Loading...
2004-08-03 SP MTG35 117 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING MTG. #35 AUGUST 3, 2004 RES. 397-399 7:00 p.m. TOWN BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT SUPERVISOR DANIEL STEC COUNCILMAN ROGER BOOR COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER COUNCILMAN JOHN STROUGH COUNCILMAN TIM BREWER QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE LED BY SUPERVISOR STEC 1.0 JOINT MEETING WITH THE QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Supervisor Stec-Introduced the following Ward 1 Councilman Roger Boor, Ward 2 Councilman Theodore Turner, Ward 3 Councilman John Strough, Ward 4 Councilman Tim Brewer, Supervisor Daniel Stec I will hand this over to John Dwyer President of the Queensbury School Board President John Dwyer-Introduced the following: Mr. Tim Place our Assistant Supt. for Business Manager, Brian Howard who is the District Superintendent, John Dwyer-President of the Board, Mariann Rapple-Vice President, Mike Sundburg-Board Member, Ray Gordon, Pat Auer, and Jack LaBombard only seven of our nine members are here, two members are absent. We are open as far as the meeting is concerned. Supervisor Stec-I want to just give a brief update before I introduce our presenter, our speaker for Chazen Company tonight who will be presenting the build out analysis which is the singular item that we have on the Town Board and I believe the School Boards agenda for this evening. I thank the School Board for attending tonight and also for participating in this cooperative effort. For the benefit of the public this study was commissioned in March of this year and it was a joint effort between the Town Board and the School Board. The approximate total cost of the build out study is fourteen thousand dollars. There was more Town than School so the Town paid a little bit more but the School paid thirty percent of that cost. What we have here I believe tonight, Stu Mesinger from Chazen Companies is going to present and field questions from the Board and I imagine certainly the public. We will have a thirty minute presentation I am told slide show, I imagine the Town Board will get out of the way so we can turn around and enjoy the show as well. I think to my knowledge this is the first time that the Town Board and the School 118 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Board as complete Boards have gotten together as far as I can recall ever. So, looking forward to the development issues, the development pressures and the stuff that goes with that as we move forward there is a lot of questions. What will the Town look like ten years from now, twenty years from now and of course along with that the other taxing entity that people are often concerned with what will the school demographic look like. What will their enrollment numbers and cost perhaps go with that. So, this was one of the key items for those of you that were following the moratorium request from the Towns Planning Board back in May and June that we discussed. This is one of the key items that they were curious to see. It is in draft form tonight we will get a presentation tonight, at that point, now, this will become a public document. It may or may not need revision following tonight’s public meeting, but if it does it will imagine get revised in an expeditious manner and then the final draft will become available as well, it will need to go to the printers. Right now we have limited printed copies but if anyone wants a printed copy tomorrow after this evenings meeting there are copies in the Town and we can make individual copies it is just that we do not have dozens and dozens of copies to hand out at this point, but we will in the near future. So, with that introduction I will turn it over to Stu. President Dwyer-Dan, would you mind if I make a remark? Supervisor Stec-Absolutely John, I am sorry. President Dwyer-I would just like to let everybody know that this is a very important study for us and a very important meeting for the school district. We are currently doing our strategic planning and in January we hope to present, make a presentation to the Board for the Board’s ok, and approval, which will include site planning. We are heavily into site planning which this study would make us think twice about a lot of things. This study will have a very serious effect just reading it as it is. Adlibbing a little bit, it would have a serious effect on our planning between now and January. The future direction that the Town takes as to build out and zoning is very important for us to know and also, if possible participate in, because those issues are going to direct long term what the school district is going to look like. Thank you. Supervisor Stec-Thank you John and with that I would suggest that maybe the Town Board might want move for Stu so that we can view the presentation. I will leave it to you Stu. Mr. Stu Mesinger-My name is Stewart Mesinger am a Planner with Chazen Company and also the Director of the North Country Office in Glens Falls. As Mr. Stec said we were retained in March to perform a study for the Town that looked at a couple of things and they were to perform a build out analysis of the Town. That is a study that would 119 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD identify how much more development could happen in Queensbury under existing zoning and given natural resource constraints. We were asked to look at past development trends and come up with some population projections so that we could try and understand how many people the Town might have in the future. We were asked to make some enrollment projections based on the population projections for the Queensbury Union Free School District. So, those were the purposes of the study. Now, before I start I got to give you all the caveats and there are quite a few for a study of this kind. The first is that the development projection is not an exact science. We have to make assumptions. The assumptions that we make are going to obviously effect the conclusions that we come up with. As we go along I am going to try and tell you where we made a key assumption so you can have some understanding particularly because if we made a different assumption we come up with a different conclusion with respect to some of the numbers that we are going to see. The second point I want to make in particular with respect to the build out analysis, the build out analysis assumes that all developable land is developed to its maximum potential under existing zoning. That just doesn’t really happen in real life. People for their own reasons choose not to develop their land. Developers choose not to maximize their return, the Planning Board doesn’t let everybody develop their land to the maximum extent possible. But, when you do a study like this you still what to compute the maximum because it is the only number that is grounded in some kind of empirical reality, the empirical reality being the zoning ordinance. So, even though you are going to see some numbers and you are going to say well will that really happen the answer is probably not, but some portion of what we are going to see will happen. So, it is important that we know what the maximum is. Then finally, development in a community like this is a function of a lot of different things but one of the main things it is a function of is economic conditions. As we are going to see when we look at some of the numbers, Queensbury, the development in Queensbury has followed the pattern of the national economy. When times are good there is more building and when there is a recession there is less building. So, if some cataclysmic event occurs in the near future that effects the economy or effects the Town then a lot of what we see here today may not come to pass. Everybody I think understands that intuitively but it bears repeating. This isn’t an exact science we can really only go on the number that we have. I guess I have a fourth thing which I did not put up here and that is that more often than not past trends are very good predictors of future conditions provided that conditions remain the same and we are going to see how that plays out when we look at some of the numbers as we go along. So, the first thing I want to talk about is this build out analysis and I think it is important to spend just a minute talking about how you do a build out analysis. The Town of Queensbury has a very good GIS system I will not explain GIS right now but suffice to say it is a computerized mapping system where all the tax parcel information is stored in a computer and all the natural resource information such as 120 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD wet lands and flood plains and so forth is stored in the computer. It is a fairly simple job to ask the computer to say show me all of the land that has wetlands on it and then we would assume that, that land cannot be built on. So, that is exactly what we did, we identified four development constraints; wetlands, flood plains, hydric soils that are not in a sewer district and a hydric soil is simply a wet soil that doesn’t fall under the definition of a wetland and steep slopes. Steep slopes being any slope over fifteen percent. There is our first example of an assumptions. If for example I had changed the assumption to slopes over twelve percent I would have allowed more land to be developed, or less land to be developed, excuse me. If I had changed the assumption to any land over twenty five percent as un-build able I would have allowed a different amount of land to be developed. So, the assumptions that we use are important. Fifteen is a pretty standard marker in planning terminology, the other three markers are also pretty standard. But, I wanted to explain that to you. So, we have taken out land that cannot be built. The next thing we take out is land that is already built on. If it is already built out that is it we cannot build anymore on it but what do we do with properties that maybe, for an example, zoned one acre and a person has a house but he owns ten acres, that land presumably can still be built upon, so the formula that we used for that we call that underutilized lands. That is more land than they need under zoning. The formula that we use for that is to say that we take five times the minimum lot size required by the zoning district and assume that is applied to the house and everything else is available for development. So, to take our example the person that has ten acres and a house and he is zoned for one acre development. We take five times the one acre and we say that first five acres is set aside we are going to assume he is just going to keep that. The other five acres are available for development and so we would assign five houses to that parcel. We do a similar terminology with a slightly different set of assumptions for commercial properties. This goes back to the statement I made earlier which was that some people will not chose to develop their property. That person with ten acres may never develop it and that is fine, nobody says that they have to but for a study like this you make the assumption that they can because the zoning law allows it. So, then we have got our vacant land we have got our under utilized land we simply take the zoning ordinance and again it is electronically over laid on this information and using this formulas in the zoning we calculate how many units can be built. I want to show you just a couple of figures and I know that you cannot see these you will have to look at the report. This is a map of build able and underutilized parcels in Queensbury, I just want you to notice two things. One is the amount of red land, red land is constrained land it is land that we are assuming can’t be built on. You will see it is the mountains it is Bear Mountain it is West Mountain, it is the Dunhams Bay Swamp it is the Big Cedar Swamp and all the land that you would sort of look at and say well should we really be allowing development on it. Our study assumed that it could not be developed because it had one of the constraints. So, 121 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD when you see the numbers coming up that land was out. The yellow lands are lands that we looked at as being potentially build able, you will notice that the watershed property is a yellow piece of property and there was some units assigned to that. It is, the way it is zoned it could be built upon. Similar map for the Commercial Properties, again we have much less commercially zoned land so the yellow parcels are far fewer on this map you see a lot of white parcels because although they are build able they are not commercially zoned so they do not count. But again the red lands cannot be built upon. That is kind of what a GIS analysis map looks like and then we come up with our numbers, number of units that can be built we will spend a moment looking at these. The analysis says that it is possible to build seventy six hundred new dwelling units in the Town of Queensbury. Seventy six hundred of which five thousand one hundred and fifty nine are possible single family units. We split it out by school district because of course we were doing this in part for the Queensbury School District and so you see the numbers about eleven hundred in the Lake George District almost six hundred in the Glens Falls District a little bit in Hudson Falls, five thousand eight hundred and eighty two potential new units if everything was build according to zoning in the district. If you take the average household size in Queensbury which according to the two thousand census is two and a half and change persons per household and multiply it by that seventy six hundred you get a potential future additional population of nineteen thousand five hundred and forty seven. So, that is how many people we can put in Queensbury as a maximum with this set of assumptions. The Commercial results show seven to almost ten million possible square feet of commercial development and between two point two and four point nine million possible square feet of office building. The reason is the range in those two numbers is that some of the zones in Queensbury allow both commercial and office development. So, at the high end of commercial we are assuming the low end of office and at the high end of office we are assuming the low end of commercial. So, those are sort of either or districts. Now, if you work the numbers purely as numbers it is actually possible to build more than this, for example the zoning ordinance allows multiply story commercial buildings so you could actually double or triple some of these numbers. But as a practical matter that doesn’t really happen in our part of the world. We see some two story office buildings but we do not really see a lot of two story commercial buildings at least of any significant size. So, in the report we did the math I am not going to go through it here because I think it frankly does not paint a very realistic picture. Then the other point is that Queensbury has some zones particularly those that encompass the Great Escape and West Mountain that all allow significant commercial development. But, again, we think it is pretty unlikely that they would be developed for that purpose so again in the report we run the numbers but I do not really make a point of them here. Our study mostly focused on the results of residential development because we were interested in population numbers and the resulting school children generation but what these say to me is that it is 122 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD certainly possible that there can be some additional commercial development in Queensbury. So, we just look at some numbers about future population and future number of dwelling units. I think what we should do is try and compare that to what we have now so that you have some context. Currently, and this is according to the two thousand census, in the two thousand census there are eleven thousand two hundred occupied housing units in Queensbury. So compare that to the seven thousand six hundred theoretical additional possible units. The two thousand population in Queensbury was twenty five thousand four hundred and forty one compare that to the potential future theoretical additional population of nineteen thousand or so. So, if everything got built, maxed out the population and housing stock would not quite double. We talked a moment ago about the average household size of two point five two, it is interesting that household size has gone down since the nineteen ninety census from two point seven oh to two point five two. That has some implications in the School piece that we will discuss in a minute. That is kind of a fairly significant decline from my point of view. The other thing to take out of this is the growth rate of the Town between nineteen ninety and two thousand. The growth rate was about twelve point four percent over that decade that works out to about one point two four percent a year. For a planner that is a moderate rate of growth, we would consider that a moderate rate of growth. Anything approaching two I would call rapid, anything under one I would call pretty slow and so when I get to one point two four I say that is a moderate rate of growth, that’s what has been going on in Queensbury over the last decade. Now, population projections, this is black science. So, I will do my best to explain some of this to you. When I do reports for people who are not paying me a lot of money and they want to see a population projection I just call up the Lake George Champlain Regional Planning Board, who is at the bottom there, and if I did that they would tell me that in thirty years the towns population is going to increase by a thousand or so people. Nothing personal, but I think that is wrong. I do not know how they got that, but I am giving it to you. I could also call up Cornell, which maintains the New York State Statistical Information Service the SIS, and they would tell me that in thirty years the population of Queensbury is going to grow by sixteen hundred people. I would again just kind of scoff at that because I do not think that is a realistic projection so I would toss that out. It makes me wonder about the origin of population projects quite frankly. So, then I go on to something that I might have some reason to believe and the first method is what is called the Cohort Survival Method and we are going to talk about this in a lot more detail when we get to the school piece. But, all the Cohort Survival Method does is it looks at the ratio of, in this case population over a series of decades and how that ratio has changed. It expresses the change as a multiplication factor. So, the simplest explanation I can give you, lets say that in the year nineteen seventy you had a population of a hundred and in the nineteen eighty you had a population of a hundred and ten. The difference there is ten people 123 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD or ten percent and you would express that as a ratio of one point one. If I wanted to use the Cohort Method to predict the nineteen ninety population I would take my nineteen eighty population and multiply it by that one point one and I would then get eleven more people and so I would come up with a nineteen ninety population of a hundred and twenty one. That is all the Cohort Method does it, looks at past survival as a predictor of future population. It is only marginally useful for population projections because we only get population data over ten years census periods. But, it is a method and we use it to take a look at the numbers and what we got is a thirty year population change of ten thousand three hundred people. That smells right to me and the reason it smells right to me is because of the next method which is to look at the actual population increase over the last ten years, based on the census which you recall was one point two four two percent a year. If we take that one point two four two percent a year and we go and we just say ok, we are going to grow at the same exact rate for the next thirty years as we did for the last ten we get a thirty year population increase of eleven thousand four hundred and two. You will see then that the Cohort Method and the Historical Growth Method result in very similar answers. That tells me that I am on the right track because I have two methods that are sort of accepted methods that are producing a similar result. So, I think from my opinion that is the most likely case, somewhere in that set of numbers if all other things remain the same. Now, I just threw up here in the study we threw a couple of other scenarios on increased growth, I just wanted to give you an idea of what happens if the growth increases by half of a percent a year, Queensbury becomes much more popular place for whatever set of reasons, what does that do to the number? The answer is, it does a lot. If we go up to one point seven four two percent a year a half percent increase suddenly the thirty year increase is seventeen thousand two hundred and seventy. That approaches the maximum build out that our build out study said could happen. So, that is pretty significant and remember what I said what constitutes moderate growth vs what constitutes rapid growth. If we go from a state of moderate growth to rapid growth the Town will build out that much sooner. This graft amuses me so I put it up for no other reason. There was I think one other method that we followed and then we plotted all of the possible population increases on a graft and what you should take away from this is sort of what I hope you took away from the last one which is that there is a lot of different methods and depending on which method you use you can make it say almost anything you want. So, beware of that goes back to my first point about assumptions and again I think that either the Cohort Method or the Historical Method probably gives us our best picture on population increase in the next thirty years. What does that mean in terms of housing? If we take again those population projections numbers that we just talked about and we divide by the average household size remember two and a half so people we would see over a thirty year period in the Cohort Method, four thousand and eighty eight new dwelling units which works out to 124 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD a hundred and thirty six a year or under the Historical Method about forty five hundred new dwelling units which works out to a hundred and fifty one a year. So, that kind of gives us some sense of what might happen at least based on the population numbers. So, is that a lot or a little? Well, lets now take a look at what has actually happened over the last twenty years so we can compare that prediction with what has happened. This table summarizes building permit data here in Queensbury and it is a table that I can look at for a long time. It is a pretty interesting table. It tells me a couple of things, first of all it tells me on the right that the average number of building permits for dwellings, the average number of dwelling units for which building permits were issued over the last twenty years was a hundred and ninety a year. So, actually more on average dwelling unit permits issued than our population projections would say would happen in the future. It also says that if you look that there were some big spikes between nineteen eighty six and nineteen eighty nine. Remember we talked about economic factors well, boom and bust years there. But, the things stayed pretty much the same in Queensbury throughout the nineties, that we ran around, I don’t know between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and eighty and I bet if I averaged it, it would work out to about a hundred and fifty a year throughout that decade, until two thousand. In two thousand the numbers, three of those four years begin to pop up, you get a total number of two hundred and nine then a hundred and forty seven, then in two thousand and two, two fifty five and two thousand two twenty nine. Those are certainly an increase over what you saw in the nineties. If you look at it a little more closely you see that the difference is that the Town has issued far more permits for townhouses and apartments in the last four years than it has in the previous years. Big, big increase particularly look in two thousand and two there was ninety one townhouse permits issued and two thousand and three, fifty six apartment dwelling units permits issued, pretty big difference in the numbers there. So, just to sort of summarize that an average of a hundred and ninety permits a year over the last twenty years, a hundred and fifty nine single family permits a year over the last twenty years. Since two thousand about a fifth of all permits issued have been either for apartments or townhouses, but here is what is real interesting and it is going to be what cobs up our numbers later, in the school piece almost two thirds of the multi family units issued since two thousand have been for seniors. So, they are not generating new school children. So, now lets talk about the school piece. This table summarizes school enrollment trends over the last ten years. What is says is that school enrollment in this school district increased by four hundred and eighty six students for fourteen point twenty one percent. It think the fourteen point twenty one percent number is pretty interesting because is tracks pretty closely with the population increase. So, it is a little bit high, remember the population increase and we are dealing with different time periods because the population was ninety to two thousand and this is ninety three, ninety four to two thousand three to two thousand four and that might account for a little bit of a 125 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD difference. But, it is pretty close, but I have got to tell you I do not know how you people plan for anything, because I look at ninety six, ninety seven and there are a hundred and twenty new students and then the next year you lost nine. I do not know what gives? Fortunately I was not paid to find that out. But, what is interesting about this is if you take the last five years and you average them over the last five years you come up with fifty four and a half new students a year. That seems like a number that makes some sense to me. When I look at school projects, I try to look at it in five year increments. So, if I look at this last five years I am getting fifty four and a half kids per year, whether or not that correlates with the up take in building permits or not I do not know because remember a lot of them were for senior housing. But, there is something going on here. So, enrollment projection methods, now respect to school enrollment the standard excepted methodology and it is really the method that everybody uses and has got gold plates and rubber stamps and I cannot go wrong using it, it is called the Cohort Method. We already talked about the Cohort Method with population but not, I have to bore you just a little bit more about it because it is very important with respect to how school works because it influences our study. When we do a Cohort Method for school enrollment projection we look at the year to year survival ratio of students. So if in the year two thousand we had thirty kindergarten students and in the year two thousand and one we had thirty one first graders there was a positive survival ratio. In other words we had one additional kindergartener become a first grader because new students came into the district, right? If there was a loss it meant that people moving out of the district going to private school, flunking out, whatever those people out weighted whatever new kids were coming into the district. The other factor is births, because to get from, to get to kindergarten you have got to be born first. So, when you do the Cohort Method the first thing you look at, how many people were born in a year and then you look out five years later at the kindergarten enrollment and you see what the ratio is what the survival ratio is between people being born and people starting school. This method works fine except where the population and demographics changes, trends are changing. If lots of people are moving in or lots of people are moving out the method is not going to work because it is based on historic survival ratios. It is basically taking data going back ten years, calculating the survival of students from one grade to another, creating a ratio and then multiplying people into the future by that ratio. But, if things change in the community this method is not going to be so good. So, that brings us to the second method. The second method we call Cohort Method plus New Development. What this method does, is that it takes the Cohort Method readily accepted and it says we think there is some new development in the community that these historic survival ratios is not capturing. We are going to make some assumptions about that development and the amount of school children it brings into our school district and we are going to add them to the predictions made by the Cohort Method. Now, there is a 126 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD couple of issues with doing that, it double counts students, because remember my example to being with, where I had thirty kindergarteners and thirty one first graders the reason there was another first grader is somebody moved into the district. Somebody built a house or had a kid or did something. So, when I add students from new construction there is some level of double counting. There is not a good way to fix that. The only way I can fix that is to make assumptions. So, the way we did it was we looked at the total number, the average number of building permits that had been issued in a year, we went back to our GIS coverage of build able land and we discovered that about sixty permit of all the remaining build able or underutilized land in Queensbury is within the Queensbury Union Free School District and so we said ok sixty percent of the new starts are going to be within the school district and we are going to count students from them and add them to the Cohort Method. Again, you are still going to get some double counting with that but short of making some assumption which quite frankly I would have no basis for making there is no way around that so we simply have to do it and present the number and see if it looks right. So, that is what we did. So what were our results? This is the Cohort Method and the Cohort Method says in two thousand and three and two thousand four there were thirty nine oh six students in the district and next year there is going to be three less and after that there is going to be twenty four less and so on and so forth. It predicts a decline. The reason it predicts a decline is and this is why the Cohort Method doesn’t really work in Queensbury, because conditions are changing. If you go and you look at the numbers what happening is we are not adding a lot of kids from births into the school district, the birth numbers are, there is a real negative correlation there is a real decline between the number of births and the number of kids entering kindergarten. Something like way less than one, kid who gets born on average enters the school district. So, it sucks all the rest of the numbers down because if you look internally at the Cohort survival if you were to throw out people being born and entering into kindergarten you would get a positive number. So, what that says is, that the growth in the district is in fact coming from new development not from people being born and being … now this goes back to the fact that I pointed out to you a little while ago the average household size in Queensbury is declining. So, what is happening is not lots of kids being born, lots of young families that is not it, people are moving into the district because this prediction doesn’t match the reality of the last five years. It does not smell right which is the phrase I like to use, it does not look right. So, lets look at the other method. The other method predicts some pretty substantial increases in students and we did it two ways, we basically took, we looked at the local census data and we calculated the number of school children generated per house in Queensbury which is something like around point six and point seven the numbers in the study I do not recall off the top of my head. We also looked what we called a regional multiplier which predicts a slightly smaller household size. For whatever reason we 127 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD have slightly bigger households in Queensbury than we do elsewhere in the Northeast. So, if we use this method we start to see some pretty huge increases in ten year increase up to sixty nine, seventy nine and the one method in sixty seven-seventy. I do not think that this is accurate either, quite frankly. I think that this is double counting too many students and over counting and giving us a set of numbers that probably just isn’t realistic. So, I wish I could tell you what to do but the only way you could fix it is to start making assumptions about the number of houses within the Queensbury School District. We could say only half of them will generate kids or we make some other assumption to get rid of our double counting problem and there is no technical basis for doing that, I would be making it up and I am not going to make it up. So, when a Councilman asked me earlier in the evening, why don’t you use another method there is not another method to use. Unfortunately, this is what we are stuck with for a study of this type, so now we have to use our brains. What my brain tells me is just as with population I think you would be best served by going back and taking a look at what has happened over the last five years which would indicate if it went forward to the next five years another two hundred and seventy students. It seems fairly consistent with the building permit data that we have seen which is that the building permit starts in this town have been really pretty steady with the exception with a glitch of a bump in recent years. But that bump is largely multi family and of that a majority is senior housing. So, I am not sure that I see a huge change in the number of units generating school children. So, if I had to plan, and you folks do, I think that I would be looking at the historical trends and my trend goes very closely especially going into next year in trying to develop some rolling averages and work with those than rather rely on too closely on either one of these methods. Certainly there is no question in my mind that there will be an increase in enrollment over both the near and long term. The building permit data is pretty clear on that and it has been reflected in the enrollment changes that you have seen. The reason to go with a five year rolling average is obviously too smooth out those jumps that you folks certainly see from year to year, which continues to amaze me. So, what did we find out? Let me summarize, first of all there is certainly potential for substantial new development in Queensbury. No matter what set of assumptions I use I think this is the case and I do not really, I do not know why anyone would take issue there is absolutely more room for development in Queensbury. Single family starts have not been any greater in the last twenty years, now than before, there really hasn’t been a change in that. There has been a significant increase in multi family starts in the last four years most of that is related to Senior Housing. The population projections using a couple of different methods seem to indicate that growth will be consistent with past trends and I think that tracks the building permit data pretty closely which show fairly consistent numbers. The enrollment in the Queensbury Union Free School District has obviously increased and that should be ten years not five year, excuse me it is fourteen point 128 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD twenty one percent over ten years not five years. Then finally, as I just said I do not think that either of these methodologies are doing a really good job of predicting school children generation so I think you are better off looking at historical data and going forward with that. I think the historical data seems to track better with what we have seen in terms of building permits and population data they all seem to pull together a little bit more nicely. So, that is the presentation and I would be more than happy to try and answer questions if I can. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Unknown-If you have a forty acre parcel and thirty acres are wet do you count that as forty units or ten? Mr. Mesinger- You would throw out the thirty and you have ten acres. Unknown-Because what they are doing is they are grouping the ten on the good ten acres and then…wasting the back… Mr. Mesinger-I think the way Queensbury’s zoning works and Marilyn can correct me if I am wrong, they are not supposed to get to count density on the thirty acres of wetlands, am I correct about that, yea. I do not think they really can do that. So, lets say that, that property was zoned one acre they would not get forty units on the ten they would still only get the ten and that is how we counted it. Unknown-If that is ten years am I correct in assuming that it is only one point four two percent growth? Mr. Mesinger-One point four two percent per year. Unknown-You indicated that sixty three percent of the homes are dedicated to the senior citizens. Mr. Mesinger-Over the last four years, that is correct. Unknown-Have you taken into consideration the percentage of individuals who move into this area who are over the age of fifty five that have no children? Mr. Mesinger-That is reflected in the average household size which is why I pointed out the decline in the average household size which the census data tells us now is two point fifty two persons. When we calculated and remember I also said to you when we multiplied the number of school children by the number of new houses the local multiplier is a lower number than the regional multiplier so that is how that gets taken into account. Unknown-One more fast question, would you consider one point four two one percent increase alarming? 129 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-I don’t do schools, from a population point of view, I would consider it moderate starting to be rapid. From a school point of view, I cannot answer that question because I do not administer schools. From a population point of view, what I said was you get up to two you are rapid, below one you are slow and the middle is in the middle. Unknown-You said a lot, it was very, very interesting I thought it was a very deep through study and I tried to pay attention to it all and I think I can summarize and I just want to confirm. The birth rates are up, they are there but we don’t think that those young families are going to enter the school system. Mr. Mesinger-It is not that they are not going to enter the school system it is that they are not the primary growth driver. Unknown-They are being replaced by perhaps by a more senior side, therefore we see a household reduction from two point seven to two point five but yet our younger families and as the population ages in general nation wide are younger families in this particular geographic area being replaced by older folks therefore you will see maybe a even a further decline in school age children? Mr. Mesinger-It is possible, certainly I do not know, I can tell you what the data says, because I promised myself I would speculate as little as possible, I even reached a couple of conclusions tonight and I hadn’t meant to do that but I feel compelled to. The data would say yes, the towns population is absolutely aging. The average household size is lower but that does not stop the fact that school enrollment has increased, because even though those things are true there is still more and more houses being built. You know both single family and multi family and even thou the majority of the multi family to date have been seniors they still generate kids. Unknown-I just wanted to clarify something, the second bullet the enrollment in the Queensbury Union Free School District ahs increased by fourteen Point twenty one percent over that past five years, Chuck had mentioned that was ten years. Mr. Mesinger-That is ten years. It should be ten years that is my mistake. Unknown-So, kids that are born in Queensbury and five years later show up in the ..school those are some of the missing ones? It is not just people that move out. Mr. Mesinger-Right, exactly. That shows up in the Catholic School, they go to private school. Unknown-So, they pop back into the public school later. 130 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-You might see them later. You folks have a study, look really, really closely at the tables that provide the Cohort numbers, if somebody has one I will give you a really quick, where the reference is. You could spend, you ought to spend some time looking at these tables. I think especially for you guys in the school you will learn a lot. Page 27 Table 4-8 is a really, really interesting table. Table 4-9 at the bottom of the page which gives you that ratio of kindergarten enrollments to birth, nineteen ninety four, births which means nineteen ninety nine school year enrollment the ratio is point eighty five, nineteen ninety seven birth, two thousand and two enrollment the ratio is point eighty three. So, out of a hundred kids you are losing seventeen of them, they are going some where else. That is why the Cohort Method is not working because there are new kids coming in but they are coming in older kids. Unknown-I would like to pick up on something that you mentioned, if we have one point four two one percent increase in the school district in Queensbury what percentage of that one point four two one percent is attributed to private institutions? Mr. Mesinger-This is just public school kids, none of it. This is the public enrollment. Unknown-What happens to those children who came in here how do they ..are they included in your mathematics? Mr. Mesinger-Which kids are those now? Unknown-Any children coming in, you gave me the impression that your mathematics includes all children coming from this area. Mr. Mesinger-No the school enrollment projections, when we do the Cohort Method we take all births everybody that is born and then five years later we look at how many people entered kindergarten. There is a ratio between those and if it is a negative number, if it is a number below one then fewer kids are entering the school district because they moved out or for some other reason. If it is a number greater than one then on average most of those kids went in, plus there were some additional kids that moved in. The school district projections are for school district kids, in other words once they move out, once they go somewhere else, we do not care about them. We are not projecting for them we are not worrying about how many went to Spa Catholic or the Adirondack School or anywhere else we are just looking at school kids in the Queensbury District. Unknown-That is not my question. If we had two point some children per house hold coming into the Town of Queensbury, we do not care what those children names are, what percentage of that two point five or two point one percent go to private schools? They would then have no impact on the public institution. 131 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-We did not look at it, we don’t have to look at it that way, in this method, I could probably find that out for you pretty simply. Unknown-Wouldn’t that have an impact? Mr. Mesinger-It is taken into account in the Cohort Method because if you look at who is born and you look at who actually goes to school that takes that into account. The kids that did not go to school whet to Catholic School. If you look at the difference between who went from fifth grade to sixth grade and that is what these two tables that I was pointing out, that is what those tables do. They show the survival of kids from fifth to sixth grade, who ever didn’t go, went to Catholic School or somewhere else. Unknown-One more question and I will leave you alone. Mr. Mesinger-The answer is yes, I just do it a little differently from you. Unknown-This is impacting the Queensbury School correct? Mr. Mesinger-Yes. Unknown-Let me ask you a question, what would happen if we resigned, realigned the school district? Mr. Mesinger-That is not for me to answer. Unknown-Is that a good question? Mr. Mesinger-You would have to ask the School District that. Our job and not to dodge it but our job is to try to give the town some numbers and give the school district some numbers to work with. Unknown-You could redistrict the entire district. Mr. Mesinger-I suppose it is an option. Unknown-I think it would be helpful to understand some of your calculations if you break down the final report …classifications? I think that would give somebody a better idea where you are talking about and where you are not talking about. There is a awful lot of people that are out scurrying around looking for subdivision and they are not finding it. Mr. Mesinger- That is in there Mike. Unknown-The other question is how do you determine wetlands… 132 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-We simply took the State mapping and the Federal USFS mapping. Unknown-You did not get into the level of wetland designation that is done . … recognized by everybody… Mr. Mesinger-That is a really good point, is that, practically speaking there are more wetlands in the field than anybody maps and it is again why I made the point and I will make it again, a study like this looks the maximum theoretical in practice it rarely happens and that is the one reason why. Unknown-The Federal Wetlands are not mapped so … Mr. Mesinger-Although the Fish and Wildlife Services publishes a map of, based on aerial survey so we used that. Unknown-How many units did you assign the lands of the Glens Falls Country Club, Hiland Country Club in the watershed? Mr. Mesinger-Watershed, I would have to look for you, Glens Falls I would have to look for you as well, Hiland if something is a PDD and approved PDD we actually manually assigned those units from whatever the approved PDD was. Unknown-Did you assign units to all those parcels? Mr. Mesigner-I am sure we did for the, I think we did for all three. Unknown-How about …and not for profit land? Mr. Mesinger-If it was coded in the real property code as a Not for Profit we did not. So, it would depend on what the Real Property Code was. Unknown-When you said you deducted the sloping that somebody has to do the density calculations deduct the sloping, deduct wetlands and then you make the calculation for density, then they cluster into what is left, you cluster on basis of that deduction already being made it is not a double count. Mr. Mesinger-Right. Unknown-You deducted for sloping at fifteen percent? Mr. Mesinger-Correct. Anything over fifteen we assumed was not build able. Unknown-Counting kids five years after they were born …many people keep their kids until they are six… 133 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-You will then see that in the first grade number so you will pick it up eventually. Unknown-With raising the standards in New York State have an effect on the secondary population in fact New York State Law the twenty five thousand students tracking them from ninth grade to twelfth grade two years ago …there was a drop off …the State Legislature just passed a law to raise the age of education, a year to seventeen to keep them in school longer… Unknown-If you have an adjoining school district that has facilities already built that are looking for students is that something you would explore? I understand the … My other issue just on your calculation density did you deduct what is the standard Town owned undevelopable properties? Mr. Mesinger-What we did is we took a factor and on top of my head I do not recall what it was, we took a factor off. Unknown-Are those calculations available? Mr. Mesinger-The summary calculations are, if you want the raw data I would be happy to give them to you. Unknown-I am sorry, I may have missed the answer to this question, which one is a build able property, basically everything is build able depending on how much the developer wants to build it. The question is legal restrictions on building in this analysis rely primarily on what is legally allowable or is it on hypothetical idea of what is build able and not build able? Mr. Mesinger-The last two questions should represent opposite ends of the spectrum on how we do a study like this. Mr. O’Connor question is well, you know there is wetlands that haven’t been mapped and they will make the number lower and you know the Glens Falls Country Club isn’t going to be developed so the number should be lower. Your question is well, you can build on a twenty percent slope if you want to throw enough money on it and you are right you can. But, as a practical matter, most people don’t and so that is where the assumptions comes in. You can disagree with the assumptions. I think just sort of based on a lot of experience doing this that they are pretty reasonable. The Planning Board doesn’t let a lot get built on over fifteen percent they do not let a lot get built in wetlands in flood plains and so forth and so I think that the assumptions that we used are sort of based on real world. I think that they are ok. (tape not audible) 134 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-I think it would be counted, I would have go back and ask the Building Inspector but I think it would be counted as a new building permit. That is a good point where you have some level of replacement. I would guess on a whole it is a very small number each year, it is an interesting question but I would guess it is not huge. Mr. Lou Stone-How does this relate to the other two large school districts in the Town, mainly Lake George and … Mr. Mesinger-We did not calculate enrollment for them because we were not asked to but if they want me to, I can. Mr. Stone-But a lot of the information that you collected could be used in a study if ... Mr. Mesinger-There is a lot that you can do with this because what the GIS system has done is assigned housing units to parcels to areas of town you could plug it into a traffic model you could plug it into a sewer model you could plug it into a water model, there is a lot of uses like that and certainly the other school districts could use it as well. Unknown-Stu, I am just curious when you did this, did you factor all the building permits applied to Queensbury district only or did you split some out for Lake George, Glens Falls? Mr. Mesinger-The Town does not maintain them by school district so this is the entire town which for population is fine, and then remember when we had to try to calculate school kids the way we did it was we took the percentage of build able land that is in the Queensbury School District which is around sixty percent so we said we made the assumption and here is another example of an assumption that therefore sixty percent of the new development would be within the Queensbury School District. Unknown-So you did use a factor of Mr. Mesinger-We did use a factor. Unknown-Building permit data ..every building permit is not a new structure. Mr. Mesinger-There are only new structures these are not additions, renovations, garages these are just single, these are dwelling units, actual dwelling units. Unknown-Did you break down by any chance, the senior housing …from this chart? Mr. Mesinger-Did not do that. 135 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Unknown-Stitchman Towers… Mr. Mesinger-No, we did not do that. Unknown-Does the School Board have one map that shows the Queensbury School District within in the town? Unknown-Yes Unknown-All in one map? Unknown-Yes. Unknown-I was just going to ask you, I realize you primary function was gather data and reporting on it but in your experiences have there been any communities that you have worked on previously that were in similar situations and what has happened to them and where are they today? Mr. Mesinger-I really didn’t want… Unknown-What did you see in the data? Mr. Mesinger-What did I see in the data? That is a better question. Every community is different and you have your own conclusions. What I saw in the data is that I do not think that the Town is experiencing run away development and I do not think that the Town is going to experience any way near the kind of growth in school enrollment that our second method predicted. But, I also, so not to think it is going to stay steady, like our first method. I think that you folks are going to see steady growth, pretty much like you have over the last five years because those numbers are very consist ant with the building permit data and the population data. I think that and now I will give you an opinion, it seems to me that Queensbury is a pretty desirable place to live and work it has a real good school district and it is likely that people are going to continue to want to come and move here. I think that they will be able to find land to do so, it will not be as easy and housing will become more expensive as a result. Whether that continues in the long run I do not know. There may come a point where it gets too difficult and so on. But, yes, an opinion I gave you one and now you can all put your hands up and say what kind of a stupid opinion was that. Unknown-Having said that could you take with these numbers that you had in the past five years with the steadiness of the incline and make some sort of prediction that would say in ten years or fifteen years the number is going to be somewhere near this? Rather than use the other two methods that you have used here? 136 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-Well, that is the historical number, that is what I am suggesting to the school board that they do, that they look at that fifty five kids a year and run that forward and keep a rolling average in your next school year through out the last year, put in the new year and see what you get. That is what I would be doing. Unknown-The thing that concerns me is, I see the town houses and apartments going up a lot in the last four years and even the ..aren’t going to be school kids but still if that continues to happen the ten year projections you got are no good. Mr. Mesinger-Except that the five year average is fifty five kids and we have seen that town house spike for four years, so I am suggesting to you that the data that you are now working with reflects what we are seeing in terms of town houses and apartments that it is actually pretty reflective of that and that is the number you have to work with. You are going to have to keep watching. But if you have the fifty five and you only had one year of apartments then I would say well, maybe you have to worry about it, but you don’t you have four years. Unknown-Are these apartments that have been built or are these just permits to build them? Mr. Mesinger-Permits to build. Unknown-Those are not going to show up in people until they are actually built. Mr. Mesinger-Yes, but I actually think there are at least until the last year pretty good, good point though and you got to watch it but.. Councilman Strough-I know you assisted on the Towns Affordable Housing Study and Chazen was involved with that and Marilyn Ryba and in that study you did address the potential impact of ..Forest … technology Park and we are as you said in the study we are in the first year of impact. This study, I did not see that potential impact addressed? Mr. Mesinger-Because there is no way to do it. We were at pains to do this in a statistically valid way, you know based on real data, so that gets into the real of what if. But, I think you raised a good point you know well, what might change? That is certainly a regional factor that might change things toward greater growth and development pressure and I cannot predict it in this but I think it is something for everybody to keep in mind. Unknown-What are the other communities… such as Malta still …they have got to be faced with the same thing there? 137 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-Stillwater I can tell you because we are their Town Planner is about to engage in a fairly extensive overhaul of its Comprehensive Plan followed by its Zoning, Malta I think is in a moratorium now while it does the same. They are at ground zero and they are having to look very closely at what happens. That project at the soonest is two years out and more likely five years out. Remember there is no water, no water line there, there is no access they got to get themselves an exit off the interstate. There is no money, it has got to get designed, bid and built. I am just saying time frame, I have no doubt that it is going to happen and a water line will happen but time frame two to five years. So, there is they are feeling it because what is happening in their community is that there is a lot of land speculation and there is a lot more open and developable land. There are very much easier places to develop so they are feeling development pressures in a way that you aren’t and when I say development pressures, in Stillwater, we have three hundred unit developments coming knocking at our door now. Very, very large scale stuff going on. Unknown-Are interest rates factored in to the potential, like predicted interest rates by the Federal Government, because that is usually the biggest precursor to growth? Mr. Mesinger-Not in our model but I made that point at the outset that, that is exactly the kind of thing and we have seen it historically, that is why I say, remember my first slide the caveats there is a lot of outside factors that can effect us. Luther Forest is one thing that can effect one way if the economy tanks and we go back to twelve percent interest that is another factor. So, no, I cannot predict it. Unknown-It is not factored in. Mr. Mesinger-No. Unknown-In your percentages of units for Senior Citizens do the facilities for assisted living skew that figure? Mr. Mesinger-I believe that they do. Unknown-So, that you could have the reality of older people living in single units and sell their house to child bearing kin. Mr. Mesinger-Right, that is right and you would see that again in the enrollment. That is why the enrollment numbers are so interesting because the internal numbers of survival from year to year mostly show increases. Unknown-Stewart did you do a traffic study eight or nine years ago in Queensbury? Mr. Mesinger-Did I? Not that I remember. 138 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Unknown-The reason I ask you is because I wrote five years ago that the nineteen ninety eight, you said right here an interesting thing, the …reality which the Zoning Board and I wrote five years ago I believe the nineteen ninety eight comprehensive land use plan should be put on hold until after an plan took place, a structured questionnaire had been submitted, administered, tabulated, analyzed and …into a new …approach. I think government should be put in the hands of homeowners, along with questions of they want their homes in the Town of Queensbury to look like in the future. Based on what I have heard so far from Town residents they want a healthier and more attractive street scape. It is their will that clear cutting be prevented whenever and where ever possible. We also want to see trees planted all along Route 9 from Foster Avenue to Route 49, along Aviation Road along Quaker Road. These are factors that, I am not talking about ideas this is actually people most conscious of. As far as I am concerned this whole nation north of Albany is God’s Country it is up to us to protect and respect what our creator has given us. Residents are the true stewards of our land, our streams, and our Hudson River and our Lake George. We have not stressed the quality of life here, I think it is very important to go from there with a questionnaire about what the people of Queensbury want and have a moratorium in order to see what they want. Mr. Mesinger-Just so everybody understands our purpose tonight, I am here to present the results of the study and the data and then the policy makers and the decision makers get to figure out what to do next. Unknown- (tape not audible) Mr. Mesinger-No, we presented commercial number too. There is a handout by the way that summarized that at the door if anybody didn’t get it. …The exclude areas would be wetlands, steep slopes, hydric soils and floodplains…. No, because not legally protected in the town right now, so we would assume that those areas could be built on although they may not be. ….again if they are not legally protected right now we would assume that they could be built on for purposes of this study. Unknown-I just want to make a comment I have seen in the Post Star several articles about people in Queensbury saying they do not want their area to look like Great Escape. So, they are going to continue to develop around Great Escape or do you know, I am just making a comment. Mr. Mesinger-And I will just say your comments are all I think part of the debate that the Town is now going to engage in. I cannot give you answers for obvious reasons. I am just the statistician here. 139 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Unknown-First of all I want to thank you Stewart, I know we worked closely together and you do a nice job. One of the questions and I have to ask again … office space can also be used for apartments. Mr. Mesinger-We, there are several zones in the Town that allow either office or commercial or apartments and within those zones when we did the residential calculations we assumed that it would be all apartments. Then when we did the office calculation we assumed it would be all office and then the commercial we assumed it would all be commercial. Just so again, you get a maximum case. Unknown-Then that is taken into account. Mr. Mesinger-It could be one or the other. Unknown-On page thirty eight, mathematically I do not understand the spike between the ten and the fifteen …I understand there is some double counting there, the one that goes out fifteen years? When it jumps from Mr. Mesinger-It has got a sharp spike there, I would have to go back and look, it looks to me that the, oh, I know why, because it is counting single years from two thousand three, two thousand four up to two thousand thirteen and then it is counting five year increments. Which is probably really lousy scale making and you guys have now picked that up. Unknown-..add just for public information maybe we haven’t seen the enrollment reflected by the multiple dwellings, you have started to see a difference in, how do I want to say, an increase in moving in and out that would maybe be a correlation or maybe not, it is hard to say. You have also seen an increase in especially the last two to three years, especially the last …months a significant increase the number of students moving in with very high needs and very high costs. I do not know if there is a correlation,…tracks where people live and demographics and probably never will, but we are seeing that and that is not going to be reflected in the individual… Mr. Mesinger-That really is the kind of thing you guys have to keep track of more than anything else I would think. Unknown-Can I ask you a question? Given the shift in the height of building and construction and I call them high densities temporary housing, the schools in the area have a tradition and I think all the schools in this area have a tradition of easily having the student anywhere from kindergarten to twelfth, which is thirteen years or at least eight of ten years. They are part of the school district whether it be Glens Falls, Lake George, Hudson Falls or Queensbury that as you increase in the density and the …that you are going to have a higher transient group, the percentage of your students transitioning in and out is that, is that a safe assumption looking at the trends? 140 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Mr. Mesinger-I do not know enough about school enrollment to give you a real answer. Intuitively that argument makes a certain amount of sense to me, but, just because of you have rental housing there is going to be higher percentage of transient. So, my planners answer is that I think, that is possible true. Unknown-The School Board now that you have the statistical information up there, give us any insight as to the spikes that occur, how do they handle those and what is their analysis of that. Ninety six, Ninety seven jump to a hundred and twenty and the next year a negative, can they shed any light on that? Unknown-First of all, we did have an increase that was not anticipated when the current building project was projected out the long range planning here thought that the growth would get around thirty seven, thirty eight and grow steadily along. So, that is what the current building project was intended to meet. The increase we’re trying to figure out where they coming from and exactly what is happening and it has to do with people moving in. Part of these increases were, part of the enrollment is in grade nine, ten, eleven and twelve that is where all the classes are three hundred and above. The lower enrollment is down below, they are starting to increase and our fourth grade enrollments can be larger than our kindergarten enrollment. We are projecting out many people move in around that Many believe the local parochial school …that time. We asked for this study to give us the best information so we can plan for the future. Unknown-Mike, when did Saint Mary’s close it’s high school? I do not remember the exact date but wasn’t it somewhere in that neck of the woods where we have spiked the hundred and twenty? Unknown-Ninety six, Ninety seven. Unknown-…eighty eight was the last classes… Mr. Mesinger-Anything else? Unknown-You mentioned the Cohort Build Out Analysis and you got…numbers which you chose to disregard and then you said you have to make some assumptions in order to … those numbers and I wonder if it would be helpful rather than just throwing it out would it be helpful to run a different scenarios with different assumptions so that people can take a look at those assumptions and say does that make sense? Mr. Mesinger-I could certainly do it, it is just that I would have no basis for saying to anybody that one assumption was better than another. That is sort of the problem that I have that, it would be shear guess on my part. Any other questions? 141 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD (tape not audible) Mr. Mesinger-Yes, there is a full blown report and I think Supervisor Stec said they would be available in the Town Hall if they wanted them tomorrow. Supervisor Stec-They will eventually be on the web site, I do not know about tomorrow. Unknown-…ratio showing past trends of percentage of acreage that has been developed against… Mr. Mesinger-No We did not do that calculation. Councilman Strough-On page twenty one of the study …I thought that the public might find it interesting, fifty six percent of all the new construction in two thousand and two were for apartments and townhouses, fifty nine, almost sixty percent of all households have move into Queensbury since nineteen ninety. Those are pretty interesting. Mr. Mesinger-It goes back to the points that we made earlier, about turn over and clearly there has been some of that. Unknown-The year two thousand two the Cedars Senior Citizens was getting on board with sixty three units for persons over the age fifty five, they presently have an application in for another sixty five or sixty two units and have a waiting list of eighty. It is not subsidized housing, it is senior housing without children so that gives you a spike I think of building permits and apartments in the year two thousand two. I did ask the building department to see if they could break out the different permits for different projects because I think we had a couple projects that are unusual because it spikes that aren’t necessarily repeatable item. Councilman Strough-…when you did what I thought was interesting in the study was the number of births in Town vs kindergarten we noticed that there is some missing, theoretically if everything was steady the number of births would correlate somehow to the number of kindergarteners. Mr. Mesinger-It is just a negative correlation. Councilman Strough-So, how did you get the figures for the births that arose from the School District? Did you take that sixty percent formula? Mr. Mesinger-No. You do not have to do that because whatever the ratio is between births and enrollment in the Queensbury School District it is. In otherwords you are right, it may be the reason that it 142 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD is partly negative is that some of those people are going to Lake George, but whatever the ratio is, is what you use. Councilman Strough-What I was wondering is, I would think you could find the statistic the number of births of people that say they are residents in the Town of Queensbury, but do they also ask are you in the school district? Mr. Mesinger-No. Councilman Strough-My question is how did you filter out? Mr. Mesinger-Because it does not matter, because the ratio is what it is, it doesn’t matter. Councilman Strough-Ok. You mean the multiplier? Mr. Mesinger-Yes. It just doesn’t matter. Unknown-Just one more comment while we are all here. Right now the million dollar mile is a real bumper to bumper thing in the summer time a lot of times as you probably know, now three million dollars going in to tourism and development coming on are they looking at things like this, how it is going to be effected? Mr. Mesinger-I am not sure I understand the question. Unknown-Well, the million dollar mile is very congested…I wondered with future development what impact it will have at there, with three million dollars in the …what is going to happen? Mr. Mesinger-I guess that is kind of a planning question that we would have to ask the planning department what is going on up there. Anything else any other questions or comments? Unknown-Where do we go now as far as moving this draft to final? Mr. Mesinger-Well, we will whatever file comments that town has for us and finalize it. I do not anticipate that, that will take to long. I know that we have been talking to the Town Planning Staff and I assume that the School Board Members and the Town Board Members have any comments and we will give them a few days to get them to us and then we will finish it. Unknown-One last thing is there a relationship between a commercial office available development and residential are we heavy in one and light in the other, are we well balanced? Mr. Mesinger-I couldn’t tell you that aggregate what our situation is, office is usually regional more regional in nature, than say commercial there are, it is pretty easy to establish sort of relationship 143 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD between commercial development and residential development because commercial development sort of follows it except for again the regional factors like the malls and the shopping centers, office is a little harder to do. I really cannot answer your questions because I do not know what the numbers are. Unknown-The way I am seeing this again, … Mr. Mesinger-It was intended to do three main things; one-look at the potential build out of the town under existing zoning given development constraints, look at development trends, project population, project school children, so, four purposes. Unknown-(tape inaudible) Mr. Mesinger-I think the next step is for the Town and the School District as policy makers to think about what this means and filter it through their own views of the world and decide. Our role here was to do the study and provide the numbers and now the Town gets to decide what to do with it. I think that what they will do. …. Unknown-(tape inaudible) Mr. Mesinger-That is a loaded question because it assumes that building is not sensible now. I think that the Town needs to decide whether it likes what happening and whether the vision is good, does it need tweaking, does it need wholesale change? This is one set of factors for the Town to consider as it does that. Unknown-Normally wouldn’t you do all the school districts if you are doing a town wide study and they are effected according to conclusions, assumptions, all the school districts involved probably should have a liaison involved in this process, it directly effects, some may have a different take on it. Mr. Mesinger-That is possible, that is certainly possible. Councilman Strough-You as a community planner … community after community as you travel around the country you see that as a community gets built out horizontally there is tremendous pressure to go to multi story to build up because there is nothing else to do. Mr. Mesinger-I do not disagree with that, I guess I just think that within my working life time that there is enough available development space that, that probably will not happen. I have a hard time thinking that Queensbury can absorb another nine million square foot on the flat before having to go up, the population is not here to have that happen, I do not think. Ok. Last question here and then we are done. 144 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Unknown-What did you say about the traffic study has there been a traffic study done projected for any development? Mr. Mesinger-The Town requires traffic studies for individual developments, right. Unknown-I just want to make, first off I want to thank the Town for working with the School District on this because I think it is important for both of us. The second part is I want to make sure I am clear on your advice because when the current building project for the school was put together they used this survival ratio and according to that today we are supposed to have thirty seven hundred students and they have thirty nine hundred. So, if we are predicting the future you are saying we should use the most current five year trends that is probably the best statistic we can, we have now to project out? Mr. Mesinger-I am saying that and I am saying that I did not know that you had done that it makes me feel good because it means that I am right. The Cohort Method just doesn’t seem to work and the fact that you just discovered that I wasn’t aware of that makes we go, thank God. I do not think it is predicting your future for whatever reason I think it has to do with births, it maybe, it is not working. I think you ought to be looking at five year rolling averages and I think you ought to roll them over again next year and I think you ought to look closely at the building permit data and compare it and keep a close eye on it, that is what I would be doing. Unknown-We increase two hundred in less than five years. Mr. Mesinger-Fifty four a year. Ok Councilman Brewer-Is there a number that you want the school to be at and not go beyond that, is that part of the purpose of this? Unknown-I can only give you a personal opinion I cannot speak for the Board …I really think when you start getting to a gigantic size you lose what is special to Queensbury. ..the low four thousand is the largest I would personally like to see it, I cannot speak for the community, I cannot speak for the Board of Education. I think you lose that personal touch you ..as a community and we work together and you are watching over, its …control and watching as …that is a personal opinion I want to make sure… Councilman Brewer-I understand that, I just have to understand in my own mind if there is some magic number that we are aiming for to keep that level, my child goes to Queensbury School and I think it is wonderful. To keep what we had is there a plateau we want to reach and not go any higher, if there is lets see if we can obtain that number and work for that number. Maybe that is something that needs to be done. 145 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Unknown-I think one thing that you can do is draw larger districts around us, Saratoga around seven thousand, according to the study it may or may not happen at some point, Shenendehowa…there are others Guilderland the ones that are kind of the next step up kind of go to them and see what they are like, there is a difference in those schools vs what we are now and even the smaller schools … Councilman Brewer-I guess that is something that you have to communicate with us, if we control the densities in the development then that is something that you have to communicate to this Town Board to say hey, this is where we want to be and we really do not want to get to be nine thousand students, then that is important for us to know that, if that is the direction you want to go. Unknown-I am also going to point out that what you have in Queensbury is you look at the last fifty years who ever is responsible for it in my opinion was a genius you have a two hundred acre campus you have every building in one area that is something where you can take care of the …we are one of the hubs of the community in this area. If you get too much larger you are going to have to spread out and I do not think that is an answer. So, can the Board and we talk about what we think would be, we would not want to go beyond that I am sure that the Board would be willing to sit down and talk about that, but once again, personally I would not want to see go beyond one campus. With all do respect to our neighbors to the South I do not want to see a Shenendehowa here I think we have a special.. but that is one persons opinion and I think will have to take some time to deliberate on, you do not want to get too large. … Councilman Brewer-I did hear the option twice given if there is such a strain on Queensbury School is it possible to spread the children out into Glens Falls, Lake George, if their population is not growing in a rate that ours is? Unknown-I can address that, would you want your kid to go through six or seven years of Queensbury High School and be told because is lives in a certain section of the district he has to move? Councilman Brewer-That is not a good reason, if it makes financial sense and gets a good education then… I do not personally believe it is. I think if my child is in a class room with thirty five kids and we can move things around and get that child in a class room with eighteen or twenty kids that provides better class time, better education for the child I think I would chose to have that. Unknown-I think you are absolutely correct, I think that if there are concerns by the School Board that we are reaching a critical point in our enrollment I believe they have an obligation to present to the Town Board specifics and I think your position is well stated. Thank you. 146 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD Councilman Brewer-It is something to think about, that is all. Unknown-Somebody raised a valid point and I think you have a computer data base together, could you do the same type of analysis for a certificate of occupancy as opposed to building permits submitted? Mr. Mesinger-I think so, if the data is there. Unknown-The Board might be able to understand the kinds of …seen the completion of units in projects and any increase in any … Mr. Mesinger-If the Town has the data it would be easy to do. Unknown-Typically, building permits are only a year period. Mr. Mesinger-I think we are going close it, I will give it back to you Dan. Thank you very much, you have been a good audience, you asked a bunch of good questions. Supervisor Stec-Thank you, Stu. I would like to thank Stu for his enlightening statistical analysis, being a number guy myself, I prefer to deal with factual numbers. I want to recognize our several members of the Planning and Zoning Board are here I want to thank them for their attendance as there are a few members of the staff. George Hilton and our Senior Planner Marilyn Ryba are here this evening and I say Marilyn was writing furiously, so I think that we captured hopefully the comments that were made, Stu, so we can ask for the certificates of occupancy. I know a few people touched on district lines, act of God and I have his phone number somewhere in my rolodex, but you know, thinking out side the box that delivers things like savings in areas like EMS, and Fire and whatnot and things that have not been done because they were sacred cows and unthinkable, unchallengeable. I think there has been local evidence lately that some of these things can be done, so perhaps changing school district lines to correct past inequities might not be a completely off the wall thing. Certainly something I should think should be put on the table, I think everything should be on the table. I want to thank the School Board certainly for coming this evening. The Town Board there is no other agenda items for open session I will need a very brief executive session with the Town Board to discuss a personnel matter. John Dwyer I do not know if you have anything else for your Board before I go into Executive Session. President Dwyer-Not really Dan, except that one comment I didn’t make but I should make now, is the fact that if you look at kids and the consistency what we have tried to do in Queensbury is educate kids right through the whole school. If you start taking children and putting them in different places you are breaking that process, especially if you talk about a high schooler they have their affiliations 147 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD and their driving forces to graduate with, so all of those things are part of what would have to be looked at. I am not so sure that is a real good idea but it is worth taking a look at. Supervisor Stec-Thank you very much everyone for coming and like I said I need a quick executive session, to be held in the Supervisor’s Conference Room. RESOLUTION CALLING FOR AN EXECUTIVE SESSION RESOLUTION NO. 397.2004 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Tim Brewer WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby moves into an Executive Session to discuss personnel Issues, hiring and interviews. rd Duly adopted this 3 day of August, 2004 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Boor, Mr. Turner, Mr. Strough, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Stec NOES: None ABSENT: None RESOLUTION ADJOURNING EXECUTIVE SESSION RESOLUTION NO. 398.2004 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Roger Boor WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns its Executive Session. rd Duly adopted this 3 day of August, 2004 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Boor, Mr. Turner, Mr. Strough, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Stec NOES: None ABSENT: None (No action taken in Executive Session) 148 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 08-03-2004 MTG. #35 JOINT MEETING WITH QUEENSBURY SCHOOL BOARD RESOLUTION ADJOURNING SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING RESOLUTION NO. 399.2004 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Roger Boor RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby adjourns it Special Town Board Meeting. rd Duly adopted this 3 day of August, 2004 by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Boor, Mr. Turner, Mr. Strough, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Stec NOES: None ABSENT: None Respectfully submitted, Miss Darleen M. Dougher Town Clerk-Queensbury