Loading...
2011.02.08 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING WORKSHOP MEETING FEBRUARY 8, 2011 INDEX DISCUSSION Policies, Procedures, Engineering, etc. 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 02/10/2011) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING WORKSHOP MEETING FEBRUARY 8, 2011 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CHRIS HUNSINGER, CHAIRMAN GRETCHEN STEFFAN, SECRETARY DONALD KREBS PAUL SCHONEWOLF DONALD SIPP THOMAS FORD STEPHEN TRAVER BRAD MAGOWAN, ALTERNATE ZONING ADMINISTRATOR-CRAIG BROWN LAND USE PLANNER-KEITH OBORNE TOWN COUNSEL-MILLER, MANNIX, SCHACHNER, & HAFNER-MIKE HILL TOWN ENGINEER-VISION ENGINEERING – DAN RYAN & MIKE FARRELL MR. HUNSINGER-I guess to get started I’ll just recap by spending a couple of minutes. I had a phone call from Dan Stec, the Supervisor and Craig was there on speaker, talking about engineering attendance at our Board meetings, and I think it was a couple of days, or maybe the day before a Planning Board meeting, so we brought it up at the next night, and decided that we should have a workshop to talk about it, spend time, you know, talking about policy and procedure and how that would fit. I kind of started the conversation with Dan Stec by saying, you know, if it were up to me, I’d want the attorneys and the engineers at every meeting, like it used to be, you know, because the applicant is going to have their attorney and their engineer at the table, and if we don’t, then we’re kind of at a disadvantage, but, you know, having said that, we understand we’re always dealing with, you know, diminishing resources of the Town, and it’s expensive to have the professionals there at every meeting, and sometimes, quite frankly, it’s not really necessary, but I guess that’s the topic for discussion. Craig, I don’t know if there was anything that you wanted to add? MR. BROWN-No, I don’t think so. That call came on the heels of, Dan and I sat down with Dan and my. MR. HUNSINGER-That was the discussion of their contract. MR. BROWN-Yes, that was right after that we went in and called you up. I think the Planning Board made that resolution to sit down and talk about that and invited these guys and Mike Hill h here to try to hammer out all those things, and, you know, right now the Town Board, and I’ll say this for the whole Board’s benefit. They’re considering continuing on with an RFP for the engineering services. VISION’s kind of here because they’re doing some of the Town Board stuff and they were the, I guess the conflict attorney if Clark had a conflict with an application last year, it rolled over to them, and now they’re thankfully taking up some of the slack for us until we figure out what we’re going to do, but, you know, they’ve got some valuable insight on what’s good and what doesn’t work and the Planning Board review. MR. HUNSINGER-So does the Town need to go through an RFP before? MR. BROWN-Before they select, yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. BROWN-I mean, well, they can do a couple of things. They can ask VISION to revise their contract and they’ve provided us with a draft today that I haven’t had a chance to look at it. They can go with that, or they could shop around and see what’s out there, and I think the majority of the Board members that I’ve heard from, that’s what they want to do, just to see what’s out there, and maybe we’ll likely end up here, but they’re just going to be interested in seeing what’s there. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. 1 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. KREBS-Well, sometimes they feel that’s a necessity so that the public doesn’t feel like they made one inside decision. MR. BROWN-Yes, and along those same lines, we’re going to need another engineer some place along the line because if, in fact, VISION does stay as the Town Engineer, they may have an applicant or two that they’re working for on a current project that they can’t do review on before the Board, we’re going to need somebody to review their work at some point anyway. So we’ve got to do this exercise and see what’s out there and whether they become primary or secondary, I don’t know that yet. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyway, that’s for coming here tonight. MR. RYAN-Well thanks for having us. We did this Planning Board work for several years, and, you know, we thought we did a pretty good job. I know we didn’t have a lot of interaction with the Board specifically because we weren’t attending meetings. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. RYAN-But we certainly think that we were a benefit and an asset to the Board in reviewing projects and certainly ending with better results for each of the projects. We try to engage the types of projects that come in front of you. Some are large. Some are small. So we try to gauge and tailor a lot of our comments related to the size of the project, the importance of the different design elements. I’d like to discuss whatever issues the Board has had in the past when we did reviews, and anything we can do to improve the process moving forward, if we were to assist you guys in evaluating these projects before you. We’d like to continue that service, and it is a commitment that we’ve discussed with the Town Board members, in particular with Dan Stec and Craig Brown. So we’d like to answer any questions you have tonight. We’d like to discuss your procedures. Having done it for several years, we know what has worked and we know how you’ve changed the process over the years to improve on it. I think right now you have a good system in place. Some of the timing issues can be difficult with larger projects, but we would, you know, like to discuss anything that you guys feel is important. We’d be happy to elaborate on our request to possibly attend the meetings and why we think that’s important as well, not to mention the content and some other things. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. So there’s at least a couple, three different issues sort of on the table. I mean, you know, one is attendance at the meetings, and I can think of a number of occasions when it would have been beneficial to have someone there, you know, where a technical question came up and we’re not engineers, and, you know, we kind of send the applicant packing to make sure it’s okay. MR. RYAN-And we recognize that, I mean, because we, when we weren’t attending the meetings, we were always reading the minutes to get a gauge of what your responses were to the comments, what was your perspective of the project, so when we reviewed it the second time, we would have a better gauge on that, and we found that, reading the minutes, not being at the meetings and reading the minutes, it seemed pretty clear that there were oftentimes when the Board would have benefitted from us being there, and projects would not have been delayed had we been able to tell you the magnitude of the comment. Some comments you may have taken as this seems a little bit drastic, does this change the project, is it, you know, how important is it? And oftentimes that was questioned, I think, on various applications. So I think we could alleviate some of that. The other things I recognize is applicants would tell you anything to get you to do a conditional approval, such as, well, we talked to Dan about it, when they maybe hadn’t talked to me about it. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. RYAN-And that’s frustrating for us, because you guys were unclear, unsure as to, well what was decided, what was discussed. Did VISION Engineering really say that that was okay? When oftentimes they hadn’t even called us. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. RYAN-So we preempt a lot of the dishonesty that could possibly be happening in front of you by being present. I think that being present gives us the opportunity to help you make informed decisions on your feet, on the spot, and maybe some projects don’t require further tabling if engineering issues are minor and can be worked out. So I think there’s a lot of benefits to us being present. It is an added cost. We’ve talked briefly with Craig on how do we put that cost onto some of the applications. It’s hard to do, unless we’re tracking the time at the meetings, and we’re set up so where, you know, we’re at the beginning of the meetings on the 2 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) schedule and the agendas. So, you know, I think it could be a benefit to both the Boards and the applicant, but in particular for you guys in making decisions if we’re present. MR. HUNSINGER-And the, sort of the flipside of that, though, one of the concerns mentioned when we talked about it a couple of weeks ago is, you know, we don’t want to be doing the engineering for the applicant and, you know, so there is some concern about that. MR. TRAVER-Well, we have a couple of decision, I mean, there’s a couple of points at which a decision could be offered as to engineering or counsel, for that matter, to be present. I mean, obviously when the application is looked at by Planning Staff and that process has really gotten excellent, so we can have a recommendation there, and then I know that you’re involved in the development of the agenda and so on. There may be something that you look at that, even though you’re not a quorum, you know, would be enough to nudge that to be on the agenda, and then if we have an application that we perhaps don’t have either professional consultants present, we get to the point where we have a tabling, we might decide at that point that we want professionals there at the next hearing of the application, based on an issue that came up that we couldn’t resolve and therefore it needed to be tabled. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-One of my concerns is that as we have more input the night of the meeting, I’m concerned about the issue of accepting materials the night of the meeting, and not that we either do or we don’t, but it seems like we ought to develop a policy and stick to it. Because I’ve sometimes been a little bit uncomfortable, and obviously it’s well intentioned, you know, and there’ve been times when we’ve taken materials and times when we haven’t, and obviously we’re just trying to help the process along, and time we’ve done it both ways, but it would be great if we could, and I’m sure this conversation takes place in towns all over the country, but it would be great if we could have some kind of a practice and a policy and really be consistent with it, so that applicants would either know or know not to bring materials, because they often do bring materials that night and say can we give this to you, you know, and that makes it tough. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. MAGOWAN-And it’s going to be a larger and larger, like every meeting, as meetings go on, people are going to say, well, they’ll take it that night, they’ll take it that night, and it might get out of hand. MR. TRAVER-Right, and as we’re all aware, time is money, and we’ve already talked about that tonight and we also have seen, I think, a trend, this obviously will be continuing, that projects are going to be more and more complicated as we have more difficult to develop land remaining, you know, in the Town. I mean, it will involve more planning and more engineering and it’s just, which is the other thing. I mean, the engineering is great, but planning and engineering obviously are two different things, and I worry that there might be some overlap there somehow or that that, you know, that communication might be complicated, somehow, by this whole process. MR. KREBS-Well, of course that’s why I proposed this last year, is that, you know, I didn’t know you two, Mike and Dan, were going to be here, but this is a flow chart basically which includes a couple of more weeks of effort and what it does it allows the applicant to go back to the Staff and to the engineers, prior to the coming to the Planning Board meeting, and resolve engineering issues or planning issues, so that when the applicant comes before the Planning Board, most of those issues have been resolved. MR. HILL-It happens in a lot of municipalities. That exact process does, but that’s a procedural thing that certainly as the Board and the Planning Staff, you know, on how that’s set up, but that particular design happens in a lot of municipalities where, specifically on the larger jobs. The smaller jobs certainly you can get through them, but the bigger jobs are the ones that get hung up in that six month, eight month, nine month, ten month window because there’s engineer comments, they can’t bring material. They get all of those Planning Staff, engineering staff hashed out early in the process, and then it’s ready for the Planning Board. MR. KREBS-Right. MR HILL-There’s an initial meeting with the Planning Board for all of their input for project design changes associated with what the Planning Board wants, and then it goes to the engineers to develop those concepts that were expressed by the Board members the first night. So it’s basically almost like an introduction to the project. Planning Board says we’d like to see this, we’d like to see the traffic patterns, whatever it may be. We’d like to see more trees, buffers, whatever you would have, and then it goes through a planning, an extensive planning 3 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) and engineering review, and then the engineer and the planner say, okay, we think it’s ready to present to the Planning Board so that they can move through the process of SEQRA and move through the process. MR. KREBS-See, the problem we have, oftentimes, is that the applicant doesn’t get your engineering comments until Friday before the Tuesday meeting. So, they don’t have time to, I mean, it may be minor things or they didn’t put everything on the drawing, etc. So now we’re in a position that we either have to condition approval based on having all those engineering questions answered. I’d much rather see it come as a package to the Board already resolved, so then we will look at the planning issues, not whether all the test pits are on the drawings or maybe there isn’t enough topographical information on the Board. Well, when you, as the engineers, meet with the applicant before the meeting, you would resolve all these, and then they would come to the meeting with a package that basically has your approval, and then we don’t have to worry about the engineering issues. MR. BROWN-The whole timing of the comments when they’re provided to the Town from the engineer, that was by design from the Planning Board to avoid that, hey, the Board’s got Version A that was the original submittal and by the time it goes back and forth at the engineer three or four times, they’re on project development D, and they come to the Board with a set of plans that you guys haven’t even seen yet. So you guys kind of designed it to, we want to look at Plan A. We want one set of comments from the engineer on Plan A, and then we’ll talk about that at the first meeting. MR. RYAN-And I think what I find is we do issue the comments on a Friday before. If we do them earlier, we almost always see a re-submittal before the meeting, because the sooner you get it done, the more apt the applicant is to provide additional documentation to you at the meeting or to us and Craig before the meeting. MR. BROWN-And that plays into the problem you described is they come to the meeting with more information and they still try and do that now, even when they get the comments, you know, on purpose at the last minute. They want to come and get an approval that night. So they’ve got this information that they’re going to bring to the meeting and say, oh please, oh please, oh please. I talked to Dan about it and everything you see here is fine. Well, you don’t know that for sure, and, you know, this is the conversation we had, you know, at one or two or maybe the last three workshops, is there’s kind of three scenarios to do engineering and planning approvals. One is you get the engineering flat before they even get on your agenda. The second one is they get the Planning Board’s approval, this is the project we like, now go engineer it and make the engineering flat, and if you can’t, then you come back, or you do what we’re doing now which is that you do the engineering review and the planning review at the same time so their comments and your comments can be put together to make one project at the end, and that’s the way we’ve been doing it for a long time. It doesn’t mean that it’s the right way or that it has to say that way, and, you know, I had a conversation with, you’re going to get a public comment letter there, from Tom Center was in my office earlier this week and he talked about a plan much like yours, Don, and said, why don’t we, like we do in whatever town he works for, Bolton I think, why doesn’t the Town develop a process that gets the engineering done before it gets to the Planning Board on a Planning Board agenda? And the only pitfall I can see with that is if the engineering is done, then it gets to the Planning Board review and you guys want to change the location of something or want more landscaping instead of a pond in that area. Now they’ve got to go back and re-do that portion of it, probably not entire re-do, but it’s a re-do of work that they’ve already done, which they’re kind of doing at the same time in the current process. So there is something to be said for. MR. KREBS-Yes. I’ve also sat on the Board and we’ve had engineering questions which none of us on the Board could answer and we weren’t sure quite how to interpret what the engineer had said. MR. BROWN-And I was going to say, there’s something to be said for having engineering done before they get to the meeting. Like I say, the pitfall is you guys find something that you dislike or want to change about the project. Now they have to go back and re-do it. Likewise if they have planning approval and they can’t engineer it, now they’ve got to come back to you and change the plan because the engineering just didn’t work. MR. OBORNE-And there’s also another wildcard in there, and that is a lot of these plans have to go through ZBA approval first, and that could dictate how that planning aspect of it’s going to go forward, too. MR. BROWN-Do they get the variance for excess parking or not. Well, if they don’t, that effects their design. 4 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. TRAVER-Well, you know, that’s an interesting point, because we basically have a process that applications follow in the whole Planning Board review process, and, you know, you look at the Code, and we’ve got at least a couple of different ways that projects are sort of classified at the beginning, and then they’re handled under the Code differently. Why couldn’t we have more than one process for projects in the Town? Maybe initially when they come in you say, well, this can follow the standard procedure, but maybe this has got a tremendous amount of engineering issues, so that follows a different timeline. Maybe something like this. MR. OBORNE-Well, I think the agenda is developed with that in mind, right off the bat, and I would offer that as, just to offer it out, to develop the agenda with the engineer in mind, knowing that you’re going to be at those meetings, front end those meetings, each of those meetings with the larger projects, or back end it, however you guys want to do that. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-So some of these issues might go away just because we’re talking about involving the engineer earlier, as part of the initial project evaluation process, and that would follow through to the meetings as well. MR. OBORNE-I do want to just add one more thing, and please keep in mind that it is the applicant’s engineer that the burden is on. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. OBORNE-They need to do their due diligence, and if they do their due diligence, they’re not going to have a million questions. That’s my perception, to be honest with you. It really is on the shoulders of the applicant. MR. TRAVER-We have seen a lot of really sloppy applications. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I was going to say, and that has been the bigger. MR. TRAVER-And that’s really frustrating. I forgot to do that. MR. HUNSINGER-How many times did Gretchen say due diligence. MR. RYAN-(Lost words) it’s hard to convey that if you’re not at the meeting, and you’re looking at an application, and we know, as engineers, because we’ve looked at it, that this is not going to work, and they need to go back to the drawing Board, either they get tabled or they get moved to the (lost word), but you’re looking at it because they’re on the agenda and. MR. OBORNE-And this is an engineer designed plan. MR. RYAN-It happens. MR. OBORNE-I know. MR. RYAN-But that’s, you know, our job is to protect the Town so that the garbage doesn’t get built and the Planning Board is the ones that made that decision. We’re just trying to inform them that. MR. OBORNE-I concur wholeheartedly. MR. RYAN-But it’s hard to convey that technically to the Planning Board whereas, you know, an engineer will say, oh, well, that’ll work just fine. There’s no problems, and we’ve seen it time and time again, where the applicant’s engineer gets in front of you and they say, oh, that’s no problem. That’s going to work fine. We don’t know what they’re talking about, and, well, I don’t know if that’s the case, because then the project comes back and you see that there’s a major change and now you’re looking at another project, and you thought you were looking at one project, now you’re looking at another project. With larger projects, those are the ones that you have to be, you can, as you were saying, maybe run a different track because those are the ones you want to see that are the package of, and then, you know, get, you’re going to have a couple of shots at them through the course of the project, but you want to have a good project, but you want to have a good project in front of you to move forward with and not something that came out that’s got 40 comments on it, the, you know, the Friday, they just came in and you’ve got 40 comments on this, and the next time you see the set of plans it’s going to be a different project, and then maybe the third time you see them it’s going to be a different project again. 5 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. HUNSINGER-And that is the frustrating part is, you know, we get our package, well, I mean, we get the plans before we get your comments, you know, because we already have the plans for next week and the week after, and then we’ll get your comments, you know, the weekend before the meeting, but when I’m reviewing a project and I see either Staff comments or engineering comments that are extensive, quite frankly I don’t spend a lot of time reviewing the project because I know we’re going to table it. MR. RYAN-You’d just as soon not have it on the agenda. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-And it’s like you know you’re going to table it and send them back to the drawing board. MR. TRAVER-Well, and I worry that a pattern might develop, and this is purely hypothetical, but the applicant’s coming in with engineering and they’re maybe not sure if it’s going to work or not, and they say we’re not going to worry about it because the Town Engineer will be there and they’ll, if they don’t accept it, you know, then, in other words, more and more of the job becomes our responsibility. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. BROWN-That happens a lot, not only with the engineering, but the actual application th completeness. They’ll get 60% of it done because it’s, you know, Tuesday the 13 and we’ve got to get this in on Thursday, and they’ll come in with an application that’s half done and they know that we’re going to take a look at it and find a whole bunch of mistakes in it during the review process and they’ll patch it up, but at least they made it in by the deadline. That happens all the time, or it used to happen all the time. Now we’re getting a little bit better with it, but. MR. SIPP-I’d like to see a little more detail on these plans, too, because we’re supposed to have contour lines on all of these and a lot of them we’ve had in the past couple of months. MR. TRAVER-They ask for waivers. MR. SIPP-Yes, and we also need rock outcroppings. We also need soil information on places where the drainage is poor or drainage is good, or drainage is moderate. Just by identifying the soil type, unless you know what the A, B, and C of the whole matter is, you’re not going to be interested in how well the septic is going to drain. I think we need more technical knowledge, and maybe it’s just because of the way I was schooled, but when we had a project, this is why I said the other night, when Hayes and Hayes put up that first thing on West Mountain Road, I said they’ll have water running in their back door. I had a project in college, very similar to that, on farmland, and they had water running through the barn after the second year. So you need your comments to say specifically that this may not work or it’s, it needs to be enlarged to work properly or. MR. RYAN-We’ve contemplated adding, in our comment letters, some standard statements at the end about the degree of the comments, like we would recommend to that Board that the project, or the comments above require significant project change, you know, to give you a kind of an indication that, wait a minute, there’s stuff here that, although we may not understand all ten comments, there’s apparently a couple in here that matter significantly, or you’re going to see a different project the next time around, or maybe that the project, we don’t want to recommend conditional approvals or anything, but basically try to give you some indication as to the severity of the engineering issues, whether they require a significant project change or not, or that they’re built into the flood plain, the basements are going to be flooded type of thing. That requires a major project change when it comes to grading on the site and how the site develops. So you’re going to see a completely different project when it comes back, just by that one comment. MR. OBORNE-And that has a snowball effect. MR. RYAN-It does. It’s a domino effect. I mean, that’s the one thing with engineering is if you don’t cross your T’s and dot your I’s out in the front of the game on these projects it’s just a domino effect and there’s two strategies in the engineering field. You may or may not be aware of them, and one is throw as much paperwork to the municipality as you possibly can, and just bomb them with all of this paperwork and all of this stuff to get approval, and then there’s another one that comes in and does the right job and gets approval, but there’s two different theories. 6 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. OBORNE-I’d add another one to that. They don’t give you enough paperwork. MR. TRAVER-Well, we’ve also seen, we’ve seen the filibuster strategy, too, where somebody will come in and they’ll debate with us for three hours to try to get something through, too. I’ve often felt, you know, we should have a time limit. That might tighten up their preparation and their presentation as well, if they, you know, okay, you’ve got an hour or max or whatever, and if you’re not done. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean, that does bring up an interesting question, and we have talked about that on occasion, about limiting, you know, the amount of time that we will spend on any one application in the evening, and then the other part of that is the introduction of the project. I mean, kind of the way it is now, we pretty much give the applicant almost as much time as they want. MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-To summarize the project and, you know, present it, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t tighten that piece up, too and say, you know, in ten minutes or less, you know, summarize your project. Put the burden back on them to tell us what’s important. MR. TRAVER-Well, I notice, for example, we have an application coming up this month that traditionally is, anyone that we’ve talked to has commented on, and we’ve ended up, late at night, talking about the weather and about the traffic, and things that have nothing to do with the application that’s in front of us, and I mean, you know. MR. BROWN-Well, on an average application, how much time do you think the Board spends on discussing engineering items? Average application, not a Wal-Mart, not a huge project, but average application that has engineering comments? MR. SCHONEWOLF-This Board less than most than I’ve been familiar with because there are less engineers on the Board. MR. BROWN-So if you spend 30 minutes on a project, is half of that talking about engineering? Is a third of it talking about engineering comments? MR. TRAVER-It’s hard to make an average, because they vary tremendously. I mean, there are some projects where all of the questions and concerns have to do with things like setbacks and the aesthetics, and the design or maybe the neighborhood impact, potential neighborhood impact, and there are others where it’s very technical, very difficult to develop site where you’re looking at, you know, slopes and stormwater and so it’s really kind of hard to give that kind of thing. It really can vary a lot. MR. BROWN-Well, the reason I asked is I kind of get the sense that the Board might be interested in going from Option Three that we’re on now to maybe Option One or Two, which is get the engineering flat before you come, or let’s let us focus on designing, not designing the project, but reviewing the project against the site plan requirements or subdivision requirements and then go engineering, you know, and get away from the (lost words) engineering, yes, and we also have to talk about neighborhood character and we have to talk about impacts on the community and we have to talk about all of these things. MR. BROWN-Well, the planning aspect of it. MR. BROWN-Will we get caught up in this engineering thing and why is the basin this big and how come you’ve got these size stones in there, why don’t you use these, and is it supposed to be the steep, you don’t need to be caught up in that stuff that we’ve got professionals to do that and say, it’s right or it’s wrong or it’s acceptable. So, I don’t know, to me it sounds like you guys are maybe kind of polarizing away from item three and maybe you’re looking at item one or two, and I didn’t know if there was a thought to going in one of those directions. MR. RYAN-With the larger scale projects, and early on in the process, as I was saying earlier, is that the planning aspect of the project comes out real early in the project, and the engineer’s comments are generalized in nature, associated with this, we think this is going to work, we don’t think this is going to work, things that, you know, point things out on the site when that first application comes in for the first look at the Planning Board and says, here’s my plan, here’s what I want to do in Queensbury, so that everybody on the Board gets a good sense from the planning aspect and the engineering aspect of how feasible the project is, and then they dump in all of their input into the equation, then they go back to the drawing board to address all the planning and the engineering, and then that’s when they start designing and that’s when the technical review really gets intense, because if you’re intense on the first, a sketch plan, for 7 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) example, there’s not much we can comment on, on that plan, there’s not much we can comment on because we don’t have all of the data that’s associated with it. We can say that we don’t think this is going to work. I mean, there’s been a couple of sites where we said we don’t think it’s going to work, and right in to the end it didn’t work, but the engineer kept telling you that it did. Still didn’t work. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, in fact, that’s what I was going to comment on, and say, I think a lot of what we’re talking about brings us back to the importance of sketch plan review, you know because that’s where you do preliminary plan, and, you know, if we can sit down and do preliminary planning at sketch plan review, and then say, you know. MR. BROWN-You’re talking about subdivision? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I’m thinking actually more about site plan. MR. BROWN-Okay. Like a concept review? Any obligation, just show me what you want to do and we’ll give you some initial feedback, and now go. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. For example, like where are we going to put the building? I mean, that’s something that we could flesh out at sort of a sketch plan review, and I mean, that’s pure planning. That really has no engineering. MR. RYAN-Do you like the location of the building on the site, as to how it interacts with, you know, Meadowbrook or Bay Road or wherever you may be. MR. HUNSINGER-And I’m thinking now, you know, Kenny did that with the proposal for the outlets. He came in with sketch plan concept review. MR. OBORNE-That was on his own fruition. The Board that I serve on in Moreau, we get it before us and we say do we like this or don’t we like this, we want to see this, we want to see this, and then we set the public hearing. So, that’s taking up a month, though, right there. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. It does. MR. OBORNE-Because we have professional staff here, we don’t in Moreau, we can front end that process, and that’s what we do basically. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. OBORNE-And then it comes to you, obviously, you know, you get the package in the mail, make sure that everything is complete, you know, per this bad boy right here, the Code book, and then it gets sent to, that’s the process now. So if you front end it with a sketch review for the project, that’s going to add a little bit, but it could potentially help on the back end of it, obviously. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. BROWN-Yes, and if you’re a developer, to follow the process we have right now, which is come with a complete application, you’re spending a lot of dollars with your design engineer, whereas maybe you could spend 10 or 15% to come up with a concept, without all the details and the engineering done and say, here, here’s what I think, do you like it or not. If you like it, we’ll go forward with it, and then come back. MR. TRAVER-And we’ve actually, we’ve had presentations like that. MR. BROWN-Yes. I think it’s a valuable tool to do something like that and, you know, just to try and make some progress here. I’m not trying to rush anybody, but of the two other options, engineering first or Planning Board review first, I think to me, get the engineering done first, before they get on an agenda, works better than the planning first, because that kind of puts the engineer on the hook as, they’ve got the plan review, now who are you to tell me that I can’t go any further, that it has to be this way before I pass muster with the engineer, get to the engineer and then to the Planning Board, then you guys have the final say, and if it passes your muster, you know the engineering’s flat, you don’t have any time spent on what’s up with the engineering comments? Why are we getting comments at the last minute, you know, where is everything? All that stuff is off the table and you focus on planning issues, the things that are important to the Board, you know, and I think it’ll work. Will there be those times where you feel it necessary to make some changes to the site and they have to go back to the Board and change some things? Sure. I mean, it happens right now in the process and it’s a month out because they’re being tabled because you tweaked something, then they had to move it, or the comments can’t get ironed out with the engineer. So, I mean, it kind of happens now. They may have two or three 8 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) months in advance before you ever even know there’s an application submitted, but when you get it, you don’t have to worry about the engineering. (Lost words) something to say about that, but. MR. TRAVER-Yes, that would be my concern. I guess I’m advocating for all the applicants that are out there now, is that if they have that process in mind, are we leading them to believe that if they can solve the engineering problems, and show us the documentation that in fact says the engineering problems are solved, they get an approval, and that has a tremendous impact, I think a negative impact, on the planning aspect of it. MR. BROWN-Yes, I don’t think that it does if you take full advantage of the concept review part of it. MR. HUNSINGER-I see what you’re saying. MR. BROWN-Before you do the engineering. You have them come in and say, I like it, I don’t like it. This entrance near this intersection needs to be changed, you know, you give them some clear direction, not that you’re going to be issuing a resolution or you’re going to be bound to anything, but you’re reacting to a concept. If you’ve given them valuable information about some planning, and like Chris was saying, you kind of do an intensive sketch plan review or concept review, they have all your feedback, then they design it, I don’t mean these guys, but the engineer designs it the way you want it and it’s going to come back the way you want it. So are you kind of telling them they’re going to get an approval? Yes, you kind of are if you told them you like their project, now go design it. Unless something crazy happens with the design, the engineering changes something, you’re probably going to get the same thing back that you saw at concept, but you don’t have to worry about all that other stuff. MR. TRAVER-And again, as an applicant, what I would say to that would be, you really would have to submit to the Planning Board more than a sketch plan. I mean, what we now consider a sketch plan is really literally that, and if we need to see a proposal before it gets engineered, it’s going to have to have a lot more detail on it, I mean, some of the things that Don was talking about, for example, the contours and slopes and rocks. MR. RYAN-The feasibility aspect, I think, has to be solved, I think, at sketch plan. MR. BROWN-Yes. You’re going to have to figure out, you know, how many trees are going to have to be taken down, what are we talking about grade changes on the site. You’re have to understand those, or at least have a good handle on those at the concept review to say, we like it or we don’t like it. MR. RYAN-Well, you have to identify if a variance is required. There’s got to be enough information for that. MR. BROWN-On a flat piece of paper, most things look pretty good, but, you know, when you go out in the field and say, holy crap. MR. TRAVER-Right. Yes. MR. BROWN-And you didn’t realize that this is 30 foot change in grade and I’ve got to take some of the acre of trees and change the grade 30 feet to make this work. You’ve got to have a handle on those. MR. KREBS-But, you know, as a businessman, being an applicant, coming before the Board, I don’t want to come with my lawyer and my engineer and sit there for four hours waiting for my turn, which happens often at our meetings, okay, because I’m paying these people for that time. I’d much rather have the process a little longer, and come in and go before the Board and have all the answers there, whether you start with a concept, so that you understand what the concept is, and maybe during that concept review, you can also spell out to them exactly, maybe it’ll be in a format, but you can spell out to them exactly what you expect them to provide to us, if they’re going to get approval, and so that if it’s contours that you want. MR. TRAVER-They should know that, though, already. MR. BROWN-I mean, there’s an application that has a checklist of things. MR. KREBS-They should know that, but how many times do they come before the Board and they don’t have that information? MR. BROWN-You know why they do that? Because you guys give them waivers all the time. 9 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. TRAVER-Right. Exactly. MR. BROWN-No, seriously, if you didn’t grant the waivers from certain submission requirements, all the information’s going to be there. They’re going to make sure it’s there or they’re not going to get their application on the Board. At the same time, the other side of that, you don’t need all that information in every application. MR. TRAVER-I mean, staff is being pressured to make a planning decision. MR. BROWN-Ninety-nine percent of the time, we tell people submit more information than you think is necessary. MR. TRAVER-Exactly. Right. Yes. MR. OBORNE-Exactly. My two cents on the whole process is it’s working now, don’t fix it, it’s not broke. There are some things that need to be tightened up. I think obviously we’re in flux with the engineering issues at this point. That’s going to work its way out. I would say that more communication between Staff and the engineer and applicants is probably in order. I think that’s not even a probably. I think that’s a given. I think that’s important. It’s the mechanism that trips that is something that we need to get our arms around, I think, but that’s my two cents. I don’t think the process is broken. I think it’s working well. I think we can get applications, especially with this recommendation, Area Variance and Site Plan dance we have to do, to change any of that is going to, change is threatening, let’s start with that. I’m in a comfort zone right now. If change is what you want, change is what it is. I have no issue with that whatsoever, but we do do a dance with this whole recommendation zoning and anything, just keep in mind, everything that goes before my desk or even you see it, Craig sees it and we see that. There’s this whole like symphony that goes on. Sometimes they’re flat, sometimes the notes are sounding good for lack of a better term. MR. SCHONEWOLF-So what are you going to do if you hire a Town Engineer? It’s going to be another step in the process. MR. OBORNE-It’s in the process right now. It’s part of the process right now. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Well, it is, and, you know, that’s why I, both systems work, as far as I’m concerned, and even if you have an engineer on payroll, you need these fellows, because once you get a guy on payroll in the Town, he gets peppered with all sorts of little engineering things during the day, Highway Department, Zoning Board and all that stuff. You guys have got to do the major projects. He hasn’t got time to do it, or even think of it, but what he does do is he does follow the information through, puts it in order for you, and makes sure that everything is there before we get to see it. MR. BROWN-Have you heard something that we haven’t heard that the Town (lost word) hire an engineer? MR. SCHONEWOLF-No, but you said you were going to do an RFP. MR. BROWN-For engineering services, not for a staff person. No, no. This is just for a consultant. MR. TRAVER-Well, one of the things I was thinking about, in thinking about getting ready for this meeting, you know, is, and I’m the kind of guy, a management guy. I like a lot of structure. I like to know that I’ve got a process in place. If not, I’m going to come up with one, so that I know exactly what, every situation is going to be handled, blah, blah blah, a solution’s going to come out, and really in our situation it’s like trying to cut a paper circle. I mean, there’s no way that we’re going to be able to come up with an A, B, C, D, E practice that, you know, we can funnel applicants in one end, and they’re all going to come out the same way the other. So I think the best that we can hope for is, which is what certainly has been my experience since I’ve been involved, and that is the process gets better and better and better and better, and it’s a heck of a lot better now that it was a year ago, and infinitely better than it was two years ago. So I think, you know, if we don’t set our expectations too high, that we’re going to come up with this sort of grand unified theory that we’re going to be able to handle all these things, but if we just say, well, let’s take a look at trying this with a few of our major projects or try this or whatever, you know, it’s definitely going to work out. MR. BROWN-I think if you, I mean, Dan talked a little bit about you have to figure out, does it need a variance or not. That’s true. We do that early on in the stage before even an application is filed. Applicant’s will come in and say, here’s my project. What do I need, and actually it usually starts with a building permit. They file for the building permit and we say, whoa, whoa, 10 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) you can’t do that. You need to come through this review process. So early on we try and identify what paths they have to go down. So if the thought maybe is to utilize the concept review, go get the engineering done, then come back with an application, if that project also requires a variance, you kind of have that mechanism in place right now, and that’s the recommendation that you do. You just do that a little beefier, and you do your concept review while you’re doing recommendation, which you kind of do now. For some projects that require SEQRA, you kind of do SEQRA before you do the recommendation. So, I mean, it’s kind of in place right now, but it’s called a Site Plan application, it’s not called a concept review. You have a full blown application in front of you. So you can do that. It could work without too much change, but you get that concept review done up front. MR. FORD-I would just like to see something that was evolutionary, because I think we have gotten better and better and better and I would like to see us do some tweaking to our present system as opposed to kind of starting over, or I don’t know that there’s a need for some major diversion here in a new direction. MR. SIPP-Is it possible for us to get the results of what we do, that is, if we approve something, it gets built or starts to get built, and then enforcement is not policing, I should say, is not there, and it doesn’t come out the way it was supposed to. Who’s to blame? MR. BROWN-Well, is there a process for that, is that the question? MR. SIPP-Yes. MR. BROWN-There is a process for that, and that process is called Bruce Frank. MR. SCHONEWOLF-And we have one up on Assembly Point that’s a perfect example. MR. TRAVER-(lost words) follow a plan that was approved. So really, they’re (lost words). MR. BROWN-At the end of the day, you guys issue an approval. We send them a resolution in the mail that says give us final copies of the plans that our Planning Board approved. We review that to make sure it’s consistent with what you approved at the meeting. We stamp them off. We give them copies of the plans back. So when they go to build the project, they’re supposed to be following that plan that’s got a Town stamp on it. If they don’t follow their plan, we call them on it and say you didn’t follow your plan. Does that happen all the time? No, not all the time. Does it happen sometimes, sure? If there’s a problem with that, they have two options. One, they can complete it the way you guys approved it, or they can come back and ask for a modification to that project. So, hey, you know, I didn’t realize my landscape architect had put in $20,000 worth of landscaping. I thought it looked great on paper because, you know, I like the flowers and I like the crabapple trees, but I didn’t realize now that I just spent my last nickel putting the last door in, I’ve got to spend $20,000 more in landscaping. Do I have to put all those trees in? Yes, you have to put all those trees in. MR. TRAVER-I didn’t know it was going to be that big. MR. BROWN-Exactly. So you guys have seen those modification requests. So, again, the more you let people modify their plans, the more they’re not going to do what they said they were going to do the first time, and they’re going to come back and say, can I do a little bit less? MR. TRAVER-Yes, and I think Keith raised a huge point before with communication. I mean, we’ve had, in fact I can remember last month I think we had at least two applicants that, you know, we were sort of trying to help them out a little bit and, you know, hello, talk to the Planning Office. Really? Can I call you tomorrow type of thing. MR. HUNSINGER-It feels like the first time they heard that. MR. TRAVER-Yes, it’s like, oh really, you have a Planning Department? MR. BROWN-Well, usually before an applicant sits before your Board they’ve spent at least a couple of hours cumulatively in our office talking about, you know, a pre-application review. Hey, that’s not quite complete. Come back next time and we’ll check. So if they sounded surprised that they can contact us, we tell them all the time, if you have a question, give us a call. Ultimately you guys have the responsibility and the authority to issue an approval. So regardless of what we tell them, sometimes they just say, I’m going to go talk to the Planning Board. They’re the ones that are giving me the approval. MR. OBORNE-Half the time we’re dealing with their proxy also, and then they come to the meeting. 11 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, right. MR. TRAVER-Yes, it’s not always a credible comment on their part, to say the least. MR. FORD-To come full circle, and back where we started, I would like to see, as we have counsel available to us, I would like to have our engineers available to us, not on an every night basis, but I think that it should be on call. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Well, I think you’ve got to look at the agenda and probably you’ve got to make the call, Chris. MR. FORD-It’s agenda management and there’s certain times when we’ll need everybody there. MR. SCHONEWOLF-And you need even an attorney every once in a while, and lately it’s been more rather than less, the way we’re going, but I don’t think we should get too hard on ourselves, because this Planning Board handles one hell of a lot of work, so does the Staff, and you handle, you know, you handle everything from fruit stands to big developments. MR. TRAVER-And they’re getting more and more and more complicated. MR. SCHONEWOLF-And a lot of that stuff is, I sometimes wonder why we’re doing it, but I think we have some timing issues. I think we have some communication issues a little bit, and we can smooth those out, but, by in large, don’t get too tough on yourself, because I think you do a pretty good job. MR. TRAVER-Yes, it works well, I think. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Maybe this would be a good time to read this letter that Tom Center sent us. It’s just over one page, so I’ll just read it. It’s addressed to me. This letter is in regards th to your scheduled workshop on February 8 2011 with the agenda item for discussion with the Town Engineer, Planning Staff and legal counsel regarding policies and procedures for the coming year. After discussions with several engineers and developers, we would like to take the time to request that the following policies and procedures regarding Town Engineering comment issues be reviewed. Our first and probably most important request would be that the Planning Board considers having the Town Engineer attend Planning Board meetings. The general consensus was having the Town Engineer available at the meeting will allow the Planning Board member’s concerns to be addressed at the meeting by their engineer and allow our responses to possibly be addressed by the Town Engineer at the meeting and avoid unnecessary tabling of a project. Our other concerns involve allowing the Town Engineer to directly converse with the applicant’s engineer after receiving a comment letter or specific issues that may have arisen from the Planning Board or public comment. As a group we believe that permitting this type as open dialogue will allow our responses to engineering comments and concerns to be more focused and again avoid unnecessary tabling of a project. Our last concern would be the timeframe between application submission and initial engineer comments. Our understanding of the current process is that the project is not reviewed by the engineer until after the first of the month and only if placed on that month’s agenda. In some instances, if a particular project is bumped, the project is not reviewed until after the first of the following month. We would request that some thought be given to allowing the projects to be forwarded to the engineer for review and comment as soon as they are submitted and forwarded to the applicant’s engineer as soon as the Town’s engineer’s comments are completed, as opposed to routinely the Friday prior to the scheduled meeting. A process such as this would allow the Town Engineer and the applicant’s engineer adequate time to review, respond and hopefully resolving engineering comments prior to the scheduled meeting. In conclusion, we appreciate the time and effort of all Board members and Planning Staff involved in the application process and hope that our concerns help provide a more proficient system to all parties. We believe that by addressing some of these concerns, resolution to engineering comments and concerns can be accomplished in a more timely manner for all parties and possibly result in less tabling of projects due to unresolved engineering concerns. And it just says please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, Tom Center. MR. FARRELL-The last thing we want is to get into a debate with the engineers. We sit down with the Boards, and that doesn’t happen, we don’t allow that to happen, and, you know, we’re there to help you with questions that you have in regards to the plans that are in front of you. They’re going to always come at us, if we give them comments, to say, I’ve got this straightened around or I’ve got that straightened around. I want my approval, I want my approval. That’s completely up to you, but the last thing on us, you know, sitting on a Board meeting with you is to assist you, that’s it. Not to say, I agree with that, you know, it would be a direct question from one of the Planning Board members, do you agree with what the applicant just said in response 12 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) to a question you may have had regarding bedrock or something, and based upon knowledge and based upon the information submitted, yes, we do in fact agree with what the engineer has told you as an advice similar to what the attorneys would do. That’s it, but that’s, they’re just trying to get approvals faster. MR. TRAVER-Sure. MR. FARRELL-I mean, but with the comments, I mean, it seems at every meeting it’s the engineer’s comments. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. FARRELL-It’s the engineer’s comments, there’s problems with the engineer’s, the engineers have problems. It shouldn’t be the engineer’s comments. It should be the Planning Board as a whole making a decision on a project based upon the merits of the project, not the engineer’s comments. The engineers are going to get the comments hashed out. I mean, what projects have you seen come by you that were not buildable that didn’t get built, that had 50 or 100 engineer’s comments on it? They end up getting resolved at some point in the process. MR. OBORNE-There’s also a public record component to all of this. These conversations and submittals that they’re giving to you needs to be part of the public record, and if we don’t have a certain amount of hegemony over that, then that might slip through the cracks. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. OBORNE-And that’s why we’re pretty, or protocol is pretty strict. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, that has happened in the past. That’s why we have it the way it is. MR. TRAVER-And that gets to my issue. MR. BROWN-Yes, and Tom brought up a good point, is and it happens right now, you know, we want to be able to contact the Town Engineer during the review. We don’t have a process with applicant’s agent’s contacting the reviewing engineer. We just want to make sure if they’re submitting any plans or trading any physical plans, that we have a copy of it as a document. If they work things out over the phone, what if I change to that, what if I change to that, that makes it go faster, that’s fine with us, but. MR. OBORNE-We don’t need minutes to their phone conversation. MR. FARRELL-Yes, but that leads to them at the meeting telling you they’ve resolved issues, verbally, and that’s the confusion you have. MR. TRAVER-And that leads to my concern, in effect, of getting information the night of the meeting. I mean, I can envision a time when we have the engineer there on a fairly regular basis, where the applicant has received engineering comments, comes to the meeting with responses to those comments, wants the engineer to look at them while we discuss something else. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-And, you know, I mean, it’s just, it’s not going to improve the process. MR. FORD-Or they get into the dialogue that you were referring to. MR. TRAVER-Yes. Exactly. It’s a version of that, and it’s going to dilute the process, not make it better. MR. BROWN-I sound like I’m pushing this, but have the engineering done before they come to the meeting. It saves those debates that the engineer, you know, they don’t want to get drawn into, and rightly so, at the meeting with the applicant’s engineer. You’re not even talking about engineering at the meeting. You’re just focusing on the process itself. MR. TRAVER-If that can be done, I mean. MR. BROWN-I mean, I think that it can, and Tom brings up a good point is why make a big change. Maybe we do it with the big projects for starters and see if it works, and if it works, 13 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) maybe we can do it for all projects that need engineering. Maybe you just kind of roll into it with the projects over X number of square feet or pick a threshold or let us say, you know what, this is one that is going to be at least a couple of meetings. Why not let’s just, you know, we’re going to send them down to engineering first path, rather than the back and forth at the meeting path, like some of them, you just know that they’re easier projects to do. I mean, we can make those changes any time you want. MR. KREBS-That would be well worth trying that method. MR. BROWN-And if it doesn’t work, you know, try something else. MR. TRAVER-And I do think, also, it would be helpful, I mean it’s almost like aversive conditioning. It would take the applicants a while to get used to it, but I do think that putting a time limit on hearing applicants would be constructive, because I think that they would prepare themselves with that in mind, and they would say, okay, I’ve got an hour. So how much do I want to spend. MR. OBORNE-Minus public comment. MR. TRAVER-Not including public comment, right. I’m talking about their presentation, not public comment. I’m sorry. I should have clarified that. MR. BROWN-We try and do that when we develop the agendas. We’ll look at the application and say, this is 25 minutes. This is 30 minutes. This is an hour and a half. So we kind of try and keep the agendas balanced. Sometimes the public hearing kind of blows those calculations out of the water when you don’t expect the neighborhood. MR. TRAVER-It’s clear from how effective the scheduling and the planning has been that that’s what your office does, and that’s not what I was, I mean, that wasn’t a form of a complaint. MR. BROWN-No, I know. MR. TRAVER-It’s just that there are times, and I have seen applicants come before us where it’s a relatively simple project, or we would get close to a tabling resolution and an hour after we know it’s going to be tabled, we’re still talking about where are the drywells, or, you know, how much business did you have this summer, or how bad do you think the winter’s going to be, and it’s just, there are other people waiting to be heard. MR. MAGOWAN-You guys brought up earlier about maybe adding in some like recommendations maybe to some areas where you think might be something that would, you know, after reading the minutes and that, you probably have a gist of how we feel and how we might swing on an engineering comment, and you mentioned kind of like maybe putting in a recommendation of what you might see where we might have trouble thinking about something, and put like a little red flag in there for something that, you know, our recommendation is maybe to look at it this way or something like that. I mean, do you guys like something like? MR. RYAN-I mean, we’ve contemplated that for a couple of years, and probably in ’07 was when I was first thinking about the concept is at the end of the letter trying to give you an indication of the degree or severity of engineering comments, and that brings up another question is, when do you guys set agendas? Is that like the first of the month? MR. BROWN-It’s usually the final agenda is the last Thursday of the month. That gives us, th deadline date is the 15. It gives us time to weed through and see which ones are. MR. RYAN-A couple of weeks, basically? MR. BROWN-A couple of weeks, sometimes shorter than that. MR. RYAN-So the question I have, is there a way for engineering comments to be done before the agendas are done, so that anyone with substantial engineering comments doesn’t get on the agenda. Because right now you have no way of controlling that without. MR. BROWN-Yes. I mean, there’s one way. Get the engineering flat before they even put your, they get put on an agenda, or. MR. RYAN-Because you have to make an agenda within a couple of weeks. MR. BROWN-Yes. I mean, with County referrals, we have to get them out by a certain date to get on the County meeting, advertising deadlines, so there’s a process. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. TRAVER-And we’ve talked amongst ourselves of having a practice that when we come to a meeting night, if they’ve got many, many, many engineering comments, that we will move to table them, on the idea, again, that it would sort of train the applicant, if you don’t want to keep getting bumped, you know, do due diligence. MR. FORD-Some of those we know right up front and we don’t need to spend an hour and a half to get to the point that we started with. MR. KREBS-Right. MR. FORD-It’s going to be painful. MR. TRAVER-That’s where we get to the filibusters. That’s when they start filibustering. They say, well, we can work that out. Let’s go through them one by one. It’ll only take a couple of hours. MR. HUNSINGER-Right, yes. MR. MAGOWAN-Or we get someone like Stewarts to just say, hey, why don’t we just table that and I’ll come back with some. That was the best. MR. TRAVER-Yes. Exactly. MR. RYAN-I mean, certainly we’d be willing to provide some generic recommendations accompanying our letters to kind of give you a degree of severity. MR. FARRELL-The degree of concern that we have over something that’s occurring on this particular site plan or whatever, subdivision, that we have a concern about, that trying to alert you to a concern that we feel is major in the category of planning, engineering may not work kind of thing, that’s what we’ve been trying to come up with with comments. I’ve seen engineer’s comments that basically say, you know, this plan is ready for SEQRA review, this plan is ready for Preliminary, you know, the engineering comments, and, you know, the permit applications that are necessary for them to get after Preliminary, you know, they recommend right on their comment letters of where they think the Planning Board should be or where the project should be in the planning process. MR. FORD-As I read your comments, it would be a red flag to me any time I saw you use the word major. MR. SCHONEWOLF-We had one firm used to list the engineering comments and they’d put an asterisk in front of the ones that we know, that we’d know we’re going to hang on those. MR. TRAVER-Well, and things like please clarify, please provide. No new information submitted, you know, those kinds of things are automatic tabling things. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, pretty much. Yes. MR. FARRELL-But that’s when you get into the no information provided, here you go, here’s my, here’s that report. MR. HUNSINGER-But that’s such a fine line, too, because, you know, someone, you know, if an applicant has been tabled, or even if they haven’t been tabled, you know, they come to the table, they have their opportunity to make a presentation, the first thing they talk about are Staff comments and the engineering comments. I mean, in fact, and if they don’t, we ask them to address it. MR. TRAVER-Right. MR. HUNSINGER-So what’s the difference between, you know, this is kind of where I get stuck sometimes, and it really depends on the project. So what’s the difference between them saying on the record, verbally, you know, well, we’ll make this change or we’ll address that, we’ll take care of that, versus handing us a piece of paper with the same information? Now, if they have a four page document that they hand to us, they can’t expect us to digest that and review it in one evening. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-But if they walk you, step by step, verbally through the same analysis. 15 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. TRAVER-Sure, well, that’s the tension that exists in that whole issue of, and that’s why there’ve been times when we’ve accepted material the night and times that we haven’t. I mean, generally I think that we do, we seem to handle it pretty well. It’s just that it always makes me a little uneasy, simply because we have that policy. I don’t know. Again, it’s, we don’t want to have our expectations so high that we’re going to have this absolutely clear cut solution to everything. MR. OBORNE-You know what happens when you accept multiple comments at the meeting. I mean, you know that it prolongs the meeting. It’s going to need engineering review. Craig and I are probably going to have to vet it. So it’s like all or nothing. It’s one or the other how you want to do it. MR. FARRELL-It’s almost like them answering engineering questions or planning staff’s at the Planning Board meeting are pointless. I mean, it doesn’t, you know, they’re telling you, yes, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, please give me approval, but you’re looking at a project that’s not what the project’s going to be, and you’re not even focusing on the project anymore. You’re focusing on a technical comment or a planning staff comment, whereas the Planning Board as a whole has to look at the project and say, I like that, you know, maybe I don’t like what the planner likes. Maybe I don’t like what the engineer likes. I like what I like, and you’re the Planning Board, say I want that driveway over there, where does the snow dump, whatever it may be. MR. OBORNE-And that’s (lost words) the conditional approvals that you guys have done have really tightened up. MR. FARRELL-And getting all of those things in. MR. HUNSINGER-And that’s what I was going to say, I mean, if the comments, and a lot of times with get the comments back saying, you know, you need to label this, you didn’t mark that, you know, there was an obvious typographical error here, you know, if it’s those kind of comments, then I think it’s easy to say we can give a conditional approval. MR. TRAVER-Right. Yes, if it requires a change that requires a review, verification, then they have to re-submit. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, we just need Staff to verify those changes. MR. RYAN-Ideally we just want to get the best project for the Town at the end of the day, and, you know, painless for the applicants, but, we, you know, the Planning Staff and certainly we don’t want to be the kicking bag for, oh, the engineer they commented, there was one Planning Board that I worked for that they basically it was, if there was 30 comments or less between the planning staff and the engineering, they would get on the Planning Board, but the comment letters, I mean, they started at 150, 200, that’s where they started. I mean, every single thing was checked, but this was down in New Jersey. So it was a little bit of a different place because like you said the land is less and ht e development is more intense. So everything is checked, every calculation, everything. I mean, the planning reviews were enormous. That was their theory, when you get below 30, you get on the Planning Board meeting. MR. BROWN-Well, I guess if you guys wanted to do that selective, let’s get the engineering stuff done first with bigger applications, you know, you may want to do that by resolution at a regular meeting and make some sort of motion to change your policies and procedures so we’ve got something to point to when applicants say, well, what are you doing I just want to get on the agenda. No, we’re going to go here because the policies are such, and we may be able to work th in, you know, the deadline’s the 15 of the month. We may have a short list of, hey, we think these two or three applications should have engineering done before they come to the Board, and we can kind of give you the heads up at your first meeting of the month, which is sometimes the same day, deadline day, sometimes a couple of days later. So you can either agree or disagree and say yes, no, maybe. I don’t know for sure. I just thought that up. MR. TRAVER-I wonder if, rather than change the policy as a whole, if we become aware of those for our first meeting, that we handle those one application at a time. We can make a motion that this is the way this application, X, Y, Z is going to be handled, you know, on the administrative items, rather than make a blanket change in our policy. MR. BROWN-Well, I, no, I think the policy change would be to give you the authority to do that, to pick and choose which applications go through what review process, but I think you want that as part of your policy document. That’s all I was saying, is to put that. 16 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. HUNSINGER-You mean in our policies and procedures? MR. BROWN-Yes. Put that rule in place that, you know, we can pick and choose what goes through. Is that going to cause a problem, Mike, about selective kind of processing of applications or, you know, if you say Project A has to go through engineering first before it gets on an agenda, but Project B, which is maybe only a little different, doesn’t have to do that? MR. HILL-I think that the answer is, what’s the justification for treating one project differently than another project, and as long as you can articulate a reasonable basis for putting the Wal- Mart in this category and the fruit stand in the other category, I think you’re fine. MR. BROWN-Okay. They can be threshold sizes or whether it’s square footage or acreage. MR. RYAN-It’s just consecutive. If they can get them done next week, they get them done next week. They submit them. They’re in, they’re getting reviewed and the whole process gets a lot th faster for them through the design process before it comes back to you. It’s not, by the 15 they’re back in, then they get a slew of comments again and the cycle repeats itself. The big ones. The small ones, those work just fine on the small ones. You can get through those rather quickly. MR. HUNSINGER-Although one of our smaller projects, and I can’t remember who the applicant was, the office building down on Meadowbrook, near Quaker, where we bounced that around month after month, after month, then we finally approved it, then they put a for sale sign up and said, you know, pre-approved building site, but, I mean, that was just such a complicated project with a lot of engineering. MR. TRAVER-That was a janitorial company or something wasn’t it, the custodian. MR. KREBS-Well, the fellow who owned the property was. MR. HUNSINGER-That one wouldn’t fit into the size, you know, Mike brought it up, and it really was one of the more complicated projects. MR. TRAVER-Well, again, I mean, there’s always going to be something that comes up. MR. BROWN-Whether it’s environmental constraints or slopes or, you know, wetlands, we can come up with some sort of criteria that allows you to pick and choose which ones you want to get ironed out. I mean, if you guys want to take a whack at drafting that revision to the policy up, fine. If you want us to come up with something to offer to you, we can do that, too. MR. TRAVER-As long as we can’t be accused of doing something arbitrary, right? MR. HUNSINGER-Arbitrary and capricious. MR. HILL-Yes, and, basically, yes, just kind of the rule of reason, and I guess as a follow up I would just say that when you have two projects that are similar in nature, you know, say a big Wal-Mart and some other big retailer, and the projects have a lot of similar characteristics, well then you don’t want to, you know, waive the Wal-Mart through and then subject the other guy to a whole extra, you know, layers and layers and layers of process so that consistency’s going to be important also. Based upon the letter that was read earlier, the smaller projects are going to want to get into the bigger project category under the policy, I would think. The smaller projects are going to want to try to move into that policy where they’re able to get the engineering hashed out before it comes back to the Planning Board. MR. BROWN-So maybe it’s not a size. Maybe it’s a potential, what are the problems with this site. It’s like engineering constraints. Somebody talked about wetlands, you know, slopes or site disturbance or something that would be a trigger that you really want to have worked out before you get before the Board. MR. TRAVER-Why can’t you approve it, all the engineering’s taken care of, you know. MR. BROWN-Well, because we’re the Planning Board, that’s why. That’s what you tell them. MR. HUNSINGER-Could we be proactive maybe and say, just thinking of, you know, how I think we generally appreciate Sketch Plan Review. Can we be proactive and say, if you choose to come and do Sketch Plan Review, then you get to go through this, you know, process where you do the engineering first and, you know, maybe that becomes the carrot. MR. TRAVER-That’s a great idea, yes. 17 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. FARRELL-Well, I’m sure this conversation’s been had quite a few times with a lot of people. MR. TRAVER-It’s a never ending, but that’s a great idea, though. Yes. MR. FORD-Craig, you had mentioned before drafting something. Would you like to present something to us that we could take that up with the Board? MR. BROWN-That’s your decision. We’ll come up with something. I like this taking care of thing. That’s a good idea. Give them the option, do you want to go through the regular way. MR. FORD-And we’ll have at it. Discuss it. MR. OBORNE-If you give them that option, you wouldn’t have to have those triggers, then. MR. HUNSINGER-Right, exactly. MR. FARRELL-They come in. They present their project to the Board. The Board gets to see a plan that’s, you know, got some look to it that you can understand. You’re not looking at 100 sheets. MR. BROWN-You don’t want some cocktail napkin sketch. You want something that’s got some level of detail to it. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Yes. MR. BROWN-We can come up with something. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I mean, well. MR. KREBS-See, that kind of satisfies what I was looking for, because those major projects will then go through the engineering beforehand, and then come to the Planning Board, and we won’t waste all that time. MR. OBORNE-You’ll also have a look at it. MR. KREBS-Exactly, beforehand. MR. HUNSINGER-We’ll have a look at it. MR. BROWN-Up front and steer them down the path you want them to go down, design it and engineer it this way, if that’s what you’d like. MR. RYAN-And it does get you off talking about Staff and engineering comments, and that’s exclusive, you know, (lost words) applications, that’s all you end up talking about. I think it gets you away from that. MR. FARRELL-And once the engineering has been hashed out with an applicant, they come back to you, and then they say, okay, well, here’s our project. We’re all engineered. The engineer’s signed off and you’re able to start to get into procedural things, and then all of a sudden they say, oh, well, I can’t move, you know, someone says I’d like to see this snow dump or parking area moved over here, oh, I can’t do that because, you know, that’s going to change this, then. You have us sitting there to say, yes, that’s a feasible change that they’ve made to the project at that stage of the game. So there’s a couple of different avenue. You still have cracks at the project when you’re moving into that procedural SEQRA, preliminary, final, you’re moving through all of the permits and everything else associated with the project. So don’t look at it as (lost words) project after that first shot. MR. TRAVER-It sounds good. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. KREBS-Sounds good to me. MR. TRAVER-Thanks, Don, for putting this together. MR. SIPP-Who’s going to be responsible for asking them to be at the Board meeting? 18 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. TRAVER-Initially it’s going to be, Staff makes a recommendation and when Chris looks at it, he’s going to look at that, but he’s also going to look at the others in case he wants to make recommendations. MR. HUNSINGER-And then of course the whole Board can, if we table it. MR. TRAVER-Yes. That would be another point where we’d have a decision. MR. FORD-Chris’ decision with Staff input. MR. OBORNE-The thing is then that’s on your calendar, two weeks before the meeting, maybe you can have that blocked out, and the Board will have that anticipated engineering. MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, basically it would be the same process as we do with, you know, counsel being at the meeting. MR. OBORNE-Yes. MR. BROWN-And in the mean until you guys get this codified, so to speak, in your policies and procedures, we can hint it to the regular players that come in and say, hey, look, if you want to go with a concept review, we might let you get, especially, you know, I mean, Tom Center is the name that comes to mind because he wrote that letter, and he talked about that very process, not the incentive process, but let’s get the engineering done before we even get on a Planning Board agenda. We can offer that to some of those regular players and see if, you know, just kind of let them see how they want to go down that road before we get it done, but we’ll still work along those lines to draft that for you, but if we can get some volunteers to see how it works in the meantime. MR. KREBS-Another way to save a little money, too, was, would be if we sometimes do this for legal, is that we, when you do the agenda, the ones that you’re going to need engineering on or the ones that you need legal, we’ll put those in front of the meeting. MR. HUNSINGER-Absolutely. MR. OBORNE-Absolutely. That’s what we attempt to do right now. MR. RYAN-Or you could do all the engineering comment reviews on the second meeting where we’re required, not the first, not both. MR. OBORNE-Right. Yes, and again, it’s juggling. It’s most likely going to be both meetings, because they have to be balanced. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. OBORNE-You have that whole recommendation deal you’ve got to deal with, but, I mean time will tell how that works through. MR. FARRELL-There was a couple of items we were discussing. MR. RYAN-Yes. One of the items was, I know in the last year a lot of the reviews for engineering were strictly focused on stormwater. In the past years we had reviewed basically all the technical aspects of the project, whether it be a septic, traffic, public safety issues. We’ve gotten away from that and gotten to where we’re focusing on, or being requested to review stormwater only. So our concern is that it does present issues for us when we readily see public safety issues that we’re not identifying in our reviews, and, there’s a second issue. Is the Town, and Mike can attest to this possibly, exposed to additional liability when engineers are not reviewing technical aspects of a project related to sewage or water supply, water distribution, traffic? Who’s qualified to review those on behalf of the Planning Board if we’re not? So that would be our concern related to the extent of our reviews. MR. SCHONEWOLF-What did you mean by safety, public safety? MR. RYAN-Public, you know, it’s our job as engineers, public safety, access management off a State highway. MR. SCHONEWOLF-Because the Fire Marshal looks at parts of that. MR. TRAVER-What do you recommend? 19 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. RYAN-Well, what we’ve always done is anything technically, anything that requires engineering, I mean, if a water distribution system is required to be engineered by the Department of Health by a professional engineer, why wouldn’t we be reviewing that? If a septic system has to be engineered by a professional engineer, who’s reviewing that? MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. TRAVER-And that policy, that was the policy, and then it changed to recently now it’s just stormwater? MR. RYAN-Erosion and sediment control and stormwater. MR. BROWN-That was kind of at the direction of the Planning Board. There was a time when there was engineering comments that would come in with 20 or 30 or 40, pick a number of comments. They’d kind of overlap the planning comments that say landscaping this, parking space that, drive aisle this, traffic accessibility that. So there would be, not necessarily conflicting comments, but two sets of comments on the same things, and it was the Board’s direction that, hey, why are we having the applicants go through all these engineering comments and pay these additional engineering review fees, when we just maybe want to focus them on stormwater and that’s what we did. We suggested and requested that the applicant or the engineering comments, the Town engineering comments focus on the technical stuff and the plan review stuff would be done by Staff and septic was mentioned. Our Building Department reviews septics during the building permit process. So all components of it get reviewed, and I can certainly understand where these guys are coming from, and I think, in my opinion, and Mike’s here. He can give us the legal opinion, but if we ask him to do something, I don’t think they’re obligated or there’s any liability, if there’s something else on the project, we didn’t ask them to review, if they don’t comment on it, we didn’t ask you to comment on that. MR. FARRELL-We are liable under the State law, professional engineering, that’s completely a fallacy. If we see it, if we’re on a job site and we see something that’s not right, we’ve got to stop it. It’s not right. That’s a New York State thing. We have a license, and that license requires that if we see something along those lines, we’ve got to deal with that. It has to be said, and if it was to come full circle, of course you know anything if it comes full circle, they start looking for people, and if it was in front of us and it was on our desk and a planning officer said, just review stormwater and erosion and sediment control, and someone got hurt, and we were looking right at it, they’re going to start questioning us as to why that wasn’t, and they’re going to start questioning the Town. They’re going to start questioning everyone. So, from a liability standpoint, that is the case. We are required by the law to identify an issue that we see. So if we’re working for a client, which is the Town, we are required to identify that. It’s a safety, public health, any one of those issues. MR. TRAVER-So really there’s kind of, I mean, we’re starting from sort of two extremes. One is you’re only looking at stormwater. The other is you look at everything, but is there a way that we could add to the process somehow, a way to, in addition to stormwater, which we want to retain, identify, maybe in the review process, some items that we want to specifically request. MR. FARRELL-I mean, we’ve historically tried to avoid zoning issues, setback issues, I mean, stuff that is straightforward planning, but public safety would be traffic, access management, sewage, water, signage, lighting. MR. TRAVER-Well, the traffic, I’m sorry to interrupt, but traffic, I mean, usually if we identify traffic as a problem, we direct the applicant to do a traffic study. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. FARRELL-(lost words) vertical curvatures of roads that are being built out there, so those all have to go through, you know, they have to be ASHTO. If we’re adopting the road, it’s a private road, you’ve got accessibility associated with fire department. Certainly the fire department looks at that, but there are plans out there where there’s hairpins that, as we all know right now, we’ve got huge ice banks on the side of the road. So that fire truck now can’t get through. So you’re looking at a condition of, in the summer it’s no problem, because it’s an open field, but when you get into a winter condition where the snow banks are eight feet high, now they’re either going to go through it, most likely those guys probably would, but, you know, those are things that, you know, are issues that come up on plans that have to be addressed and looked at. If we’re only looking at stormwater and erosion and sediment control, we’re saying well this is an access issue or this is, you know, a safety issue or this, you know, sewer line is too close to this water line. Why is that. It all depends on what the situation is. There’s a lot of codes that we do follow that we know that aren’t being looked at. I mean, certainly a septic is a perfect example. We understand that the Building Department does review septics on plans 20 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) that do not require site plan approval, but a plan that requires site plan approval, we’re not reviewing the septic system so no one knows, on the planning level, if the septic system even works until it gets to the Building Department after the Planning Board has approved the project. So what happens when it gets down to the Building Department and there’s not an engineer looking at it there either? So it’s just a septic system that may or may not work. MR. OBORNE-But it is an engineer designed septic system, though. MR. FARRELL-That’s so, there’s a lot of failed engineer designed septic systems. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, the one thing that I’ve benefitted from in the past, and I’ve missed, is that when we’ve got engineered projects that are right on the edge of acceptability, and in the past you guys have let us know that, you know, there’s no margin for error. For example, another issue on Route 9 where, you know, we need to have folks hook into a system, no one talks to us about capacity anymore, and that was always important to me, because, you know, there is a certain level of capacity, and if we’ve got a big project that needs to hook into the sewer, where are we with that information? And then there’s another issue regarding traffic, and there’ve been times when I think we’ve fallen short. I can think of one project specifically in the last year, where I really would have liked to have had engineering input on the traffic issue, and we haven’t gotten it, and I think that we could have made better decisions than we made if we had had that input. So, you know, I’m in favor of having. MR. BROWN-It depends the municipal system. People with water and sewer. Their plans go to the water and sewer department. They typically don’t address it until it comes time to go to construction, but they certainly don’t let anybody connect to the municipal system. MR. KREBS-They can’t. MRS. STEFFAN-There was a time when folks, when we had a couple of situations where there were large developments that were being proposed, and, you know, there were issues of map plan and reports that needed to be put together, and the Planning Board would have never known about any of those things if we had had the engineer provide us with that input that it was even relevant or important. MR. TRAVER-So what we need is a trigger of some kind. I mean, right now they’re just doing stormwater, and clearly it sounds like there are some issues on some projects, but what mechanism do we use to say, okay, guys, we want you to take a look at? MR. SCHONEWOLF-We’ve got a lot of people doing different things, and that’s when things slip through the cracks. MR. FARRELL-I think you rely on our professional judgment as to when a plan comes across we comment on what we think is relevant that is necessary for you to review, and then what we feel is necessary to protect the Town. Certainly there’s items that, you know, if it’s a setback line, I mean, that stuff can be picked up, but we don’t have to review all of that stuff, but the technical issues certainly, you know, that’s the way that we were doing reviews in the past. That was just the way that we were doing them. If we saw relevance or we saw a need for, you know, this hasn’t been identified by the applicant, this, you know, septic system requires, you know, a SPDES permit from DEC, you know, but it’s not there, that’s not what they’re doing. They’re building this enormous system and this requires permits from other regulatory bodies that aren’t being identified, those types of things. Some of those have slipped through the cracks. MR. RYAN-And I understand the duplication. I just don’t see the harm in duplication. If the project’s better in the end, and you’ve got to remember, when they do their review and I do my review, we don’t have the benefit of each other’s reviews. So I don’t know if he’s picked up on a particular item, and if I don’t flag it, and he doesn’t, it gets missed completely. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. RYAN-So the duplication is an added factor of safety, if you ask me. MR. FARRELL-Two heads are better than one. I mean, we could correlate our comments, knock them down a little bit. MR. OBORNE-Obviously you know what happened, you know what the process was before. It has smoothed out, absolutely, as a result of the protocols that we have in place right now. Duplication is, it’s going to happen. I think that’s inevitable if the engineers are to do a review, a full blown review, which they’re requesting, obviously. Do I have an issue with it? I don’t have an issue with it. It’s the Planning Board that needs to decide that. 21 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. OBORNE-Better communication between the engineers and planning staff, communication solves quite a few problems, to be honest with you. MR. TRAVER-Well, the other way to look at it is that we know, at the time, it sounds as those at the time that we moved to stormwater only, we didn’t have as tight a review prior to hearing that we have now, and that became a bit of an issue. So we said let’s just look at stormwater. So why don’t we go back to a more complete engineering review, and for a while at least, and see if that causes issues, other issues to come up that takes us in the wrong direction, it becomes more of an issue, as it did in the past, but it may be that we’re so much more organized now that we’re not going to run into the problems that we did in the past that caused us to restrict the review to stormwater only, and won’t know that until we try. MR. KREBS-I’d go for a little more engineering than just stormwater. I think we could use the help. MRS. STEFFAN-I think that that’s a wise idea. I mean, a lot of the projects that we’re seeing, there’s a lot of wetland, you know, infringement, and we’re just getting very close to the edge. There’s a lot of marginal properties. We need a second layer of scrutiny. Because, you know, sometimes, as I mentioned before, sometimes the tolerances are too tight. MR. TRAVER-Right. MRS. STEFFAN-And then we come back, you know, we have people coming back for modifications because plans didn’t work or something blew up. I can think of another one that comes to mind, and if we had a redundant review in place, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Did you have something else, Dan? MR. RYAN-The only other thing is obviously when we had worked with you in the past, we were allowed to do work in the Town. We’re being asked to commit to the Town exclusively, which we are going to commit to, assuming we are retained by the Town to continue this work. What we’ve identified to the Town is that there are two or three projects we have in the hopper now that will be the only projects we plan to continue on, without taking any additional work within the Town, so that this Board can be comfortable that we’re here to represent the Town only. So that is a commitment that we’ve agreed to make, assuming that we move forward, with the exception of the two or three clients that we have ongoing. Those projects, not additional projects, but the projects that are (lost word). MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, that seems fair. MR. RYAN-Just so that it’s clear, if we do move forward, and then you end up seeing us, obviously it’s going to happen, for the projects we already have. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure. MR. FARRELL-And we’ve been working with the Town Board for quite a few years doing a lot of projects throughout the Town, and Dan and I both, you know, we discussed this and we think that that’s the right thing to do for the Board and for the Town is, you know, there is a lot of work in Queensbury, and it’s, you know, it’s sometimes, you look at that decision and it’s a tough decision to make, but we think that we have a good relationship with the staff here that we’ve been working with, and also the Town Board and hopefully we can continue that and we’d like to commit those services so that you can rely on us for, you know, to call us, and certainly the communication thing, we think that, you know, certainly we can improve that with the Planning Board members also is, if you have a question about a project, you know, we’re usually available on our phones and sometimes busy, but most of the time we can get on our cell phones or something, but just to put that out there. MRS. STEFFAN-I think that’s a great arrangement. I think it raises our confidence level, and just, there’s a confidence that comes with exclusivity, and so I think that, you know, by having you guys on our side, I think that’s a very positive. MR. HUNSINGER-Anything else? Did you have anything else, Mike? Keith? Craig? Okay. MR. FORD-Thank you. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board 02/10/2011) MR. HUNSINGER-I guess we’ll take a motion to adjourn. MOTION TO ADJOURN THE WORKSHOP MEETING OF THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD OF FEBRUARY 8, 2011, Introduced by Donald Krebs who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: th Duly adopted this 8 day of February, 2011, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Ford, Mr. Traver, Mr. Schonewolf, Mr. Krebs, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Chris Hunsinger, Chairman 23