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2009.01.13 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING WORKSHOP MEETING JANUARY 13, 2009 INDEX DISCUSSION Planning Board Policies, Bylaws, Procedures & Other 1. 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 01/14/09) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING WORKSHOP MEETING JANUARY 13, 2009 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CHRIS HUNSINGER, CHAIRMAN GRETCHEN STEFFAN, SECRETARY THOMAS FORD STEPHEN TRAVER THOMAS SEGULJIC DONALD SIPP DONALD KREBS, ALTERNATE PAUL SCHONEWOLF, ALTERNATE ZONING ADMINISTRATOR-CRAIG BROWN SENIOR PLANNER-STUART BAKER LAND USE PLANNER-KEITH OBORNE MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening everyone. I’ll just call the meeting to order. As you might recall from our discussion, I thought it would be useful to have a, for lack of a better term, an organizational meeting, before we get into our year’s business, just to talk about policies and procedures and other issues that might come up, that have come up, really, in the last several months. One of the things that we were just talking about briefly, off the record, before everyone came in, is I received a phone call last night from the Town Supervisor regarding the term expirations of the various Planning Board members, and he called me because it was on the agenda for discussion at the Town Board workshop last night, and he wanted me to be aware of it and called myself and the Zoning Board Chairman. Apparently there were I think five, five of the seven terms were messed up somehow, and he went on to give me some detail about how, you know, there’s precedence in State Law from 1896 about what you do when there’s a problem and recreate the record, and I guess the record’s been recreated. MR. BROWN-Yes. What we did, and if you want me to jump in? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, go ahead, Craig. MR. BROWN-What we did is we went back as far as the Craig MacEwan days, when the stagger of Board members was correct, and what the Town Law, New York State Town Law, says is each Board member’s term has to be equal to the number of Board members that there are. So seven Board members, each member serves seven years. MR. HUNSINGER-So every year one person is off. MR. BROWN-Every year somebody is done, or up for re-appointment. So what we noticed, when the end of 2008 came around, we had a couple, a Zoning Board member and a Planning Board member that we were looking to see, okay, who’s turn is it, and nobody was expiring. So that made us look at the terms, and two or three expired in 2010 and 2012. MR. HUNSINGER-Tom thought he was off. MR. SEGULJIC-I thought mine was up. MR. BROWN-You were up, and Roy Urrico thought he was up on the Zoning Board. So what we did is we found that once, it was 1999 when we started having alternates, and when we would refill a regular member’s position with an alternate, what would happen is we’d give them a new seven years and start there, rather than let them complete the term they were filling in for. So it got completely messed up where we had two or three members then ending in one year. Nobody in the next two or three years. So we had to go back and recreate that whole thing, and that’s what the Town Board had a little workshop last night, and figured most of that stuff out or all that stuff out. So believe it or not it was worse for the Zoning Board because, as far back as when they only had five members, it was still messed up, and that’s in the 1990’s. So, and we did the best we could to recreate that, staggered, and what I have is a list of all the correct, if you want to pass those around, and then letters from the Supervisor asked me to deliver to 1 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) everybody tonight, that basically is a copy of the resolution, and a letter that says please come in as soon as you can to sign your new oath of office based on these new terms, this new stagger. Like I said, everybody fills in for a member that had an original correct stagger. So we’re back on track now, finally, after a number of years of being incorrect. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-So, Tom, yours doesn’t end until the end of the year. TANYA BRUNO, MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC MRS. BRUNO-So mine actually ended a week ago. MR. SEGULJIC-Excuse me. So, when you’re an alternate, and then you get appointed full time, how does that term work? MR. BROWN-If I’m a regular member, and my term is up in 2010, and you’re an alternate, and your term is up in 2020, if you take my spot, you’re not still on until 2020. You fill the rest of my 2010 slot. MR. SEGULJIC-So mine comes up in 2010. MR. BROWN-So yours comes up in 2010 now, even though you were just appointed yesterday, you don’t reset the seven. MR. SEGULJIC-You don’t reset the seven. MR. BROWN-And that’s the mistake we made. We did that several times, and that just caused you all kinds of confusion. MR. HUNSINGER-So I didn’t realize that the alternates are only alternates for seven years. MR. BROWN-The alternates are alternates for seven years, yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, then how can Tanya be appointed in 2006, and her term expires in 2008? MR. BROWN-She filled for Tony Metivier, who’s term ended in 2008. So you’d complete the term of the regular member. MR. KREBS-Just like, you know, with the Senate appointment now. The Senate appointment is only for the expiration for Hillary. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-And that’s in Town Code somewhere? MR. BROWN-New York State Town Law. MR. KREBS-Actually, it’s in our, if you look in our By-law things. I just happened to be looking through for something else, but it says right there that, our frame for Bylaws, that each person is one year, and when you fill in, you fill in for the term of the person you replace. MR. BROWN-Right, you don’t start a fresh set. MR. SEGULJIC-So, if an alternate, an alternate’s on for seven years, (lost words) they become a full-time Board member, but that seven year period, they would be reappointed as an alternate. MR. BROWN-Correct, if they haven’t become a regular member yet. MR. FORD-So a re-appointment is for an additional seven years, as in your case. MR. BROWN-That’s correct. 2 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. HUNSINGER-It’s weird that mine happened to work out right. Because I was appointed in 2000. MR. BROWN-There were one or two between both Boards that just happened to be correct, but with the number of alternates that come through and we start the clock all over again, and we just totally messed up. MR. SEGULJIC-Who did that fun mental jumble? MR. BROWN-Pam and I did it. MR. HUNSINGER-Who’s the official keeper, though, the Clerk, right? MR. BROWN-Believe it or not, I think it’s the Attorney’s Office. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. BROWN-Because they generate the resolutions for the Town Board, through the appointments, but it falls between our Department, for these two Boards. The other two Boards that the Town Board has purview over, the Board of Assessment Review, and the Cemetery Commission, also had terms that were messed up. So this is a broad brush to fix everybody. You guys just happen to have meetings before they do. So they wanted to deal with it, you know, have a meeting this year. MR. SEGULJIC-So, do we all have to go in and resign our? MR. BROWN-Everybody has to come in and resign their oath of office. MR. KREBS-Not the alternates, though, right? MR. BROWN-I would check with Darleen. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Because we didn’t change. MR. KREBS-We didn’t change. MR. TRAVER-Well, wouldn’t it only be people who’s term was adjusted in this process? MR. BROWN-I don’t have the answer to that. I would just, if you’re in the building paying your taxes or whatever, just ask Darleen to sign your oath of office. MRS. STEFFAN-That’s a good idea. MR. SIPP-Mine’s the same. MR. BROWN-I know what she said, there’s a couple of people who haven’t signed it for a couple of years and technically, according to the County Civil Service, we’re not supposed to pay you unless you’ve signed the oath of office. So I’m sure that Dan’s letter says something about come in before your next regular meeting so we can make it look good. MR. KREBS-So, just as an example, if, in fact, I were to, let’s say that Tom, who’s up in 2009, for some reason had to leave the Board next month, and I took his place as an alternate moving up. MR. BROWN-You would be up in 2009. MR. KREBS-Exactly. Okay. That’s what I wanted to understand. MR. SCHONEWOLF-It works that way on every Board. I mean, Board of Fire Commissioners, everything down the State, that’s the way it works. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s nice to have an up to date list, too. MR. TRAVER-It is, yes. MR. BROWN-And that’s a correct one. MR. HUNSINGER-I was going to say, if anyone has information to update. 3 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. KREBS-Mine is wrong. MR. BROWN-If you want to just mark one up and pass it around, and then we’ll take it back and fix it up, if everybody wants to check theirs on one master. MR. KREBS-It would be nice if our phone numbers appeared, too. MR. BROWN-Well, that’s one that, I mean, we have phone numbers some place, and we can circulate one for Board members the phone numbers, but we don’t like to have it for the public to get. MR. KREBS-This is for the public? MR. BROWN-No, but if you want one with all the Board members phone numbers on it, we can keep one, you know, for the Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions on that? When we worked up the agenda, and I had the item, Planning Board Bylaws, Policies and Procedures, I actually didn’t mean it as a heading, but I meant it as this document. Does everybody have a copy of this? I told Keith, I meant to send around an e-mail to everybody to have you take a look at it, and see if there’s any questions, comments or changes that you feel we ought to make in here. MR. BAKER-Is there anybody that needs a copy this evening? MR. FORD-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Thanks, Stu. MR. BAKER-Let me go make a copy. MR. TRAVER-The only suggestion I had was, when we did talk about attendance and so on, I was going to suggest something we could put in there. MR. HUNSINGER-That was, yes, part of the reason I brought. I mean, the two, the first two items, Completeness Review and Agenda Control are contained in here. As you might recall, those who have been on the Board for a while, the Agenda Control, the number of items that we review per meeting, is contained in the Bylaws, and we have, on occasion, changed it. We haven’t changed it in two or three years now, but that was an item that I wanted to discuss, as well as Completeness Review. We did try to have Board members come in and do Completeness Review last year. I can’t remember when we started it. It wasn’t January, but it was, you know, February or March. Everyone had an opportunity. Did anyone not get an opportunity to go in? Don? MR. SIPP-Nobody ever talked to me about it. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, well, that’s part of the reason why I wanted to bring it up now is because there seemed to be some confusion as to whether or not it was something we wanted to continue or not continue, and I figured, you know, this was the best place, the best forum, to bring it up. MR. FORD-I appreciate the effort. There’s no confusion on my part as to whether or not it should be continued. I think it should be discontinued. The reason that we brought it up initially, I think it served it’s purpose, and there’s no reason to continue it. As I recall it had to do with basically completeness, the complete packets that were coming to us. I think that that has turned around a great deal, and it has much more to do with staffing, perhaps, then it does to our involvement and oversight. That’s my opinion. MR. SEGULJIC-I’ll agree with that. MRS. STEFFAN-I will, too. MR. TRAVER-I think we can always resume a tool if we decide, at some point down the road, that that’s going to benefit us again. MR. BROWN-And we’re kind of experiencing a little bit of growing pains in the Department. Obviously Keith is new this year, and he’s still, you know, trying to absorb as much information as possible. So there may be something that squeaks through here 4 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) and there that maybe shouldn’t have been on, but you know, it got on anyway, or I know sometimes we’ll have a discussion that they don’t quite have everything you need, but let’s try and keep them going so that we keep them as an item on the agenda. So, you know, we do what we, we do our best to be the bad guy and not put them on if they don’t have enough information, but. MR. FORD-You do communicate that with Chris, however, so that there’s some contact? MR. BROWN-When there’s something that, say an old item that they’ve been asked to come back with information, maybe they have five of the six items, well, do you want to keep them on or hold them off for that one thing that’s missing? And usually it’s, let’s put them on, we’ll work through it. If it’s still an outstanding item that we can’t resolve, we’ll table them again, but at least you can make some progress. So, yes, we bump applications that, if they come in and they’re missing two or three things, they just get put off until the next month, rather than put them on. We know they’re going to be tabled because they’re not going to have enough information for you, why waste their time and yours when you’ve got a backlog of applications already. We’ll just give you the complete ones. So, and to that end, we’re going to work, you know, we’re going to continue to work as hard as we can to make sure everything on that checklist has either been included in the application or an explanation as to why it’s not there is in the application. So then you can determine, well, we accept this explanation or not, and, you know, we’ll go forward with the review of it. So that’s a little bit of a learning curve for us, but we’re continuing to try and make them better for you guys. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, and I think one of the other things that we intended to be better at, and I think we have to be better at this year, is sending away applicants who don’t have all of their things and just say, you know, this is too incomplete. We have to table this, instead of spending any time on it. We’re not perfect at that yet, but I think we’re much better at it than we have been in the past. MR. BROWN-Well, the razor’s edge that we have there is that we have a checklist. If an applicant comes in and says I request a waiver from all these, they’re entitled to ask for that. They can come before the Board and then you guys will say, well, no way, we need this information before, and so they get caught in that loop of trying to give you the bear minimum that you’ll go for before you make a decision, and then sometimes that costs them two or three trips to the Board, but really it’s, you know, it sounds cold, but it’s their problem. There’s a checklist. MRS. STEFFAN-Exactly. They’re taking a risk. MR. BROWN-There’s the checklist. Here’s what you need to submit. If you choose not to submit it, you’re rolling the dice with the Board. Maybe you’re going to get tabled. Maybe you’ll get through, and kudos for being the tough guys. I mean, you really need to have all the information that’s in the application to make an informed decision. So, I don’t have a problem with you sending them away. We just try and make sure they have it before we get them to you. We can’t make them. We can only make sure they have a response, and if their response is N/A, then you just have to decide if you don’t want to see it or not. MR. FORD-My perception is, again to reiterate, that it served its functioning at a time when the need was perceived to be there. We addressed it. MR. BROWN-Well, I think the more times you, and I’m certainly not trying to tell you what or how to deal with applications, but the more times applicants appear before you with a list of four or five waiver requests, and the more times you turn away that say, we’re not going to deal with this until you get us this information, the less we’re going to get those waiver requests and the more you’re going to get complete applications. So, you know, it’s a little bit of tough love but it keeps you guys, your information level up here when you make decisions instead of down here. MRS. STEFFAN-The only time we run into an issue is when the Planning Board meetings go beyond midnight, and then our decision-making ability is compromised by the late hour, and so that’s usually the only time folks squeak by. MR. HUNSINGER-Those are the ones when we get the e-mail the next morning from Craig saying, what did you guys do, what did you mean by this? MR. BROWN-Well, you know, along this agenda control, your meeting’s advertised seven to eleven. You guys get to eleven o’clock, and you’re not going to be able to get 5 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) to it, I’m sorry, you know, the next two items. It’s not a popular decision, but rather than make the wrong decision or just give away the, not that you guys give away the store, but give away the store because it’s eleven thirty, come back next week. MR. TRAVER-It’s certainly been better, I think. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s probably an issue we should re-visit. Because, you know, we have been put in a situation where we made some, I believe we made some bad decisions or maybe we didn’t give something the attention or the scrutiny it deserved because of the late hour. MR. TRAVER-Yes. Although it’s my perception, and I could be wrong, but just sort of a gut feeling, it seems like it’s been better this year. I mean, we’ve had fewer of those really late meetings. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, we have. MR. TRAVER-And I think a lot of it can be attributed to the whole agenda control and Staff have clearly indicated they’ve made an effort to look at different things and say, well this is, you know, going to take a certain amount of time and think of the agenda in terms of time rather than numbers, and that’s been, I think, tremendously helpful. Because then we’re, you know, we’re giving the applicants what they deserve which is a fair hearing and enough time to do what they need to do without feeling that, you know, we’re. MR. KREBS-And I know you don’t want to squash public input. MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. KREBS-But, you know, many times we sit there and the people get up and say the same exact thing that the people before said, that the people before said, that the people before said, and I think maybe Chris is going to have to say, if you have something new to add, please come forward, but if you don’t have anything new to add, we don’t want to hear the fact that you have the same opinion that 14 other people have. Because that opinion is already on the table. MR. TRAVER-They gave us a handout this past year, and we’ve been using that, and I think, you know, over time that will help that, but quite often, unfortunately, when we have the public controversy, it’s generally people that don’t have experience with the Planning Board, you know, all of a sudden they get alarmed because they hear of some project and they may have never even been necessarily aware of how we function as a Board. So they come in almost in a panic sometimes desperately opposed or in favor, perhaps, of some project, but I think that the handout, I think, and, Chris, I know regularly, when we do have a lot of public comment, he will proactively point out that part of the handout to people that, you know, try to keep your comments to new information, and I think that that’s helped. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s hard, though, because people want the say. MRS. STEFFAN-Exactly. MR. TRAVER-Yes, well, they’ve been thinking about it in developing these Boards. MRS. STEFFAN-And they have the right to it. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-And of course, I mean, the other issue is, and I think, I’m not sure where this comes from, but I think there’s a perception by the public oftentimes that if they pack the room with 100 people that oppose the project, that we’re going to naturally oppose the project, and they don’t seem to understand that it’s not a popularity contest. It’s not an exercise in democracy. It’s an exercise of this Board, you know, in making a determination. MR. KREBS-And the other thing that’s happened over and over again is that people keep speaking about the Comprehensive Plan, as if it, in fact, was law. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. 6 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. KREBS-It is not. It’s strictly a guide for the Town Board, as they move forward and make zoning laws, but if you listen to the public, so often they get up and talk about it like it is the law. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, and that’s part of the difficulty is that folks don’t understand the process, and unless you are involved, unless you’re a Planning Board member or a Zoning Board member or on any of the Boards, you don’t really understand the connection. However, we do have an incongruence in Town, because we did re-write the Comprehensive Land Use Plan, but we didn’t make the zoning amendments that went along with it. So there is some confusion for people who have been part of that whole process. So that’s a systemic problem, yes, that’s a systemic problem. MR. HUNSINGER-And that was something that we had later in the agenda to talk about is the Codes and Ordinances. MR. BROWN-Well, we’re this close with the new zoning. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. BROWN-A couple of months, I think, the public hearing’s will be done. MR. HUNSINGER-So getting back to the Agenda Control, are members generally comfortable with the number that we’re using right now? I personally don’t see a reason to change it, but I wanted to put it on the agenda for discussion. MR. SCHONEWOLF-What’s the outlook in the future? It looks to me like some people are dropping out. Maybe we’ll see a (lost words) whatever it is, but do you think they’re going to stay at five, six, seven a night? What do you think, Craig? MR. BROWN-Yes. I think so. Right now we’ve got an overflow that we couldn’t get them all on in January. There’s four or five that I think were bumped to February. So, and, you know, with the history of the Board and of certain applicants more than applications, things are going to get tabled to the next month or the next month, because there’s a project that comes in that’s either controversial or the design is such that you guys want them to maybe tweak something or get some more information. So there’s always going to be those two or three that are going to take up a slot on a future agenda. So I think, I don’t think you’re going to have a problem doing six and six, for as long as you want. MR. OBORNE-And to elaborate on what Paul’s asking is we are getting quite a few applications in. That is not slowing down. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. OBORNE-It is for the zoning, which could be expected. That could be attributed to the season, but the planning, no, not slowing down at all. MR. HUNSINGER-And that is the one thing, Paul, that you brought up, that I find frustrating is where we have an item on the agenda, and either the week before the meeting or the night of the meeting, the applicant comes in and asks that we table it. To me. MR. SCHONEWOLF-It’s rude. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, not just that, but they, you know, they took up a spot that somebody else who might have been ready should have been before the Board. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Plus the public might be there for that, because they heard about it, or it’s been published. Now we’ve got to republish it. MR. HUNSINGER-But I don’t know what we can do about that. MR. BROWN-Well, you know, I’ve got a couple of options. MR. TRAVER-Well, I think what typically, what I can recall typically happens with that is that they ask to be immediately returned to the agenda at the earliest possible convenience, and they’re kind of moving to the head of the line a little bit. MR. BROWN-Yes, and you’re certainly under no obligation to do that. 7 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. BROWN-It’s at your discretion to do that. Granted there are instances where there’s a situation there’s no control over. There’s been an accident or a family situation where an attorney or an applicant can’t make it. I mean, I think those are the exceptions to the rule. If it’s just, you know, I’m not ready or, I forgot I scheduled my vacation and my attorney’s going to be out of town that week, they get put off not until the next week or the next month, but submit by the next agenda cycle and we’ll get you on in, you know, if you’re on for January and you request a tabling this Tuesday night, we’ll see you in March. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, that’s what we’ve done the last couple of times, and I think if we do that. MR. BROWN-Yes, I mean, and I think that message will be out there that, once I get in the slot, I better not miss it because I’m going to take an extra two months that I don’t have to wait. That’s the tough love version, but, you know, and there are instances where you, okay, we’ve seen you three times before, you want a tabling. Let’s put you on next week and just get done with your project, but those you have to play case by case. MR. TRAVER-Of course the downside to that is then they may not withdraw their application for that night and they come in and spend an hour before, with us having to table them anyway, but I don’t see how we have any control over that kind of thing really. MR. HUNSINGER-So it sounds like there’s not much feeling among the Board members to change the number of items right now. MR. TRAVER-No, I think it’s more time management than it is numbers. MR. HUNSINGER-Absolutely. Absolutely. MR. TRAVER-Yes, but we’ve had meetings that we’ve been over at nine thirty. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Not enough, but some. MR. BROWN-Well, you guys know, as you came in for the completeness review, is what we try and do is once we get a list of the applications to see what’s what and what’s complete, then certain applications have to go on certain meetings based on they need a variance first. Then Site Plan, and that’s something I’d like to talk about later if I have an opportunity, but, and then once we’ve broken them up that way, we try and balance the meetings where this is a big one, this is a small one. Let’s put these two in here. So we don’t have a six hour meeting and a two hour meeting. We try and even it out as best as possible. There’s some wild card applications out there that, you know, take three hours by themselves, and that just blows the whole thing. MR. TRAVER-Right, and I think on the occasions when we’ve been done at nine or nine thirty it’s usually because we’ve had a shortened agenda because somebody’s withdrawn their application or something, not because it was scheduled that way. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Steve actually I think had asked that we put Sign Ordinance on the agenda, and it was something that I wanted to bring up anyway, and it was even Steve wanted to bring it up in the context of The Great Escape’s signage, and I said, well, we can’t really talk about specifics, without the benefit of the applicant being there, but I think we do need to talk about the Sign Ordinance as a general policy because I’ve always felt that there’s kind of a disconnect between the Sign Ordinance and Site Plan Review, and there’s been a number of occasions where an applicant has simply said, well, you know, I’ll put up a Code compliant sign, when we’re sitting there doing a Site Plan Review, and then they do something that we wouldn’t like or we didn’t like, and at that point it’s already too late. So I mean, I’m not sure where I expected the discussion to lead, other than to have kind of a general discussion about it, you know, maybe we need to make a recommendation to the Town Board about the Sign Ordinance and I think there is some information from the Sasquatch sign that’ll kind of shed some light on the issue, without talking about that specifically, but I wanted to put it on the agenda for discussion. MRS. STEFFAN-I certainly think that it’s a, you know, relevant issue for us to make some policy decisions on, and if you look at the Zoning Board agenda for this month, it’s all, it’s predominantly sign exceptions, and so I think we need to address those things in 8 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) Site Plan Review, and also make some recommendations to the Town Board, because things are getting out of hand in Town. They really are. MR. BROWN-When it comes to the Sign Code, and not to jump in front of anybody, when it comes to the Sign Code, the authority that the Planning Board has, with the administration of the Sign Code itself is very little. What you do have, though, is an extreme amount of flexibility with your both subdivision, more importantly Site Plan Review. When you look at a Site Plan, certainly the sign is part of the site, and to look at the design of the sign, the location of the sign, the size of the sign, how the sign’s landscaped, all those things you can say, here’s the concept. Here’s what I’d like to see, and here’s what you’re going to show me, yes, I approve this, and then if they come in for their sign permit, as long as they have the right size and it meets the setbacks and they meet all the dimensional requirements of the Code, then they can put the sign there, but you guys certainly have discretion over, is it a monument sign or do we want to see a pylon sign. Do we want to see a wooden sign or, I don’t know if you want to get too much into the materials of the sign, but certainly the style and location. This side of the property rather than that side of the property because you have to cut more trees over here, or this is a high spot or low spot, or I think you have the discretion to direct them where and what you’d like to see for a sign there. MR. SIPP-Well, I go to a specific case with Rite Aid. They came in with a 25 foot freestanding sign. We said no, and then they also wanted another sign on the other end on Lafayette, same thing, freestanding, 25, we said no, we would put a monument sign. Okay. They turn around. Two months later they’re in the Zoning Board saying, well, the Planning Board said we could have a freestanding sign out there, and had I not been there that night, the Zoning Board wouldn’t have known beans about it. MR. BROWN-What would be helpful for, not only us when it comes, and that’s everybody on Staff, right from me through Bruce who does the enforcement in the field is, if there’s a specific item you want to see as part of a Site Plan or a provision or a performance kind of thing you wanted to do, make it a condition of the approval. We’re going to give you this approval with a condition that, the sign that you pick is no taller than eight feet. It’s a monument style sign, and it’s landscaped, or you’re not handcuffing them to exact size, but you’re going to give them a window to work in, and if you don’t want the 25 foot, condition it that no 25 foot freestanding sign. MR. SIPP-Right. We said that. We said because. MR. BROWN-I know, but if it’s in the minutes, it’s different than if it’s a condition of the approval. It’s easier to find. I’m going to use another argument, maybe later, that if it’s in the minutes, that it is something that they’re bound by, but for the most part, if it’s a condition in a resolution, then that’s the easiest way to enforce it. MR. SIPP-I think, in a Site Plan Review, we should have the power to dictate what we want to see, and that is it, without them crawling around behind us and saying, well, they didn’t say we couldn’t. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, and that one application we did say, as a condition, there would be no reader board. MR. TRAVER-Well, and I think that’s a case, and another case, that’s a little bit, it’s an unusual sign, and I think, you know, if we had an applicant that came before us that was doing something that was exotic, they were putting it several hundred feet up in the air, or it was so bright that it would upset the whole neighborhood or something, you know, then I think that we need to look at that in context. I mean, it could even impact our consideration of a paint scheme. The brightness and the condition of the sign might affect how the colors are going to be perceived, you know, in the area. So I think that there are cases where you have sort of a “normal” sign that, and we can often tell, I know from my experience in looking at the different site plans, you can usually tell if a sign is going to be fairly mundane and reasonable or if it’s going to be something exotic, and I think certainly in the case of the exotic, you know, that’s something where clearly I think it’s important, in our role as planning people, to have, you know, some discussion with the applicant that they need to come back and (lost words). MR. BROWN-What I’d like to see, and I know we’ve talked about this on, at least in our office on numerous occasions, maybe in a workshop here, but when applications or projects require review by both Boards, Planning Board and Zoning Board, whether it’s for a Site Plan and an Area Variance for the building, or Site Plan and a Sign Variance for the sign, that part of that review process, before the Zoning Board makes any 9 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) decisions, right now the way the Code’s set up is you get your variance first before you get your Site Plan, but what I’d like to see is that any time that you need both Board’s approvals, that the application automatically come to the Planning Board first, for a recommendation to the Zoning Board. You can almost do all of your Site Plan Review, you’re going to sit down, look at the site, get a feel for it, without actually making any decisions or going through SEQRA or all those things, and then when you provide a recommendation to the Zoning Board that says we don’t want a 25 foot tall sign, or you know, we don’t want a 185, you know, whatever the issues are with not just the sign but any component of the project, we think it’s great, but we don’t want to see this much parking, or, you know, a building with a different kind of façade where they don’t need a height variance we’d like to see. Those kinds of recommendations to the Zoning Board are definitely going to help them when the applicant’s sitting before them saying, I want a variance for this. Otherwise, they get their variance and they come to you and say, the Zoning Board gave me my variance. They approved this part of the project. You have to give me all this parking. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. KREBS-I mean, I haven’t read the new Sign Ordinance. I’m sure you took some of that, you know, you take like when they put the malls in, you know, they’re allowed so many square foot of sign depending on the size of the building, but there are other issues like back lighting, front lighting. So they’ll wait until the review is all complete. Then they’ll go over to the ZBA and get a variance, and I don’t know how. You can’t stop that. MR. BROWN-Well, sure you can, but I think if you get the Zoning Board to buy into the whole process of, if I get a commercial site in front of me asking for a Sign Variance, I want to know what the Planning Board thinks, because whether they reviewed this Site Plan 20 minutes ago or 30 weeks ago, I want to know how this sign fits into their review and approval of this site, and if the Zoning Board, you know, it’s going to be a lot of hand holding and, you know, leading them down the path to do that, but if we can get them to, what’s that mean, it means a lot more applications before this Board. Maybe a lot more recommendations, but you do get projects that are consistent with what you think you’re going to get when you’re doing your Site Plan, when you have a chance to recommend what you like or don’t like about the sign. MR. OBORNE-And I will say that the Zoning Board does value the Planning Board’s recommendations. I mean, absolutely. They, in fact, welcome the guidance. MR. TRAVER-And if an applicant goes to the Zoning Board and they fail to disclose that they had already discussed coming back to the Planning Board, then does the Zoning Board have an obligation to overturn their decision, or to re-evaluate their decision? MR. BROWN-Do they have an obligation to? If somebody were to challenge that, absolutely. I mean, they can be requested to re-visit an application, yes. MR. TRAVER-Because I think an applicant, I mean, obviously it would be wonderful if we all read the minutes of every Board and so on, and I don’t know that we can say that if an applicant comes before us and then they’re going to go before the Zoning Board that the Zoning Board has a responsibility to, you know, study the whole process that that applicant went through before us, but certainly, I think the onus is on the applicant to disclose that this subject was discussed with the Planning Board and we were, you know, the result of that discussion was that we’d be coming back for that aspect. MR. OBORNE-I absolutely agree with you on that. I also agree that, as a Staff member that is present on both Boards, I think a little of that is on my shoulders, also, and that’s one thing I can promise in the future, that, you know, that will be reviewed much more carefully, and something like this will not happen, 185 foot freestanding sign. MR. BROWN-Not that we’re talking about any specific project. MR. OBORNE-Right, or any other sign. MR. TRAVER-Well, I think that’s generous, but I think the responsibility really is on the applicant. I think you’re being very generous to them by, you know. MR. OBORNE-It does circle around to it, but, that’s my two cents. MR. BROWN-Just one more thing on the Sign Code. During all of the workshops and discussions we’ve had on the Zoning Ordinance, obviously the Sign Code is tied to that 10 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) pretty tightly, especially in the commercial zones, performance standards. Immediately or very soon after we get done with the Zoning Ordinance, the goal is to jump on the Sign Code and revise that. What I can tell you, big picture items with the new or potentially the future Sign Code is that it’s going to be more restrictive. The Town Board expressed an interest to take, for instance, a maximum of 50 square foot freestanding sign, limit it to 40. Maximum freestanding sign 20 to 25, certain zoning districts, monument style signs, no taller than eight feet. So at least the draft items that we talked about, bringing the Sign Code a little bit tighter out of the 70’s, into the 2010’s, but. MR. KREBS-Those are the kinds of things, if you could rebuild the Town, you wish you had. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. BROWN-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we can’t look back, we have to look forward. MR. SCHONEWOLF-I know it, but that’s how they’ve turned out most successful, but you still have the same (lost word), because I was on a Zoning Board where every time they’d build a mall, like, okay, here are the standards for that mall, for signs, and sure as hell almost every store would come in for some sort of variance because of their corporate seal and all that, and it’s a jungle and it takes up a lot of time. MR. TRAVER-One other question regarding that. I know that there was some, there were some changes made. I believe that the Town passed an Ordinance forbidding digital signs. MR. HUNSINGER-I was going to bring that up, too. MR. TRAVER-Okay. I was just going to say, now, those digital signs that are out there, do they have to come down, or are they grandfathered in? Or is that still> MR. BROWN-I don’t know if there’s a sunset provision in there. I don’t know. I think there’s only three or four that I can think of, the CVS, the Stewarts on Dix. MR. KREBS-Glens Falls National. MR. BROWN-Yes, that’s been there forever and ever. MRS. STEFFAN-But the time and temperature is exempt. MR. SIPP-That’s exempt. MR. HUNSINGER-The time and temperature was an exemption, yes. MR. KREBS-Was exempt. MR. BROWN-So those, I think, are the four. I don’t know. I’d have to look at it. MR. BAKER-I don’t think there was a sunset provision. MR. BROWN-I don’t think so, but. MR. HUNSINGER-I was going to bring that up, just as saying I think that was, I mean, I was someone that was on the fence, the last time we looked at LED sign for a gas station, but I’ve got to tell you that I was glad that the Town Board took the position they took, because that makes it easy for us. MR. BROWN-And then we got a request from a billboard company to modify one of their existing billboards, and make it into an electronic billboard (lost words). So the Town Board looked at it and a lot of times you have to kind of exaggerate things to really drive it home, looked at the scale of an electronic sign and said, no, that’s not what we want. MR. TRAVER-Well, it’s only my opinion, but I would say, even if we could offer some incentives to those relatively few, at this point, businesses that have the digital sign, that maybe we share in the cost of renovating the sign or doing something like that, I think it would be an investment worthwhile for the appearance of the Town, because it’s really quite, it’s even worse when there are only a few, in some respects. 11 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I think so, too. MR. TRAVER-It probably wouldn’t be difficult to do and it would be, you know, probably a relatively small investment compared to, you know, the aesthetic cost, you know, the future value of our Town against that. So I don’t know if that’s something could be. MR. KREBS-Well, not only that, Steve, but the number of arguments we’re going to get for applicants because there are pre-existing signs that sit there, and if that person can have one, why shouldn’t I have one? MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. BROWN-Yes. Just so you know, we always caution applicants to not use that argument because it’s not a very good argument. MR. TRAVER-That’s not a winning, but you’re right, I mean, that’s a consideration. MRS. STEFFAN-We certainly think of all the re-development opportunities, we’re going to be able to change some of the signs in the Town, and the other thing are the conditions, and there isn’t any reason why we can’t put a condition on someone’s approval to say, if there will be changes to your signage, you will need to come back before the Planning Board for Site Plan Review, and then once that condition is added, then they have to come back to us. MR. FORD-And some of those, very possibly, with current digital signs, will be here before us, and who knows how much we would re-visit. MR. BROWN-Yes, and some of those types of conditions, like that one, they could be almost boilerplate conditions. I know we’ve talked about this before, is what kind of regular conditions can we just put on every resolution that, you know, final engineering signoff, or need changes to the sign or the landscaping or just any, a general condition, any changes to this plan, you have to come back to the Planning Board. Those kind of general conditions could be put on any resolution. MRS. STEFFAN-I would like to look at the motions, because they used to be, the motions used to be a lot more expansive than they are right now, and I know you went through a process where they were scaled down, but I think we need to re-visit those again, based on the current conditions, to see what the motions, what the boilerplate motions need to be. MR. TRAVER-Yes, and in some ways it would almost be easier to have a motion that they would have to return and us decide, for example, the resolution prepared by Staff has, you know, three or four items in it that 99 times out of 100 we can exclude. Maybe we need to add to that, just for the checklist process of saying, no, they don’t need to come back, and if we don’t say that, well, then they do, you know, that type of thing. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Anything else on the Sign Ordinance? MR. SIPP-This doesn’t cover it, but I know I saw it some place, 60 day thing. A nonconforming sign is a sign which is in conflict with the provisions of this chapter. Such sign or signs in existence as of the effective date of this chapter will be brought into conformity with all respects of provisions of this chapter and shall be removed within 60 days of the effective date. MR. TRAVER-Well, there we go. MR. SIPP-Now, if that becomes by, it has to go through the State I believe, doesn’t it, the digital sign? MR. BROWN-Yes. If you’ve been given a copy of the Code, it’s been filed in the Secretary of State’s office. So, is that part of the Town Sign Code? MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. BROWN-Yes. If you got that copy from the Town Clerk, then it’s filed someplace. That’s part of the digital sign? 12 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. SIPP-What I mean, when their addition, several weeks ago, of nonconforming digital signs, it seems to me, I’ve got it here some place, effective date, this local law will take effect upon filing of the office of the New York State Secretary of State or otherwise provided by law. So when that’s filed, they have 60 days to remove their sign? MR. BROWN-If that’s what it says, yes. I didn’t even realize that was in there. MR. SIPP-140-8. MR. BROWN-I’ll take a look. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. The next item for discussion was on attendance and notification, and this is really where the By-laws came. When the question came up a few months ago, I did check, I did look in the By-laws, and there’s really not much in here that talks about, you know, notification. All it says is that if you know you’re going to be absent in advance, you should contact the Chairman and the Planning Staff, and that’s all it says, and, you know, we’ve had some conversations before, you know, I’ve had with the alternates about, you know, no one expects you to be there. If you get a phone call the day before the meeting, or the day of the meeting, if you can, great, but, you know, th don’t feel that you have an obligation, when you get, you know, 11 hour notice, to drop everything and kill yourself to be there. I mean, that certainly continues. I didn’t know if maybe we want to have like a day where by, you know, you try to contact someone, so that an alternate can take your seat. I kind of, it said Friday. I mean, there’s always going to be things that will come up where at the last minute you can’t be there, and, you know, you can’t help that. That’s life, you know, you get stuck in traffic. You get called out of town for work or whatever. MR. TRAVER-Well, I could offer a suggestion, kind of as a starting point. I ran into this as a bit of an issue when I became president of a local non-profit, and they had a real problem with board members. There were a lot of other issues, you know, the meetings weren’t all that interesting and people just didn’t feel like showing up, but because of governance and other issues, it was very, very important that the Board attend. So what we basically did was we said that, in that case, we said that if a person, a board member, fails to appear without notice, three times in a row, then they have to meet with the president and have a discussion about, do they need a leave of absence or do they need to continue. So that isn’t exactly perfect for our situation, but, I mean, we could perhaps modify that provision on Page 13 that we could say the, that a member needs to notify the Chairperson of any absence in advance, so that an alternate member can be used, and then if we have, let’s say, two failures to notify with at least 24 hours notice, upon a third incident, then that Board member would perhaps sit with you and talk about, do I need a leave of absence or do I need to make some kind of a thing. So that the goal would be, of course, as soon as you know that you’re not able to attend, but if there’s a pattern where you have two instances of a person with less than 24 hours notice, then now they’re on notice that if it happens again, they’re going to need to sit down with you and say, here’s what’s going on and, you know, not always, but that might be indicative of some kind of an issue that you can talk about and maybe come up with some plan to address it. I know that worked for me, in the case of the board members. I had some people who said, you know, I’m glad you brought this up, because I really, I intended to resign and I really didn’t, sort of didn’t want to, so I just wasn’t showing up, and then I had other people say, you know, thanks for letting me know, it’s so important that, you know, I come and I’ll never miss another meeting. So, sometimes just sitting down with the Chairman, or in this case the president or whatever, to have that communication can be valuable. Sometimes, unfortunately, you know, people don’t always, with everything else that goes on in our lives, we don’t necessarily appreciate the impact, but I do think we need to accommodate, in some way, the fact, you know, and it’s, you know, it’s relatively easy for me, because I have a wife to take care of, but I don’t have a whole big extended family, and, you know, there aren’t too many things that come up where I’m, very suddenly at the last minute, other than maybe an illness. I think I did miss a meeting this year. I don’t remember what the reason was, but that does happen. I mean, I thought about driving over here tonight, the roads were so slippery and I thought, you know, what am I going to do if I get into an accident or something, but I think if we have some kind of a plan in place that, you know, the plan is give notice, and, you know, if you can’t, you can’t, but if it starts, you know, if it happens two or three times, then I think it’s time for you, as Chairman, to come up with some kind of a plan to address it. MR. HUNSINGER-One of the reasons why I wanted to talk about it is because, later on this month, I know a lot of you know about Saratoga County does a planning day workshop every year. I was asked to be on a panel with, I think there’s three or four other Planning Board Chairmen, and some of the Planning Boards in Saratoga County, 13 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) they actually have mandatory attendance clauses. I don’t know if they’re just an internal document. I don’t know how legal that is, but, you know, we met a while back to talk about, well, you know, what kinds of things are we going to talk about, you know, it’s, you know, it’s a panel discussion, and that was one of the items that came up, and, you know, and I don’t know what the numbers are, if it’s three meetings or five meetings a year, whatever, but, you know, there are options, you know, I hate to see us go that way, to be quite honest about it, you know, I think the whole reason why we have the alternates is so that we can give people a night off once in a while. Sometimes you just need a break. Gretchen and I used to talk about that all the time, and when we got done after doing all the Planning Ordinance Review Committee workshops, you know, we were going to four and five meetings a month, and, I mean, there were times when you just needed a break. So, that’s what the alternates are for. MR. KREBS-And our thing is just, give us sufficient notice so that, you know, if you give us 24 hours notice, it’s just that, you know, if we don’t know until 2:30 in the afternoon, you have to assume, then, that I’m looking at my e-mail every minute, because that’s how I usually get notified, well, sometimes I don’t sit at my computer in the afternoon, and watch my e-mail, so then I don’t feel like I can sit because I can’t properly prepare to come to the meeting. I’m not going to spend ten hours going through, in detail, all this information, if I’m not going to sit. MR. HUNSINGER-Like I said, that’s only fair. MR. SEGULJIC-So we’re saying by Monday to notify the Chairman? MR. KREBS-Yes, that would be fine. That would be great. th MR. SEGULJIC-Now is there a meeting on the 27 this month? I think there is, right? I can’t attend. MR. BROWN-If we could add to that notification that you also, please notify somebody on Staff. Because Chris, like you, might not be at his desk to check the e-mail. MRS. STEFFAN-Do we have to amend the By-laws to do this, or can we just? MR. HUNSINGER-We can just do it. I wanted to bring it up for discussion so that everyone has an understanding of, what’s the expectation, you know, and that’s kind of what we had talked about. MR. FORD-You would be notified, and who on the Staff? MR. BROWN-Well, probably Pam. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think Pam and Keith. MR. BROWN-Right, and if you’re doing it by e-mail, why not send it out to everybody. At least it puts them on notice, before we’ve even called them, before you’ve called them, that, hey, somebody’s going to be, I might get called. You don’t know which one it’s going to be. Maybe there’s two. MR. SCHONEWOLF-We usually copy Pam. MR. OBORNE-If by some reason it’s by telephone, by all means, you know, if you can’t get through to Pam, get through to me or Craig. MR. BROWN-Let somebody know. MR. OBORNE-We’ll take care of it. MR. HUNSINGER-Now, as alternates, you get the Board package every month, right? MR. KREBS-Yes. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. So we don’t need to worry about that. Because I know in the past, like when I was an alternate, years ago, I wouldn’t even get the materials unless I was expected to sit. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. KREBS-No, we get the materials, hand delivered, and in fact, we even talk, like I’m th not going to be here the 27, unfortunately I’m going to be in the Dominican Republic, th but I’ve already called Paul and said, you know, I’m not going to be here on the 27. Are you going to be here, so that he can cover, and if he knows he’s going to be out of town, then he tells me, so that, you know, I plan to fill in that spot. MR. TRAVER-And, you know, I like to know, I mean, just on a personal level, I like to know, there’ve been a couple of times, not often, but there’ve been a couple of times when I’ve come to a meeting, and all of a sudden I find out that there’s only three or four of us there or something, and, you know, you’ve got to kind of psych yourself up for that. so even if we could be notified that, you know, hey, somebody isn’t going to be here this first, this person or whatever, you know, it’s not as important as you and Staff knowing, but, you know, it would be nice to know. MR. KREBS-But as Dan Stec pointed out to me, too, when that happens, whenever you’re short, you already have a no vote. So when you’re talking about the applicant, when you have two people missing, you have two no votes, before you even start the discussion. MR. HUNSINGER-And one of the things that doesn’t come into play very often is if the project requires County Board approval and the County Planning Board votes no, then you need a supermajority, and like I said, it doesn’t come into play very often, but every once in a while it does. MR. TRAVER-We’ve even had applicants that have wanted to table their motion because the full Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Because they were afraid they wouldn’t get approval. While we’re on the topic of e-mails, I know there’s been some discussion, I don’t know if you guys are up to speed on it or not, and I’m not trying to put you on the spot, I actually brought it up about a year ago, (lost words) much earlier in 2008, about having Town e-mail addresses for Planning Board members. MR. KREBS-We got a memo on that, didn’t we? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I thought so. MR. TRAVER-I remember something about that. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. So while we’re on the topic of e-mails and correspondence. MR. BROWN-Yes. I don’t have an update for you. I am aware of that project. I can check with our IT guy tomorrow and see where he is as far as setting that up. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. BROWN-That would be one more e-mail address you get to check. MR. TRAVER-Well, that’s the thing, it shouldn’t be complicated at all on their part, but for us it’s going to be, I mean, I already have two. MR. BROWN-Well, and ideally if you guys, obviously it sounds like you got a memo, but the main reason is for FOIL purposes. Any conversations back and forth, between the Board members, if somebody wants to FOIL that, it’s all right there. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SIPP-I think your idea of having, to check the receipt, that you have read it, that you’ve at least gotten it, is a good way to do it, and talking about notification, before I th forget, I’m going to the Saratoga Planning meeting on the 28. I put in an application and haven’t heard a word about it. The last time I went to Lake George, you sent it in and they never got it. th MR. BROWN-January 28? MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. BROWN-Okay. 15 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. SIPP-And I put it in before Christmas. MRS. STEFFAN-Pam took care of my arrangements. MR. FORD-Congratulates, Chris, on being asked and participating. MR. TRAVER-Yes, that’s neat. MR. HUNSINGER-The Site Manager from Stewarts called me and asked me to do it. MRS. STEFFAN-I went last year. I think I went, I’ve gone two years in a row, and it’s a very good program. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. That’s what I’ve heard. MR. TRAVER-It would be great to go to those things, but it’s so tough when it’s in the middle of the workday. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s tough. MRS. STEFFAN-If I was working, you know, if I had another job, I wouldn’t be going. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Which is another topic for discussion. MR. BROWN-Can we finish attendance, though? Minimum 24 hour notice. We’re going to notify somebody on Staff and everybody on the Board. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, you know, as reasonable, you know, because I can tell you that there was a time this year when I ended up doing a termination, and it went bad, and so, all I did was I called Pete and Pete called Chris, but, you know, it’s just one of those situations you do what you can, but sometimes you can’t. MR. KREBS-And we know there are going to be exceptions. MR. FORD-It should be the goal. MR. BROWN-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Termination of employment. MR. HUNSINGER-In terms of the, back to the document, the By-laws document. It’s probably worth, you know, maybe a committee to take a look at it and see if there’s any recommended changes or maybe everyone take a look at it, and, you know, maybe e- mail any suggestions that you might have. I would like to try to keep it current and useful. MR. KREBS-And by the way, on Page Five, 2F, talks about vacancies, and it says remainder of unexpired term. So if there’s any questions on that. It’s been there for a long time. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Staff Board issues is Item Three. Resolutions. I think the thought here was, you know, sort of our standard resolutions, what do we want to see in them, what do we like about them, what do we not like about them. I mean, we don’t need to come to any kind of final decision this evening, but just to put it on the agenda for discussion. MR. TRAVER-Well, I think the hardest part for us, and I think we need to recognize the job that Gretchen does, I think, as Secretary, and Staff, in providing us a framework in the form of a draft resolution, but it seems to me, and I’ve been guilty of this as well, is having a discussion with an applicant, or among us on the Board, and then translating that to ensuring that it’s in the final resolution, and it’s, you know, when you have these long discussions with applicants, sometimes over several evenings or something, it can be difficult to do that, and it’s, I think it has to be the responsibility of the individual Board member who says I want to see this or I want to see that to make sure that Gretchen has that information, or to remind, you know, for the most part I think we kind of do that. I know that you, Mr. Chairman and Gretchen, kind of go through as you prepare it now, does anybody have anything else, you know, that kind of thing. So we sort of have a 16 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) process in place, but I think, if there’s a weak link in resolutions, that’s where it is, when something, we want something, we want them to do something, but we don’t put it in the form of a resolution. I know Staff has reminded us of that time and time again. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s difficult. I know that, well, Chris was Secretary when I started on the Board, and did an excellent job of putting together resolutions, but you really have to, if you’re going to be the one responsible for putting together a resolution, it’s actually very hard to participate in the process because what you need to be doing is listening and taking notes the whole time, and so it’s kind of frustrating from that point of view because you don’t, I believe you just don’t get to participate as well. I thought, last year, of a way that, you know, maybe we could help that process by looking at the agenda. There’s seven of us, and if we exclude the Chairman, there’s six people. We could each take lead on a project, and be responsible. MR. SCHONEWOLF-That’s the way to do it. I’ve been on boards that did that, and that, there’s two, you’ve got too much to do and you’d have to be out of a discussion because you’re busy worrying about what you’re going to write. Plus it’s embarrassing to sit there and watch you write, you know, the people are getting edgy out in the audience and everything else, and so I’d just throw this out, because this is what we did in another place, is that everybody took a project, all right. You’re responsible. That doesn’t mean that everybody doesn’t have to go look at it, they do, they should, but that person’s responsible for keeping track of that project, responsible for the interface with the Staff on that project, and also responsible, as the discussion goes on, to make the notes on what are going to go into that resolution, and then they give you the basis for a resolution, the Staff does, and you take that and you just add and subtract to it, and so when you make the motion, that person makes the motion. MR. FORD-I can appreciate the fact that that undoubtedly worked in another venue. I think that a modification of our current practice would be better than, this is a major, major transformation, a major change. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, the other thing is that, you know, what happens if somebody’s not there one night and they’re the ones responsible. MR. SEGULJIC-How can we help you, Gretchen? MRS. STEFFAN-Well, I think that certainly looking at the resolution, you know, the boilerplate, and often what I’ll do before the meeting even is I’ll go through and I’ll just highlight the resolution up with what are decision making items based on the boilerplate, and the conditions, I’m writing and taking notes, you know, if there are waivers, I make notations of those, and so maybe if we add, you know, what I’ll call menus to the boilerplate, so that we can just cross off the things that we don’t want and amend it, that it’ll be much easier so that we won’t forget some of the things that are crucial to us and that we’ve had problems with in the past. MR. FORD-Picking up on what Stephen had, I thought he was recommending before, perhaps if, during the discussion, one of us were to pick up on one particular item and really try to shepherd that through, that at least we would make a notation and it would be our responsibility to make sure that you had that and that you covered it. I didn’t know if that’s where you were going with that. MR. TRAVER-Well, in a way, yes, I mean, I can envision, and I will certainly try to do this, if, for example, Tom, if you’re having a discussion with an applicant, and you’re talking about, you know, we want to see this or we want to see that, I’m going to try to perhaps even say out loud, Tom, do you think that should be in the form of a resolution, and that may trigger, among all of us, you know, if we do that a little bit, it may, you know, from kind of a thought or giving instructions to the applicant, to now it’s framed in a formal resolution that. MR. FORD-And as we go along with this process, if some of us pick up on certain issues, and as I say, shepherd it through, and then it would be our responsibility to make sure that it was included. MR. KREBS-And I was wondering if we couldn’t also make up some sample pieces of resolutions. When we talk about, you know, we want them to meet engineering approval or, you know, they have to meet the Sign Ordinance, or they have to, if we had a one sentence, two sentence, and we had a list of those. MR. TRAVER-Like a boilerplate. 17 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. KREBS-Like a boilerplate, okay, and then, I mean, you could help us do this, too, and then, as a member, I could say to Gretchen, I would like boilerplate item number six added to this resolution, which may be meeting Town engineering requirements, okay. So you wouldn’t have to, now, try and compose what I was saying, you know, I would say to you, I’d look at the list and I’d say this is the one I want added to the resolution. Add resolution Sub Number Six, and you’d do that and it’s already written, and it’s written in a way that you’ve looked at it, so that it meets the requirement of the law. I don’t know, maybe we could sit down and make a half a dozen or a dozen and try them and then see if. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, our resolutions used to be a couple of, well, two or three pages long. So it has been shortened to where it is right now. So it’s certainly, we can go back and add some of the things that we need. I think that that’s one of our weakest links. We’ve talked about a lot of organizational issues today, but I think that that happens to be the weakest link we’ve got in the chain right now, and I’m really not concerned with folks having to wait for me to write a resolution, because one of the issues that we have is that our Code Enforcement person or people have a very hard time following up on what we want if our resolutions are not specific on exactly what we want. MR. KREBS-Well, see that was why I said we could use him to help us write, you know, you two could help us write the code or write the insert so it was properly expressed. MR. BROWN-Yes. We can certainly come up with a boilerplate list of items, and I think we actually did that for a very short time and then from a previous Chairman who wanted to do that agenda diet kind of thing, and it got a lot smaller. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, Bob wanted to edit it down. MR. BROWN-But, you know, some sort of a meeting, job shadowing, where somebody sits next to Gretchen during what she does and says, okay, when Gretchen’s not here, here’s a good way to do these things, and, you know, it’s all about cross training and everybody knowing everybody else’s job. You all kind of do the same thing, you decide on applications, but, you know, somebody make sure everybody’s nice and polite. Somebody keeps track of all the rules or tries to keep the meeting in order, and somebody else keeps track of all the notes, and, you know, but if everybody else knows how to do those things, when somebody’s absent, you’ve got somebody to cover and it just doesn’t blow up in your face if you have an absence some place. So, when you’re not there, I think it’s perfectly acceptable for the Board as a whole to consciously say, this person’s going to act as Secretary tonight. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that happens, don’t worry. MRS. STEFFAN-We’re teaching a couple of them. MR. SEGULJIC-One of the things that might be helpful, too, I know, I think it was Craig used to do this, that when it’s a longer motion that we should take a break for a few minutes. I know that’s happened to me a couple of times. You have to write up that motion. MR. TRAVER-Then everybody gets a break except Gretchen. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, yes, exactly, but at least the pressure’s off. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, when people try to come up and talk to me, I can’t. MR. BROWN-Usually a small committee of two or three members that have been the most vocal or come up with the most issues on the application you guys craft that resolution. MR. HUNSINGER-But part of the reason why we used to do that is because the Secretary wasn’t acting as the Secretary. MR. SEGULJIC-Correct. Whoever did the motion, did the motion. MR. HUNSINGER-The way Gretchen does now, and that was, Craig had said, you know, we need a Secretary that’s like a real Secretary, and I actually volunteered to do it. Dumb me, right? It was almost a necessity, oftentimes, to take the five minute break to draft the resolution because we didn’t have anything to go by. 18 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. SEGULJIC-Right, I’m not saying for every one, but there are some that are more complicated. MR. HUNSINGER-Absolutely. MR. SEGULJIC-And I’m not going to say it’s not easy. MR. HUNSINGER-And as Counsel had advised us a number of times, we don’t have to make the resolution that evening. We can always say, look, we’re going to draft the resolution, and we’re going to present the resolution next week or next month. MR. SEGULJIC-We have 60 days, correct? MR. SCHONEWOLF-A lot of County Boards do that. They don’t write the resolution. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SCHONEWOLF-They don’t even fill out SEQRA. The staff does it and the Chairman signs it. MR. TRAVER-Every applicant that comes before us, though, is in an emergency situation. They need that decision that night. MR. SCHONEWOLF-They’re going to have to cool their jets. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Which is another part of the resolution we’ve had quite a bit of discussion about recently is there’s been some resolutions that we approved, thinking that the applicant can then get a building permit. They go down to the Building Department and the Building Department says, no, because you still have this outstanding issue with the Planning Board, whether it be the siding colors or the roof color or whatever the case was. We thought we were doing everyone a favor. All we were doing is creating more work. MR. BROWN-Well, I keep telling myself, and this is my label, it’s a partial approval. Here’s your approval, but we want to see you come back next month and look at something else. That doesn’t do anybody any good. I’m not going to give them a building permit until I know that you’re done with them, in case something comes up at that next meeting. MRS. STEFFAN-There’s no leverage otherwise. Once they have the permit. MR. BROWN-Absolutely, and further down the road we have other leverage issues when CO’s are issued before the site work’s done, but that’s not an issue you guys have, but it’s leverage for you to get what you want before you decide. I’m not going to give you an approval tonight. I’m going to table you, and here’s a list of things why I’m going to table you. When you come back to me next month for the things I want to see or next meeting, then you can give them a final approval, maybe with no conditions at all, because they fixed the plans the way you want them The plans reflect exactly what you want and your list of conditions disappears. MR. SEGULJIC-So it’s 100% approval or nothing. MR. BROWN-Absolutely. MR. SEGULJIC-Recommending not even the color of the. MR. BROWN-You mean to give them an approval but to come back for the color? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. MR. BROWN-No. I would recommend against that. MR. SEGULJIC-So you’re saying overall, 100% or nothing. MR. BROWN-I would recommend you table them, come back with the colors we can see it. Then we can decide it as a Board. 19 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. FORD-In as much as you’re going to have to come back anyway. MR. BROWN-You’re going to come back anyway. MR. KREBS-I think some of us thought by giving them a conditional approval, though, they were going to be able to go get their building permit and get started the process. That’s not so. So, if that’s not so, then there’s no reason to do it. MR. TRAVER-And I think that the applicant felt that way, too, because they often made that argument to us. Just give us this tonight, and we’ll at least be able to do X, Y and Z. So it’s not just us that didn’t realize it. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Well, they have an attorney that says that all the time. MR. BROWN-I know we’ve talked about this before. Applicants are going to tell whatever they can tell you to get you to give them the approval. You guys are very good at seeing through all that stuff, to the real issues that need to be dealt with. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else in resolutions? So how difficult would it be to maybe go through a list of, you know, more recent resolutions and give us the laundry list that we talked about? MRS. STEFFAN-Craig, can I work with you on coming up with some kind of a draft resolution that, you know, we could work with? MR. BROWN-Absolutely. Yes. Actually, we may have, I think Pam does, and she’s been pretty good about keeping track of these, a list of items that can be used as part of the boilerplate, whether it’s sign stuff or engineering comments or whatever. We’ll use that. MR. OBORNE-And I do want to say, Staff is extremely approachable. I mean, we’re here to help you. That’s what we get paid for, and my thinking is, although I’m pretty new to this business, is that the resolution is only as good as your review. You have to do your review. You have to do your review before you come to the meetings, and I highly suggest that, if you do your review at night, and if you can’t get through, you can’t get through. I understand that, but if you do your review. I’ll respond to you. I mean, that’s what I get paid to do, and we’re very approachable, and it would streamline the process. Again, the resolutions are only as good as the review that is completed on that project. MR. TRAVER-That’s good to know, Keith. I mean, I, for one, have been reluctant to do that because I somehow thought that that was against protocol. MR. BROWN-Yes. No, you can talk to any member of Staff anytime about anything. It’s just the applicants you don’t want to be talking to, but yes, any question that comes up anytime during the review here, I’m on site. I see this here, what do you think about it. We’ll try and get you an answer as soon as we can. If we can’t, we’ll look it up. MR. OBORNE-And, conversely, the same goes for the applicant. The applicant can call me and I’m there to help the applicant also. MR. TRAVER-I actually referred an applicant to you one time, that was for one of the applications. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, some of the questions in review is that sometimes when you’re making your plans and you’ve got questions, somebody wants waivers, and so when I’m preparing for the meeting I’ve got questions about waivers. If it doesn’t come up from another Planning Board member, then it comes up from me. Okay. Well, what about this item and this item? I always make my decisions before I come to the meeting, but I weigh and consider the information that’s presented, and I’ve changed my mind lots of times, but, you know, that’s part of the Site Plan Review process. MR. OBORNE-Absolutely. MR. FORD-I like this direction and having things to choose from, the boilerplate and so forth. Just looking down the road a ways, there may come a time when a laptop with these things programmed in might be a very useful tool at the meeting. 20 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MRS. BRUNO-Wasn’t there something about a zoning, a ZBA member I remember of years ago, having a laptop, somebody from the public raised a stink about it. MR. BROWN-Mr. McNulty used to have one. MR. TRAVER-I heard a story that the argument was that hat person had access to information, though, that other people didn’t have. I mean, I’m not saying that that was a valid argument, but that was a story that I was told. MR. BROWN-Well, I guess while we’re here, does anybody have anything on the boilerplate list you want to throw right out? MR. HUNSINGER-I was also going to ask if anyone else wanted to work with Gretchen on that. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, Chris, what I could do is work with Craig, and then after a meeting one night, you know, he could send it out in a package and we could have it as a discussion item at the end of one of our meetings. MR. BROWN-That’s fine. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure, that’s great. Anything else on resolutions? Engineering comments. We’ve had lots of discussion, kind of, you know, at different times about what should be in them, what should not be in them. Well, if he doesn’t identify the issue, did he consider it. I think that was kind of the basis, Tom. MR. SEGULJIC-It was highlighted with the dog kennel where he acknowledged the quote unquote noise study, and he didn’t say anything about it. Does that mean he was okay with it? And, you know, I think Dan Ryan does a good job, but he can’t be an expert at everything, and one of my concerns is that we ask him to look at stormwater. We ask him to look at traffic. We ask him to look at noise. We ask him to look at all these different things. I don’t know if, sometimes I want to call him and say, what exactly are you comfortable with, and what exactly can you comment on that I’m comfortable with? I don’t know if that’s appropriate, but, you know, he can’t be an expert in everything. Should we ask him to say in a letter, you know, here’s my concerns regarding stormwater or whatever. I’m not 100% comfortable. Could you go out and get someone else to look at it? I don’t know how to handle that, and it came to light with the sound study, for me. MR. KREBS-But I think with the sound study you have to have, I think what Dan looks at is Dan looks at the Ordinance and then says, how does the engineering fit the Ordinance? The Ordinance has nothing in it that says anything about sound, and in fact, I’m sorry, and I brought this up to Staff, my page, the pages in my book, did not have part of, and I think it very specifically states what the people who wrote the Zoning Code expected, and they said kennels. Kennels shall be located on a parcel of at least 10 acres, which they certainly did double that size. MR. FORD-We’re not talking about a specific instance, are we? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we’ve already dispensed with it. MR. KREBS-Well, we dispensed with it anyway, and all dog runs in other areas in which dogs are kept must be located at least 200 feet from the property line. To me, that very specifically identifies what the requirements were of the people who wrote this Ordinance. It’s not the way we acted, but that’s, you know. MR. SIPP-Did you read the section before that? Or the general? MR. KREBS-Yes, there’s always the general. MR. SIPP-Is noise mentioned? Well, Number One, there’s no such thing in this Town as a noise ordinance. So you can’t have the noise be a factor. It cannot be a factor. MR. KREBS-And, Don, that’s what I was saying. The engineer, I don’t think our Town Engineer. MR. SEGULJIC-But then in light of that he should have made a statement that there’s no sound basis for me to compare this against, for example. I guess, you know, we put a lot of weight on the comments, engineering comments, but I don’t know, sometimes they’re 21 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) solid and they’re right there for you. Other times they lead you down this dark alley and you’ve got the attorney waving, you’ve got the engineering approval, and I think what we have to do also is be much clearer on the questions of what exactly we’re asking him to review. MRS. STEFFAN-And the other thing is, remember that we do have the ability to have an engineer at a meeting, if there’s an agenda item. MR. HUNSINGER-And we don’t do that very often. MRS. STEFFAN-No, we haven’t in the past year. We used to do it all the time. We had a lawyer, you know, we had counsel there, and we had the engineer there. MR. TRAVER-I think one of the biggest limitations that is faced by the engineer Dan is that in giving his opinion about a project, because he is an engineer, he has to avoid anything that’s subjective. I think he has to be very scientific in his analysis. So that if there’s something that he either can’t analyze, in other words, if he, if there’s something that is not in his report, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t think about it. It means that he didn’t feel that he could report on it because he couldn’t put it in anything other than very subjective terms, which is really our responsibility. So I think if we, to use an example, Tom, where, you know, if we get a report and there’s something in there that we’ve identified as significant or potentially significant, I think it’s then for us to say we need engineering information on this, and maybe we do need him to come in and try to put it in more context or something, but when I look at his stuff, I know that it’s not, it doesn’t include everything because he can’t, he has to be, he has to look at it as a scientist, as an engineer. He cannot be subjective about the information that he’s providing, and that eliminate a lot of the stuff that by definition we have to consider or why would we even need a Planning Board. MR. SEGULJIC-Well then I would just ask that there be a statement made to that effect, that I looked at this in particular and I have no comments on this. MR. TRAVER-He could put a disclaimer in there or something. MR. SEGULJIC-I’m not asking for disclaimers, but, like, for example, he cited the noise study but he had no comments on it, just like, you know, for example, no comments provided on noise study because there was nothing to compare it to. At least then we know what he was thinking. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, but comparing it to another kind of Site Plan, it doesn’t have to be the item you talked about, but one of the things that we’ve been remiss, I think, in doing over the last couple of years is asking for experts. We think we have to go with the information that we’ve got, and, you know, that’s short-sighted on our part, and if we need a traffic engineer of our own, a specialist, we can ask for that. If we need a noise engineer of our own, we can ask for that, and I think we need to exercise that prerogative, because there’s some times when we just don’t have enough information, scientific information, to make the decision, and so we need to go above and beyond. MR. KREBS-We help the applicant because we, in that particular case we were talking about, we just told the applicant to go get noise studies. So they came back with a noise study. Well, we didn’t like what they used for the noise study, but we didn’t specify beforehand what it was that they were supposed to provide us in the noise study. So it’s kind of a difficult. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, I guess, but on the other hand, we’re not experts on noise studies. MR. KREBS-No, no. MR. SEGULJIC-They have to get an expert that’s going to outline what exactly they did. MR. KREBS-Well, he did. You didn’t like what he did, but he did. MR. SEGULJIC-He cited Wikipedia. MR. KREBS-But you didn’t tell him that that wasn’t acceptable. MRS. STEFFAN-Let’s not talk about a specific application. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. KREBS-Right. Okay. I’m just saying we often ask applicants to go get some information, but we do not specify specifically how we want that information brought back to us, and because of that, they come back with information, and then we don’t like that information, but if you took, sometimes, and it’s happened before, if you took us to court, we would lose because we don’t have a specific, we haven’t asked them for a specific thing to bring, and then we reject what they bring, after we haven’t given them a specific requirement to bring. MR. BROWN-That goes back a little bit to resolutions. When you make those tabling resolutions, when you send them away with the, go get the witches broomstick and come back, you’ve given them a specific item to come back. If they don’t have it, we don’t put them on and they don’t get to see you unless you, unless they’ve brought back exactly what you want. MR. KREBS-Right, but if we don’t specify what we want. MR. HUNSINGER-And I think that was a good example. Because that was one of the levels of comfort that I didn’t have is, you know, they came back with their noise study, and it was pretty rudimentary, you know, and then the night of the meeting, they started saying, well, you know, we could have gone over here. We could have taken these levels. We could have done that, and it really wasn’t a big effort for them to get that additional data, and it would have really helped their cause, you know. MR. KREBS-But at the same time, at the previous meeting, when I happened to be on the Board, we did not specify that, we just said go get noise information. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Understood. MR. KREBS-And nobody knew what we should require for a kennel. There were no requirements. So we sent the applicant off and said do some noise studies. So they came back with some noise studies, okay. I mean, that’s like you saying to me, Don, go get a tire, okay. So you have a 17 inch car and I come back with a 15 inch tire. MR. SIPP-Yes, but that’s not even a good example. MR. TRAVER-Well, yes. I think a better example would be, go get a tire that’s going to be effective on this road. You’re going to go find, hopefully, an expert who’s going to make a recommendation to you and give you the information you need to get the right tire. So if we have an application where we’re concerned about sound, and we say, look, we need information on sound, that applicant is going to go to somebody who’s a sound expert, and that expert, should, if they’re earning their money, should say here’s what you need, in order to make a presentation to that Planning Board, to convince them that sound is not going to be an issue, and if they’re unable to do that or if the information that they get shows that, in fact, it’s still an issue, just because they got the information that we requested doesn’t mean we have to approve their application. MR. KREBS-No, I wasn’t saying that. I’m saying. MR. TRAVER-But I guess what I’m saying is, we can’t, when you say we need to tell them what information to get, that’s saying that we have to have the expertise of the consultant that we’re sending them to get. We can’t do that. We know that we need more information. MR. KREBS-Steve, what I was agreeing with Gretchen with is that when we don’t have the ability to request that proper information. We need to go get somebody, whether we do the research, whether Staff does the research. We get somebody that comes up with a criteria, and maybe we have to say to the applicant that night, we can’t give you an answer to the criteria. We will forward to you, from the Staff, a criteria that you’ll need for the next meeting. MRS. STEFFAN-Actually, I think, Don, you’ve got it backward, because what we need to do is we provide broad, general direction to the applicant. The applicant comes back with the information that they think we will need to make a decision, because we’re an executive Board. We make decisions based on the information provided to us. If we want to challenge that information or we want some more scientific data to compare it against, that’s when we call in the expert to weigh and consider the data that’s been presented. It is not up to us to tell somebody how to develop their site or how to put together their plan. That’s not our job. 23 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. BROWN-And if you don’t think the current engineering firm that you have knows how to review this widget study that they’ve brought back, you get your specialist in there to review that portion of the project. You may have engineering comments from your engineer on everything else except this one piece of information. Get somebody else that specializes in that to review what the applicant gave you. MR. SEGULJIC-That’s where I’m kind of hung up is that I don’t know exactly what he’s an expert in. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. SEGULJIC-I think he’s good at stormwater. I question noise. I don’t know about traffic. That’s the sense I get. MRS. BRUNO-I’m sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean to keep interrupting. I thought you had completed your thought. I just had another thought, too. If we were to ask an applicant, or to give the applicant super specific direction so that they can make their, that almost puts us into a position where they can come back and say, you gave us all of this direction, and now you’re looking for this point. Well, that wasn’t in your point. So it’s just opening a can of worms, I think, to ask them. MR. SIPP-I think in a case like that, what I said is that the physics of the situation we’re not going to change that much. Wind direction might have something to do with it, and humidity, but it’s not going to change it that drastically, because it’s a physics problem. MR. TRAVER-And that was the testimony of their expert. MR. SIPP-And you can’t deny, you may quibble about 50 feet or 25 feet, over the long run it’s going to be within one percent because that’s the way it is, and because we have no sound ordinance, noise ordinance in this Town, there’s nothing we can, if the decibel level was 150. MR. SEGULJIC-There is, because we have to answer that question in SEQRA. MR. BROWN-Yes, well, there’s no standard to use, but can you say noise is an issue with this application? Absolutely. I don’t think you have to have a standard to do that. MR. OBORNE-If I do say, engineers are not good to go to for subjective material. That’s not the way they’re wired. They’re very, very good for certain situations. MR. SIPP-It’s like a traffic report. I’ve never seen a traffic report done by an applicant done by an applicant that said the traffic is going to be horrendous. It never happens. MR. TRAVER-Exactly. Good example. MR. OBORNE-I do say that you guys are on the right, you’re going down the right path with the way you’re going to do your resolutions, and I think you should stick with that, and get used to doing that over time, and have you guys, you know, one person sticks with one thing, and make sure that gets into the resolution. If it’s subjective, it’s subjective. There’s not a lot you can do. That’s why you’re here to make decisions. MR. SEGULJIC-No, I guess just it’s like a broader issue. We always, occasionally we bring up health issues with projects. There was this one, well, I don’t know if I can bring that up, but a situation where they were going to potentially locate subdivision down gradient of a potential groundwater contamination source. MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. SEGULJIC-I assume, is that a concern of ours? MR. BROWN-Absolutely. MR. SEGULJIC-All right. Then going back to Don’s issue. We can’t tell them how to do that study, for example. That’s a pretty involved hydrological study, because once they start pumping wells potentially on a subdivision, it’s potential they’re going to screw up the whole groundwater pattern in the area. MR. TRAVER-Well, maybe that’s just it. Maybe it’s a problem of exclusion rather than inclusion. Maybe they need to demonstrate that it won’t be a problem rather than. 24 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. SEGULJIC-Absolutely, but you never absolutely know. MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. BROWN-Yes, and keep in mind also that the engineer is here at your disposal. The engineer is working for you, providing comments for you. If you have a specific question that you want answered about an application or something the applicant submitted, ask the engineer. Hey, Dan Ryan, is this, you know, well pattern that they have here for these houses or this test well pattern sufficient? Is it going to monitor everything that we need to see, or? MR. SEGULJIC-But I guess where I get uncomfortable is, is he a hydrogeological expert? MR. BROWN-I’m sorry? MR. SEGULJIC-Is he an expert in hydrogeology? MR. BROWN-That I do not know. I don’t think so. MR. SEGULJIC-So, I mean, how do I say, well, how do we? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, he did the Meadowbrook Road study. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that’s a different issue. That’s a surface water. Hydrogeology is a little different. It’s a whole other set of expertise. MR. BROWN-Can you answer this question? If you can’t, then you take directions. MR. SEGULJIC-All right. That’s how we should approach it? I guess I’m, in some ways, asking how do we approach that question with our engineer? MR. BROWN-Nothing like asking. MRS. BRUNO-Dan’s a pretty straightforward guy. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. BROWN-If he knows it, he knows it. If he doesn’t, he’ll either give you help with recommendations. MR. SEGULJIC-We would put that in, so we’re sitting there at night and, for example, a hydro geological issue comes up, and we say we have to have this, you know, we need the engineer to look into this. Do we buffer that by saying, however, if the engineer is not comfortable, we seek outside assistance? MRS. STEFFAN-We have to table it and our engineer has to review it. If we hear from Dan Ryan that he doesn’t have that specialty, then we have to. MR. BROWN-I mean, you could certainly put the applicant on notice. MR. SEGULJIC-I don’t want to. MR. BROWN-Well, I mean, if you’re tabling them for engineering comment, and the comment that comes back is, I don’t know the answer to that question. You may want to get a consultant. Here’s a couple of people to pick from. Whatever the response comes back, that’s the answer you give to the applicant. Sorry, we don’t have an answer for you. You’ve got a complex project here. We can’t decide on it until we’re comfortable with the information we have. We’re still gathering it. Or we’re going to ask you to gather it, better. It’s your project. You get the information. MR. SIPP-If we ask for an expert, is that chargeable, is time chargeable to the applicant or to the Town? MR. BROWN-I knew somebody was going to ask that question. MR. SIPP-I think at one time the Town Board made it such that it was chargeable to the applicant. 25 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MRS. STEFFAN-I thought it was up to $1,000? MR. BROWN-Well, when they sign the application, they give us the ability to charge them up to $1,000 before we have to tell them about it, not that we don’t keep them abreast every month when we send them the bill, but if it goes over $1,000, then we have to sign it and say, I realize it’s over $1,000. Let’s keep going. Here’s some escrow money and, you know, we keep going with it, but I don’t know. I’ll ask that question. I’ll ask Counsel. MR. HUNSINGER-It hasn’t happened in a while. I remember there were a few times when we had applicants offer to pay to have our engineer at the meeting, so they can get through and get an approval. Okay. Any other discussion on engineering comments? MR. BROWN-Just one follow up on that. We’re currently negotiating the contract with Dan Ryan, and I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but we certainly have, the timeliness of the comments that come, if you ever look at the dates on the top of the fax sheets, some of them are 6:58 on Tuesday night, and we bring them to the meeting. It doesn’t help us give you some feedback on what the engineer has said. We can’t put it in Staff Notes when we don’t get them until then. So the goal is to get him to be more timely with comments, and hopefully if we have them on a Friday before the meeting, and they go out in Staff Notes, you’ll be better prepared at the meeting to say, I understand these comments. I don’t, or I have a question with this engineering comment. MR. SEGULJIC-We even made a resolution. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I was going to say. MR. SEGULJIC-Six months ago, asking for comments submitted. MR. TRAVER-I would almost say we use the same standard as attendance. MR. BROWN-It’s twelve o’clock on Friday. That’s what we’re shooting for. So they can go out in the packets, Staff Notes packets, on Friday. MR. SEGULJIC-Did that get forwarded to him? MR. OBORNE-He knows about it. He’s human. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. All right. Yes, he’s busy. MR. FORD-You’re negotiating that. TAPE TURNED MRS. STEFFAN-What we’ve done is against our practice or our decided practice of not accepting documentation the night of the meeting, and we have been accepting, over the last few months, a lot of information the night of the meeting, and I wanted to remind the Board that we’re not supposed to be doing that. MR. SCHONEWOLF-I don’t have any trouble with Salvador’s stuff. I just throw it out. MR. OBORNE-Obviously you do have to accept public comment. That’s not the issue. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. No, these are. MR. TRAVER-Revised drawings. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, revised drawings, additional information. MR. SIPP-Additional information, yes. MRS. STEFFAN-And it’s kind of frustrating, and even the engineering comments, usually we’re scrambling them to use those, but it’s very frustrating to try to absorb what’s going on around you, and read the engineering comments, which I don’t know about everyone else. I’m not an engineer. So I have to spend time thinking about those and relating them to what I’ve looked at. So, I don’t know. I think we just need to go back to our decided practice of not accepting materials the night of the meeting. 26 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. FORD-I agree with that. It also will reinforce Staff as they negotiate with the engineer, and that includes engineering comments will not be accepted at the meeting. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I had on here Codes and Ordinances. We kind of talked about it a little bit already, but one of the things that I had said in the e-mail was I wanted to make sure that everybody on the Board has all the Codes and Ordinances that are up to date, but I guess there were maybe three or four changes made in 2008. MR. BROWN-I’ll check with Darleen. Typically, whoever had a Codebook, she gets, actually the big blue book, she gets the revisions out to. I’ll check on that. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-Excuse me, what particular, you said three out of four of the signs, I guess? MR. HUNSINGER-I don’t remember. Do you remember, Keith? I remember you wrote back saying what they were. MR. OBORNE-There was parking. Parking was one of them. MR. HUNSINGER-That’s right. Parking was one. MR. OBORNE-There’s a few others that really aren’t too applicable, but if you do have the big blue book, you should have it. MR. BROWN-I don’t think anybody has it. MR. HUNSINGER-Mine’s in a comb binder. MRS. STEFFAN-I don’t have a big blue book. MR. SEGULJIC-All we ever got was that. MR. BROWN-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-We have a zoning book and a subdivision book. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-Official issue. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, we did get 147. MR. KREBS-Is there a problem with having that information on your laptop and bringing it to a meeting? MR. TRAVER-I was just going to say. If you could, if Staff could research the issue of whether or not we’re allowed to have a laptop there, then that would be good, because I would certainly use mine, although the other issues would be, for it to be useful for me, I would need a power strip to plug into and the password for the wireless. So I had access to the Internet, but if that’s the case, that would be, I mean, I wouldn’t use it all the time, but it would be a great resource. MR. KREBS-Well, Steve sent me a copy of 179, 183, and the nice thing about it is it has a search capability, and so if you had it on your computer and you’re at the meeting and you want to look for something, it immediately brings you to that. MRS. STEFFAN-In my opinion, I would caution everybody against that. I mean, that’s what Staff is there for that night, and they have access to that on their laptop. It is very hard to pay attention and to take in all the information that’s at hand if you are distracted by a laptop or if you’re diverting to a laptop, you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in the room, and so I would caution against that. MR. TRAVER-Well, distractions are a problem, but I don’t think, for some of us, looking up something in a laptop is easier than going to a pile of Town documents and finding it, but it’s a good point. I mean, it’s not to be done. 27 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. KREBS-But we sit there, we try and go through our, you know, hardcopies of these at the meeting, and it’s very difficult sometimes to find the particular thing that you’re looking for. MR. FORD-It probably would be easier on a laptop, but there also is the perception. If you’re plumbing through this, the Town Codebook, and the people can perceive that. MR. OBORNE-Don’t hesitate to ask me or whoever the Staff member is there, for any concerns. Obviously, do that. If I don’t have an answer, I will get you an answer. It may take time, but I’ll get you an answer. It may take time but I’ll get you an answer. Let me do the shuffling. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-Because usually when Counsel’s there, and we’ve got an issue, I mean, there’s always the Codebook, on those really gnarly applications. They’ve got the Codebooks there, and between Counsel and Staff they’re answering your questions for you. MR. BROWN-And the entire Board gets the information at once, and the issue with somebody having information that somebody else might not have if you’re relying on a map that you have up on your laptop and six other people don’t have it, is your decision unjustly influenced by that over the others? And there may be some issue to that, but we’ll look into it and see what Counsel recommends. MR. TRAVER-Well, I understand what you’re saying, but I think we wouldn’t have much purpose if we all had exactly the same information. I mean, almost by definition we come to the consideration of applications with a different set of skills and a different set of information that we’ve looked at and maybe considering that particular night. MR. BROWN-Yes, personal, anecdotal information, yes, everybody’s going to have their own, but when it comes to the base information and the rules and the codes and the information that’s been submitted by the applicant, that’s really all you can use to make a decision on. You can’t go out and do your own map of the property. Not that I’m saying that’s what you have on your laptop, but you have to rely on what’s been submitted for that application. You can’t bring in your own stuff, do your own traffic studies. MR. HUNSINGER-You started to mention earlier in the meeting that the Town Board is now addressing the updates to the Code from the Comprehensive Land Use Plan. MR. BROWN-The Zoning Ordinance? Yes. We’ve had several internal Staff workshops, and then probably, what, a dozen or so, Stu, workshops with the Town Board, at this table, to hammer out pretty much everything, and I think the goal is for the Town Board to set a public hearing to adopt the new Zoning Code. They want to set that hearing on th the 26 of January for a mid February date. MR. HUNSINGER-Wow. MR. BROWN-So we’ll start the public hearings on the adoption of the new Zoning Ordinance in February. One, maybe two public hearings, waiting time with the APA. So it may be mid March or maybe the end of March at the latest where we’ll have and adopt a new Zoning Ordinance. MR. HUNSINGER-Great. Okay. MR. BROWN-So that’s the goal. MRS. STEFFAN-I think it would be great to have a workshop, once that is done, for highlights. Obviously we’ll get a copy of it. We have to read it. MR. BROWN-Generically, big ticket items. MR. HUNSINGER-Do you remember any of it, Gretchen? MRS. STEFFAN-It’s so long ago. I still have piles of data. MR. BROWN-Big ticket items, residential development, probably going to be a little more difficult to do. Lot sizes are going up. Density is going down. Commercial development. 28 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. HUNSINGER-Trading density. MR. BROWN-Trading density, yes, for the commercial, but commercial development, performance standards, beefs up a little bit, but definitely more attune to be more pro- development on the commercial side. That’s the tone that I get. That’s the way that I read it. That’s the way the Code’s headed, but even though I’ve said that signage is potentially going to be going down, definitely commercial development is the, it looks like the crux of this new Code is to make that, maybe not easier, but more understandable for somebody that wants to come in. The rules are easy to follow. The how many trees per parking lot, what the lighting standards are, all those things are geared to be easier to do to facilitate more commercial development. So, yes, there are some changes. Format, I think it’s almost the same format. MR. BAKER-It’s essentially the same format. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, the format’s pretty similar. MR. BROWN-Yes, and the tables and lists are all pretty consistent. There’s just some threshold triggers for Site Plan, what requires Site Plan, when, you know, tighten up the Floor Area Ratio numbers a little bit, you know, those kinds of things will just take some getting used to the new Codes. MR. HUNSINGER-So is the Town Board considering any significant or major changes to what was drafted? Maybe Stu knows better. MR. BAKER-Some significant changes from what the Ordinance Review Committee put forward, yes, but it’s still consistent with the adopted Comp Plan. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-If this stays on schedule, could we conceivably have a workshop in April, then, Chris, May at the latest? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, because it’ll become effective immediately, right? MR. OBORNE-Right. We’ll update you on the progress of it. As soon as that happens, you guys talk amongst yourselves. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. I think we’ll need to jump right on, because it’ll be a pretty significant change. MR. FORD-We’ll be behind the curve because there will be applicants coming at us who (lost words). MR. HUNSINGER-Well, to that end, does it make sense to try to schedule a workshop, maybe even before the Town Board changes, or adopts it? I mean, maybe once they set the public hearing or something. MR. BROWN-Yes. I would think that when the public hearing is scheduled and the document goes out to, you know, the APA and whoever else that we need to get comment from, my guess is the goal is everybody, every Board member is going to get a copy, Planning and Zoning, that says here’s what’s coming, now’s the time to comment on it. So, whether it’s done in a formal meeting where we all sit down or you all sit down and discuss it, I suppose you could do that. Sure. Know this, that the Town Board spent a lot of time on it and they’re probably not going too receptive to too many changes, but, because they’re all, pretty much to a person, comfortable with the document that they have. So there’s not a big half of them like it, or half of them don’t like it. The majority of it’s 5-0. MR. FORD-I wasn’t thinking of a workshop to make changes. I wanted to make sure that we were getting information, so that we’re in tune with it. MR. SEGULJIC-I was going to say, I would assume there’s a potential of, down the road, assuming that new Ordinances get adopted, that we’re going to be looking at projects under the old Ordinance and projects under the new Ordinance, right? MR. BROWN-Well, if you have any in the hopper, sure. I mean, there’ll be a month or two of. 29 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. SEGULJIC-So there’s going to be like this four month period of? Okay. MR. BROWN-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-So that’s going to be interesting. MR. HUNSINGER-You mentioned the APA, and I know, I don’t know if everybody got the notification about the APA changes. MR. BROWN-Yes, I gave a copy to everybody. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I mean, is there any, I haven’t really looked at it in any detail. Is there anything there significant? MR. BROWN-It formalizes that, if you do anything within a certain distance of a shoreline where you expand the structure, it says you need an APA variance now. So, where that wasn’t formalized before. It was, go get your local review, and then, you know, if we want to assert any jurisdiction, we’ll say we agree with their variance or we’ll say we don’t agree with their variance. Now it formally says you need to come to us for a variance. MR. SCHONEWOLF-This is the one that’s under legal challenge? MR. BROWN-Yes. That’s actually tomorrow, and I think I sent, did I send you this e-mail tomorrow Brian Grisi from the APA is going to come to Bolton to meet with the Bolton Zoning Administrator, Lake George, myself and the Hague Zoning Administrator, and talk about. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, you did send me that e-mail. MR. BROWN-Here’s what this means to you guys at the local level. So Jim Underwood from the Zoning Board’s going to go up with me. So anybody, if they can, I know it’s late notice, and I sent it to Chris, but that’s tomorrow at two o’clock, Bolton Town Hall. MR. SEGULJIC-So, assuming it goes through, it’s going to be business as usual. MR. BROWN-It’s pretty much going to be business as usual for us. I think how it’ll effect us is we’ll have to tell applicants, by the way, you better contact the APA and get in the hopper here, too, because what I don’t want to have happen is we grant a variance and they have to get in line with the APA and the APA says, no, we don’t grant the variance. Now where does it leave our applicants? MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. So they have to get the approval from us and then go to the APA. MR. BROWN-That’s what I’m going to ask tomorrow is what their perceived timeline is. Do applicants go to them first, or do they go to us first? A lot of times the next level, and I don’t know where the APA is on a level with us, but like with the DEC or Department of Health, they like to see what the local Board thinks. If the local Board is happy with the project, who’s the State to say, we want to be stricter? Usually the local ones are stricter than the State because we’re allowed to do that. So, will the APA do that and say if you get through the Town we’ll go with it? That’s a wild card. They’ve overturned variances we’ve granted in the past. So, details to follow. MR. KREBS-When’s it effective? MR. SIPP-It is. MR. BROWN-I think it is as of January ‘09. st MR. SIPP-December 31. MR. KREBS-Okay. So the legal challenge has not changed the date? MR. BROWN-Not that I’m aware of, no. MR. KREBS-There’s no stay on it. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. FORD-So those regulations are modified. I don’t know how many are aware that there also is a movement afoot for expansion of the APA, a regional expansion, to include the acquisition, under their jurisdiction, of several of the State campsites that are currently outside of APA. Moreau is an example. Keewatin. Higley Flow State Park, and it was made known that there really was an attempt and an effort made to not have public input or supervisory input, as they went through this process. They’ve been challenged with that, and at least they’re going to be getting some input on it, but as we look at the potential for how, for example, Moreau State Park would come under APA, and some of these others that are not immediately adjacent to the blue line, it has some potential there, as far as, would it be a natural extension of the blue line down to, and inclusive of those, and out to Keewatin and the St. Lawrence and elsewhere? So just be aware that that’s afoot. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Wow. Anything else under proposed Ordinances? MR. SIPP-This court decision, the one on Collins. MR. BROWN-Probably an Executive Session kind of thing, that we don’t want to be talking about at a workshop. That’s a suggestion. You guys are the Board, but. MR. SIPP-Well, I think you ought to read it. MR. BROWN-No, I definitely read it. MR. SEGULJIC-Brower has to take an action, is the bottom line. We needed to speak with the attorney and decide what we need to do, in essence. MR. BROWN-Well, the applicant. You’ll be seeing this in the near future. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. SIPP-All right. I mean, it doesn’t make sense. MR. HUNSINGER-That’s what I thought. Should we have counsel maybe come to the, one of our January meetings to brief us on that. MR. BROWN-Well, you can. If you have a specific question, I can carry it back to him tomorrow. I mean, not that I want to get in the middle, but if I can get an easy answer for you. MR. KREBS-So who’s responsible to resolve it, we aren’t we? MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. BROWN-No, I think it’s the applicant’s responsibility to (lost words). MR. KREBS-And if they don’t apply for the variance, then it just dies? MR. BROWN-Then their approval that you issued to them is void. So they don’t have a project. So they have to come back to you or they have to go the Zoning Board and get a variance. So they’re going to choose what they want to do. MR. TRAVER-The ball’s in their court. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. So there’s probably no reason for us to, they’ve already chosen? MR. BROWN-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-So there’s no reason for us to do anything until that plays out. Okay. One kind of final thing I wanted to bring up. As everybody knows, as members of the Planning Board, we’re required to go to four hours of training a year, and we really haven’t looked at that in the past, the past few years, in any coordinated kind of approach. We’ve kind of left it up to individual members to say, well, there’s this workshop here and there’s that workshop there, you know, make sure you go up and get your training. I think last year maybe we did, that was two years ago. MR. TRAVER-Last year we did one, too. 31 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. OBORNE-Last year we did over in the Senior Center. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I just wanted to bring that up for a point of discussion, almost more as a reminder than anything, that it’s something that we. MR. OBORNE-It’s a requirement of Town Law, is it not? MR. BAKER-A requirement of State Law. MR. HUNSINGER-State Law. Four hours annually. MR. KREBS-You can go to the Association of Towns and get it. MR. SEGULJIC-What are the requirements for those continuing ed credits, for what counts, what doesn’t count? MR. BROWN-Towards that four hours? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. MR. BROWN-Virtually anything. If you wanted to have a workshop with Staff to come and talk about how to read topo on a map or have the attorney come or have the APA, anything that you’re going to give the Board more information counts towards those four hours. MR. HUNSINGER-The Town Board gets to decide if what we did was good enough. MR. SEGULJIC-Because I’ve got a lot of continuing education credits. I don’t know if they’re relevant or not. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-So I could always pull those out. MR. HUNSINGER-It wouldn’t hurt. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-No, I mean, the Planning Board workshop in Saratoga County at the end of the month, I mean, that counts. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MRS. BRUNO-What I was trying to remember was how many hours did that count for? MRS. STEFFAN-Eight hours for the Saratoga, that’s one of the reasons I go to that. It’s in January and I get it done for the year. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, you get it done for the year. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, because I went the past two years, too. MR. TRAVER-It would be good if we had some evening or weekend opportunities to get those four hours, for those of us that can’t go to the day. MRS. STEFFAN-There’s also the Saratoga Planning, not the Saratoga, the Planning Federation, which the last several years has been right in Saratoga, and it’s three days of meetings, and they start on a Sunday. So you’re able to get, you know, you’re able to go to a Sunday session if you need to get your four hours in, but then the content for the rest of the few days. You don’t have to go to the whole thing. You could just talk with Staff, and I think it’s included in the newsletter that we all get. MR. KREBS-When is that, in April or May? MRS. STEFFAN-October. MR. KREBS-October. MRS. STEFFAN-Every year. 32 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. SEGULJIC-And there’s also that on line course. MR. SIPP-Lake George has one in June. MRS. STEFFAN-A watershed conference. MR. BAKER-Pace University New York Municipal Insurance Reciprocal. MR. HUNSINGER-I’d forgotten about that. MR. SIPP-And then New York Department of State has those. MR. HUNSINGER-The Department of State does stuff. Last year they did one right here in the Activities Center. MR. TRAVER-I know I went to an evening class up at the Municipal Center, a couple of times I think. MR. FORD-I have a final question, when you’re ready. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. No, go ahead. I’m not guaranteeing it’ll be a final question, though. MR. FORD-It’s my final question. Chris, do you have a comfort level with calling for our attorney to be present at our meetings at any given meeting? MR. HUNSINGER-I do, sure. I mean, and I would say this. If any member has strong feelings about a particular project, I mean, my inclination is if we think they should be there, I’ll ask them to be there. So I guess I would put it out to the Board, you know, I think if it’s a reasonable request. I’m certainly, I feel very comfortable making that phone call and ask him to be there. MR. KREBS-You’re talking about our attorney, now, the Town Attorney. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. KREBS-He’s excellent. I’ve never seen a Planning Board that doesn’t have legal representation on the spot, quite regularly. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we used to have the Town Attorney there at every meeting, and it got to be expensive, and so now they’re kind of on call, and, I mean, I’ve been very vocal about my feeling about that. MR. KREBS-They bill us by the hour for it? MR. HUNSINGER-They do. I mean, I feel that we’re at a disadvantage if the applicant has an attorney there and we don’t. MR. KREBS-We are. MR. HUNSINGER-So, I mean, again, my inclination is if one or more members. MR. FORD-(Lost words) because we never had one there. So my perception was that you either didn’t have a comfort level with addressing it or requesting it or that you didn’t perceive that there was a need for one. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean, what’s kind of played out now is that they’re only there on unusual cases. MR. SEGULJIC-Which leads me to question, and I know the applicant’s attorney has given their opinion, and I guess the question we should ask our attorney is, if the, you know, the applicant senses it’s not going their way, and they request a tabling, they have said that stops our potential to make a motion then, and is that true or not? MR. BROWN-No. Any tabling that the Board does is entirely discretionary. You don’t have to table them. They can request it, but you’re not obligated to table. MR. SEGULJIC-So we can go forward with our motion, then? 33 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. BROWN-You can, you know. As a courtesy, typically you grant a tabling, and just like any court would do, if you ask for more time, you get more time, but you can, likewise, do the same thing if an attorney question comes up that you have, you’re attorney’s not that. Geez, I don’t know, I’m going to table this to get legal counsel here for next time. So to have them there every time, maybe you don’t need that, but if something comes up, pull the plug and get them there for the next time. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, what happened, Craig, was the prior Town Attorney, at a meeting, the applicant asked for us to, requested that we table, and I think this is where this is coming from. The Town Attorney was present at the Planning Board meeting. The applicant asked us to table the application. The Town Attorney’s opinion was that we had to honor that request. MR. TRAVER-Yes, I remember that. MR. HUNSINGER-And that went against what I had always understood, you know. MR. SEGULJIC-And I guess that’s one question I’d have, and the other one was, I guess out of courtesy, sometimes when you have four members or five members, the applicant would ask for a tabling, which I think is the right thing to do, but can we still continue with the motion to deny at that point? MR. BROWN-Well, that’s a different situation. I think you’re obligated to provide them a full Board. So if you only have seven, or five or six members there, and they ask for a tabling, then you may be obligated to do that, but if you have a full Board there, have all the information before you, I don’t think you’re obligated to table them. I think that’s, what you were saying. MR. SCHONEWOLF-We only had four the other night. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, when we only have four, I think Chris does the right thing. He offers the courtesy. He says, look, we only have four members here, do you want to table, and they say, yes. Okay. That’s happened once or twice. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, that’s happened before. MR. TRAVER-And if we’re obligated to have a full Board, then if more than two Planning Board members are going to be absent, and both of our alternates are present, but we still don’t have a full Board, then we should cancel the meeting. MR. BROWN-No. I think if you can come to a decision with the members that you have, and the applicant’s going to be happy with that, and they’re not say, whoa, I want to be tabled, and you’re saying, no, I’m not going to table you, I’m going to decide, I think you can go forward with six or five or four, as long as you have four to make, you know, a quorum to make a decision, if you’re happy with the decision, and they’re not kicking and screaming, okay, go forward. MR. KREBS-I think an attorney’s important in some of these big commercial projects. Because, you know, they’re bringing in four or five, and taking us on. MR. TRAVER-Well, there’s certainly an application, and I know we don’t want to talk about specifics, but there’s an application, I believe the second meeting of this month, where there may be some residual issues we might want to have. MR. KREBS-Yes, you better believe it. MR. BROWN-I’ve already asked him to come to that meeting. Way ahead of you, and that kind of rolls into one question that I have, if everybody’s done. I didn’t want to jump in front of you, in SEQRA forms. Ideally, the SEQRA forms are completed at the meeting, and signed and not to put more work on the Secretary, but you guys go through, when you do the Long Form, you go through, item by item, you fill it out. When you’re done, pass it over to Chris, sign it, stick it in the folder. It’s completed. The same thing for Short Forms. If you’re going to go through that no, no, no, no, Negative Dec, sign it and put it in the file the night of the meeting. Those are important documents that have to be completed. MRS. STEFFAN-We’ve never done that before. 34 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. BROWN-I know. MR. SEGULJIC-So we should have a stack of forms with us. MR. BROWN-Yes, there’s a binder that’s at the meeting every night that’s got a bunch of blank forms in it that, yes, that’s. MR. HUNSINGER-They’re always with the application, too. MR. BROWN-Right, they’re always with the application. So that needs to be completed and put in the file as a document. MRS. STEFFAN-Chris didn’t do it, so I. MR. HUNSINGER-Who signs it now? MR. BROWN-Probably nobody. MR. KREBS-Doesn’t the Chairman sign them? MR. BROWN-The Chairman doesn’t sign them. No. MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, I have signed them in the past, but it might have been when I was Secretary. MR. BROWN-And it’s whoever the preparer is. It doesn’t have to be you, but if the Secretary, whoever fills out the application signs it as the preparer, yes. So, they need to be done, just closes out the file. MR. OBORNE-That’s one thing I’ll be trying to stay on top of. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. OBORNE-I will, sorry, will be staying on top of. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, 90% of the time it’s just check the boxes no, and sign it. MR. BROWN-And not to belabor SEQRA because we can spend, you know, five more hours talking about that, that SEQRA classifications and the determination of what type the project is, lies with the Board who’s going to make that decision. When you get an agenda from us that says this is a Type I or it’s Unlisted or it’s Type II, that’s what we think it is. We’ve got the New York State DEC information that says here are all the types, and we’ve looked at that list and we’ve pigeon holed it into this one location. That can be changed. That’s up to you guys. You guys decide, you know, a Negative Dec or Positive Dec on the application. So the type, whether it’s I, II or Unlisted, is up to you. You can change it. It’s our recommendation what the type is. MR. SEGULJIC-So a motion and a vote, and, you know, we want to change it from an Unlisted to a Type I. MR. BROWN-Yes. Hey, it’s been identified on the agenda by Staff as a Type II. We think that in the Type I list, this is a Type I so we’re going to classify it as a Type I. MR. SEGULJIC-We make a motion, it gets approved, and we go on from there. MR. OBORNE-Well, you’ll need a Long Form for the record. MR. BROWN-Yes, I mean, if it happens to be a Type I or something that’s Unlisted, you have to do the actual SEQRA review, but, enough of you guys have been to SEQRA classes, probably at the Planning Federation Planning Conferences, that, you know, if it’s an item that’s on the Type II list, it can’t be anything else. If it says it’s a single family dwelling and that’s Type II, just because that project has filling in a wetland that’s a different type, it’s a Type II. It can’t be anything else. So it’s pretty cut and dried as to what the types are, but just, ultimately, just a reminder that that decision of what the type is lies with the Zoning Board, lies with the Town Board, whoever’s doing SEQRA, you’re the one who has to classify or agree with the classification that we recommend to you, but ours is just a guess that, you know, we’ve gone through the list. It looks like it’s this. We’re right 99.9% of the time, but there are those times that where, you know, if you’ve got an application say that’s, you know, that straddles the Town line and you want to do 35 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) a coordinated review, and call it a Type I action, and we’ve identified it as a Type II or Unlisted, you can bump it up and make it whatever you think that it is. So, just a reminder. That just ties into the SEQRA stuff. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think that was a good clarification, because there’s been some confusion on that recently. MR. BROWN-Who’s on the hook for the SEQRA decision? Not me. You guys are on the hook for it. I mean, make sure it’s a right classification that you can live with, and the decision of Neg Dec, Pos Dec at the end is your call, too. MR. HUNSINGER-And there are some anomalies in SEQRA law, too, which always kind of throw us off, which, you know, frequently on the same night we’ll have some that are, you know, listed as a Type II that, you know, we think should be different or whatever. MR. BROWN-Yes, and that list, that Type II list, I think even the Type I list is in that binder that you bring, that Pam has put together, that’s got all the blank SEQRA forms in it. So, anytime you need to, just open that up, or if you’ve got the laptop there, you can get to that DEC website. MR. OBORNE-Well, I can’t get on that laptop right now as it stands. MR. BROWN-The wireless isn’t working anymore. MR. OBORNE-That’s the problems, though, we’ve had with the GIS. MR. BROWN-I think there’s a hardcopy in that binder anyway. MR. OBORNE-There is. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else anyone wanted to bring up this evening? MRS. BRUNO-How does it work for me, when the Town Board ends up voting on the seat, right? MR. TRAVER-Well, I was going to say, with the change in the agenda, I mean, I’d like to make a motion that we make a recommendation to the Town Board that Tanya be reappointed. MOTION THAT THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MAKES A RECOMMENDATION TO THE QUEENSBURY TOWN BOARD THAT TANYA BRUNO BE REAPPOINTED, Introduced by Stephen Traver who moved its adoption, seconded by Donald Sipp: th Duly adopted this 13 day of January 2009 by the following vote: MRS. STEFFAN-Can we do that at a workshop, or do we have to do it at a Board meeting? MR. HUNSINGER-No, a workshop’s a public meeting. It’s been noticed. MR. SEGULJIC-So your term expired, expired, then. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, at the end of the year. I’m a member of the public right now. MR. TRAVER-But we don’t have a meeting until Tuesday. MR. KREBS-They don’t have a meeting until the end of the month. MRS. BRUNO-The Town Board. th MR. BROWN-The 26 I think is the next meeting. th MR. KREBS-The 26. They won’t be making the appointments until then. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I mean, we have a motion, we’ll act on it in a second. Just while we’re discussing, one of the things that Dan did tell me was that, he said that he was going to give you a letter asking, you know, you need to give the Town Board a letter if you want to be reappointed. 36 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MR. BROWN-I think that was in those letters that I handed out. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. I didn’t read the whole thing. MR. BROWN-Because, technically, you’re not a Planning Board member anymore. At th the meeting before the 26, you’ll probably want to have an alternate sit in for Tanya until they do the reappointment. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. th MR. BROWN-Because it’s expired. Whatever meeting before the 26. thth MR. KREBS-I’m going to do the 20. You’re going to do the 27. MR. HUNSINGER-Further discussion, Tom? MR. SEGULJIC-Well, doesn’t it make more sense to do the motion at the next, at the Board meeting on Tuesday? MR. KREBS-Yes, it does. MR. HUNSINGER-I don’t think it makes a difference. MR. BROWN-That’s still before the Town Board meeting. MR. KREBS-The Town Board has an obligation to, if they have an opening, unless it’s something different in Queensbury, in other places, they have an obligation, I believe, to request people that are interested in being on the Town Board, they usually put a legal notice in, don’t they? There was a big fight about that last time, a couple of months back, because people were saying that they weren’t notified that there was a vacancy. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, the practice has always been, and I think I was one of the first two or three alternates, the practice has always been that when there’s an opening, that it first would go to one of the alternates. I mean, you can say no, you know, but that has been the practice, and then, so, the opening has the opening ends up being one of the alternates. MR. TRAVER-But in this case, our opening is only a technicality. Because it was discovered that there was a mistake in the record keeping. It wasn’t because Tanya’s term was coming up and did nothing to continue that term. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-So I think it’s an unusual situation. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. BROWN-To be avoided in the future, because we fixed that. MRS. STEFFAN-So we have a motion on the table. MR. HUNSINGER-We have a motion and a second. AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Ford, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE MRS. STEFFAN-I guess any other business, I just would like to just bring up standards of comportment. There was a letter that I think most of us got, and I just want to remind folks that in our e-mails and in our meetings that we need to act professionally, that we need to use manners and courtesy and respect, that we also need to follow the chain of command. We talked a little bit about that with notifying people if we’re not here. Chris is the Chairman of the Planning Board. He is the spokesperson for the Planning Board, and all matters regarding the Planning Board should go to Chris first, and so I was very concerned with the letter that I got in the mail. When I went back and read the minutes, I was very disappointed and so I wanted to bring that up, because I think we really need to pay close attention to that, and in light of some of the e-mails that have gone back and 37 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) forth, which I’ve been offended by, I would just like to put that on the table, that I think we need to re-direct our attention to make sure that we’re behaving as professionals. MR. SCHONEWOLF-What letter are you talking about? MRS. STEFFAN-The letter from John Salvador. MR. SCHONEWOLF-You know what, let me tell you something about that. That lady sought me out later, and apologized to me for coming to the Planning Board unprepared, and then she proceeded, and you heard it, proceeded to give just a perfect introduction of herself and her organization to the Zoning Board. I said to her, well, that was great. Why not do it for the Planning Board. She said because I got thrown in the middle and got sent down there, nobody told me what I was supposed to do. So she said I apologize to you. I said, you don’t have to apologize to me. I just asked you for your name and address, and I was asking, really, the Water Keeper still irritates me because he doesn’t give that, and he purposely does that. He just doesn’t do it here. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, I guess the issue is not that you did it, but that you were rude. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, and as I read the minutes. MR. SCHONEWOLF-I don’t think that’s rude. She didn’t think it was rude. MRS. STEFFAN-I read the minutes, after I got the letter. I was not at the meeting, but after I read the minutes, the discussion was disputatious, and I thought in appropriate. MR. SCHONEWOLF-And Salvador’s letter was inaccurate. Because nobody said anything about shoot the messenger. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. The letter just brought the issue to my attention as one Planning Board member. I went and read the minutes, as a result of that letter, and felt that the exchange was inappropriate. MR. SCHONEWOLF-That’s right. That’s okay. Just keep in mind that Salvador is attacking me personally on many issues, because he has a problem with another organization I belong to, and that’s what it’s all about. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that’s not an issue for the Planning Board. MR. SCHONEWOLF-No, it isn’t an issue for the Planning Board, and if you have a problem with what I said in the Planning Board, well, then you’re perfectly in your right to tell me that. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think one of the other issues, too, and I’m glad you kind of brought this up for discussion. I think one of the other issues that we frequently kind of get caught up in, and I think the Water Keeper is maybe a good example, is where we have an advocacy group like that that tries to exert more influence than what they really have, and our jobs as Planning Board members is to take whatever information we have and dissect it, and just because they have a title or they say they represent a group or, you know, they offered this or that, it doesn’t automatically make them an expert, and really where I thought you were coming from, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is to say, well, you know, you’re just another person coming to the Planning Board. You might, that might be your living. You might be the Water Keeper. You might be whatever, but, you know, your standing to the Planning Board is any other member of the public commenting. MR. SCHONEWOLF-That’s exactly what I was saying. It wasn’t directed at her, because I didn’t even know here, and she hadn’t been there before that I know of. MRS. STEFFAN-She’s been in front of the Planning Board many times. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Never when I’ve been there. MR. HUNSINGER-And that’s really where I got in trouble with the Citizens for Queensbury, and I want to apologize to this Board for the comments that I made to the press, and I was totally caught off guard. It was at the end of October, with the Mall expansion. Dr. Hoffman was on the PORC Committee with us. He sent an e-mail to Gretchen and I, comments on the Mall expansion project. I didn’t even know about this e-mail until I get a phone call from the reporter saying, well, you know, Dr. Hoffman did 38 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) this and did that, you know, sent this information to the Planning Board. The Planning Board has ignored him and you’re not taking him seriously, and I made some off the cuff comments that she printed. They were correct. I mean, she was beautiful and the comments were correct, but it was taken out of context. It was kneejerk reaction on my part, and I will apologize to Dr. Hoffman, if and when the Mall project comes back to the Board, but I wanted the Board to know that, you know, I wanted to apologize for doing that. It was inappropriate for me to make the comments that I made. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Was that the sidewalk issue? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I’ve since, since I talked to the reporter, though, I did find the e- mail that he had sent. It was in my, you know, 3,000 spam e-mails, because it had an attachment on it, and I did respond to Dr. Hoffman. I believe I forwarded it to Staff, saying, you know, if you wish to make a comment on the record, you need to either send it to Staff as part of the record or come to the Planning Board meeting and speak your comments to the record, but, since we were on that topic, I thought it was an appropriate point to bring it up. MRS. STEFFAN-And in that particular situation, I mean, most of the local advocacy groups come in front of us and are regular speakers at the public hearing, and they have a right to an opinion just like everyone else. We have experts that we listen to and we pay them for their expert opinion, and then we weigh and consider. We have used the Lake George Water Keeper’s plant list in the past and we’ve referred to it regularly. MR. TRAVER-And the LGA, too. MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-And so, you know, that particular group is known to us, but they don’t have anymore weight than any other member of the public, but. MR. HUNSINGER-That was the only point I was trying to make, when I made the comments to the press. I got a little overzealous, I suppose. MR. KREBS-Well, and a couple of times that I’ve been called by the Post Star, I just have refused to say anything. Figured I’d stay out of trouble. MR. SCHONEWOLF-They’re not worth talking to. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else? I wanted to be done by nine o’clock. MR. FORD-Are we squared away as far as attendance, anticipated attendance for the month of February? MR. HUNSINGER-January I think we’re all set. I don’t know about February. MR. TRAVER-We haven’t talked about February. MR. HUNSINGER-We haven’t talked about February. MR. FORD-Because I sent out an e-mail several weeks ago that I’m not going to be here for either of the meetings. I’ll be out of state. MR. HUNSINGER-While we’re on meetings, we do have Site Visits on Saturday. I will make arrangements to get the van. MR. BROWN-Just a quick question on the meeting dates. MR. HUNSINGER-And I forgot to bring my calendar. th MR. BROWN-May 26 is a regular meeting date. It’s also the Assessor’s Office Grievance Day. MR. HUNSINGER-We run into that every year. I thought, didn’t we talk about that, Keith? MR. OBORNE-I don’t remember talking about Grievance Day, no. 39 (Queensbury Planning Board 01/14/09) MRS. STEFFAN-I think we were going to meet on a Thursday. MR. HUNSINGER-Thursday. thth MR. TRAVER-So we’re going to meet the 28 instead of the 26. thth MR. BROWN-19 and 28. Okay, and the week of Thanksgiving, any issues with the Tuesday before? And likewise Christmas week. Christmas is on a Friday this year. So you guys would be the Tuesday before Christmas Friday. Any issues with that? MR. KREBS-No. MRS. STEFFAN-I thought we had decided the Thursday before. Because this year we thth did Tuesday and Thursday. So it would be the 15 and the 17, and then Christmas week we wouldn’t have to be there. MR. FORD-As per my previous e-mail, I will, however, be back for the March meetings. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Anything else? Thank you everybody. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Chris Hunsinger, Chairman 40