they’re going to be looking at more intensely into the boatyard, and I would recommend that the entire 66 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) down slope be vegetated so that the stormwater can infiltrate the ground before it has an opportunity to start running down the hill, and as a winter boat storage, I don’t know how boats are classified, if they’re classified as impermeable surfaces. They certainly do infiltrate, or block some of the water that would flow down into the ground, but the entire property is wetlands, and I think that that needs to be looked at. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MS. BOZONY-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else? Stu, you have a written comment? MR. BAKER-Yes, we did receive one letter addressed to the Board. The letter is from Bill Calogero at 2629 Route 9 L, which I believe is this property right here. “To the Town of Queensbury: As per the attached “Notice of Appeal Hearing”, I would like to express my comments and concerns. I will not be able to attend the meeting, but as per the options outlined on the notice, would like to send my comments to be heard via fax. First off, my family and I have owned property less than two hundred yards from the property that is requesting a special use permit for over twenty-five years. Since we have been living here full time, which has been for over fifteen years, that particular property has caused concerns within our community connected with the possible contamination of the grounds. To my knowledge, this issue has not been addressed and or rectified. Now the proposal of an outdoor boat and equipment storage facility to be constructed on this very same site adds to its absurdity. The location is on a very bad turn on Route 9L, which is also at the bottom of a hill. To have any additional traffic pulling in or out, let alone cars and big trucks trailing boats and or other water or ATV equipment will surely create hazardous driving conditions. Another issue of concern is that if there are hundreds of boats located in one area, it is sure to attract crime, which will flow over onto our properties and jeopardize the safety of our families. In addition to that, the increased noise levels of even the fewest of the required machinery needed to make the proposed operation work would not only create noise pollution for us, I am also deeply concerned about our area’s wild life, especially the turtle population, which includes endangered species to New York State that live around the property in question as well as the back ends of my and most of my immediate neighbor’s properties. Finally, when the summer is over and all the tourists go home, we will be left with the eyesore of boats stored for the winter. Being from downstate, one of the main reasons I chose to relocate my family and raise my kids in the house I currently own was because of the picturesque scenery we have around our home. I chose Queensbury because I felt it was a great place to live, raise a family and upgrade the quality of living for my wife and two daughters. I love the area so much, that I am forced to work far way from my home to make ends meet. This is a sacrifice I feel is well worth it with the way or area is today. I for one am not sure how”, we lose some of the letter there, this is a faxed copy, “built. I am opposed to the Town of Queensbury granting a Special Use Permit to J & D Marina or any other person, persons and or company, private or corporate for the property described on the attached sheet. I urge the Planning Board to vote against the issuance of a Special Use Permit. After all, the Town of Queensbury promotes the very same beauty I do not want to lose and feel WILL lose if the permit is issued. All one needs to do is look at their letterhead. The phrase the Town of Queensbury uses reads, “Home of Natural Beauty….A Good Place To Live”. I would have to agree. Sincerely, Bill Calogero 2629 Route 9 L Queensbury, NY 12804” MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. The applicant can come back up to the table. Any final questions or comments from the members of the Board? Do you have any tabling conditions, other than Staff and Engineering comments? MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, but to denote on plans some of the things that were identified should be carved in stone. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I’ll let you take it, then. I think, based on the Staff comments, the engineering comments, and some of the comments from the neighbors, I think we’re going to table this application, so that you can provide more information to the Board, and so that we can, you know, take a closer look at the project. MRS. STEFFAN-Do you have any thoughts on the project, now that you’ve heard what some of your neighbors are thinking? MR. MATTHEWS-Well, one thought is, what would you like to see, I mean, what else can we show you? Second thought is, although the neighbors don’t want to see what I want to do, but I have no choice, when I turn 180 degrees and look at the neighbors’ 67 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) property. Now I don’t want to see buses, commercial trucks parked in the yard. Every piece of stuff that’s been collected for years in the yards. I mean, I have nothing against the neighbors, but, I mean, it’s much an eyesore, to me, as maybe them looking out and seeing some boats stored, which actually it’s a lake area. I mean, you’ve got boats at Harris Bay. You’ve got 300 boats there all sitting in the swamp, hanging over the swamp, and in the 40 some odd years that I’ve seen that go on, I haven’t heard anybody complain about it. If I came before you with a proposal to build houses, would I be in the same situation? I don’t want to see a driveway there. I don’t want to see kids running around. It’s a valuable piece of property. I pay substantial taxes on it. All I’m looking for is some way that we can use the property in a low scale means, to help what we’re doing across the street. I have had absolutely no problem with the entrance way, with the driveway, with the curve. I mean, when I pull out of that driveway to go to my driveway, just down the road, now they may be thinking about utilizing the lower driveway, but I tore down a building which was part of my Site Plan for the previous construction that we did at the Marina, so that it would open up the entrance way to that upper lot, which is almost contiguous to the lower portion of that piece of property, of the property in question here. So it’s not as though you can’t see the other driveway. If there was a car parked coming out of that driveway, I can see it from the entrance of the McLaughlin property. Now when I’m coming up the hill, the traffic is behind me. So it’s my concern to stop, if I have to, and watch for any cars coming in the opposite direction, and there’s a clear shot at least 5, 600 feet down the road in that direction. So I really don’t feel that traffic and, yes, the cars go fast. They go fast past by house. I mean, the kids go, going to school in the morning go fast, but, you know, that’s the way Ridge Road is. I mean, the road was designed many years ago so that it could be driven fast, but I just don’t know what your questions are. What else can we do? I mean, what’s going to sway this whole deal here? MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, just to give you a for instance, you know, one of the comments that was repeated several times by the neighbors was visual impact. So, you know, maybe you want to take a look at your planning scheme to see if there’s some additional things that you can do to block the view of the storage. MR. MATTHEWS-Well, I could make the berms higher. I could plant more trees, but you know, when I drive down the road and I go past Jimmy Schoonover’s house, and I look right straight across through there, if we store the boats in the wintertime down in the back, he’s not even going to see them. I went out there yesterday, after one of the fellows from over on the other side of the bay came and approached me and asked me what I was planning on doing, because he had heard all kinds of stories about what I was going to do, and he lives right directly on the curve, and he can see my building from his house. Now I went in the area where I proposed to store boats, and looked towards Hanneford Road, and I can’t see these people’s houses. They might be able to see a little bit of the block building, which is higher right now, because there’s no vegetation on the trees, and in the wintertime, the only people, you know, yes, they’re going to look across there and see some boats stored, but the majority of them are going to be down in the valley. There are going to be no trees cut. What’s cleared is cleared, and has been cleared for decades. I can remember years ago there being a building down in the bottom lower plateau there, where they stored equipment and parts and what not. MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, just another kind of random thought, too, I mean, again, if visual impact is the biggest concern, a lot of the boats that are stored in the winter are shrink wrapped in that blue plastic, you know, maybe a different color plastic would be more appealing, you know, green or white that would blend into the landscape more. MR. MATTHEWS-I’ve always used white. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. MATTHEWS-Because I think blue stands out in the winter. White blends in with the snow. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. MATTHEWS-It blends in with the foliage, no foliage and what not. Now, you know, I even thought, well, maybe we can find some camouflage stuff, but what good would that be when there’s no leaves on the trees? MR. SEGULJIC-Maybe also you could provide us with some photographs from different vantage points to give us an idea of what it’s going to be and what it’s going to look like, because that seems to be one of the big concerns I’m hearing from the public. 68 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. FORD-An additional area of concern is also the impact on wetlands. I’d like to have that studied further. MRS. STEFFAN-So that is the stormwater, we wouldn’t grant stormwater waiver? Is that what you’re saying? MR. FORD-Probably. MR. MATTHEWS-What tests or what would satisfy you? MR. FORD-I want to make sure that the wetland issue is recognized and addressed. The ball’s in your court. MR. MATTHEWS-I mean, if you want to stipulate distances or something like that, I mean, there are no parameters that I know of. I mean, we talked to the APA, and they had found absolutely nothing wrong with what we were proposing. We talked to the people at DEC, to see if they had any outstanding or any particular items that would put a flag on it, and it was not their jurisdiction, but the people that we talked with gave us the impression that it was okay. MR. FORD-Do you have any documentation to that effect, from either APA or DEC? MR. CHASE-I mean, DEC, that was specifically asked by me to DEC, Bill Lupo specifically, and he would not give me anything, and he said, look, the Town of Queensbury knows we’re not jurisdictional, and they know that this is an APA thing, and because it’s a, I can’t remember what class it is, but it says in the GIF response that you guys are the governing agency. You are issuing the permit. So he was pretty adamant about the fact the he could not even give me anything in writing from DEC, and then the APA obviously we did a jurisdictional inquiry, and we have their response in our packet, basically saying it’s a non-regulated activity. However, you know, as soon as we start doing any kind of stormwater mitigation or trying to reduce the amount of stormwater going into the lake, then suddenly it does become a regulated activity, and now we’re within the 100 foot setback, and, you know, a lot of that stuff has to be figured out. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, to say that it’s not, for them to be saying that it’s not under their jurisdiction is much different from saying that they approve or agree to the project. MR. CHASE-Are you referring to DEC or the APA? MRS. BRUNO-Really either. MR. CHASE-Okay. I mean, I guess DEC is saying that it’s not their jurisdiction. They cannot even give an opinion. So then you jump over to the APA, and the APA is saying that this activity is not even something that they regulate. So they have no interest in it, I guess is what they’re saying. They are jurisdictional, and if we were to dig a trench or do anything, you know, any construction improvements, site improvements, then they would need to oversee that and go through all the permitting process and everything for that. MR. BAKER-Yes, well, I guess I’d like to add to that by pointing out that the wetlands at the site are APA jurisdictional, and they are not DEC jurisdictional. It’s APA wetlands only. MR. HUNSINGER-Interesting. MR. CHASE-Which is kind of what we found out in talking to Bill Lupo at DEC. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. All right. Do you want to go forward here. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. MR. CHASE-I guess my question would be do we need to address Item Four of VISION Engineering’s letter? Do we need to go ahead with a full hydrologic analysis and stormwater reports and, I mean, it’s kind of a unique situation. Since there is no permanent structures that are displacing any ground area, the pre and post developed conditions are not any different, so I can simply state what the runoff is. 69 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I mean, the engineer’s comment is consideration should be given to implementing some type of stormwater management practice. So, I mean, again, they’re kind of leaving it open ended for you to make a suggestion, you know, and for them to consider and comment on and for us to consider and comment on. MRS. STEFFAN-Based on how many boats you think you would have on site, and how you would configure the boat storage. MR. HUNSINGER-And it is different. You aren’t putting up a permanent structure. So, you know, a lot of the issues that you just commented on don’t apply. MR. CHASE-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-But what I think I’m hearing from the rest of the Board is, you know, we just want to make sure, and I think that’s kind of what VISION Engineering is saying, too, is, you know, we want to make sure. So, you know, to use Tom’s comment, the ball’s in your court to say, you know, this is the concern that you’ve expressed. This is our response. This is what, you know, we think we can do to help mitigate some of your concerns, or to address your concerns. I don’t think we’re asking for a specific type of report or specific type of plan. MR. CHASE-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-But just, you know, give it consideration and tell us why we shouldn’t be concerned, I guess is really what we’re saying. MR. CHASE-Sure. MRS. STEFFAN-I have to admit, with any of the boat storage, I’m just concerned about the visual impact. Some of the neighbors identified that, but in my experience in the area, whether it’s Lake George or Whitehall or over on Route 149, often the boat storage facilities are a mess, just the way that they’re configured, but there happens to be one boat storage facility over on Route 149 that’s very neatly laid out. It’s not too far from the new barbecue place, and so it’s fenced, it’s graveled. The boats are very neatly configured, and it’s very nice to go by. It’s visually appealing, for a boat storage facility. I’ve never seen another one like it. So I might recommend you take a look at that, because it certainly sticks out in all of the boat storage facilities I’ve seen in the area. MR. MATTHEWS-I know exactly what you’re talking about, and if you drive through our facility, during the height of the season, when it’s packed, you will see exactly the same situation, and I would expect to do nothing less across the road, as far as it being neatly laid out, lined, and, I mean, one of my major provisions is to leave the grassy areas for the boat storage. So the foliage is still there. All we’re going to do is be backing a trailer on and plunking a boat on it, not having any hard surface gravel showing, I mean, just the way it is now. It’s mowed. I mow it with the bush hog, leave it up six inches, and it absorbs the water, and I mean, I haven’t seen any erosion or what not there, and it’s going to be the same amount of water coming off the sky than there would be with boats parked on it. There’d be space underneath the boats for the water to infiltrate into the gravel, dirt, sand. MR. FORD-One of the things that was mentioned, and I’ll just reiterate it, just to give you some further direction, perhaps, and that is the potential for addressing the visual impact through some additional vegetation. You talked about increasing berms, you know, now you’re talking what we’re going to be looking for. If you got into some specifics of trees, for example, that would help break up the visual impact, those are the kinds of things that would be helpful to us. MR. CHASE-I mean, are we saying that we should add more to the berms that are already shown on the plans? MR. FORD-I don’t know that. I’m saying you’ve come up with several ideas, and neighbors have, and I just suggest to you, look at visual impact and how can we mitigate that. MR. TRAVER-Yes, we can’t design your project. MR. FORD-You come up with the plan, come in with the plan and how you’re going to address these various issues. 70 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SIPP-Are these pictures typical of what is on the property, grease, oil? MR. MATTHEWS-I haven’t seen the pictures. So I don’t know? MRS. STEFFAN-No, I believe that, Don, those are old photographs. AUDIENCE MEMBER-They’re old pictures, ’95 and ’96. MR. SIPP-Has this been cleaned up? MR. MATTHEWS-If you were there, there’s nothing there. MRS. STEFFAN-Right, it’s just vacant property. MR. SIPP-Because I was at this property back in the Fall and I didn’t see any of this. MR. MATTHEWS-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-No, we did our drive around, and it was just vacant property. MR. MATTHEWS-That hasn’t been there for 10 years or so. They’ve cleaned it up and cut up all the old equipment and moved it out and seeded it down. MR. FORD-I’m glad to hear that. I was going to take another drive out. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think we all want to. Are you ready, Gretchen? MRS. STEFFAN-Sure. I would like to make a motion to table. MOTION TO TABLE SPECIAL USE PERMIT NO. 14-2008 J & D MARINA, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: thth Tabled to the June 24 meeting, with an application deadline of May 15. So that the applicant can meet the following conditions: 1.That the Planning Board would like the applicant to denote on their plan the following items: a.That there will be trailers stored on the property during the summer. b.That there will be boat storage in the winter. c.That there will be no repair and no boat washing. d.That no new lighting is planned, and no lights on longer than necessary in the evening. e.That there will be no quick launch on the site. 2.That the Planning Board would like the applicant to satisfy the VISION Engineering requirements identified in their April 20, 2008 letter, and obtain a signoff. 3.That the Planning Board would like the applicant to consider buffering scenarios to mitigate visual impacts, and we would like the applicant to present a visual analysis or impact. 4.That the Planning Board would like the applicant to present a stormwater plan focusing on wetland protection for the APA wetlands. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: MR. MATTHEWS-Now, if there’s an issue here, with lighting, and people want lighting, I’d be glad to put in lighting. MR. HUNSINGER-No. MRS. STEFFAN-No. MR. MATTHEWS-No, I heard somebody say, you know, about the security and what not. I have never had any problems across the street, and I leave it dark. 71 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, also the notation, and you’ve identified this, no lights on longer than necessary in the evening, and that there will be no quick launch on the site. MR. HUNSINGER-The public hearing remains open. AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MOTION TO AMEND THE MOTION FOR SPECIAL USE PERMIT NO. 14-2008 J & D MARINA, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: To include that the Planning Board would like the applicant to address Staff comments. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Steffan, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Traver, Mr. Ford, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. HUNSINGER-You’re all set. Thank you. MR. MATTHEWS-Thank you. MR. CHASE-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-The last item on the agenda is the resolution appointing a traffic study committee. I don’t know if everyone saw the e-mail from Craig Brown today, that the th meeting to discuss the traffic, a meeting has been set up for Monday, the 28, at 10 o’clock, and, Stu, I don’t know if you know where the meeting is proposed? MR. BAKER-It’s going to be at the VMJR offices, at 73 Mohican Street in Glens Falls. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I guess first I’d look for volunteers, if anybody would like to volunteer to be on the traffic study committee. MR. BAKER-We did get two responses from Craig Brown’s e-mail, looking for volunteers, and the two Board members who expressed interest in serving were Don Krebs and Don Sipp. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Mr. Krebs isn’t here, but anyone else? MR. FORD-I responded to it as well. MR. BAKER-Okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t see your response. MR. TRAVER-As did I. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, four is too many. MR. TRAVER-Well, unfortunately my response was that I’m not available during the day, during working hours. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. So we do only have two. Tom, you said you would like to attend? MR. FORD-I will. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. So I hear three volunteers, Mr. Krebs, Mr. Sipp, and Mr. Ford. MRS. BRUNO-Let me just ask for clarification. If you go on Monday to the meeting, does that mean you’re on the traffic board? 72 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MR. HUNSINGER-No, it’s just a scoping session, committee, just for this particular project. MR. BAKER-To discuss the traffic study they’ve provided, and more specifically to discuss whether the scope of the study is adequate. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Any other questions? MR. SIPP-Is there going to be another meeting of the full Board that week? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean, I think, you know, the role of the committee is to represent the whole Planning Board, to make sure that, as Stu said, that the scoping session of the study will meet the concerns that the Board has. MR. SIPP-Would you like a written report? MR. HUNSINGER-I don’t think so, because I think between the applicant’s submission and the discussion that we will then have, we’re scheduled Tuesday night. So I think your mind will be fresh enough that you can. MR. SIPP-We’re going to meet Tuesday night. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, Tuesday night at seven. So, you know, I don’t think a written report will be necessary. It will be covered in Staff Notes as well. MR. FORD-Anything in particular you want back, then, Chris, or just for our edification and guidance? MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, I haven’t seen anything specific to the project on traffic, but, I mean, you’ve been here enough to know what the typical concerns are. MR. SIPP-We have a traffic report. MR. HUNSINGER-That’s right, there is a traffic report. MRS. STEFFAN-And, Don, just because you weren’t here I think the last time they presented, I think you were in Florida. If you read the minutes, their traffic engineer did do a fairly good presentation which provided a great deal of information. So you might want to read that before you go. MR. BAKER-I will be attending that meeting as well. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Good. So, would you like to put forward a motion? MRS. STEFFAN-I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO APPOINT THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS TO THE TRAFFIC STUDY COMMITTEE FOR REVIEW OF SITE PLAN 61-2007 VMJR COMPANIES PER THIS th PLANNING BOARD RESOLUTION DATED MARCH 18, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: The members are: Don Sipp, Planning Board member; Tom Ford, Planning Board member; and Don Krebs, Planning Board Alternate. nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MR. HUNSINGER-And I thank the members in advance for volunteering, and I trust that they will do an admirable job and represent the Board well. Any further discussion, business? A motion to adjourn. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. 73 (Queensbury Planning Board 04/22/08) MOTION TO ADJOURN THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING OF APRIL 22, 2008, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: nd Duly adopted this 22 day of April, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: Mr. Traver On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Chris Hunsinger, Chairman 74