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2008.03.18(Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING FIRST REGULAR MEETING MARCH 18, 2008 INDEX Site Plan No. 44-2007 David & Mary Lou Dutra 2. Tax Map No. 289.6-1-33 Site Plan No. 61-2007 The VMJR Companies 5. Freshwater Wetlands Tax Map No. 303.15-1-25 Permit No. 1-2008 Site Plan No. 4-2008 Scott & Jackie Wheeler 23. Tax Map No. 239.18-1-27 Site Plan No. 5-2008 David & Lois Arakelian 36. Tax Map No. 227.10-1-27 Site Plan No. 7-2008 K Twin Holdings 50. Freshwater Wetlands Tax Map No. 296.20-1-9, 10 Permit No. 4-08 Site Plan No. 30-2002 Adirondack Girl Scout Council 56. MODIFICATION Tax Map No. 296.16-1-10 Site Plan No. 33-2006 Steven & Debbie Seaboyer 59. Tax Map No. 227.13-2-36 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 03/18/08) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING FIRST REGULAR MEETING MARCH 18, 2008 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CHRIS HUNSINGER, CHAIRMAN GRETCHEN STEFFAN, SECRETARY STEPHEN TRAVER TANYA BRUNO THOMAS SEGULJIC THOMAS FORD MEMBERS ABSENT DONALD SIPP GIS ADMINISTRATOR-GEORGE HILTON STENOGRAPHER-SUE HEMINGWAY MR. HUNSINGER-I’ll call to order the regular meeting of the Queensbury Planning Board, Tuesday, March 18, 2008. The first item on the agenda is approval of minutes nd from January 15, 17, and 22. Mr. Ford, you have a couple of corrections? MR. FORD-I did. A correction, I know I have been accused at times of multiple personalities, but I can’t be both here and absent, and I was here to vote. I think it was th Mr. Seguljic, on the 15, who was absent. Is that right, Tom? MR. SEGULJIC-I think so. I know I was absent for one of the January meetings. MR. FORD-But I recall voting on this, and then I was counted as the absent, and that occurred also on the minutes. th MR. HUNSINGER-And the 15 was the meeting that I was not at. Yes. Mr. Seguljic was the one absent, not Mr. Ford. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other corrections? MRS. BRUNO-I’d just like to point out that I’d like to abstain from approving on the th January 17. I don’t think it’s appropriate. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Any other comments? Anyone like to put forward a motion? MR. FORD-With those corrections, I would move acceptance of those minutes. MOTION TO APPROVE WITH CORRECTIONS THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING MINUTES OF JANUARY 15, JANUARY 17 & JANUARY 22, 2008, Introduced by Thomas Ford who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: MS. HEMINGWAY-Mrs. Bruno, do you want to vote on the others? MRS. BRUNO-The other two are fine, yes. MS. HEMINGWAY-Okay. AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mr. Traver, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp ADMINISTRATIVE ITEM: 1 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) SITE PLAN NO. 44-2007 SEQRA TYPE UNLISTED DAVID & MARYLOU DUTRA OWNER(S) ETHEL, DAVID & MARYLOU DUTRA ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 28 NACY ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES TO RECONSTRUCT A RETAINING WALL AT THE LAKE EDGE ALONG WITH FILL ACTIVITY WITHIN 50 FEET OF THE SHORELINE. CROSS REFERENCE NONE FOUND WARREN CO. PLANNING N/A CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL AREA GLEN LAKE CEA LOT SIZE 0.18 +/- ACRES TAX MAP NO. 289.6-1-33 SECTION 179-6-060(D)(2) EDWARD GRIFFIN, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-We have a resolution for further tabling consideration. MR. GRIFFIN-Can I ask why you tabled it again? I’m here on behalf of the Dutras. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Can you come on up to the table, please. If you could identify yourself for the record. MR. GRIFFIN-Edgar Griffin. I’m their contractor. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. GRIFFIN-And in October, actually in September you asked for a letter from the Soil and Water Conservation for the 50 feet adjoining the lake. All they want to do is fix the lawn so they can stop the erosion. You’ve had this letter since October. I have extra copies here now. You’ve gotten a registered letter. I personally brought in a copy. They sent you a copy from Mr. Wick. I was just wondering why we got tabled again? MR. HUNSINGER-Do you know anything, George? I don’t mean to put you on the spot. MR. HILTON-Yes. No. It’s been some time with this application. I don’t recall if there was more information that was requested originally. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I mean, part of it is that it was tabled originally for some reason. Whether that was additional information besides that letter. th MR. HUNSINGER-Well, yes, there was a list of five items from the September 18 meeting and then it was tabled again in November. th MRS. STEFFAN-Well, actually in September it was tabled to the November 20 meeting and there were five items. MRS. BRUNO-Right, and that item you have there speaks only to the amendment that we made to the original motion. th MRS. STEFFAN-Yes. The requirements from the September 18 tabling motion were pretty substantial. Plantings in the disturbed area, silt fences to be maintained during the. MR. GRIFFIN-They’ve been maintained. MRS. STEFFAN-Provide landscaping and terracing plan that identifies terracing details. MR. GRIFFIN-That was submitted. MRS. STEFFAN-Stormwater management plans for periods of construction, and then the last one is to provide engineering details of the seawall. MR. GRIFFIN-It’s not a seawall. There was an existing wall. That’s what’s on the print you have. It fell in years ago when the original Mrs. Dutra owned the property. It went into a state of disrepair. It fell into the lake. Now, from what we discussed with Mr. Wick, all we’re trying to do is lay the fabric down for the erosion, the erosion fabric, and put a layer of rocks by the shore to keep whatever water and waves from eroding it again, and then we’re just going to plant lawn, that whole 50 feet, and then up the bank, after the 50 feet, there will be a wooden retaining wall, but I believe for the variance all I need is the 50 feet. Correct? After the 50 feet, then I have to go to the Town Board. MRS. BRUNO-The ZBA, the Zoning Board? Are you thinking of the Zoning Board? MR. GRIFFIN-Yes. 2 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MRS. STEFFAN-But even with the seawall, even if you’re going to put fabric down, and then put rocks on top of it, we have to have a drawing detailing that. MR. GRIFFIN-And you have that. It was submitted in September. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Well, I don’t have it in front of me. MR. GRIFFIN-Mr. Wick approved that. MR. SEGULJIC-Could we, you believe they’ve been submitted, correct? MR. GRIFFIN-I know they’ve been submitted, twice. MR. SEGULJIC-Maybe what we can do, get this moving along, I don’t think it’s that big a deal, maybe we could do this next week. Because maybe Staff could review the files, if you have them, get them to us, and then we can review it for next week. MR. HUNSINGER-See, I don’t know about next week. MR. HILTON-Yes. I don’t know. I can certainly review the files and see what has been submitted and what hasn’t been, but I mean, the fact that we’re here with a tabling motion indicates to me that there’s something missing. MR. HUNSINGER-There’s something missing, yes. Did you bring extra copies of that letter with you this evening? MR. GRIFFIN-Yes, I did. MR. HUNSINGER-Can you leave one with George? MR. GRIFFIN-Again? I’ve done this once before. I can give you all a copy now. MRS. STEFFAN-I just happen to have that plan here from September. MR. GRIFFIN-That’s not it. There was another one. Actually, this is it. MRS. STEFFAN-This is the package that we received in September. MR. GRIFFIN-Right. There was also another smaller schematic, too. That’s it. That’s the property layout and all the information that you’ve asked for. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, none of us have reviewed the project to discuss it this evening. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, actually, this is the project, the package that we received on the th 18. MR. HUNSINGER-From September. MRS. STEFFAN-That we reviewed and put the tabling motion in place, that it was going th to be tabled until the 20 of November, but we needed the engineered details of the seawall and the stormwater management plans, and apparently this wasn’t sufficient, because this is the package from September. MRS. BRUNO-Actually, Gretchen, I’m sorry to correct you, but, just in terms of the engineered seawall, I just remembered that because I had voted against it, but regardless, that’s what, I think, the letter from the Soil Conservation should cover, but there’s still, the stormwater management plan is probably one of the most key pieces that we had asked for. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, we’ve tabled it now. MRS. BRUNO-But it sounds like maybe there’s just some confusion between the two, and I’d maybe encourage you to get, do you have a copy of the meeting minutes from September? MR. GRIFFIN-No, not at the moment. I’ve just looked through, I don’t have them. MRS. BRUNO-But you’ve looked at them? 3 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. GRIFFIN-I have seen them, yes. MR. TRAVER-They’ve available on the Town website as well. MR. HUNSINGER-I guess at this point what I would recommend is that you contact Staff, I mean, certainly as early as tomorrow morning, so that we can make sure that we have everything that you believe we should have, and so that we can make a determination if you have met those conditions from the September meeting. MR. GRIFFIN-So the only thing that I believe I’m missing right now, and the only concern is the stormwater runoff? MR. HUNSINGER-Again, I don’t know. MR. GRIFFIN-If you read the letter from Mr. Wick, it says the whole thing. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. GRIFFIN-He just agreed with the smaller print and the side line. That was totally within restrictions. He had no problems. Even at the bottom of the letter, if you have any questions, call him at any time. He was out to the site, he looked at it, and he said the same thing. It’s a simple lawn repair. I’m starting to wonder why it’s taken since September to get the lawn repaired. MR. FORD-To help clarify, would you follow through, please, with what Mr. Hunsinger has suggested? Give Staff a call in the morning and they can run down through the list of our tabling motion and determine if there’s anything missing, and if there is something missing, I’m sure you can provide it. MRS. STEFFAN-Right. Because the Staff has tabled, obviously we tabled this initially in th September to the November 20 meeting, and then because we didn’t have the information that we were looking for it was tabled again to January. In January we still didn’t have the information, according to Staff who reviewed the files, and so it was tabled again, we tabled it again, until tonight. So Staff doesn’t have the information. So you really do need to meet with them and make sure that the tabling requirements are satisfied. So that you can get back on the agenda. MR. HUNSINGER-I’m glad you came this evening, though, to help set the record straight, because I’m sure that, for whatever reason, we don’t have that letter on file, because otherwise I think we would have been alerted. We’d be talking about the project instead of a tabling motion. MRS. STEFFAN-Right. MR. GRIFFIN-Would they like to clarify that? MR. HILTON-No. I guess my only concern at this point is we can certainly, tomorrow, go through the plans and find out, you know, set the record straight, so to speak, but this application was tabled to this evening. The Board is not prepared to act on it. I would, I guess, suggest that another tabling motion be put forth. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, we’re going to need to. MR. HILTON-Yes, but absolutely tomorrow morning we can sit down and set the record straight. MR. GRIFFIN-Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-Before you leave, though, let’s discuss a tabling date. First meeting in April? Assuming we have everything we need. MRS. STEFFAN-We’d have to add it as an extra item because the agenda is already set. It was set today. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. HILTON-Yes. It’s your decision, certainly. 4 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Well, if it’s as straightforward as the applicant has indicated, it shouldn’t be a big issue. MR. HILTON-The only thing I would add to that is that if tomorrow we find that something is still missing, you know, obviously it wouldn’t be on in April. You’d be looking at an th April 15 deadline probably for May, but if everything is there and you table it, in a matter of moments here, to an April, sure, it could go forward. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, what if we table it until next week, and then next week we can make a determination if it’s ready for April or not. Is that fair? MRS. BRUNO-Yes, I think that sounds good. MR. GRIFFIN-That would be great. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Would anyone like to make that motion? MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 44-2007 DAVID & MARY LOU DUTRA, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Tanya Bruno: th To the March 25 meeting. th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Steffan, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUNSINGER-Did you bring copies of that letter for everybody? MR. GRIFFIN-Yes. I believe I did, yes. MR. HUNSINGER-And this way we could even be prepared to discuss it next week, if the application is complete. Okay. Thank you, and we will hear your project first at seven o’clock next Tuesday. MR. GRIFFIN-Okay. Thanks. SITE PLAN NO. 61-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS 1-2008 SEQR TYPE I THE VMJR COMPANIES AGENT(S) BERGMANN ASSOCIATES OWNER(S) FOREST ENTERPRISES MGMT. ZONING HC-INTENSIVE LOCATION RT. 254 NW INTERSECTION AT QUAKER RIDGE BLVD. SITE PLAN: APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 199,000 SQ. FT. RETAIL BUILDING WITH ASSOCIATED PARKING AND UTILITIES. RETAIL USES IN HC ZONES REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. FRESHWATER WETLANDS: FILLING WETLANDS TO PROVIDE PARKING AND STORM WATER MANAGEMENT FACILITIES. THE PLANNING BOARD WILL COMMENCE SEQR REVIEW. CROSS REFERENCE UV 27-93, AV 34-93 WARREN CO. PLANNING 1/9/08 APA/CEA/DEC/ACOE NWI WETLAND/ACOE LOT SIZE 37.55 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 303.15-1-25 SECTION 179-4 MARK PETROSKI & BOB SWEENEY, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-George, if you could summarize the Staff Notes briefly. MR. HILTON-I guess my summary would actually be a little bit different than what you have in front of you. Stu Baker, our Senior Planner, has prepared notes in regard to this application. I have, however, just prior to this meeting, distributed what appears to be an updated Site Plan proposal for this site, which appears to reduce the building square footage and the parking, and I think it’s our, well, I know it’s our recommendation anyway that this application would be tabled this evening, given that we’ve received new information that is different than what was put before you, tabled so that we, Staff, can have time to review the information, give the Board time to review the information, give our consulting engineers time to review the information, and that’s our comment at this point. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. 5 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SWEENEY-Good evening, Mr. Chairman. MR. HUNSINGER-If you could identify yourself for the record. MR. SWEENEY-Sure. My name is Bob Sweeney. I’m an attorney, and I’m here on behalf of the applicant. We’d like to do, and understanding that a piece of information just came in, we would like to do a couple of things tonight, in furtherance of our Site Plan and Wetlands application that we talked about with the Board here last time, fully expecting that we’re going to have to come back again, obviously, and it will be tabled at the end of this meeting, but we do have some of our consultants here tonight to address two of the most significant issues on the application, and as you know, the application is for a retail project at the corner of Quaker Road and Quaker Ridge Boulevard, and we have a presentation for you tonight which I think is a very focused and detailed presentation of the wetlands issues, and we have our consultants here for that. We have Don Kugan from Terrestrial Environmental Services, and we have Barbara Beal from Chazen, both wetland scientists, here to walk through exact the nature and character of the wetlands and what our project proposal is with respect to them. We also have Gordon Stansbury, our traffic engineer, who will be able to walk through what is in our traffic report, what he discovered in his study, and what his proposals are, to address the traffic issues from the project. So, with the Board’s permission, we’d proceed with those presentations and informational. You know Mark Petroski from Bergman Associates, our engineer. He has a couple of comments on that. He also has some visual presentation to go along with the discussion, but these are two very important pieces of the project, and I think we have good answers for you and good information. So we’d like to proceed and show you those, and Mark will tie in the recently adjusted plan that we were able to come up with as part of the wetlands presentation. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. That was going to be my question. MR. SWEENEY-Yes. We will bring that in to the wetlands part of the presentation, and we understand that you just got it. So you’re going to need to take a look at it. Staff is going to need to look at it closely, but I think tonight will help a great deal in tying that in to the overall project. So we’d like to proceed with that. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. MR. SWEENEY-And the only person I didn’t introduce is Vic Macri who I think you probably know, the applicant. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SWEENEY-Why don’t you go ahead. MR. PETROSKI-For the record, my name is Mark Petroski with Bergman Associates. I just briefly wanted to talk, just for a quick second, about the submittal that we just presented to the Town. We know it came in at the last minute, but in keeping with our promise at earlier meetings, and in earlier correspondence, to make information available to the Board, as soon as it’s available to us, we decided to go ahead and send that in. Because it’s pertinent to our discussion this evening, I wanted to point out one thing that came to our attention quite by surprise, it has to do with the parking calculation. We addressed in this letter that we incorrectly looked at parking calculations in an absolute way. In other words, your parking regulations for a retail shopping center say that, from zero to 150,000 square feet, you need to provide five spaces per thousand. From 150 to 500,000 square feet, then you need to apply 4.5 spaces per thousand. Well, we took it as an absolute calculation. We just took our site was 199,000 square foot store. It feel between 150 and 500,000. We calculated 4.5 spaces per thousand, and that’s the way we were representing our application, but we understand that it’s actually a graduated calculation. So for the first 150,000 square feet, we actually have to apply five spaces per thousand so what that does is it means that as a minimum, we need 971 parking spaces. Okay. So that point is made in our letter, and that is based on the 199,000 square foot application. So just to set that aside for the moment, because these numbers are going to keep changing on you, and we want to kind of try to keep this straight, okay. I just want to move this discussion right now into the wetlands, and the reason why we, as Bob was saying, the reason why we’ve done this is having read the minutes from the previous meeting, I think we correctly recalled many of the th comments that were made, allowing us to properly respond on February 15, and we left, in January, with the understanding that wetlands, and to a lesser degree traffic, were significant concerns. We decided to address those issues in more detail, and I just 6 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) wanted to give, for the record, the qualifications that are going to be speaking this evening. The two people that are going to be speaking about wetlands are Don Kugan, and Don has a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science, from the State University of New York. He also has a degree from Paul Smith’s College, and he’s been trained at Rutgers University in the methodology for delineating Federal wetlands. Mr. Kugan has over 20 years of experience conducting environmental studies for Terrestrial Environmental Specialists, where he is a Senior Environmental Scientist. His primary area of expertise is in wetland science. He has participated in over 300 wetland related projects, including delineating wetlands, preparing wetlands reports, impact assessments, permit applications and mitigation plans. Don will be speaking first, but before I get to him, I just wanted to keep this thing moving and also give Barb’s qualifications. Barbara Beal is a Manager of Wetlands Services with the Chazen Companies. She’s also an Environmental Scientist. Ms. Beal has over 20 years of experience in all facets of environmental analysis, specializing in wetlands and waters identification assessment, permitting and mitigation. Prior to her employment at the Chazen Companies, Ms. Beal worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the regulatory branch. In addition to her wetland and water specialties, Ms. Beal is an experienced environmental analyst, having prepared numerous environmental assessment forms and impact statements for a wide range of projects under both the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. With that, we’re going to get to a PowerPoint presentation. I know you like our graphics, but I wanted to correct, Mr. Ford, I wanted to correct some numbers for you, because this is, because this was a subject of discussion, and I think I might have confused things last time. We made a re-zoning application, which the Town acted upon. In that re-zoning application, there was a plan. That plan showed about 230,000 square feet of development. That size of development would have had 7.7 acres of wetland disturbance, okay. When we made the actual Site Plan application, we downsized the project. The project was downsized to the 199,000 square feet, and the wetlands impact decreased to 5.5 acres. Now I apologize because when we submitted the Environmental Assessment Form, we didn’t make that correction, so it caused some confusion, but we went from 7.7 with the re-zoning application to 5.5 with the Site Plan application. With th the February 15 application, with our understanding of how parking was calculated, and remember I said we did that incorrectly, we thought we could reduce the parking to 895 spaces. If we could do that, which was the alternate plan that we submitted, we could have reduced the wetland impact further to 4.8 acres. Okay. So that was our first attempt at trying to continue the dialogue of mitigating, of reducing the amount of wetland impact as much as possible. So we went to 4.8 acres. MR. FORD-4.88? MR. PETROSKI-4.88? Is that what it is? Okay. Thank you. In this package that we just gave you, we have another proposal, and what I’d like to do is wait until Don and Barb do their wetlands presentation and talk about that a little bit further, and that will explain why you have yet a fourth alternate with a further reduction in wetlands impacts. I think that the presentation is going to clearly identify, and this is an important thing, drainage patterns. I think that’s a very important part of our discussion. Their presentation is going to clearly ascertain the distinct separation between the Big Cedar Swamp and our site, and the application is going to clearly discuss the habitat and the value of on site wetlands and what it means to mitigate. So with that, I want to turn it first over to Don, and let him run through some slides and some background information, and then he will have Barb finish up on the tail end of the presentation. DON KUGAN MR. KUGAN-Hi everyone. I’m Don Kugan. I’m with Terrestrial Environmental Specialists. We’re wetland consultants, environmental consultants. We do a lot of work with Mark Petroski’s firm, Bergmann Associates, and got involved with this site a couple of years ago, and our job was to come out and take a look at the general site character and the wetlands on the property. The site is here, of course. This gives a pretty good regional perspective of the area, Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, the Hudson, Warren County Airport up here, and this dark spot up here is the Big Cedar Swamp. As you can see, this is Route 254, Quaker Road, and a little hard to tell about some of the other roads on this one because it’s such a small scale, but we’ll have some other slides to show you guys, so you can see what we’ve got going on here a little bit more. Like Mark said, the first thing we want to really show, and that’s my task, is to give a perspective of the wetlands on our site versus the wetlands that are to the north, which are the Big Cedar Swamp, and we believe there’s a distinct separation between the two, and I think we’ve got some good information here that’ll help to show you guys that and allow you to see what the differences in those are. Of course this is the Big Cedar Swamp here. This is 7 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) Route 254, Quaker Road. This is our site. It’s about 37 acres in size. The Big Cedar Swamp is part of a DEC wetland, and this over here is also a DEC wetland, as you can see heavily forested to the north. This is a Niagara Mohawk transmission line. Our site is basically open fields in this section, forested with a mixture of wetlands and uplands down here, and some additional wetlands over here, but we’ll show you that in a little bit. This is the soil survey for Warren County. In the blue it shows areas of, this is The Big Cedar Swamp up here. This is another additional area of wetlands. You noticed on that previous slide over here where there’s another State wetland, but these blue soils represent what are called hydric or wetland soils. They’re mapped by the NRCS, which was formerly the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, and these yellow colored soils were mapped by the Soil Conservation Service as upland soils or non-hydric soils. This is a Wareham soil up here, and it doesn’t show on here, but this is called Madalin, again, Wareham over here. Most of the soils on our site are primarily sandy loams, and some sandy silt loams, and as you can see, this map is from, this aerial photo was produced in 1980. So it’s really not that old, considering some of the soil surveys we see. They go back into the 50’s and 60’s and even earlier, but the soil survey was produced in, I believe, 1988. So it’s a fairly recent soil survey, and as you can see on this, even in the 80’s, this was still agricultural land, some shrubs coming in here, but you’ll be able to see that on some of the later aerials that I’ll show you. This is a, the base map for this map is from the U.S.G.S. Survey. It’s a topographic map, and this is where we find our drainage separation between The Big Cedar Swamp and our site. Flowage, surface flow for The Big Cedar Swamp is all pitching to the north in this direction here. Somewhere along this ditch there’s a separation. This water goes this way, and this water goes down this way towards the Hudson. Here, this is the outflow along this contour, which I believe is, is that a 300 mark? No, it’s a 310, yes. This water is flowing this way. We have a large ridge here that divides the Cedar Swamp from this other basin. Right here, along here, is a National Grid or Niagara Mohawk power line. It appears that when they hit this ridge, they utilize the high spots to go along with this, and it’s really a pretty good divider for the north and the south drainage basin for this site. As you can see, we’re a considerable distance from the edge of the Cedar Swamp, which is depicted here, and we’re about the same distance from the south end of our site to maybe Route 32 or, you know, somewhere down near the Hudson, versus the top end of the site to The Cedar Swamp. It’s, you know, there it is. So, this shows a distinct drainage pattern here. These, at one time, were agricultural fields, and I believe they were muck fields, possibly for celery, cabbage, those kind of crops, but they dug this ditch, and you’ll get to see it on some of the next aerials, to relieve water. Most of the time, though, we think that the water, in normal periods, it flows this way. In high water, it may come down and actual breach this and go down this way, but it’s still not within the same drainage basin as our site. Both of these drains that come out of the Cedar Swamp up here, and you’ll see it on another slide, they do converge, but it’s quite a ways from the site, or from The Cedar Swamp. This is a smaller scale map that shows a bigger area. Again, here’s our site. The Big Cedar Swamp is up here. The Niagara Mohawk right of way, Route 52. Water coming off of our site appears to drain up this drain, stays on this side of the ridge, boy, that’s a heck of a crazy drain, isn’t it? It’s just going everywhere. It goes up this way, crosses Queensbury road and it merges with this drain that comes out of here, goes around the airport, and crosses Queensbury Ave. again, and meets with Dean. This is where the confluence is. This drain goes down, continues down, meets another stream called Bon, I believe Bon Creek, and that eventually goes down into the Feeder and the Champlain canal, but again, the drainage basin separation is here, and along this ridge. This aerial, which is a 2004 aerial, provides wetlands on the vicinity of our site. There’s several wetlands on the property here, and Barb will go into more detail about the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of these wetlands, but again, you can see there’s some drainage here, there’s drainage here. This goes off this way towards this wetland complex over here, but these drains head up towards The Big Cedar Swamp. Again, we have the drainage basin showing that. It’s pretty evident, when you look at the high spot and go back to, once again, this ridge follows this high spot along the power line, and down. So, it gives a pretty good perspective of what the delineated wetlands are on our property, and in the general area. Okay. Part of the reason why we did this, we wanted to do an aerial photo historical assessment, or historical aerial photo assessment I should say. We wanted to try to see what the site was like and what the progression of the development in the area was like to try to further define how the wetlands may have come to be on our property. Considering that we have all upland soils, no mapped streams on our property, we felt that it was a good idea to show how these wetlands may have developed. This is a 1948 aerial. As you can see, Quaker Road wasn’t even built at that time. Here’s Dix Ave. A lot of the area was an agricultural production. You can see up here in The Big Cedar Swamp, it looks like this may have been muck fields. It looks like more fields here, but that drain is here, and you can almost see right in this area where the divide is, where it peters out a little bit, and then it goes on this way. So, that ditch has been established for a long time, and the farmers 8 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) probably relieved the extra surface water from the area via that ditch, but a lot of these fields up in here were an agricultural production. Some of these look like they’re becoming abandoned, as you can see the trees and the shrubs, but on our site we have a lot of active ag fields, and, you know, that’s how New York State was back in the 40’s. There was a lot of agricultural production, and our next aerial photo is from 1966. Quaker Road has been built. The property is still being used as Ag. However, you can see that, down in this section of the property, we’re starting to see water pooling, and you’ll see from some of the other aerials that this was problematic for the farmer. Those are wetland signatures. They may not be wetlands yet, but it’s pooling water. As you can see here, here’s a pond right across the street. That’s a pretty good indicator of wet. There’s another pond here, wet. Streaks. This may have been another little muck field or something over here. I’m not sure, but you can see the dark lines of the ditch here also. MRS. STEFFAN-Can you go back to the last slide so we can just compare the two? Now that we know what we’re looking for. Okay. MR. KUGAN-Sure. That’s that pond that’s right across the site on Quaker Road. It really didn’t change in shape or form, if you look back at this one. It’s about the same size, same, you know, it hasn’t expanded because of Quaker Road. So our belief is that this land is pitching towards the river here, and Quaker Road becomes a dam, to some degree. Next photo. This is from 1982. You can see that, not only on our site, but up in here, and I’ll go back to the other one. See, notice back when the ag fields were being farmed, they were abandoned. They’re coming in as shrubs now, and then in 1982 a lot of that land has been let go. You’re getting a lot of brush cover coming in, small trees. It’s reverting. It’s succession, and it’s happened all over New York State, and this is a classic example of wetlands that are growing. These wetlands down here are forming. The farmer’s abandoned his activities in here. This field certainly is still being farmed. These fields are being utilized also, but down here in this low area along the road, they can’t get on it anymore, or at least not successfully. It’s too wet, and it could be from other reasons, too, besides Quaker Road. There’s more development over here, which might be blocking some of the water. Of course there’s a lot more commercial development, and you’ll see it on the next aerial, and other residential development in the vicinity. So, we’re getting not only a blockage from the road, but we’re probably also getting stormwater sheet flow coming off the road and into this basin, and this is basically the lowest point of the site. So it all makes sense that this has become the sump, so to speak. This is a 1990 aerial. You can see that there’s a lot more development over here. This has gone completely wild. These fields are still open. It looks like they’ve done some, maybe logging up in here, possibly four wheeler trails, I don’t know. A little bit more work here as you can see. Spur road is up here now, and this field is still being farmed. I believe it was in corn production, but this part of the site is now too wet, and this is the current aerial, well, the current aerial, 2004, the most recent we have. Again it shows the site, this is all undeveloped down here. You can see some of the areas in here. They may have been driven through, maybe tried to farm it, but it’s pretty much I think also been let go. It’s pretty much an old field. It was corn up until ’98, ’99. Interesting, they cleared out a large spot up here in the area that was previously woods. I don’t know what that is, but Cedar Swamp has remained the same, for the most part, as far as no impacts, no development, really, along the sides. Obviously, we have the airport that’s way to the north, but it’s pretty much stayed in the same state, and with that, I’m going to turn this over to Barb. Does anybody have any questions? Do you folks have any questions? Okay. Thank you. BARBARA BEAL MS. BEAL-So I’m Barbara Beal. I’m with the Chazen Companies out of Glens Falls, New York, and our company was hired to do the wetland delineation on this property. We were hired by VMJR to do the wetland delineation and we delineated the wetlands on this site in August 2005, and then we completed the wetland delineation report. We did the surveys of the wetland flags. When we do a wetland delineation, we go out and we look for locations where there is evidence of wet soils, soils that have developed wet characteristics over time. We look for the presence of water on a site, indicators of water, and even though it might be summertime, you can still see those indicators, things like water stained leaves, roots that might be shallowly rooted trees, bumpy grass soil that plants are trying to grow up on hummocks. Those are all things that we look for, and mostly we look for vegetation. We’re looking for vegetation that has typically adapted for life in wetland areas. If you, right now, were to close your eyes and think about what sort of vegetation would you find in a wetland, you might think cattails, maybe red maple, dogwood plants. Things that, and you thought about the wetlands, you see around your community. That’s sort of the same thing we do. We look for wetland plants and they’re 9 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) actually rated, and we look to see whether or not a plant community is dominated by plants that typically live in wetlands or if it’s a community dominated by upland plants. We flag a wetland, generally using a flag lettering system where this is Wetland A. All the flags out there were A or AA because we had two people flagging, and so one person was A and the other person was AA, and then we labeled them sequentially, one, two, three, four, five. Similarly we go through and do wetland B, C, and F in the center, and the other wetlands on the site. As we’re going around and doing wetland delineation, we take data points. We look at the soil’s vegetation, hydrology. We record it on a data sheet and submit that to the Army Corps of Engineers along with photographs of the site and the wetlands that we found. After we prepare a report that describes the different wetlands on the site, where they’re located, what their characteristics are, what the methodology was that we used to delineate the wetlands, what background information we found about the wetlands, we compile that into a report and submit it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and we submitted that. We did the delineation August 2005, and we submitted the report in September to the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps of Engineers, and that was September 2005, the Corps of Engineers then came out and did a site inspection on the site and actually also a (lost word) came out and walked the line and discussed various aspects of the delineation with us, and in April 2006, the Corps came out on the site over a couple of days and walked the lines, made adjustments, made some changes, and we went in and had those areas re-surveyed, re-mapped for them and submitted information to them, to the Army Corps of Engineers, and by letter dated December 19, 2007, the Army Corps of Engineers verified the wetlands on this site. A copy of that letter was included in item number six of the packet of information from February 2008 that Bergmann prepared. On this site, we have a number of different wetlands. We have Wetland A, which is 10.45 acres in size. This is identified in the bright green as being a shrub area and shallow emergent marsh, and basically a shrub wetland is a wetland that has shrubby plants in it, dogwoods about this high, thin little plants, and typically also might have shallow emergent vegetation like cattails, and if you go and drive by there today, you’ll see pockets of cattails standing in some standing water. You’ll see shrubs growing on a little bit dryer area, and this is, you know, indicative, when you looked at the aerial photographs having been farmed previously. If you had a place where you had a deeper plow furrow. You had areas that might be a place where more water collects and so you’ll get a shallow emergent marsh developing. You might have a location where there’s some discharge from the road at a low point that your shallow emergent marsh and cattails will develop there, and in other locations, you’ll have just a little bit higher of an elevation, only six to twelve inches will make a big difference in a wetland delineation, and in those areas you might get some shrub vegetation developing. The center part of the site, in the sort of yellowish-taupe color is a shrub successional hardwood forest and shallow emergent marsh, and this area is about 2.08 acres in size, and it’s a mix of forested area, the same cattail, shallow emergent marsh vegetation and shrub vegetation. Basically it’s a lot like wetland area A but a little bit more trees in there than Wetland A has. We have another wetland on this site, wetland area E, .03 acres in size, and that’s isolated, and also we have this Wetland W, of .22 acres in size, that’s isolated. When a Corps of Engineers identifies a wetland as isolated, it means it’s not regulated under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which is the law that the Corps regulates wetlands under, and the reason why it’s not regulated is because of some recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that state that in order for the Corps of Engineers to regulate something, as the Federal government, there needs to be a connection to the Constitution in some way, and the way that they have a connection to the Constitution is through interstate commerce, and they want to see that these wetlands flow out to a navigable water body in order for them to be regulated, and if you don’t have that surficial water connection, the Corps will not regulate those wetlands, and those two wetlands do not have a surficial connection to any other wetland on the site or to any, the Hudson River, for example, a navigable water, and so the Corps did not take jurisdiction over them. One of the reasons why you have an isolated wetland up at the top here is because, again, you’re up at the top of a drainage divide, and typically you find isolated wetland pockets up at the top of a drainage divide where the area is relatively flat coming off hillsides and water doesn’t flow off of there as well. You also probably have a little wetland development up there because it’s part of the Niagara Mohawk right of way corridor with trucks going back and forth on that corridor and compacting the soil, you’ll get some wetland development in compacted soils, and finally we have a shallow emergent marsh wetland, Wetland D, at .3 acres in size. The wetlands here, as we showed through the slideshow, probably developed as a result of the area laying fallow, drainage not being maintained, the construction of Quaker Road, sheet flow into the site that might be more than what the site was used to, and they developed over time and this is not uncommon for agricultural fields in New York State to develop wetland characteristics when they are let go. One of the interesting things about these wetlands is how common they are. I went onto the National Wetland Inventory website, and the National Wetland Inventory is run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 10 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) and it’s basically a way for them to map and track wetlands all around the country, and to see the status and trends, how are wetlands changing over time, and in the Town of Queensbury, just from wetlands that they’ve mapped, and it’s not the most accurate wetland mapping, but it’s a good indication, you have 306 acres of emergent marsh, and you have 405 acres of shrub swamp land, just based on National Wetland Inventory mapping. There could be more than that if you went and found little pockets and other areas, but that’s quite a bit of those types of wetlands on the site. They’re relatively common. Another way that we know that they’re relatively common is because if you look at a New York State DEC publication called Ecological Communities of New York State, both of those wetland areas are rated G-5, or globally secure, meaning that there’s a lot of them around the globe, and they’re also secure in New York State. They’re ranked S-5 for both of those habitat types, meaning that they’re secure in New York State. There’s so much of them that it’s unlikely that we’re going to lose or have a problem with them being impacted. Shallow emergent marsh is actually one of the fastest growing wetland types in New York State because of the reversion of agriculture lands going fallow. One of the, you know, I know that there was some comments about whether or not, how the wetlands developed, and the type of wetlands are important when you’re reviewing a project, or if it ought to be every wetland is important and they ought to be protected. I think there’s a little bit of both going on. When you look at Federal law, all wetlands are reviewed under a same, similar set of criteria. Have you avoided wetland impacts? Have you minimized wetland impacts, and are you able to mitigate unavoidable wetland losses, especially as it relates to functions and values, and when you have common wetlands like this, mitigating them is relatively easy. It’s not too difficult to create a shallow emergent marsh or a shrub wetland. For your law, your law talks about preserving, protecting, and conserving their values, and you’re regulating them to secure the natural benefits of wetland, consistent with the general welfare of benefits of the economic, social and agricultural development of the Town, and that’s sort of your mission statement about wetlands, and when I look at that, I look at the need to balance economic development with wetland protection, and one of the things you talk about in your regulation is the loss of wetlands and that should there be wetland losses. Wetland losses can both talk about the impacts to wetlands but it also can talk about the ability to mitigate for wetland impacts. That’s why the type of wetlands that are here are important to know about, because if they’re easy to replace and easy to mitigate like these are, because they’re relatively common, and they’re relatively easy to create, then their loss might not be as significant as if you were impacting a higher quality wetland, a wetland that was more valuable. So they developed relatively easily on this site. One would presume that you can create them elsewhere relatively easy. One of the reasons why you’re protecting these wetlands is because of the functions and values that they serve, and the functions and values that are in the Queensbury Town law, and they’re similar to most local laws as well as the federal law, also looks at these functions as being important, this flood protection, wetland conservation, recreation, pollutant treatment, erosion control, education and science, open space and aesthetics, and nutrients and the freshwater food cycles. Many of these sorts of pollutant treatments, erosion control, those sorts of values, can be replicated both through mitigation and creation of wetlands, and many of those same sort of values are also important from a stormwater protection, stormwater management, and doing, one of the things that the DEC, with their new stormwater management regulations, which include the need to create wet ponds and forbays and things like that as part of stormwater management, is they’re trying to recreate the functions and values the wetlands do on a site, and I believe that, with proper stormwater management, some of the impacts that might occur on these sites could be recreated and protected through stormwater management. That’s sort of where I am right now. Do you have any questions for me? MR. PETROSKI-There’s only a few slides left here, and then we wanted to let Gordon talk a little bit about traffic so we can turn the page, so to speak. This here slide shows our application as it currently stands, in terms of the 199,000 square foot project, on the full spread of drawings that we’ve given to you, okay. So on the site grading/utilities plans, this is what you’ll see, and this is what we’ve showed you before, that if you overlay the site on the wetlands on site, this is the scope and breadth of the impact, and this was based on the 5.5 acres of disturbance. Now, in the packet that we just sent to you, and this is important because the Town expected us to do better, and we took that back and really labored on this, how can we do better than 5.5 acres. Well, initially we thought we could simply reduce the parking back down to the Code minimum, go from 970 spaces down to 895, and gain about seven-tenths of an acre of wetlands back th again, and that’s what we submitted on the 15. We’ve been working very closely with the prospective tenant, working with the developer, saying we have to do better. The Town expects us to do better, and this is just to say we’re listening. We’re hearing what you’re asking us to do. So we came up with this plan, and this plan, overlaid on the site, is what is in that last package of information that we just sent to you. This is a downsized 11 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) project. One of the ways, obviously, that you can reduce the wetlands impact is to make the project smaller. So we went from 199,000 square feet down to 150,200 square feet. So that’s about a 48 or 49,000 square foot reduction in the size of the building. Once you reduce the building, you reduce the parking. So the parking went from about 970 spaces down to 751 spaces. In this plan here, when you overlay over the top of the wetlands, has 2.45 acres of impact. So, we went from 7.7 to 5.5 to 4.8, and now to 2.45. So this is why we wanted to put this drawing in front of the Planning Board for consideration because it shows that we’re listening, we’re trying to do better, and we’re working back and forth with the person who wants to occupy the building, and they have concerns about the economic viability and success of their project, which way it faces, how it’s situated on site. So we’re going back and forth in trying to find the best balancing point for everybody concerned. So this is the way the site stands at the moment, and I’m sure there’s going to be more questions once Staff has a chance to review it, but that’s where we’re at. With that, what I’d like to do is to introduce Gordon Stansbury. Let’s see, Gordon, I wrote down some things. Gordon is a graduate of Clarkson University. He’s the President of GTS Consulting. He has 13 years of experience in traffic engineering. That’s his sole practice. He’s a licensed Professional Engineer in New York State. He’s a certified PTOE. A PTOE is a Professional Traffic Operations Engineer. He’s performed over 300 traffic impact studies, ranging from a 5,000 square foot commercial site to over two million square foot office complex, and with that, I’d like to give Gordon the floor to talk about his traffic report. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Before we get into the report in any kind of detail, I know that one of the things that DOT has requested is that there be some sort of a scoping session to determine the study limits, that the study limits would be agreed upon, and I think that would be the most useful use of our time, in terms of the traffic at this point of the project review. You look surprised like this is the first maybe you’ve heard of this. MR. PETROSKI-At the last meeting we were at, which was in January, we had the discussion about what we had submitted, and what we had submitted was a, it wasn’t, more or less, a scoping document, and by saying scoping document, we identified ten intersections that, from a combination of the discussions with the County DPW and the State DOT, that’s what they asked, at least from their perspective, that we would analyze. We came to the Planning Board and said this is what they want us to analyze, and we even started the process by taking, and doing counts, and also doing some Level of Service analysis on those intersections. We asked the Town for some input on whether they felt that, basically, the number of intersections or the approach that we were taking would sufficiently cover what you might have some concerns about, and I think we left there with the understanding that we needed to do a little more work on wetlands, and we postponed the further discussion on the scope, but in the meantime, because it was important for everybody’s benefit to actually finish what we started, we took the next step of finishing the traffic report, within the scope that we identified, and that we have since submitted it to the Town, to the Town’s engineering consultant could look at it, and we’ve also sent copies now to the County DPW and to the State DOT. MR. SWEENEY-Mr. Chairman, if I can just recall one other piece of that January discussion, and I know it came from several members of the Board, what you have in front of you now is a completed traffic study, and obviously built into that is its scope, but the question came up, suppose we want something additional, or an additional intersection, or some more information, would you be willing to give that to us, are we locked into the study that you produce, and I certainly said at the time, if the Board has an interest in an additional piece of information outside of what we’re proposing to do for the study, that’s our job is to get it to you. So if, after Mr. Stansbury goes through the elements of the traffic study, if the Board is interested in something that isn’t included in there, please, I know you’ll say so and we’ll get it to you. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. George? MR. HILTON-I just wanted to clarify from Staff’s end, as far as traffic, where we’ve gone from our last meeting in January, I believe it was. At the time the Planning Board accepting Lead Agency for the purposes of SEQRA review of this project, one of the involved agencies, New York State DOT, submitted a letter indicating that they had no objection to the Planning Board being SEQRA Lead Agent. Attached to that letter was a comment from Mark Kennedy at New York State DOT stating his desire to have, as you mentioned, a scoping meeting, involving New York State DOT, the applicant, the Town’s consulting engineer, A/GFTC, Warren County DPW. All the traffic review agencies would get together as part of one meeting to scope out which intersections and the extent of the traffic study. As part of a follow up conversation, after receiving that letter, I spoke to Mark, and he, again, reiterated his desire that all those agencies that I just 12 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) mentioned get together and discuss the scope of the traffic study for this project, in order to make sure everyone’s on board, all the agencies agree to the extent, and to really avoid any future delay as part of reviewing this application. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. HILTON-So I just wanted to clarify for you what we have received in our files from DOT, and what my conversations with them have been in regards to traffic. MR. HUNSINGER-Does that make sense? MR. PETROSKI-Absolutely, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the context that we’re in. We can take you through what we have for traffic information right now. Maybe, apparently nobody thought to give us a copy of that letter, but it may be helpful for us as well. MR. HILTON-We can certainly provide you with that. MR. PETROSKI-That would be great. MR. HILTON-That was something we received, Mr. Chairman, as part of their signing off on the SEQRA Lead Agency. MR. HUNSINGER-Right, you know, and I imagine every member of the Board has read the complete traffic report like I did, but I just, you know, for the benefit of time, I didn’t see a lot of value in spending a lot of time talking about the report and the findings at this point, when there’s still other input that needs to be brought to the table before we have a finished traffic report. So that was the guise for my comments. I certainly don’t have a problem in you summarizing what information you’ve gathered to date, but, I mean, we spent over a half an hour just on the wetlands discussion, you know, I don’t know if, you know, we want to spend another half an hour just on the traffic report when we know we’re going to have a special meeting in April where we can then get into more details and some of the very specific issues and identify additional concerns and information that we want to see addressed. Again, we have new information tonight. So we’re not going to go very far anyway. We’re going to end up tabling it to a special meeting in April. So, I’m just trying to keep the process moving more than anything. MR. PETROSKI-Understood. How about we give you the ten minute version, because Mr. Stansbury is here, and maybe that’ll help in your meeting with the public officials on what you want to see and stuff. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. That sounds fair. Well, and, you know, I think what has been suggested is that you would organize that meeting and it would include at least the Town Engineer and maybe a member of two from the actual Planning Board on a scoping meeting. MR. PETROSKI-I think if we had known, we probably would have done it before tonight. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I’m sure you would have. Okay. GORDON STANSBURY MR. STANSBURY-I’ll try to give you under the 10 minute version. MR. HUNSINGER-That would be great. MR. STANSBURY-I don’t have any fancy slides because I’m a numbers guy. So I’m just going to basically run you through what we did, what we’ve tried to cover. We started off with the project, the traffic study was completed for a 225,000 square foot development. Obviously it’s been scaled back. So that, in my sense, gives us a very conservative cushion with how we’ve done the study so far by we’ve over-exaggerated the trip generation and the impact of the site. Initially we had, I had a number of discussions with the Town, the County and the State, in an attempt to scope out this project, and got some of that feedback of getting the full scoping group together, but while I had those conversations, I was able to get some feedback on what the potential impacts area would be, and was asked really to develop as conservative of a study as I could, so that when we get to the scoping process, hopefully we’ve covered 95% of the issues, and that was really the goal of this study to have it mostly done beforehand, and we can go back and address specific issues as we get to them. So, ultimately, touching base on 13 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) the study area, I was asked to review the area and really try to identify the, a fair area of impact. The study area for the project included the intersections along Route 254, starting at Route 9L, all the way down to Lower Warren Street. It would be all of the signalized intersections, 9L, the unsignalized East Sanford Street, Quaker Ridge Boulevard, Dix Ave., Highland, Boulevard, and Lower Warren. We also went across Dix Ave. to Queensbury Ave., the next signal going east, and also the next signal to the west on Lower Warren where Boulevard and Highland converge. I felt that that was really the, as big as the study area could possibly go. Beyond that, we have quite a distance to the next signal, or next major impact area and our traffic would be fairly well dispersed by then. Also to really make sure that we covered the breadth of the potential impact, we chose to look at four peak hours, versus a standard two that we would look at for most traffic impact studies. Studied the morning, the noon, the evening, and the Saturday peak periods. For that, we actually go out and do the traffic counts, turning movement counts at the intersections, in two hour periods, seven to nine in the morning, eleven to one at noon, four to six in the evening, and eleven to one on a Saturday, to ensure that we capture the actual peak hour. The traffic counts were collected in early November last year. We had some question on whether there would be a potential adjustment needed to the volumes to account for seasonal variation in traffic. That was discussed with the DOT Planning Department, and based on their information, they say that this is a primarily a commuter route, with a lower seasonal variation in traffic because we’re away from more of the commercial area. Their adjustment factor for a count done in November would actually be 1.06, with a couple of more numbers following it. You take that number and you divide that from your counts. So if I actually applied their adjustment factor, I would reduce our numbers. So, given that we want to maintain a conservative study, I kept the numbers as counted. We did not reduce them for the seasonal adjustment, and the Planning Department at DOT agreed with that assumption. Once we had the existing volumes collected, we reduced it to the peak hours. I won’t give you the exact peak hours because I don’t think we need to go to that level of detail. I set up a synchro-analysis model, Synchro Version Six is an industry accepted standard for analyzing traffic operations. It is accepted by all reviewing agencies that I know of, throughout the State. I also talked with the State DOT and got their signal timing plans for all the signals. So we have, all the coordination plans are all part of the model, and we completed a capacity analysis for the intersections under the existing condition. Basically, I’m assuming you’re all fairly familiar with the traffic study, but what the capacity analysis does is it grades the intersections, just like you’re in school, Level of Service A to F, F is failing, A is great. Generally for a signalized intersection, a Level of Service D or better is considered acceptable. For an unsignalized intersection, a Level of Service E is considered acceptable. That would correspond to, for a signal, any delay greater than 55 seconds per vehicle is considered failing. For an unsignalized intersection, any delay greater than 50 seconds per vehicle would be considered failing. The existing conditions, capacity analysis of the study area intersections, indicates that everything is working at acceptable Levels of Service D or better during all four time periods, with the exception of the westbound through movement on Dix Avenue approaching Quaker ave., during the evening peak hour. This is operating at a Level of Service E, so it is starting to experience some longer delays. Everything else across the board is acceptable Levels of Service by all standards that we typically use in the industry, with the exception of Quaker Ridge Boulevard, that very minor traffic volume is failing when it tries to turn left, as we would expect a fairly long delay with no signal there. Once we complete the existing conditions, we go to looking at the design year of the project. The project has a design year of 2010. So what we do is we take the existing volumes, we grow them to the design year, we add in any known approved developments, and then we re-analyze all the intersections to get the operations right before the project opens, and that’s how we can then, when we go to the next step of analyzing it with the project, we identify our impact. We reviewed historical traffic volumes along Route 254. Based on the data reviewed, between 1997 and 2006, there’s been an annual growth rate of approximately 2.9% per year of traffic on that route. So we went consistent with that and went with a three percent annual growth rate applied to grow the existing volumes to 2010. That’s a fairly conservative number, as typically we are in the 1.5 to 2% annual projections, but based upon what we see out there today, we maintain that number. Also touched based with the Town. Based on those discussions, there are no approved developments in the area that would currently need to be accounted for in our growth. So just the grown traffic volumes are what we would be expecting in 2010, re-did the capacity analysis. Generally, no change in operations expected over the next two years, with the exception of that westbound movement on Dix Ave. at 254. We expect that would drop from a Level of Service E to a Level of Service F. So it is going to start to experience failing delays. Once we’ve completed that analysis, then we look at our site. Again, we’ve gone very conservative in the study, because at the time we were still looking at 225,000 square feet. We complete the trip generation estimate using the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation 14 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) Seventh Edition. That is the national standard for estimating traffic generated by a development. We used the most conservative land use for a retail development, being shopping center, that has the highest traffic generation rates. The ITE manual only provides data for the morning, evening, and Saturday peaks. It’s very rare to look at the noon peak hour, but we did choose to look at that. Fortunately the manual also provides a daily variation in traffic for shopping centers. We used that to correlate our evening peak hour trip generation estimate to the noon peak, which would be essentially 75%. So that gave us a solid estimate for what it would generate during the noon peak. Not all of the traffic that is generated by the development would be new traffic to the area. A certain portion is drawn from the traffic already passing the site on Route 254, or Dix Ave., that’s referred to as a pass-by credit. There’s an additional manual that ITE provides that we use to estimate that traffic. Based on historical studies of shopping center retail sites, they say that roughly 34% of the traffic generated during the evening peak would be pass-by trips or not new trips to the area. Twenty-six during the evening, or during a Saturday. It does not have data for the morning and the noon, again, so for the morning we assume a very minimal pass-by rate of 10%, and for the noon we assume that it’s comparable to the Saturday, and we use a 25%. With all of that, the traffic generated by the site, again, this is a 225,000 square foot, so we’re expecting this to go down a bit from this estimate, total traffic generated would be approximately 100 to 150 vehicles entering and exiting during the morning, approximately 315 in and out during the noon, approximately 400 to 430 during the evening, and approximately 500 to 600 on a Saturday during the peak hour. Applying the pass-by credits of traffic that will draw off the existing road, our new traffic generated is expected to be approximately two to three hundred cars entering and exiting during the noon and evening peaks, and approximately four hundred cars, new traffic coming into the area, to enter and exit during the Saturday. The morning is still around one hundred vehicles. That’s our lesser concern because the overall traffic on the roadway network is lower during the morning. Ironically enough, the overall traffic traveling along 254 is almost identical during the noon, evening, and Saturday peaks. So what that tells us is the traffic flow is very consistent through the area. You don’t have major spike in traffic during any of the peak hours, relative to each other. Traffic was distributed through the study area, the new trips and the pass-by trips, based on traffic, travel patterns that are going through the area today. We expect, overall, that approximately 60% of the traffic generated will come from the Glens Falls or the east, I’m sorry, west side of the project, and approximately 40% will come from the Hudson Falls area to the east of the project. Specifically, an overall split of traffic, we expect about four percent to be coming from Queensbury Ave., about 15% coming from Dix Ave., to the east, 8% from Boulevard, and13% from Lower Warren. From the west side, we expect 22% from 254, 6% cutting over Sanford Street, 12% on Dix Ave., and 12% on Lower Warren. What that tells me overall is that traffic is very well distributed through this area. The volumes are consistent. They’re well distributed. So it’s going to really distribute the traffic out, once you get a few intersections out from the site, which gives me an increased level of confidence that our study area is sufficient, because we don’t have a major 60% of the traffic’s coming down 254. If it were, we should go more intersections out. So that’s, I think, an important thing to keep in mind as the project is scoped. MRS. STEFFAN-I’m actually pleased that you used the noon hour because BOCES is on Dix Avenue, right down the road, and they switch. So the morning programs, afternoon programs, there’s a tremendous amount of bus traffic that goes back and forth. So the noon hour included in your study I think is a good idea. MR. STANSBURY-Thank you. I cautioned them, when we did the studies, that we really, if we’re going to move forward, let’s cover our bases, so that we don’t have to go back and do a major effort. If we need to do a couple of small things to address certain issues, I think this document is fairly complete and it will allow us to do that easily. With the traffic generated, we then distribute it through the study area. We add it to the background traffic volumes for the resultant 2010 combined traffic with full build out of the site, and then we re-analyzed the intersections. Basically, the analysis shows that there’s a very minimal impact to the majority of the study area intersections. On average, delay is increased by three to five seconds for most movements during all four time periods. There is, acceptable Levels of Service are maintained at all locations, other than the Quaker Ridge Boulevard, which is the site exit which we would expect a failing condition with a stop controlled intersection. We also show that continued failing movement on the westbound approach of Dix Ave. to 254. All other intersections studied, acceptable levels are maintained. MRS. STEFFAN-The numbers are part of that issue, but does it also have, is the way that the intersections are configured, does that have a bearing on it, because both of the 15 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) intersections you identified are oddly shaped, instead of being, they’re kind of oddly laid out. MR. STANSBURY-Quaker Ridge, with a development of this size, obviously needs to be signalized, and that’s what I’m going to get to with recommended improvements. The Quaker Ridge, or the Dix Ave. approach to 254, has some issue because there’s no left turn lane, and there’s only four or five cars that make that movement to turn south, but they basically clog up the movement, and that’s part of the issue, because we have a consistent flow of east bound traffic. Those lefts sit and wait, and if we could increase the green time for the east bound movement, those would be allowed to clear, letting the westbound clear, which is what I’ll get to in the proposed improvements. One more note on your comment. The skew of that intersection, as we call it, actually benefits that intersection to a degree, because the two major movements are the left turn from 254 to Dix heading east, and the right turn movement from Dix turning to 254 north. Given that that’s kind of at the “Y” part of the angle, that’s more of a smooth, free flow movement. So it actually increases capacity because they can go at a higher speed. They don’t have to slow as much for the left turn. The first thing we did, once we had that combined analysis, is we did a signal warrant analysis for Quaker Ridge Boulevard. Using standard practices, we extrapolated the peak hour volumes to check toward the MUTCD, which is the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, to see if a signal would be warranted. All volume warrants are met. So we recommend a signal be added to that intersection. Beyond that, we then reviewed the intersection to say what else do we need to accommodate this development. We’re proposing an eastbound left turn lane on 254, which would be essentially southbound into the site, an opposite northbound left turn lane into the car dealership, so that you could time it so that they can go together to get those lefts out of the through lanes, a northbound right turn lane from 254 into Quaker Ridge Boulevard, to, again, get that right turning traffic off of the main through lanes, the addition of a 250 foot southbound, again, I forget my directions because we’re at an angle. So everything’s southbound and northbound. Quaker Ridge Boulevard, we’re saying a left turn lane and a shared through right exiting the site. The traffic signal should be timed and coordinated with Dix Ave. to be part of the coordinated signal system. Also, by having that signal and coordinating with Dix Ave., we improve the southbound flow of traffic, which then frees up time for the east/west movements on Dix Ave. So, by having that smoother progression of traffic, we can add time to the eastbound/westbound and get rid of that failing movement, without any actual lane improvements. We actually increase it back to a Level of Service C, which is well within acceptable ranges. An additional analysis was completed with that signal at Quaker Ridge. That analysis shows that that intersection would operate at a Level of Service C, with all movements operating at D or better during all four time periods. So we’re very comfortable that that will address the access to the site, and again, the coordination addresses the one area of impact we identified at Dix Ave. All other intersections will continue to operate at acceptable levels. The final thing that we looked at was the access along Quaker Ridge. We have the frontage road fairly close to the intersection. With the very minimal traffic that we have today on the frontage road, the recommendation is to keep that stop sign controlled, put a sign southbound coming out of the site, do not block roadway, to allow that one or two vehicles that occasionally come out to get into the traffic hue and clear with the signal. Given the volume of traffic, it’s five vehicles or less, it doesn’t warrant any more substantial mitigation at this point. If additional development were to occur on the frontage road, than something may want to be considered there. Recommending a single lane entering and exiting the site at each of the two driveways proposed, stop sign controlled free flow traffic on Quaker Ridge, and that is my condensed summary. MR. HUNSINGER-Mr. Ford? MR. FORD-How did you factor in the potential for delivery vehicles? MR. STANSBURY-As far as coming into the frontage road? MR. FORD-Coming into the site and leaving the site. MR. STANSBURY-The site has a third driveway at the back of the site. The two driveways closer to Route 254 would be the primary vehicle access points. They’re at each side of the parking fields. The delivery trucks would continue down Quaker Ridge and come around the back of the building and basically stay out of the parking lot and not impact the circulation of traffic on the site. The delivery vehicles will be able to utilize the turn lane to enter and exit off of Quaker ave., so I don’t foresee any issue with delivery vehicles. 16 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. FORD-So the size of the vehicle and the increase in numbers was either factored in or not factored in, or isn’t it an issue? MR. STANSBURY-The design of the intersection would have to make sure that we can accommodate the design vehicle, which would be the delivery truck. So at the point that the intersection is designed and laid out, that would be accounted for at that time, but truck traffic. MR. FORD-They have a tendency to slow traffic, do they not? MR. STANSBURY-Yes, they can. Heavy vehicles were accounted for in the analysis. When we do the traffic counts, we specifically count heavy vehicles as a separate item, and we put in that percentage into the analysis models, so they are accounted for in all of the analysis. MR. FORD-And accurate traffic counts were completed? These are not estimates? MR. STANSBURY-Yes. No. What we do is I was physically here. That was a very long day, counting a lot of traffic. I had 15 temporary employees that have been in my employ for nearly ten years. They’ve done tons of counts. I had electronic count boards that they actually sit and count each single vehicle driving through the intersection for two hours. We then reduce that traffic and we see how they balance, because if they don’t balance well, then it tells us we had a mistake in the count. Generally everything balanced within 10%, which is the goal for traffic counts. So I’m very confident that the counts completed were accurate and a fair representation. MR. FORD-One other question. On the description of the roadway network, it appears that as you talk about the average daily traffic volume is approximately, they seem to be rounded off to the nearest 500. MR. STANSBURY-Yes. MR. FORD-That you’ve got 18,500, you’ve got 9500, 10,000. MR. STANSBURY-What we do is we have two sources of information. For a State route, such as 254, 32, 9L, they actually have a traffic volume history report that gives traffic volumes, they count usually every three years. Those numbers are rounded. Those are where we pull the numbers from. For the other roadways where I estimate that number, typically the evening peak hour consists, makes up about 10% of the total daily traffic volume, and what I do is for the roads where I have the DOT daily counts, I see what that percentage is, directly comparable to my peak hours, and then I apply that percentage for the other roadways, and then we rounded off just for simplicity. MR. FORD-Okay, because in each case you say approximately, and it appears that it’s rounded to the nearest 500. MR. STANSBURY-It’s actually rounded, typically, to the nearest 100. Coincidentally, these are all in 500 increments. Typically, if it is 500, I round up, I don’t round down, but again, the analysis is based on actual counts, exact numbers, down to the single digit. MR. FORD-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Other questions? MR. TRAVER-I have a question regarding future development beyond this particular project that would affect the boulevard that’s there, in other words, property, I guess it would be to the north or behind this project might be proposed for further development at some point down the road, and might that not have an impact on the signaling and other designs that would be incorporated in that intersection? MR. STANSBURY-That’s a very common question that I get. I do a number of meetings throughout the State. One of the difficulties of doing a traffic impact study is nobody has a perfect crystal ball. So the standard protocol that DOT, MPO’s, most counties require, is that you account for known approved development. So if something has been approved, we account for it in our numbers, to make sure that we’re not stealing their capacity, in essence. If another development were to come in to the north or somewhere else along 254, it would be their obligation to complete a traffic study, to account for our numbers, assuming that we get through the approval, and then they would identify their additional impact and have to mitigate. You’ll often see in like a master planning 17 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) process, if you have a large area, they may master plan out and project some level of development, to get an idea of what the roadway may need to be 20 years from now, but even when that’s done, you still do traffic impact studies as each development’s completed, to identify their specific impact. MR. TRAVER-I see. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions on traffic? MR. STANSBURY-Thank you for indulging me and letting me present. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. You’re welcome. Was there any additional information that you wanted to present this evening? MR. SWEENEY-That was our program, and I wanted to say we sincerely appreciate your attention and your time. I think we had a lot of valuable information, and have a better understanding, or we all have an opportunity for a better understanding of the project now as we move forward. MR. HUNSINGER-In terms of the new drawing that was submitted yesterday, are you going to prepare another whole package based on the smaller scale building? Is that the intention? MR. PETROSKI-Ultimately, we have to convert that whole roll of drawings that Mr. Ford has into a set of plans that represents whatever we collectively decide is the balance between what is acceptable and what is not. We fully understand that and fully intend to do that, but as you can see, we’ve kind of progressed through four cycles of working with the Town to try to minimize and we need to get some feedback on, have we reached that point, and maybe with the workshop that we’re talking about having, we can get into that dialogue to figure out where exactly we stand with the Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Does that sound fair? MR. SEGULJIC-So are you going to submit another complete set, or do you want to discuss it before you submit it? MR. PETROSKI-I would rather we have our discussion, because it’s only going to confuse the issue, I think. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. PETROSKI-And quite frankly, everything on the plans gets shrunk, and we probably have a task to go through with Town Staff to make sure we capture all the little items that we’ve been talking about, sidewalks and landscaping, and we intend to do that. MR. FORD-I appreciate that, and it’s time-consuming I know, but sometimes going through a packet of material like this and trying to digest it and pull it all together is extremely difficult, particularly when you have to bear in mind that it is shrunk, it is not actually as it will be presented in its final form, and we try to minimize our guesswork. We want to be as precise as we can. How do you suggest that I look at all of these again with that in mind? MR. PETROSKI-I’d just respond by saying I’m honoring your request that we need to look at those wetlands, and making sure that we’ve done the best job that we can. Things like, there’s a comment about retaining walls, there’s a comment about a sidewalk, there’s a comment about, there’s a variety of things that Staff commented on, but at the end of the day, what matters, what we understand matters, is getting this wetland issue as tight as we can, and then proceed to get these plans completely adjusted to meet that plan. I have no problem. I will completely convert those plans and I’ll produce a set every meeting, if that’s what you want. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think part of, just speaking for myself, but knowing how other members of the Board feel, I think almost the minute that you provided the scaled down version, the larger version is already off the table, and when I had heard that there was a new design, I just assumed that it was going to be a whole set of new drawings already. I guess that wasn’t a fair assumption, but I mean, certainly less impact on the wetlands is going to be better, less parking is going to be better, because less parking also means less traffic, and fewer traffic impacts, and actually one of the questions I did have on the 18 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) traffic study is, you know, would the numbers be revised to reflect the smaller sized building. I assume the answer would be yes. MR. STANSBURY-We certainly could. The one comment that I would offer is, given that we’re not showing an impact beyond that one location, it is an existing problem that is being addressed through the timing revisions, that to reduce the square footage wouldn’t really show anything different. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Yes, that’s a fair comment. MR. STANSBURY-So if you want it we can. I think it probably is an exercise in futility. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay, and maybe that’s the kind of discussion we would have in that scoping session with DOT and Glens Falls Transportation and Warren County. Anything else from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-Mr. Chairman, when is our workshop with this project? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we haven’t scheduled it yet. That would be the next step. We did hear from Staff, the meeting room for the month of April is available every Thursday. thnd We have regular meetings scheduled on the 15 and the 22. The room is also th available on Tuesday the 29. So it’s either going to be a Thursday meeting or Tuesday th the 29. What would be the Board’s pleasure? Do we want to see new information? Do we want to have new information to review? Do we want to see new drawings based on the new plan, before the meeting? MR. SEGULJIC-I think I can understand what the applicant is saying. They don’t want to have to go through the whole exercise of changing all of these if we’re still hung up on the wetlands. I guess that’s what you’re saying, right? MR. PETROSKI-That’s a very condensed way of saying it, yes, but I will be as responsive as you need me to be. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. Whatever the will of the Board is, I’m open to the date. I guess I just don’t want to see the applicant have to go through the exercise of changing all of these plans, when the biggest issue is really just getting the big picture, you know, least impact on the wetland, reducing parking fields, things of that nature. MR. FORD-Personally, I’m not going to try to look at these anymore, and go through the mental process of looking at something that is supposed to be finite but reducing in my mind. I’m not going to go that route. MR. HUNSINGER-Comments from the other Board members? MR. TRAVER-Yes, I agree with Tom. I think it’s to the applicant’s advantage, too, that we look at the proposal which is going to be least, have the least impact on the wetlands and the parking, and even though, you know, we can look at the original plans submitted and one of the things to consider is not all of those pages, perhaps, need to be reproduced. I don’t know if there’s any savings in that, but it is difficult to make the calculation, and looking at it, and looking at engineering and Staff comments and so on and reviewing it in that context, it’s almost better to try to forget all that and start over again, because it is a fairly complicated process, and I think it would be to your advantage to give us as accurate a picture of what you’re currently proposing, rather than present something that looks as though it’s having a greater impact, and leave it to us to try to estimate the reduced impact, if you understand what I’m saying. So that would be my feeling. MRS. BRUNO-I can appreciate what the other Board members are saying. I’d like to throw in a little bit of opposition to that, though. Frequently we’ve heard, with some of the large projects through the Town, that, well, let me back up a little bit. We haven’t started with the scoping towards the beginning, in looking at the bigger picture, and thus we’ve asked for many smaller points to be researched by the applicant, and we have heard, at the end, that, well, we have addressed everything that you have given us, what more is there? I really kind of like the idea of looking at the what more is there, so that we’re not going through another exercise in futility. Perhaps it’s coming from someone who’s a little bit more accustomed to looking at something and scaling it down, but that’s just. MR. HUNSINGER-Do you have any comments? I’m sorry. Go ahead, George. 19 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HILTON-I guess I just want to make the comment that if the Board tables this this evening to a special meeting, a workshop, if you will, in April, without requiring any additional information, and just working off the plans that were presented to the Board tonight, there are several comments in the Staff comments that, once we get to that special meeting, the discussion may continue again, and we may all be looking for additional revisions after that April meeting. I guess I just don’t want to get to a Special Meeting and then have it just for the sake of having it, and then turn around and say, we’ve got to table it again because we, you know, we’re looking for, example, I’m looking at a comment here made by Stu Baker talking about remediated wetlands, where will they be located, what functions will they serve? I just don’t want to get to a point in April where we’re looking for additional information that can be put on a plan, and I guess I’m just looking for the Board to have a clear understanding of either asking for additional information, or understanding that if you don’t, once you reconvene in April, the possibility is is that you may be looking for additional information, and that meeting may just be a meeting just to ask for additional information. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but. MR. TRAVER-Yes, that’s a good point. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Excellent point, and I did want to commend Staff. I thought these were excellent Staff Notes, very thorough and detailed. MR. TRAVER-Yes. MR. PETROSKI-Mr. Chairman, on that comment from Staff regarding mitigation, what we do, and this is just the reality of our situation. What we do, relative to mitigation depends on what we’re mitigating. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. PETROSKI-I think Barb and Don could both speak to the idea, and other people in the audience here would speak to the idea, of trying to mitigate as close to the existing wetlands as possible. So you kind of can have a continuity of functionality, and we like to do that. As you can see, there are spaces on the existing site that are open, that could be converted into wetlands, and if the amount of mitigation’s small enough, it could all be contained on the site. At the last meeting that we were at, which you didn’t have a chance to hear, but Mr. Macri presented a discussion he’s been having with the airport. They’ve got some projects up there, Warren County IDA, I think is also, there’s a few parties that are looking at possibly forming a wetland bank to solve several different projects, issues all in one spot, but that may only come into play if we don’t have enough room on site. These are all things that we can talk through, so you understand what we’re dealing with, because I know eventually Staff wants to see it on the plan. You want to see it on the plan. We want to know the scope of what we’re showing on a plan so that we can give you what you need to draw this to a conclusion. It all depends on where we’re at with the amount of wetland impact. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Gretchen, did you have a comment? MRS. STEFFAN-From my point of view, it’s much easier to look at drawings that we’re going to be making decisions on. I’m not an engineering, and so it’s very hard for me to make assumptions. So I would like to have the drawings changed to reflect the current square footage, and what I’m doing, I’m putting together a tabling motion, but I want to know what we put in that. I was coming up with I think a, my recommendation is that th th Tuesday the 29meeting, and we could give the applicant until Friday, April 4, it’s a special meeting because it’s the only thing on the agenda. That would give the applicant two weeks. It would actually give them two and a half weeks to get together a new package of information to address some of the Staff Notes that have been put forth, whether it’s to modify the project to meet that or to explain why it’s not a good idea or whatever, and then to revise the drawings to encompass project changes. That’s my recommendation. I don’t know how the rest of the Board feels about that. MR. HUNSINGER-Is that enough time to put together? MR. PETROSKI-We believe we can do what’s proposed within that timeframe, yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-That certainly would address the concerns that I have. 20 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-Correct me if I’m wrong, but we don’t have any conceptual plans of what the building’s going to look like to date. Is that correct? MR. PETROSKI-We have submitted that information. MR. SEGULJIC-You did? MR. PETROSKI-It’s in the original engineer’s report. MR. SEGULJIC-I missed that, then. MR. PETROSKI-It’s about an inch and a half. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s this one. The fattest of the cone binders. MR. SEGULJIC-That was submitted the first time? MR. PETROSKI-The first time. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. I wasn’t at that meeting. I apologize. MR. PETROSKI-Staff probably has extra copies. MR. SEGULJIC-It’s in with my other files. I will find it. MRS. STEFFAN-George, is that enough time? Does that scenario seem to work? Do you think it will work for Staff? MR. HILTON-I don’t know. I guess, from Staff’s standpoint, I think it can work. From our Town consulting engineer, I don’t want to speak for them, but it would likely work. They’ve always been responsive. I guess I just, again, don’t want to, I just want to make everyone aware that, even if we receive this information and we reconvene in April, you know, the potential exists that we may just be meeting to further define the project. At that point, this scoping session with DOT may not have taken place. I just want everybody to be aware of that. As far as information we receive at whatever deadline you set, we can at least, you know, begin reviewing it in time for that meeting, or have our Staff review complete. I can’t speak for other agencies, I guess. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I mean, I think we all understand that. I think the applicant probably understands that. MR. TRAVER-I mean, can we schedule it, and if worse comes to worse, we can revise the date or something? th MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I mean, April 29 is pretty far out. MR. TRAVER-Yes, I mean, hopefully that would work. MR. HUNSINGER-Mr. Macri? VIC MACRI MR. MACRI-I’d just make one comment, because I’m the one that’s been left standing at the workshop sessions since the beginning, and the reason for that is I see a tremendous waste of time and energy by Staff, by the Planning Board, in trying to get a project of this scale approved, and if we sat back, spent a little time and worked together to see what everybody’s needs were, get those all worked out, and then put them on paper, and then have the engineers review it, I think we’d move things along a lot quicker. We’d save the public’s time. We’d save your time. We’d save Staff’s time, and that’s why, I mean, I understand you want to see things on paper, but if we’ve got to continually revise and revise and revise, we’re really not accomplishing anything, and, you know, Bergmann Associates, they’ll do it, and, you know, we hired them because we know timeframes are an issue with them. They’ve got a staff to handle it. So, you know, that’s not the issue. The issue is, can we be a little more concise and productive in what we do, to what we give you, so we can get through the process, educate the public in the process, and get everything done. So that’s what we’re trying to do, and I went to the Town Supervisor. I went to the Staff. I said let’s have a workshop session. Let’s not do 21 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) this at a regular meeting, because, you know, we wind up talking about things that could easily be resolved if we were all sitting around a table, and that’s what I’m trying to accomplish with this meeting. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have a comment, Mr. Ford? MR. FORD-I just want to reinforce. I have no objection to working together. I think that is good, but it is not our obligation as a Planning Board to plan your project. MR. MACRI-I’m not asking you to plan our project. MR. FORD-Okay, but it sounds as if you’re wanting greater and greater input. I’d prefer to take a look at a project as it is, as you conceive of it, and let us react to that. That’s where I think we do our best work. MR. MACRI-I think you spin your wheels a lot. I mean, you know, I used to sit in your seat on the Planning Board, and we used to have workshop sessions with every major project, and, you know, the submission times were cut in half. Everybody got home a little earlier. Staff was a lot smaller. Sue was there at the time. She knows how many workshop sessions we went through, and we got a lot accomplished, and I think you’re wasting the public’s time, certainly wasting your time, and, you know, we’re here to do whatever you guys want. I mean, we’d be happy to do whatever you want, but I can tell you, I know we’re not asking for an approval at this workshop session. We’re just asking, I mean, if you can’t conceptualize what we’re planning at this point then I don’t think we’ve done our job, but, I mean, we’re planning a major project here. It’s a large box store. It’s going to generate traffic. It’s going to have some impact on wetlands. We all know that. I think we’ve at least brought that stuff forward today, and now what we really want to do is, you know, even out the rough edges so we know what your concerns are with intersections and emergency vehicle access and how we’ve addressed them, that aren’t going to change no matter what size the store is. We get down to the number of light fixture and things of that nature, which I think we have some comments on, too, but need an open discussion. MR. FORD-Ultimately we also give a thumbs up or thumbs down decision, and I understand your strategy. As we become more and more involved in workshop procedures, it becomes more and more our project. MR. MACRI-It’s not a strategy, sir. It’s a way to process the thing in a simpler fashion. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Do you have a comment, George? MR. HILTON-Not related to this, but ultimately, if you’re done with this discussion, there is a public hearing scheduled this evening. I don’t know how you would like to handle it, but I just wanted to make you, remind you. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Thank you. As George has mentioned, there is a public hearing scheduled this evening, and I hope that I don’t disappoint the public and say that we’re going to, the intention was to open the hearing and then to table the hearing to the special meeting, and in doing that, you know, I recognize that people may have come here expecting to speak on the project. Quite frankly, I didn’t expect to spend this much time on it. Since we were provided with new information that we haven’t even been able to assimilate yet, the original intention was to just table the project to a special meeting without the discussion that we’ve already had. So that is the intention. Again, I apologize. I do want to encourage public participation. At the special meeting, we will have a public hearing, and we will hear from anyone that does want to speak and address their questions and concerns on the project, but in the guise of time and procedure, we won’t be taking any public comment this evening. Mr. Ford? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED MR. FORD-Mr. Chairman, on behalf of that issue with the public participation, I just want to let everyone know that I’ve received a personal letter, delivered to my home, along with a study, and I have conveyed that to Staff, and as we all know, this information should be imparted first to Staff, and then they disseminate it to the entire Board, and our participation should not be individualized at the market, on the street, through telephone calls, letters to us personally, or however, but there is a process whereby we all receive that information, and I hope that everyone, either through public participation verbally at sessions like this, or through Staff, will follow that protocol. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-George? MR. HILTON-Just to follow up on that, I did speak to Mr. Ford. I was given the information that he was provided with. In speaking with our Counsel, Mr. Ford made it part of the public record or acknowledged that he had received, or had contact or had conversation with someone. The information that he received is now part of the public record, will be distributed to the Board, and certainly to reiterate any comments or correspondence to any of the Board members should come through Planning Staff. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, if I could just elaborate on that. Certainly, any written public comments that the public wants to make should be directed to Staff. They will become part of the public record. Written comments are always accepted on any project, and again, they should be sent to the Town Hall, to the attention of the Planning Department, and they will either read the comments into the record at a public hearing, or distribute copies of the information to the Board. I’m sorry, did you have a comment? MR. SWEENEY-I’m just asking for the courtesy of that anything that’s distributed from any outside agency or any interested person that’s given to the Town, if we could also receive a copy, as soon as it’s available. MR. HUNSINGER-Sure, that’s standard protocol. Yes. MR. SWEENEY-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, that’s a fair comment. So, do we have a tabling motion? MRS. STEFFAN-I think so. MOTION TO APPROVE THE REQUEST FOR A SPECIAL MEETING BY THE APPLICANT FOR SITE PLAN NO. 61-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS 1-2008 THE VMJR COMPANIES, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: To a Tuesday, April 29, 2008 meeting. The applicant will have an application deadline of th Friday, April 4 to submit materials to the Community Development Department. By that application deadline, the applicant will provide: 1.Revised drawings that encompass project changes to date. 2.The applicant will address Staff Notes to date. 3.The applicant will also coordinate a future session with the transportation groups, the Community Development Staff, and Planning Board representatives on traffic. th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: MRS. STEFFAN-And I use the language, future session. It’s not necessarily going to happen before our next meeting, but that’s something that you folks need to coordinate. AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. We’ll see you next month. MR. SWEENEY-Thank you. SITE PLAN NO. 4-2008 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED SCOTT & JACKIE WHEELER AGENT(S) HUTCHINS ENGINEERING OWNER(S) SAME [MARJORIE DUGAN, RPS] ZONING WR-3A LOCATION 3300 STATE ROUTE 9L APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 3580 SQUARE FOOT DRIVEWAY TO SERVE EXISTING RESIDENCE AND GUEST COTTAGES. SITE PLAN REVIEW AS A MAJOR STORMWATER PROJECT PER CHAP. 147-12C IS REQUIRED DUE TO CEA LOCATION AND SLOPES IN EXCESS OF 15%. CROSS REFERENCE SP 8-04, AV 55-06 WARREN CO. PLANNING 2/13/08 APA/CEA/DEC LG CEA LOT SIZE 1.43 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 239.18-1-27 SECTION CHAPTER 147-12 TOM HUTCHINS, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT 23 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-George, if you could summarize Notes, please. MR. HILTON-Sure. This is a Site Plan being presented to the Planning Board as it is a Major stormwater project within the Lake George basin, and it is a driveway to access an existing property. The plan includes a stormwater basin as part of the driveway design. This application has been forwarded to VISION Engineering for their review and comment. VISION Engineering has provided a comment letter dated March 14, 2008, and that’s really a quick summary of the project, with the main item being erosion, sediment control, stabilization and stormwater, and that’s all I have at this time. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Whenever you’re ready. MR. HUTCHINS-Good evening. Tom Hutchins. I’m here on behalf of Scott and Jackie Wheeler. The Wheelers are the owners of 3300 State Route 9L, and they wish to construct a new driveway to the facility. I hope you’ve been there. I hope you’ve looked at the driveway, because it is difficult at best. JACKIE WHEELER MRS. WHEELER-We have to park on Lockhart Loop and walk down because you bottom your cars out. We have to park on Lockhart Loop, which is probably about a football field and a half down, and walk down, because if you take your car down, it bottoms out. Take it up it bottoms out. So it’s pretty much unusable because it’s so steep, and I have teenagers that drive. So obviously I want them to get a good look at the lay of the land before they get out. MRS. STEFFAN-And for the record, you are Jackie Wheeler? MRS. WHEELER-Yes, I am. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MR. HUTCHINS-So what we’ve proposed is what I feel is the best drive we could come up with, under the existing site circumstances. The present driveway is about 35 feet long. It’s got an average grade of 27%, and a maximum grade of 32%, and when you drive down it, all you see is air. It’s scary. MR. TRAVER-Before you get started, could I just ask a question? Because when we did site visits on Saturday, we were sort of milling around trying to find it with GPS and everything else, and there is a, we think the property is, there is a small building right next to, a very small building next to the road with kind of an open slat construction. That’s not? MRS. WHEELER-No, that’s the yellow house. It’s the gray, if you go a little bit further. MR. TRAVER-It would be to the south, toward the village? One more? MRS. WHEELER-No. MR. TRAVER-The other way. MRS. WHEELER-North, headed towards Cleverdale. There’s three gray buildings. MR. TRAVER-Okay. All right. Okay. MRS. WHEELER-So it’s just shortly there after that. That’s why, it is quite a hall from Lockhart to get. MR. TRAVER-It is. All right. Thank you. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s not plowed now obviously, there’s a foot path down the driveway. MR. TRAVER-Right. Thank you. Sorry for the interruption. MR. HUTCHINS-That’s okay. What we’ve been able to come up with is a driveway that’s 140 feet long, an average grade of nine percent, and a maximum grade of 15%, which will still be what some would call a rather steep driveway, but it works with the site. We 24 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) can maintain sight distances, and it’s manageable with the existing buildings. With that, I’d just as soon open it up to questions, and we’ll do our best. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Go ahead, Tanya. MRS. BRUNO-My immediate question, I then read in the engineer’s report was, why the width? It’s 20 feet wide, which is a little excessive, I think, for most driveways. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, if you think about it as a typical residential driveway, sometimes they’re laid out to 12 feet typically. We did this one to 20 feet because, keep in mind, at either edge of this driveway is a steep slope, okay. So I would not want the crown of that to be less than 20 feet. We elected to carry the asphalt the full width of that, in lieu of having a gravel shoulder. If we go much less than 20 feet, two vehicles, there are going to be times when vehicles want to pass on this driveway, and it couldn’t happen, and again, particularly if you look at the section on the second sheet, the edge of pavement is the limit of the slope, and then it drops off on a one on one rock stabilized slope. So, if it came down to it could we make the asphalt, particularly in the straight section down to 16 feet? Yes, we probably could. It’s getting tight, and I would not want to reduce the crown width any, or the top of that slope any, just because the ramifications of going off this aren’t pretty. MRS. WHEELER-We’ll have four drivers. My mom’s 86, you know, she’s a little scary, but, you know, I’ve got my two kids and myself with my car, so, and we stay up there in the summer. There’s going to be quite a few cars there, and there will be times when we’ll be passing. So that’s why we kind of thought it would be a good idea. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. MR. TRAVER-I had a driveway question, but it’s about the old one. Are you going to pull that up and let that sort of return to nature? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. We’ll do that above, we’re showing a turn around down by the garage which will partially encumber the area of the older driveway, but between the turnaround and the right of way, and even up to the shoulder, yes, we’ll pull that out and reclaim that and we probably should have noted that. MRS. WHEELER-The culvert will be worked on, too, which is a good thing, because right now the erosion’s really bad. It really needs to be looked at and redone, you know, it’s eroding one of the house, under the houses and it hasn’t, the property really hasn’t been taken care of in the last 10 years. So, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. MR. HUTCHINS-The other item I would comment is we have received a permit from DOT for this work, and I would enter a copy for the record, if I could do so. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Sure. MR. HUTCHINS-The only thing I’d add on that is this permit expires May 31, ’08, and I presume the reason they have done that is because they don’t want us working off 9L during the summer, which makes sense. So we have a little bit of a time concern. We’d like to be able to hit that, and we’re prepared to build this, upon approval here, but if we miss May 31, then we’re likely off until after Labor Day. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have an opportunity to review Staff comments and the engineering comments? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, I have. MR. HUNSINGER-Do you have any problem? MR. HUTCHINS-I’ve had an opportunity to review them. I received them on Friday. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. Yes. I didn’t mean to imply that you’d responded to them yet, but did you have any concerns or questions about either? MR. HUTCHINS-Would you like me to address all of them, or would you go after particular ones? MR. HUNSINGER-I was just asking in general. 25 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUTCHINS-No, I think they’re all manageable. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I mean, some of the questions you’ve already answered. MRS. STEFFAN-Is this to convert this to a year round residence, or is it just summer? MRS. WHEELER-Not right now. Maybe in the future. We live in Florida and my husband’s business is based in Florida, and retirement, you know, whatever, eventually maybe, but it’s not going to be within this project. We won’t do that now. We can’t afford it. MR. SEGULJIC-Could you take a moment and explain how the stormwater management will work? MR. HUTCHINS-Sure. What we’ve done is sloped the driveway back toward 9L, and we’re collecting all driveway runoff within two retention areas, one, let me step back a little, the area is bisected by a drainage ditch. There’s a DOT culvert almost in dead center of the property. So we can’t do a whole lot with that. There’s two retention areas. One is infiltrating, one is not, because of the depth in the rock area nearby, but they are sized such that we can maintain our reductions in peak runoff rate and volume, based on the increases, and obviously it only collects the driveway, and when we deal with the regulations, this was deemed Major Project, so we have a 100 foot setback for stormwater. So that somewhat ties our hands from a regulatory standpoint. So that’s the way we’ve opted to do it, and we’ve crowned the driveway so the entire driveway will receive stormwater treatment. MR. SEGULJIC-I have to admit. I went looking for this place and I couldn’t find it exactly. Is this the, should I call it the infiltration, the rock bed closer to the lake, is that existing, or is that proposed also? MR. HUTCHINS-No, that’s proposed. MR. SEGULJIC-That’s proposed, as well as the rock bed up toward 9L. You have the two infiltration basins. MR. HUTCHINS-I have two infiltration basins, and I’m, we’re showing a rock lined slope there. MR. SEGULJIC-And it’s going to drain into this rock lined area. MR. HUTCHINS-Right. MR. SEGULJIC-It goes underneath the driveway in a culvert. MR. HUTCHINS-Correct. MR. SEGULJIC-Comes back out into this rock area. MR. HUTCHINS-Right. MR. SEGULJIC-And then what happens there? MR. HUTCHINS-Then it continues the current path that it carries into the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-So you’re collecting, because that’s the water you’re taking. MR. HUTCHINS-That’s DOT, see, DOT’s got, it’s a 28 inch culvert coming across, or 24 coming across 9L that discharges into a ditch, basically, that runs through the center of this property. There is presently. MR. SEGULJIC-So it’s just a ditch now. You’re going to put it into a culvert. MR. HUTCHINS-There is presently a 28 inch concrete culvert across our property that we’re going to replace. MR. FORD-You’re going to increase the flow into that culvert. MR. HUTCHINS-No. Actually we’re going to decrease the flow into that culvert, by ever so little, but it’ll be a reduction. 26 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-But you are moving the culvert, correct? MR. HUTCHINS-No, you’re right. Into the second culvert, that’s going to increase slightly, you’re right. We are replacing it, just about in place. It’s going to be a little bit longer on the, it’ll extend a little closer toward 9L. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay, because it’s existing at the middle of the driveway, now, if I’m looking at your drawing. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s existing, it begins in about where the middle of the driveway is. MR. SEGULJIC-How is that culvert working now? MR. HUTCHINS-The culvert discharges, that’s, it’s bigger than, it works well. It’s a corrugated metal culvert, and it’s deteriorated. It does function well. It’s bigger, I believe the concrete one at the road is a 24, and that’s a 28. So it’s bigger, and it functions well. There’s no evidence of washout. The bottom of it’s deteriorated, and to do what we need to do, we need to extend that a little bit longer toward the road. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. Now where is the septic system now? Because all I see is the future wastewater. MR. HUTCHINS-The future wastewater, we’ve identified an area that we can replace a septic system when the time comes. MR. SEGULJIC-And where is existing ones? I only see the future one. MR. HUTCHINS-The present ones are, at the house, see the two lists, underground tanks? That’s the house septic system. Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-They’re holding tanks? MR. HUTCHINS-No, I presume it’s a seepage pit. It’s an old residence. It’s a seepage pit. MRS. WHEELER-Yes, it’s real old. We have to eventually fix that, too. Like I said, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. MR. SEGULJIC-Why not fix that as part of this project? MR. HUTCHINS-Well, because we’re trying to build a driveway so we can get reasonable access down to this property. That’s why. MR. SEGULJIC-Because this one story wood frame house, that’s part of this property also? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, that is a separate house. MR. SEGULJIC-So it’s a separate house. So there’s two houses. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s part, it’s on the same property. It’s a separate, obviously it’s a separate building. MR. SEGULJIC-So if there’s only two houses, what are the odds you’re going to have two cars leaving at once? MRS. WHEELER-They all park there. MR. SEGULJIC-I mean, I’m a little befuddled why you need a 20 foot wide driveway. MRS. WHEELER-You’re going to have everybody parking in that one parking area by the garage that are going to have to get back and forth, be able to turn around and get back and forth. You may have somebody parked on the side to go to that one entrance there. So you’re going to have to have a car be able to get back by it. That house is part of our property. So you’re going to have a house here and a house here. If you have a car parked here, you’ve got to have a car to be able to get around to the other house. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s essentially a guesthouse. 27 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MRS. STEFFAN-Is that a rental property? MRS. WHEELER-No. MR. HUTCHINS-No. MRS. WHEELER-Not unless I have a (lost words) or something. MR. HUTCHINS-They’re two residences. They’re on the one parcel. MR. SEGULJIC-It just still seems to be excessive. I was just going to say, you’re within a CEA, and the goal is to minimize impacts, and a 20 foot wide driveway doesn’t seem to be minimizing. MR. HUTCHINS-Okay, but keep in mind, this is still a steep driveway, and there’s a bend at the top of it, okay. You’re going to come off 9L, and you’re going to have to hang a left, and it’s still steep. That portion right there is pushing 15%. MR. SEGULJIC-And this is the best way to do this driveway? MR. HUTCHINS-In my opinion it’s the best one we’ve come up with that satisfies their needs, yes. MR. SEGULJIC-Let’s look at it from the lake’s perspective. Is it the best driveway from the CEA perspective? MR. HUTCHINS-Well, we’re managing stormwater for the entire area, of which none of it now is being managed. I mean, you look at this driveway now, the first thing they’re going to have to do is clean all the dirt and sediment off it that’s now running down a 30% slope off, there’s a little cut in this wall here that, it’s running down now. Yes, it’s better for the lake’s perspective. The entire paved area is at least receiving some form of stormwater treatment versus presently it’s receiving none. MR. SEGULJIC-And also, I mean, you’re going to have to cut down a lot of trees for this, I assume. MRS. WHEELER-That’s what I was just going to mention it. We looked at it to try to take the least amount of impact, because really there is only that one big oak. Remember when we looked at it? MR. HUTCHINS-Right. MRS. WHEELER-Because if we went out here, we were looking at before going further north on the property and coming down, we would have had to take out a bunch of trees. So here, you know, we’re trying not to do that, and trying to leave as much vegetation on the property as possible. I live on a lake in Florida. I don’t want to impact this lake. I know what it’s like to live on a pond instead of a lake. I’ve seen what happens with runoff and when people use phosphorus fertilizers and I go to lake board meetings. I know what’s going on. That’s my concern, too. I mean, Lake George is a gorgeous lake. I want to keep it nice. Those septic tanks, like you say, eventually need to come out. We need to be able to get the people down there to work. We need to help clean up the property, too, but it’s going to take funding and time. MR. HUTCHINS-And part of the logic is to save the two large oaks you’re seeing, that are actually in right of way. We had a version where this, the driveway cut was further to the, closer to the main house, okay, to the west, and there’s two large oaks there that they wanted to save, and that’s part of the logic for this location. MR. SEGULJIC-But how many trees are you going to take down within this driveway? MR. HUTCHINS-I haven’t counted them. There are two or three very large trees, and there are a significant number of smaller trees. I mean, it’s a wooded area. If you’re interested, here’s a shot looking at the path. This shot is looking at the path of the driveway. MR. SEGULJIC-And what is this whole fill area going to be, it’s going to be the granular fill soil? 28 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUTCHINS-A lot of it will be rock. The lower material will be rock, and then progressively use smaller material, and then a gravel sub base and an asphalt. MR. SEGULJIC-I just think you can do better. MR. HUTCHINS-How would you make it better, Tom, make it smaller? MR. SEGULJIC-Make it smaller. MR. HUTCHINS-And how does that make it better? MR. SEGULJIC-I would think, theoretically, reduce the impact. MR. HUTCHINS-If, I’m concerned, I’m concerned about this upper section here, the width of it. If this width isn’t there, then it’s going to be a problem and somebody may end up off either side. If we narrowed the asphalt, would that make you, I mean, we thought about having a 16 foot run of asphalt on the 20 foot slope and having a two foot gravel shoulder. The problem with that is the gravel erodes, and then you’ve got more maintenance with the shoulder than you would if you had asphalt over the width of it. MRS. BRUNO-I would think with a 20 foot driveway you wouldn’t need that turnaround. MR. HUTCHINS-You mean take it right straight to the garage? MRS. BRUNO-Sure. MR. HUTCHINS-And then back up? MRS. WHEELER-What if we have four cars parked there, though? MR. HUTCHINS-Now you can turn around because you’re coming in from the side, but if you were coming straight in, you’d be heading right straight for the garage and you wouldn’t have a turnaround. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other comments from Board members? MR. FORD-I’m concerned with the width, the width of the drive. MR. HUTCHINS-The width of the asphalt? MR. HUNSINGER-Where would you suggest that the driveway be narrowed? MR. HUTCHINS-We could narrow it along the straight section. I would propose to take it out of the area toward 9L. You still need to be able to get around there, and you could still get cars by. MR. FORD-I can see the turning radius and maintaining that, but once you hit that straight away, I think it could be narrowed down. MRS. WHEELER-The only problem with the straight away there, again, is in front of the guesthouse. As long as we have a car parked and we can get another car by it or we have company or whatever, that I have no problems with that, but we have to be able to get somebody out if somebody’s parked there. MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, 16 foot driveway, if there’s a car parked, you can, if they don’t take up more than eight feet. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, we can live with that on the straight shot. On the turn I’d like to keep it there. We could live with 16 on the straight. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. BRUNO-Yes, because now you’re talking about cars being parked along the side of a driveway, and we were just talking about, you know, the number of cars down at the bottom, that’s why you needed the turnaround. MRS. WHEELER-It’s a big piece of property. You’ve got a realize there’s three houses, there’s two houses and there’s a shed house hooked to it. So, I mean, you’ve got, you know, a lot of. 29 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUTCHINS-And it’s going to get a lot of use during certain periods of the year. MRS. WHEELER-Yes. During the summer, I’m going to have, I’ve got six brothers and sisters that live up here, and, you know, they’re going to be over. MR. HUNSINGER-Is everyone comfortable with that? MR. FORD-Narrowing the straight of way? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-I think they can make the straight away narrower because they have a parking field down by the garage. That gives them a chance to get by. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. If we take that, does that seem reasonable to you if we take the asphalt width to 16 on the straight of way? MR. SEGULJIC-Well, I was thinking you could even go narrower on the straight of way? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, but the problem with that is two cars can’t pass, and somebody’s either backing onto 9L or backing back down toward the garage. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, what are you doing now? MR. HUTCHINS-Now? Well I’ve explained what you do now. It’s difficult. Which is why we’re trying to come up with the best. MRS. WHEELER-The driveway now is not usable. Certain cars, you can’t, like I said, I park on Lockhart Loop and walk down there, otherwise you’re bottomed out of the car. Either way, going up or going down. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s very difficult to go up in the rain. Let alone, forget winter. You have to goose it and. MRS. WHEELER-It scraps the bottom of your car. It scraps going down. MR. FORD-Between the two turning radii, you can cut that down to 16 between those two, can you not? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. We’re okay with that. Are you okay with that? MRS. WHEELER-I’m okay with 16, as long as we can get cars by, and keep that one turning area 20, if it’s okay. MRS. BRUNO-I don’t know, Mrs. Wheeler, if you had gotten a chance to read the Staff comment or look anything up in the Code. I just want to point out, I know we had talked about turning this into, potentially in the future, year round use, rather than just seasonal. As you fix your driveway and then perhaps have a better ability to plow it in the winter, and then perhaps use the houses during that time, there is the Section in our Code that says really it’s in relationship to your sewer system. I understand that you’re looking to upgrade that, but before it would turn into a seasonal or year round use, that would have to be done, and you’d have to go through a Type II Site Plan, which tonight is only an Unlisted. So just keep that in mind before you start, you know, using that year round. MR. HUTCHINS-And they’re aware of that, and that would be triggered at the building process. These buildings are uninsulated. They’re unheated. There’s no central systems. To upgrade them is a significant project to the buildings, and that would come up and that time, and they’re aware of that. MRS. BRUNO-Right. Absolutely. I was just educating Mrs. Wheeler in case it hadn’t come up. It’s a further environmental type review like what we’re doing right now, talking about the lake and your stormwater and that type of thing. MRS. WHEELER-Yes, that’s fine, and I, quite frankly, I would want that, because I don’t want that seeping into the lake there anyway because it’s not good for me. MRS. BRUNO-It sounds like you’ve got a ways to go, though, if the houses aren’t insulated yet. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MRS. WHEELER-Yes. It’s a camp. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. We do have a public hearing scheduled this evening. Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to address the Board on this application? Sir, you could be first. I would ask that anyone who wishes to address the Board on this application, that you state your name for the record. We do tape the meetings, and take literally transcripts. I would ask that you address any comments or questions to the Board. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED JIM TOBIN MR. TOBIN-Good evening. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. MR. TOBIN-My name is Jim Tobin, and I live at 15 Dark Bay Lane, which is two lots away from this parcel. I’m quite familiar with the parcel, and I can see why you didn’t see it because it’s set down quite a ways. I’m here not, I don’t have an issue with what’s presented tonight with the driveway, but the Board did bring up some good subjects I didn’t think about before. The lot currently is a heavily treed lot, and it probably is (lost word) growth, and most of the growth is probably 75 to 100 years old, and you really can hardly see the house, and I don’t think another tree would grow on that parcel because it’s too shaded. My issue here is that the Board is being asked to grant a variance for the landscaping ordinance, and I’m asking the Board to consider the fact that when this driveway is put in, because the lot is so narrow in width, looking at the plan, it looks like a swath of vegetation approximately 70 feet by about 300 feet, which is the length of the driveway, is to be removed, and I see no replacement of the vegetation that’s there. Also, the fact that the drive on the lakeside is being held in place by a riprap stone structure. It is sloping. It’s a very steep slope. I ask the Board to enforce the current landscaping ordinances and possibly put back some of the trees that are removed and some of the growth that’s removed, because when you drive along 9L, all that area on both sides of the road is currently heavily forested, and when you take a swath out, a large swath on a very shallow lot, it becomes very, very visible. So the visible importance of this lot, I think the Board should consider it seriously. There are some simple solutions to the wall that I talked about. Rather than having a straight wall, it could be terraced where planting could be installed, and I suggest the Board enforce the fact that we put in natural vegetation rather than some hybrid vegetation which may or may not grow there. That’s all I have to say. Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. Anyone else? Yes. Good evening. CHRIS NAVITSKY MR. NAVITSKY-Good evening. Chris Navitsky, the Lake George Water Keeper. I apologize. I came in a little late from another meeting, but I believe the rationale for the project was to provide a safer driveway with additional room for maneuverability, and we can understand that concern by the applicant. We have a couple of questions and some recommendations or thoughts, possibly, for the design. In general, our office does not support the sacrifice of our stream corridors. Really, that’s an intermittent stream. It can be referred to as a drainage ditch, but it’s an intermittent stream. The proposal will remove the entire buffer between 9L and the existing culvert, basically, and extend the culvert 15 feet upgradient towards 9L, and also line the stream with riprap at the inlet and outlet. A couple of thoughts would be, and I think the Board was on this regarding the width of the driveway. If we reduce the width of the driveway, we can reduce the width of the culvert, and eliminate all the enclosure, or some of the enclosures. We also, we realize that there’s an existing culvert. I think Tom referred to that it may or may not be in good condition. Maybe some decay. We were wondering if they had considered portions of a bottomless culvert for that replacement, promote infiltration. It’s a difficult site. We’ve got the stormwater basin, obviously that’s going to go to the low area. That’s where the stream is. I do not know. I took a look, and I do not know if they could push the stormwater a little bit away from the stream. I’m not really sure, to be honest. I don’t know if that’s feasible. We also wondered if they considered porous pavement to reduce the amount of runoff. Also, you know, I did not go down on the property from 9L looking down towards the culvert. I mean, that’s a well defined stream channel with tree roots and some existing large boulders. I do have a photo of that, but I don’t know if we could try to maintain that instead of lining it with riprap, which is horrible for the lake, and the 31 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) discharge. I overhead a comment about sedimentation down the lake. I do not know if that’s from the channel or from possibly the deicing and traction events that they, the sand they put on 9L. Another thought is they’re going to have a 10 foot bank there lined with riprap. I do not know if they could use some erosion control matting. The gentleman just referred to replanting some vegetation on that steep one on one slope bank, maybe, instead of riprap, which I think is really impervious and leads to more runoff. We could put erosion matting or grass seeds or a meadow type of mix on that hillside, and the last question I had was about, you know, turning the stormwater into that basin. About halfway down the driveway, the stormwater’s got to make an almost 90 degree turn into that longer, thinner basin. I’m just wondering how that will be accomplished. It appears to be a retaining wall, and I don’t know if there’s going to be a little speed bump or something in there, but just an engineering question. That’s all. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MR. NAVITSKY-Thanks. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone else? Okay. I will leave the public hearing open for now. I guess there are at least a couple of design considerations that were mentioned and offered. I don’t know if you have any thoughts or comments on any of them. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. On the first commentor, the tree cutting, we have looked at this, and that has been a primary focus is to minimize how much cutting we have to do, and I would point out that the majority of the area from the toe of the slope we’re proposing, our cut line, down to, basically to the lake, is well wooded, and we’re not proposing any cutting in that area. The area to the east of where we’re cutting this driveway is well wooded, and we’re not proposing anything in there. Between the two houses is well wooded, and we’re not proposing anything. This site is quite well screened from the lake. We’re leaving the two big oaks at the road. I mean, yes, I could shorten the driveway. We could a little bit further west, and we’d lose those, I mean, they’re very big oaks, probably 24, 30 inchers. There are a couple of large trees in the area of the lower stormwater area. I need to have a place to deal with stormwater, and it can’t be within 100, it can’t be downhill, because that’s the 100 foot from the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-But if you were to, not to, make the driveway narrower and use porous pavement, your stormwater controls would have to be a lot less, be less of a concern. MR. HUTCHINS-Making it narrower, we’ve already agreed to making it narrower. MR. SEGULJIC-But you could also make it narrower along the whole travel portion of the driveway. MR. HUTCHINS-From bend to bend. MR. SEGULJIC-From where you turn in to the turnaround area. You could minimize that. MR. HUTCHINS-We’ve agreed to go to 60 feet there. MR. SEGULJIC-I’m saying you can go smaller. If you did that and you had porous, then you could possibly leave more trees there, and you’d reduce your stormwater. MR. HUTCHINS-You’re still going to have to build the area. You’re going to have to place fill in the area to construct the driveway. MR. SEGULJIC-Less fill though. MR. HUTCHINS-Less fill, slightly less, perhaps. I’m uncomfortable going with a real narrow driveway down this thing. It’s still going to be a steep driveway. MR. SEGULJIC-Even the straight travel portion, you still need it to be that wide? MR. HUTCHINS-We can take it down to 16 in that area, and we’ve agreed to do that. As far as porous pavement, I’m not convinced that porous pavement is going to provide the benefit, any significant benefit. I’ve seen it go down in one instance. I have not used it, and we’re not willing to commit to that on this particular application. MR. SEGULJIC-Well maybe you could look at that for us. 32 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUTCHINS-I’ve looked at it, and I can run it by my client and see if they’re interested in going there, but a driveway like this, it’s not appropriate for a driveway like this, in my opinion. MR. SEGULJIC-And why would that be? MR. HUTCHINS-Because in my opinion it’s not the material for, we don’t know how long it’s going to hold up. A driveway like this, if anybody uses it in the winter, it’s going to have to be sanded. It’s going to have to be sanded. MR. SEGULJIC-No one would be using it in the wintertime. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, if someone goes down there in the winter to check on the place, it’s going to have to be sanded. If you use it in September, it may. MR. SEGULJIC-Is this road plowed now in the winter? Is this driveway plowed? MR. HUTCHINS-No, it’s not presently. MR. SEGULJIC-So why would it be plowed? MR. HUTCHINS-They may choose to have somebody check on the place. MR. SEGULJIC-It’s only seasonal now, so why are we designing a year round driveway? MR. HUTCHINS-It’s seasonal now. MR. SEGULJIC-So why are we designing a year round driveway? MR. HUTCHINS-We’re not designing a year round driveway. We’re designing a safe driveway that they can access the property in a reasonable manner. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, my suggestion is you look at a design, I think you can do better. You’ve got it and you look at using porous pavement, reducing the size of the driveway, increasing the vegetation. You’re in a CEA. You want to do the best you can. I’m not seeing that here. I’m seeing the reason why you want a 20 foot wide driveway is that so two cars can pass each other. MR. HUTCHINS-No, we want to have a 20 foot wide driveway so that vehicles can safely access in and out of this property, this very steep driveway. Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-But remember, we’re just talking about the straight travel portion, not the turn portion. MR. HUTCHINS-All right. MR. SEGULJIC-So I think they can do better. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have any thoughts on the comment on looking at a natural vegetation on the riprap? MR. HUTCHINS-On that, yes. I don’t have a problem with trying to naturalize that a little bit more. If an arched culvert is preferred to a closed conduit, I’m okay with that. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. BRUNO-I think he was also referring, though, to the slope that was holding up the driveway, not just the retention basin. MR. HUTCHINS-I’m not comfortable designing a vegetative one on one slope, if that’s your question, without any hard material at all. Maybe Chris would design it. I’m not comfortable designing that. MR. SEGULJIC-If you narrow the driveway, the slope wouldn’t be as steep. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, it depends. If you. MR. SEGULJIC-But you see my point? There’s other things to do here. 33 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, but you’re going to gain incredibly little with narrowing the driveway, in terms of this footprint. MRS. WHEELER-Would still cars be able to get by? I mean, would we have to back up, then? Like if we had one car pass and another car pass (lost words) will another car have to back up, and what’s the risk of them going off the edge? MR. HUTCHINS-Well, the narrower we make it, the more the risk is? MRS. WHEELER-Have you been out to the property out yet? MR. SEGULJIC-I looked for it. I believe I know where it is. I think I was at the neighbor’s place, but I know the area you’re speaking of. MRS. WHEELER-It would be good if you could just go. All I’m asking is for something to be safe, sir. MR. SEGULJIC-And I can understand that. All I’m asking is for you to take another look at it. I’m just saying you can do better. MRS. WHEELER-All I want the minimum amount of footage that we can pass two cars safely where somebody doesn’t have to back up and go off that edge. That’s the only thing I’m asking for. MR. SEGULJIC-I’m just asking you to look at porous pavement, reducing the width of the driveway, increasing your vegetation. MRS. WHEELER-I don’t have a problem with increasing the vegetation. That’s great. I mean, you know, whatever we can do to make everybody happy. MR. SEGULJIC-Because keep in mind this is only a seasonal use driveway. It’s not a year round driveway. MRS. WHEELER-Yes, I know, but what if someday we decide to move up here and retire? MR. SEGULJIC-Then you look at it at that point. MRS. WHEELER-All right then we’re going to throw good money after bad? I just want to do it right the first time. MR. HUTCHINS-As far as planting, we’re agreeable to working plantings on the sides of the driveway as it’s feasible. I can’t suggest anything because I’m not sure what would grow there, and I’d have to, we’d agree to work some plantings along the drive to try to break it up a little bit. As far as porous pavement, at this point, we’re not willing to commit to that. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, if it’s as wooded as, if it’s wooded, there are a lot of plantings that won’t survive, if it’s shade. I mean, you can’t even put daylilies. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s very wooded. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, ferns will grow there, and daylilies will grow there. MRS. STEFFAN-Daylilies need a little more sun. I mean, they can’t live in total shade. MR. HUTCHINS-This is looking south toward the main house. This is looking about along the line of the driveway, and the lake would be down here. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, what’s the will of the Board? Do members join with Tom’s feeling that they want to see more information? MR. FORD-I can see where, what Tom’s concerns are. I would like to see more vegetation, and that has been agreed to. My major concern was the width of that straightaway. They’ve agreed to narrowing it to 16 feet. With those modifications, I can concur with it. MR. HUNSINGER-Steve? 34 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. TRAVER-Yes. I think the applicant being willing to reduce the straight portion of the driveway I think is a good suggestion. I can understand the concern about the area, especially having been out there and seeing how steep that slope is. I can understand the need for the wider area at the top. I appreciate that they’re attempting to leave those trees. MR. HUNSINGER-Tanya, did you have any comments? MRS. BRUNO-Not at the moment, thanks. MRS. STEFFAN-So we’ve got driveway width reduced to 16 feet, and then revised design to include or incorporate vegetation into the riprap area. MR. TRAVER-And the culvert to go to an open style, or a bottomless. MR. HUNSINGER-Or a bottomless culvert. MR. FORD-How did you refer to that? MR. HUTCHINS-I called it an arched culvert. MR. FORD-It’s an arch. MR. SEGULJIC-I would say we should say review reducing the size of the driveway, not say 16 feet, because maybe they can do better. As well as I think they should using pervious pavement. Maybe they’ll determine it’s not good for it, but at least they should look at it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-The problem with that, Tom, the wording, reducing, looking at reducing could reduce to 19 or 18 feet. We’ve got them committed, on the straightaway, to 16, and that’s definitive, specific. MR. SEGULJIC-But you’re designing the project, by the way, reducing it to 16. MR. FORD-To what we want. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Do you have a motion ready? The date is the question. MR. HUTCHINS-I just want to add, we are, for what it’s worth, we are trying to complete this work this season, before May 31 when our DOT permit expires. Obviously, we need an approval from this Board to do that, and if any of the adjustments we’re willing to make can facilitate that, we’d obviously like that. MR. FORD-One other question I have, could you reiterate the amount of fill you anticipate bringing on site? MR. HUTCHINS-I don’t know that I’ve calculated it. Lucas, do you remember? I’m sorry, my engineer’s here with me. I don’t know that I’ve calculated that. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I guess that would be another question. I mean, we don’t need to answer that right this second. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s roughly 1500 cubic yards. MR. FORD-1500 cubic yards? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-Could you show us on this picture where on the design that this is? MR. SEGULJIC-Is this the stream, the intermittent stream? MR. HUTCHINS-This is the, yes. The DOT culvert comes out right up here. You’re looking, where you’re looking at here is, I’m standing on the rear end looking right there. 35 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-So right now this is all an open stream. MR. HUTCHINS-Right now, here’s where the culverts are, okay. The current culvert is from here to here, okay, to make this work. MR. SEGULJIC-I guess, why do you have to put all this riprap in here? MR. HUTCHINS-I don’t have to put it there. I put it there to minimize erosion. This is higher, this is much higher. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. We have a resolution ready. Yes, ma’am. AUDIENCE MEMBER-Maybe it’s not appropriate for me to comment, but it’s my family that sold the Wheelers the property, and I know how much they care about it. I know every inch of it. I’ve lived there for 55 years, and I know they’re going to do a good job on this project. MRS. BRUNO-Do we have a public comment this evening? Because I’d like to get her on record if we do. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s still open, well, I mean, I ended the public comment. MRS. STEFFAN-And your name was, ma’am? AUDIENCE MEMBER-(Lost words). MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 4-2008 SCOTT & JACKIE WHEELER, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: nd Tabled to the second Planning Board meeting on April 22. We’re going to add it as an extra item that evening. There will be an application deadline for submission of materials th of March 28. It’s tabled so that the applicant can: 1) reduce the driveway width, 2) address VISION Engineering comments, 3) provide a revised design to include or incorporate vegetation into the riprap area, 4) also incorporate an arch culvert. th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUTCHINS-Thank you. MR. FORD-Could I just put an addendum on this? Not to the motion, but the one thing that, during our discussion, I was convinced of, the amount of traffic, the number of people. I’m hopeful that there will be some addressing of the septic system on this site in the very near future. MR. HUTCHINS-They are aware of that, and I will further that discussion. MR. FORD-So are we. SITE PLAN 5-2008 SEQR TYPE II DAVID & LOIS ARAKELIAN AGENT(S) HUTCHINS ENGINEERING OWNER(S) TROUT PAVILION, INC. ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 14 TROUT PAVILION ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES DEMOLITION OF EXISTING CABINS AND CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW RESIDENCE, GARAGE, DRIVEWAY, WASTEWATER SYSTEM AND STORMWATER MANAGEMENT CONTROLS. SITE PLAN REVIEW AS A MAJOR STORMWATER PROJECT PER CHAP. 147 IS REQUIRED DUE TO DISTURBANCE WITHIN A CEA. CROSS REFERENCE: BP 07-625, 07-624, 06-700, 99-612 WARREN CO. PLANNING 2/13/08 36 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) APA/CEA/DEC LG CEA LOT SIZE 3.37 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 227.10-1-27 SECTION CHAPTER 147-12 TOM HUTCHINS, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-George, if you could summarize Staff Notes, please. MR. HILTON-Really quickly, as indicated in the notes, the applicant’s seeking waivers from lighting, landscaping, APA jurisdictional determination stating that a permit from the APA is required is included in this packet. The proposal is to remove existing cabins and construct a proposed home, garage, septic system. It’s a major stormwater project, and is within the Lake George CEA. So it requires Site Plan Review, and I guess I just have one question. The information that I’m showing on the screen overhead here shows one property with an existing house with the maroonish reddish roof there. Is there a subdivision proposed with this as well, or? MR. HUTCHINS-I’ll touch on that. There was boundary line adjustment done. There was through your office. Craig signed it, and it is filed. MR. HILTON-Okay. Great, and that’s all I have at this time. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. The floor is yours. MR. HUTCHINS-Good evening. Tom Hutchins, Hutchins Engineering. I’m here on behalf of David and Lois Arakelian, and I think before I review the technicals, I’ll let David just talk a little bit about his project and this is David Arakelian with me. MR. HUNSINGER-Good evening. DAVID ARAKELIAN MR. ARAKELIAN-Good evening. Hi. My name is David Arakelian. I’m here with my wife, Lois, my mother Barbara Arakelian, my father George Arakelian, and our builder, Don Gregware. After two and a half years of planning, a couple of engineers, a couple of designers, a couple of builders, tens of thousands of dollars, we are here to ask your blessing so we can build this house that we’ve been developing for that long, and we feel that we’ve dotted our I’s, crossed our T’s, and we’re ready for you to take a look at it and to go forward with this as soon as possible. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Great. Mr. Hutchins, did you have anything else to add? MR. HUTCHINS-I don’t believe so. I think that we’ve made the submission. It’s a typical residential Site Plan on a magnificent property. I would add a note, there was a note in one of the Staff Notes about a discrepancy in Floor Area Ratio, and that’s correct. I had neglected to include the area above the garage in the FAR. I have corrected that, and that brings the FAR up to three percent from two and a half. So it’s really not an issue whatsoever. It’s a three acre parcel. Beyond that, I’ll do my best to respond. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Questions, comments from the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-The driveway for the proposed home, I only see the end of it. I don’t see where the driveway goes. MR. HUTCHINS-There is presently a drive that runs right down the existing lot line. It’s a dashed line. It’s a drive that runs down through, you can see it. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. HUTCHINS-Okay. It’s almost, it follows the parcel line to a certain extent, and then this parcel veers off to what would be up on the screen or to the north it is just past where the driveway veers away from the property line that this driveway will be cut in, and this is Arakelian property. It’s an adjoining parcel that is there. MR. SEGULJIC-But you said it’s a dark line there? MR. HUTCHINS-The red line, the gray line. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay, because the dark line is the stream. 37 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. ARAKELIAN-Correct. Just to the lower, just below the stream is the. MR. HUTCHINS-Here’s the driveway. This is the Arakelian house, and this is a separate parcel. MR. SEGULJIC-So it’s going to access from another parcel? MR. ARAKELIAN-No, actually, there’s another wing, again, why it took so long, there is another lot line adjustment that we did that runs down the center of that driveway. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. All right. Okay. That explains that. MR. ARAKELIAN-So we share the driveway now and we plan on sharing it in the future. We just had to make it legal, I guess. MR. HUNSINGER-And it is shown on your plan. MR. ARAKELIAN-Okay, and it was difficult with the two municipalities and everything else. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, the yellow line is the County line, between Warren and Washington County, and the dark, winding line through the property is a stream that, it’s a significant stream, and it, from a layout standpoint on this particular parcel, you have a 100 foot setback from the lake, and you have a 100 foot setback from that stream. So, even though we’re on a three acre parcel, we’re a little bit constrained with where we can work. MR. SEGULJIC-The existing, I guess, cottage you’d call it, what was that septic system? MR. ARAKELIAN-That was part of the hotel’s that was built. That is just to the south of the tennis court, and that was part of the hotel’s when it was there. MR. SEGULJIC-So that cottage did have the septic system or did not? MR. ARAKELIAN-Not by itself, no. It was incorporated into the hotel’s septic system. MR. SEGULJIC-Because, would this then be considered a new septic system? MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-Then I believe it has to be 200 feet from the lake. Correct? MR. HUTCHINS-No. MR. ARAKELIAN-No. MR. SEGULJIC-Under 136-9B I believe it does, because new septic systems have to be 200 feet from the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-George? MR. HILTON-I don’t believe so. I’ll look it up. MR. SEGULJIC-I could be incorrect. MRS. BRUNO-How many bedrooms is that sized for? MR. HUTCHINS-That is sized for four bedrooms. MR. ARAKELIAN-But we are having two. MRS. BRUNO-Finished at this point. It looks to me like the bonus room is certainly a bonus. MRS. STEFFAN-It says a 1250 gallon tank. That’s big enough for four bedrooms. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s designed for four bedrooms. MR. ARAKELIAN-Which proposed room? 38 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MRS. BRUNO-Over the garage. MR. ARAKELIAN-That’s not going to be heated or water. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s unheated. There’s no water there. We have included that as a bedroom, just because. We’ve also included a downstairs den as a bedroom, in addition to the two bedrooms, we designed for four. MRS. BRUNO-Great. MR. HUNSINGER-Good. MR. ARAKELIAN-Well, there’s only my wife and myself. We don’t have any children. So there’s no extra, and we don’t like to entertain a lot, either. MRS. STEFFAN-Well, it’s one of those things over the years, what often happens is a project gets developed, and then it’s sold, and so the bonus room, you may not use it, but in the future somebody may. MR. ARAKELIAN-I Understand. Okay. LOIS ARAKELIAN MRS. ARAKELIAN-Well, you know, it’s been in the family for 30 years, and I don’t see it being sold. There’s enough of us that we hope and intend it to stay in the family. So I don’t think future sale is an issue. Right? MRS. STEFFAN-It’s one of those things that we look at on the Planning Board, and for the record, you’re Lois Arakelian? MRS. ARAKELIAN-Yes, I am. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. MR. HILTON-Mr. Chairman, just to refer to that section Mr. Seguljic was speaking to, it says no sewage disposal fill or mound system may be located within 200 feet of the shoreline of Lake George. For the repair or replacement of existing systems, the distance may be a minimum of 100 feet. I don’t know if this is considered replacement. It’s quite possible that it is. MR. HUTCHINS-No. It’s not a fill or a mound system. MR. HILTON-Well, either way, I guess I was going to say that I would just defer to the Director of Building and Codes. At some point, he’s going to have to look at this. I guess I would ask the question, have you run it by Dave Hatin? MR. HUTCHINS-This particular one? No, I have not run it by Dave Hatin, but it’s not designed as a fill or mound system, no. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Other questions, comments from Board members? Have you received the VISION Engineering comments? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have any comments on them? MR. HUTCHINS-By Number Five? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. FORD-Yes. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. What we’ve done is we’ve captured as much of the driveway as we can capture within the limit of this site, and I think if we read the remainder of his comment, he concurs that it’s a difficult thing to do with what we have. The dashed line is 100 foot setback from the stream, which we can’t go over. We’ve brought the stormwater devices as close to the, we’ve kept it as close to the driveway as we can in order to capture as much as we can and do what we can with the layout of the site, and I 39 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) think any time you have an uphill driveway going off a right of way, there’s a certain amount of driveway runoff you’re not going to be able to capture, and it’s going to run off the site. As far as his other comments. Number One, yes I made an erroneous reference to a rain garden in the end of the text of the report. So, that comes out. MRS. BRUNO-It’s not a bad idea, though. MR. HUTCHINS-A maintenance section, we can add maintenance provisions to the stormwater report. As for the two inch per hour infiltration rate, that’s not a tremendously high infiltration rate. Under some circumstances, I might not use infiltration on a site such as this. However, to meet your regulations, we have to, and that’s a fairly conservative rate. Erosion and sediment control notes, I have reworked my lakefront erosion and sediment control notes recently, and they’re very close to the referenced sections he has, but I have no problem verbatim putting those notes on. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. HUTCHINS-Wells or septic systems on adjacent properties, yes, there aren’t any that are within the setbacks, and I’m willing to add that, and, yes, there are two laterals and not three. So those are relatively, you’re right, the one with the driveway, but I don’t see what else we can do on that. MR. SEGULJIC-Getting back to the septic system, I didn’t see a reserve area. MR. HUTCHINS-I don’t specifically outline a reserve area. Many of these systems like this are, end up being replaced in place. I could, we can outline a reserve area right next to this one. MR. SEGULJIC-You should show a reserve area. You have to show a reserve area. MR. HUTCHINS-We can outline a reserve area right next to this one. MR. SEGULJIC-Now how far is the house back from the lake? MR. HUTCHINS-Fifty-four and a half feet. MR. ARAKELIAN-Actually, I think it’s got to be a little past that, because the existing house is back another five feet from the lake and this is back beyond that, isn’t it? MR. SEGULJIC-The setback is, what, 50, or is it 75? MR. ARAKELIAN-Fifty. MR. HUNSINGER-It’s fifty. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. HUTCHINS-It’s 54 and a half feet, I think. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, you say it’s 54 and a half on your setback requirement on the worksheet. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, and the setback is 50. I’m sorry. You’re right, David, it’s 60. I’m looking at the dimension to the existing porch. MR. HUNSINGER-I’m sorry, that’s what I looked at, too. MR. ARAKELIAN-Right now we’re about 54 and we’re moving it back even more. MR. SEGULJIC-With regards to your wastewater system notes on the second page, you make a statement about how the system is not designed to accommodate extreme water use, fixtures such as Jacuzzis, grinder pumps, things of that nature. How is that going to be enforced? MR. HUTCHINS-Garbage grinders, not grinder pump. MR. SEGULJIC-Garbage grinders. Yes, garbage grinders, non-conserving water fixtures or extreme water use fixtures. 40 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUTCHINS-How is that going to be enforced? That’s going to be enforced by the Building Department of Queensbury when they build a house as they do in all of them. MR. SEGULJIC-So there’s nothing, down the road, that they could then put a Jacuzzi if the system is not designed for it. MRS. STEFFAN-But there’s no way to really regulate that. MR. ARAKELIAN-We’re not Jacuzzi people. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. MR. HUTCHINS-They could put in a garbage grinder and send it to their septic system and probably you folks wouldn’t be able to do a whole lot about it down the road. MR. HUNSINGER-I think it’s pretty common knowledge that if you have a septic system that you don’t have a. MR. HUTCHINS-You don’t, right. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. HUTCHINS-That note came from a mandate from the Health Department that they make us put that note on their drawings. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-What about waivers for lighting and landscaping? The applicant has requested those. MR. HUTCHINS-We have requested those. The Arakelians retain a professional landscaper that takes care of this premises and the place is magnificent, and we opted to leave that to the next phase of when they go and decide how they’re going to landscape around that house, other than us try to do it at this point. MR. ARAKELIAN-My mom’s really the one that has a lot of taste in the family, and she’s the one that kind of, but she needs to see it first before she puts any of that stuff on there. So we were hoping that, like she has done with her house next to ours and the rest of the property, that we could possibly waive that and do that when the house is built. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, the one thing we’re looking for now is buffers along the lake, and I don’t see any buffering along the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. We’re holding the disturbance back to 30 or 40 feet from the lake. That’s disturbance limit. We’re not building within the setback. So there are a number of trees there. We’re proposing not to disturb any of that area down there. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that’s not the issue. The issue is is that, if you look at the Code, it says you’re not supposed to cut any more, you’re not supposed to cut any trees within 35 feet of the lake. MR. ARAKELIAN-We’re not cutting any trees. MR. SEGULJIC-I realize that, but one of the things we’re trying to do is return the buffer. We’re just looking for some plantings along the lake that will help treat stormwater before it flows into the lake. MR. ARAKELIAN-Have you been up to the property yet to see it and what it looks like? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. MR. ARAKELIAN-I mean, we are told that the lawn is one of the best filtration plans, and the lawn is below the sea level, the seawall. So, I mean, I just think that. MR. SEGULJIC-One of the best things is to have a buffer along the lake. It helps better absorb the stormwater and treats the stormwater before it gets into the lake. We’ve been working with a number of projects to achieve that. 41 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MRS. STEFFAN-But if they have a seawall, it just seems reasonable that, why would we want to disturb something that’s working fine? MR. SEGULJIC-They would plant it, it would be on the house side of the seawall. It’s something we’ve asked a number of other projects to do. MRS. STEFFAN-I know, but in those situations they were disturbing right next to the shoreline. In this situation, there’s no disturbance. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. We’ve had this before, and I’ve done it on projects that we’ve been, we’ve been here because we were working within 50 feet of the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-No. What is the purpose of the buffer? MRS. STEFFAN-To provide a buffer between the development and the lake so that no siltation or, you know, that anything leaches in. MR. HUTCHINS-That’s to treat the stormwater. MRS. STEFFAN-But if this is going to be untouched, then I think that that’s exactly what we’re looking for, to leave it alone. They’ve got some big trees that are already there. They’ve got a seawall. MR. SEGULJIC-All we’re looking is for a 15 foot strip of plantings along the shoreline, like we’ve done with a number of other projects. MRS. STEFFAN-No, but I don’t see, you know, digging something up that you don’t have to, you know, that isn’t going to be touched. MR. SEGULJIC-We’ve requested it on another, I can name a number of other projects where we’ve requested, where they weren’t disturbing that area, and they’ve agreed to do it. MRS. STEFFAN-I know, I’m just expressing my opinion. I don’t think it’s a good idea. MR. FORD-Behind the seawall? MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, the house side of the seawall. MR. HUNSINGER-I mean, I just, I don’t know, I kind of agree with Gretchen. You’ve got to look at every project on its own, it’s own specific issues and concerns. MR. SEGULJIC-And they’re going to have, and soon they’re going to have geese problems, because they have this big wide open area of grass. That’s why we have geese problems on the lake, that’s one of the reasons. MRS. STEFFAN-And this parcel, they have over three and a half acres on this particular parcel. MR. SEGULJIC-I don’t think it’s that big a deal, if they’ve indicated they want to do landscaping. MR. TRAVER-Well, they haven’t submitted their landscaping plan yet. So perhaps they could, as they look at that, consider some kind of planting down there, even if it’s something less than 15 feet. Anything in addition to what’s there now would be helpful. So maybe we could just give them that guidance and see what you can creatively come up with. MRS. STEFFAN-But they mentioned they would like a waiver from landscaping. They would like to take care of it after. It’s up to the Board, I don’t know how everybody else feels about it. I’m okay with letting them landscape it on their own. I mean, they have a large piece of property. They want to wait until it’s done, and it’s professionally landscaped. I have issues with the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-And you know what professional means. MR. HUNSINGER-Ninety-two and a half percent of the property is permeable. I mean, that’s not to say that seven and a half percent couldn’t do a lot of damage, but in this case I just don’t see it. 42 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-Well, we’re attempting to return the buffer around the lake. We’re doing what we can. The buffer helps treat the stormwater before it enters the lake. It helps control the geese population. It helps filter the stormwater. It adds to the beautification of the property. MRS. STEFFAN-But I still, I don’t think we should request an applicant to dig something up that has not been disturbed. MR. SEGULJIC-They’re disturbing over 14,000 square feet already. MRS. STEFFAN-But set 100 feet back from the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-How does everyone else feel about that? MR. TRAVER-Well, I have to agree, buffer is better than no buffer. MR. HUNSINGER-Tanya? MRS. BRUNO-I’m not sure yet. I’m trying to find something. MRS. STEFFAN-Are the shrubs that you’ve noted on this plan already there? I mean, obviously the trees are already there, but that shrubs, I’m assuming, right before the 210 foot contour there. MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes. Correct. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. MR. ARAKELIAN-Those are existing. We want to preserve those as much as we possibly can. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-Could I ask what the rationale is for requesting the landscaped waiver? MR. ARAKELIAN-Well, like I said, my mother has the golden touch, we consider, with that, but she needs to see the project and see how it goes and see where things, certain, you know, natural vegetation fits after the project is done. I think if you’ve been up to the property and look at their house, which is right next door, she’s done a very nice job by doing it that way, and they wouldn’t let us do anything less by being next door to them. MRS. BRUNO-I, unfortunately, wasn’t able to make it on the site visits on Saturday. The landscaping that you do have, does your mom intend to incorporate some of the more native species, or are they more of the cultured type nursery stock? MR. ARAKELIAN-A lot of bushes and some different grasses and things like that, low type bushes. Mom, you know the names of them, I don’t. BARBARA ARAKELIAN MRS. ARAKELIAN-I depend on the landscaper for a lot of this information, but I probably do use more of the, it’s not a natural, wild kind of look. The property just doesn’t lend itself to that, but we do have parts of the property that are treed and weeds and bushes and things like that for the wildlife, because I love the birds and everything like that, but around the houses, I just use regular shrubbery and flowers, kind of bushes and that type of thing. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. MR. SEGULJIC-Well, it’s something we’ve asked on a number of other projects, and it’s something that various, for lack of a better term, water quality experts have said it’s a good thing to do. MRS. BRUNO-Tom, do you remember what the other projects are? Because, I, like you, am concerned about the continuity and the precedents. I’m just reading some of the regulations and, you know, we try to keep the disturbance 35 feet away from the water as it is, which these folks are doing. 43 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. ARAKELIAN-And this is really a pretty flat piece of land, I mean, for the most part. I mean, you know, I mean, we’re very blessed in that sense that we’re not on the hill, and it really is flat. I mean, there’s not a lot of water running on this piece of property towards the lake, I don’t feel. I’m not an expert. MR. TRAVER-That is quite a stream that you have there. MR. HUTCHINS-That is quite a stream. MR. ARAKELIAN-That’s a neat stream, isn’t it? Yes, we love it. MR. TRAVER-We were over there Saturday, it was really going. MR. ARAKELIAN-It’s pretty, isn’t it? Yes, with the runoff, with the melting snow and everything, yes. MR. TRAVER-And the rain. MRS. STEFFAN-Is that tennis court clay? MR. ARAKELIAN-Clay. It’s, what, pervious. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, we do have a public hearing scheduled. Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to address the Board on this application? I will open the public hearing. If you could identify yourself for the record. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED BARBARA ARAKELIAN MRS. ARAKELIAN-Hi. My name is Barbara Arakelian, and I just wanted to say that, you know, we’ve had this piece of property for like 36 years, and my husband bought it because we were afraid somebody else would buy this hotel and put a gin mill in next to us or something, you know, and we didn’t want that for our kids. So anyway we bought that hotel and we put our heart and soul and money into it and then four years later is burned down, and, you know, with it our dreams for it went, too, but we really, we could have built another one and everything, but we decided to keep it as it was, and we’ve really, you know, put a lot of money into keeping the big dock area, because the memories of people coming up and landing by boat and going to the hotel and everything and like even these two little cottages, you know, it’s like hard to say goodbye to them, you know, but the kids really want a better home. This was just a little two bedroom suite for the hotel that we used to rent out, and so we really have done, I think we’ve been good stewards of this property for the last 36 years, and, you know, we want it to be there for our children and our grandchildren, which we’re going to have four this summer, and we all want them to be there for as long as they can afford to be there. So we would do everything in our power to, you know, keep the lake clean and pristine as it is because we all, our whole family love Lake George. So I just, you know, I’m just hoping that, you know, you’ll give Lois and David, they’ve been working so hard on this for, you know, the last couple of years, I feel sorry for them, but I hope you’ll let them build something, and it will be, I promise you, it will a good design and we’ll do nice landscaping around it and we’ll do everything we can to protect the lake. Thank you very much. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-I will close the public hearing, then, if there’s no other commentors. Any written comments, George? PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. SEGULJIC-Correct me if I’m wrong, Tom, but I believe it’s about a 10% slope down to the lake, within 100 feet of it. MR. HUTCHINS-What is it over 100 feet, 10 feet and 100 feet? Yes. It’s about a 10% slope. 44 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-It’s about a 10% slope. That’s, I’m not going to say significant, but that’s pretty good. Compared to the other part of the lake, no, it’s flat compared to the rest of the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-Compared to, I mean, 10% if you’re walking it on a. It is 10%. MR. SEGULJIC-But it is 10%. MR. HUTCHINS-We’re taking all of our stormwater from the pervious areas back away from the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-But what we’re looking to do is the rest of the site. MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes, but the rest of the site isn’t 10 feet, I mean, 10%, is it? From the bushes to the lake? From here to there? MR. HUTCHINS-Yes, it’s darn near, 10, it’s 10 feet, from this bush on this site, it’s 10 feet. MR. ARAKELIAN-I mean, from there to there, which is the 50 foot mark, I mean, it’s got to be nothing, I mean, it’s flat. MR. HUTCHINS-There’s five feet and there’s 10 feet, yes. You’re right, Tom, it gently slopes toward the lake. MR. SEGULJIC-That means all the stormwater from this whole site goes into the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, from the high point, which is about, if you run across, where the house is being built is about on the high point of the land, okay. So where the bushes are, the rest of it runs back towards, from the bushes, runs back toward the tennis court. MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes, well, that’s pretty flat on top, too. MR. HUTCHINS-Flat on top, yes, there’s a high point, and then it slopes back down towards the tennis court and the stream. So it doesn’t all run down toward the lake. MR. FORD-To try to get, I’m trying to get some resolution on this so we can move on. What would be your objection to a 15 foot buffer strip back of that seawall, that your resident landscaper could utilize the recommended plants and so forth and accomplish that? MR. ARAKELIAN-Well, I think it would ruin the look that we’ve kept when the hotel was there, and we’ve kept for the 35 years, 37 years. That’s not what it has been, and we don’t feel what it should be. I mean, that’s, it could completely destroy and put a different look on what’s there now, what’s been there for all that, in fact, longer than 35 years. It’s 35 years since we’ve owned it. I mean, I’m sure it was probably, you know, another 30 years before then, maybe 50 years before then. The hotel was over 100 years old. I’ve got pictures from I think, what, Stoddard, maybe, back in 1870 that the hotel is there and there was a lawn in front of the hotel, as there is now. MR. SEGULJIC-What are you interpreting a buffer to mean? MR. ARAKELIAN-What am I interpreting a buffer to mean? You said a 15 foot, that’s almost two and a half of me, wide, piece of land, that there wouldn’t be grass there, that would become some kind of mounding and some kind of vegetation there. MR. SEGULJIC-Not mounded, just vegetation, various, beautiful flowers, that your mother could design for you, using native vegetation. MR. TRAVER-It also might be helpful to remember that it does not need to be 15 feet high. It’s not, it’s intent is ecological, not for aesthetic. Purposes. So this does not have to be something that blocks the view of the lake from the house or the house from the lake. MR. HUTCHINS-Are you talking about the width of the? MR. HUNSINGER-How much lake frontage do you have? MR. ARAKELIAN-That is. 45 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-I think it’s 450 feet. MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-It says 450 feet along shore. MRS. BRUNO-Did you say that the retaining wall is actually higher than the grass? MR. HUTCHINS-It’s a concrete wall. It’s above the grass. MR. ARAKELIAN-It’s a concrete wall above the grass, a couple of inches. MRS. BRUNO-Well, we consider the lakeside the front side, where you have the stone patio. Do you intend to have that further off of that, I’m sorry, it’s getting late, no further patio? MR. ARAKELIAN-No, nothing else, the grass. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Thank you. MR. ARKAELIAN-Yes, that’s going to all be grass. There might be a foot of maybe gravel around there type of a deal, but no stone patio or anything, yes. MRS. BRUNO-I guess I was asking because, you know, anyone can think of landscaping as different things, and if you were to then go in and hire someone and have, you know, what we call hard surfacing within 100 feet, then you’re there, you’d actually need to come back in front of us. MR. ARAKELIAN-No. Correct, no, not at all, no. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-I’m just not sold on disturbing a perfectly maintained area, if the description that Tom Hutchins had put on the plans, that some mature, the site is primarily covered, well established, maintained turf, several mature trees located within 50 feet of the shore of Lake George, none of these would be affected by the project. I’m still, you know, for those times when that area is being disturbed, it makes absolute sense to me to put in, you know, buffer plantings, rain gardens, whatever they happen to be. I don’t think digging it up is adding value. MRS. BRUNO-Let me ask this, again, since I didn’t see the property. You mentioned the stream on that. Is there any sheet flow or anything going down towards the stream from any portion of the yard where it may have infiltrated less through, you know, the lawn or. MR. HUTCHINS-The area toward the stream? Well, from the high point, it generally slopes back toward the stream. It’s all grassed, and it is dense Kentucky bluegrass. The runoff curve would be low for grassed, okay. It’s extremely dense bluegrass. It does slope back toward the stream from the high point. I guess, the stream is low. Okay. The stream is low right through the property. So, yes, the entire remainder of the property probably ultimately drains to that stream which ultimately drains to Lake George. MRS. BRUNO-Right. Well, that was kind of my thought, that, you know, when we were looking wetlands and that type of thing, if we’re trying to mitigate something, if in lieu of having the buffer, if there’s another part of the yard that, you know, might be going into the stream that is not of decent quality, you know, if it’s coming off the road or anything, (lost word) mitigation there. I wish I had seen it now. MR. HUTCHINS-Yes. It’s unfortunate that you haven’t seen it, because it is an unbelievable property. MRS. BRUNO-Chris, you were just saying something about the tennis court. Something like that could be done on the west side of that. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, that’s what I was just saying. I mean, personally I’d be more concerned about runoff from the tennis court into the stream than from the lawn into the lake, or from the house into the lake. 46 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MRS. BRUNO-That was the kind of thing I was wondering if there was any runoff. MR. ARAKELIAN-Around the tennis court we have probably a 36 inch gravel base around there to catch it. Absolutely, and this whole driveway is all gravel, too. It’s a gravel driveway. So I believe any water that comes down from this high point here is not going, you know, it’s not going. MR. TRAVER-If I could ask, if we could get back to the buffer again, for a moment. Right now, essentially there is none. There’s the retaining wall. There’s no buffer. That’s not unlike many other properties around the lake. Our goal, to protect the lake, and I think your mom spoke eloquently about the future generations of the lake, and that’s really what we’re talking about, and I would just say there’s nothing there now, and I can certainly understand your reluctance to make changes in what’s been there for so long. I hope you can understand our goal is to have a 15 foot buffer, and I guess I would ask you, is there, would you consider a compromise of somehow, so that we could both come out of this with some buffering to add some additional protection to the lake, and yet not have perhaps what you envision as a huge change from what’s there now? MR. HUTCHINS-How much width of the property are you envisioning? MR. ARAKELIAN-I mean, if you’re saying in front of where our house is being built, 50 feet down in front, I guess so, but to do the whole shoreline, I don’t know if I could even afford to do that. To me it just doesn’t make sense. MR. HUTCHINS-That’s a big disturbance in itself. MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes, that’s huge. I mean, if you want something right in front of our house where we’re building our house where there’s nothing, I guess we could maybe consider that. MR. TRAVER-That’s where the largest amount of activity is basically going to be, and there’s nothing there now. So, again, I’m just saying whatever you can do to try to accommodate our goal of trying to add some protection, in the long term interest of all of us who are here, both on the Planning Board and you as a resident, on the shoreline of the lake, there’s nothing there now. We would like to have 15 feet, but if we can have anything over zero, we’re all going to be better off. MR. HUTCHINS-There are a number, I mean, there are a number of large trees in the area right in front of the house, and how big are those? MR. ARAKELIAN-They’re 80, 90 year old trees. They’re huge. MR. HUTCHINS-Okay. Obviously we don’t want to do anything that’s going to disturb them in the structure. MR. SEGULJIC-How does this sound? Could you talk to the LGA or one of the other, Lake George Fund, Lake George Water Keeper, speak to them, see what they have to say? MR. ARAKELIAN-I’m surprised Chris isn’t here. He left. MR. HUNSINGER-To me that shows me that he’s not concerned. MR. ARAKELIAN-Yes. That’s kind of what I thought. MR. HUNSINGER-Because if he had any concerns, he would have stayed. MR. ARAKELIAN-He would have stayed here. He knew it was on the list. He knows the property. He’s been by it before. I’ve talked to him. I mean, so, I was surprised when he did leave. Maybe he didn’t have any comment. MR. TRAVER-You said you were surprised that he didn’t have any comment. MR. ARAKELIAN-Well, Chris has an issue with a lot of things that are around the lake. He usually has a comment for everything, no matter whether it, you know, and so that’s why, I mean, he had no comments at all. So I was like, good. MR. TRAVER-That’s his job. 47 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-I like to think it’s because he knows we’ll, like other towns, Queensbury will stand up for the lake. MR. ARAKELIAN-He always likes to make sure, though, I think. MR. HUTCHINS-I think an argument could be made, a very strong argument could be made, in this particular situation, that, particularly in a relatively short term, going in and installing a, and cutting out for a buffer strip is going to do more harm than good. MRS. STEFFAN-I think so, too. MR. HUNSINGER-I do, too. I guess I wanted to step back for a second, though. We seem to be stuck. MR. HUTCHINS-Based on having seen the application, having seen this. MR. HUNSINGER-I guess what I would just like to do is put up for the Board’s consideration the waiver request on lighting and landscaping, yes or no. Mr. Seguljic, I think I know where you stand. MR. SEGULJIC-I would grant it for the lighting, but not the landscaping. MR. HUNSINGER-Mr. Ford? MR. FORD-I understand what our goal is and has been. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, or no, please. Let’s move this along. MR. FORD-Grant it. MR. HUNSINGER-Steve? MR. TRAVER-I would like to see some buffering, if only a compromise between our goals and. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, they’ve requested a waiver on landscaping, yes or no, are you willing to grant it or no? MR. TRAVER-No. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Tanya? MRS. BRUNO-I think not. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. It looks like we’re going to table your application for a landscaping plan. I did close the public hearing. Would anyone like to suggest a meeting a date? MR. SEGULJIC-Well, and also a consideration for a review of the 100 feet or 200 feet. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I mean that’s a Building Department issue. It’s either yes or no, you know. I mean, if they say no, then the applicant’s going to have to come back with a different Site Plan. MR. HUTCHINS-Well, if they say no, this parcel’s unbuildable. MR. HUNSINGER-Is there anything other than landscaping that we want the applicant to address? MRS. STEFFAN-Well, the VISION Engineering comments, just to get a signoff, but most of those things have been done. MR. HUTCHINS-And on that, I’ll address them and re-submit. Sometimes it’s hard to actually get a signoff. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Yes. MR. HUTCHINS-Within a timeline. 48 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-I guess I would recommend, there is a pamphlet that the Lake George Association publishes, that shows sample buffer areas and sample native vegetation that is available at local nurseries. I think that would probably be the best place to look, in terms of the requested landscaping. Notice I didn’t say buffering, because that’s not, we haven’t said that specifically, but landscaping. MR. HUTCHINS-So the landscaping, what’s required as part of the Site Plan is the landscape plan. That’s why we’re being tabled? MR. HUNSINGER-That’s right. You’re being tabled for a landscaping plan. MR. HUTCHINS-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-You’ve heard the concerns of the Board, and I’m sure you’ll take that into consideration when you come back with your landscaping plan. MRS. BRUNO-I would like to make a statement, even given the time. I feel that it’s really necessary, just in terms of how we’ve been trying to run things very consistently so that things are consistent. I, like Gretchen, really, I don’t think I’m sold on digging up that area. I know other folks on the Board have, and you can weigh all of this when you go home. I would just like to see, you know, maybe for you to get together with your landscape designer and see something put out there, because, you know, I think it is a very important tool for us to have on hand. MRS. STEFFAN-I think, as far as the waiver for lighting, I don’t have a problem granting the waiver for lighting, but one of the things that I would just like to put in the motion is I would grant a waiver for lighting, but I just want all lighting to be downcast. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, no flood lighting. MR. HUTCHIN-Exterior lighting to be shielded downcast. MRS. STEFFAN-One of the things that often happens is driveway lights are installed, and sometimes they’re installed up and not down, or they’re installed sideways and not down. MR. ARAKELIAN-We don’t have driveway lights. We won’t do it. MR. FORD-You might want to consider a nice floodlight down on your new buffer zone. MR. HUNSINGER-It’ll help it grow. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 5-2008 DAVID & LOIS ARAKELIAN, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: th We would like to table that to the May 20 meeting, which will have an application th deadline of April 15, and we will table this so that the applicant and their agent can: 1) revise the Floor Area Ratio calculations, 2) address the VISION Engineering comments, 3) address the Staff Notes, 4) provide a landscaping plan. 5) Put a notation on their plans so that all lighting will be downcast. th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MR. HUTCHINS-Thank you. 49 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) SITE PLAN NO. 7-2008 FRESHWATER WETLANDS 4-08 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED K TWIN HOLDINGS AGENT(S) RICHARD E. JONES ASSOCIATES OWNER(S) K TWIN THREE, LLC ZONING HC-INT LOCATION WEST SIDE MEADOWBROOK RD., NORTH OF QUAKER RD. INTERSECTION SITE PLAN: APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF AN OFFICE BUILDING WITH ASSOCIATED SITE WORK. OFFICE BUILDINGS IN THE HC-INT. ZONE REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. FRESHWATER WETLANDS: APPLICANT PROPOSES DISTURBANCE, FILLING AND CONSTRUCTION WITHIN 100 FEET OF A DEC DESIGNATED WETLAND. CONSTRUCTION WITHIN 100 FEET OF ANY REGULATED WETLAND REQUIRES A FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT FROM THE PLANNING BOARD. THE PLANNING BOARD MAY REQUEST LEAD AGENCY STATUS FOR PURPOSES OF SEQR REVIEW. CROSS REFERENCE AV -08 WARREN CO. PLANNING 2/12/08 APA/CEA/DEC DEC; GF-19 LOT SIZE 0.22 ACRES; 0.43 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 296.20-1-9, 10 SECTION 179-4 RICHARD JONES, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-George, if you could summarize Staff Notes, please. MR. HILTON-Yes. I’ll just try to quickly touch on some things here. The application is before you for Site Plan Review and the Freshwater Wetlands Permit. The Zoning Board, there is an associated Area Variance along with this application, and the Zoning Board has asked for a recommendation from the Planning Board on wetlands stormwater impacts, as well as any impacts from the retaining wall. The Zoning Board has also asked for a coordinate SEQRA review, and as I mentioned, if the Board wishes to do that this evening, this Board should seek Lead Agency Status and ultimately table the application. As far as the specific items of the application, I’ve talked about a line shown on the plan labeled as line of clearing. It’s, to me, unclear whether that’s proposed clearing limits, and if so, it doesn’t appear to match what some of the proposed construction. The retaining wall, it does appear to be in one area right on the wetland, and I guess the question is will there be any disturbance to the wetland as part of the construction. I’ve mentioned snow removal, storage and removal. I’ve also asked the question, has the application submitted a Freshwater Wetland application to the New York State DEC, and if so, a copy should be provided. The lighting plan, as I’ve mentioned, shows some spill onto Meadowbrook Road, and the freestanding poles do not appear to be cut off fixtures as called for by Code. Sight distance, I’ve posed the question, what is the sight distance onto Meadowbrook Road from this site. You certainly want to have a safe ingress/egress and safe travel for people on Meadowbrook Road. As I mentioned, the proposed building appears to be residential in design. The landscaping plan, in my opinion, doesn’t appear to contain the amount of exterior and street landscaping as required by Code. Ultimately, however, I think the goal is to have additional street landscaping that would provide, in the form of screening vegetation and street trees along Meadowbrook, in order to enhance the street scape and to provide a visual buffer. We also have some VISION Engineering comments in regard to this application, and that’s all I have at this time. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Good evening. MR. JONES-Good evening. For the record, Richard Jones, architect for the project. With me is Dan Krueger from K Twin Holdings. Basically, we’re proposing to construct a small office building on a parcel of property on Meadowbrook Road. We just received the comment package from the Town yesterday. So we really haven’t had an opportunity to respond to these yet, and it would be our intent to totally respond to each one of the comments and questions. Briefly, in looking at some of the Staff comments, the reason that there are not street trees along Meadowbrook Road is because of the depth to bedrock along Meadowbrook Road. We do not have enough depth in that area for root structure of street trees. So I guess we would need to do a request for something to relieve us of that requirement. In reference to the property itself, the clearing limits, as shown on the property, right now the dotted line that you see on our drawing SP-1, along Meadowbrook Road, is the approximate tree line for that property. The dotted line along the back, adjacent to the delineated wetlands is, again, the backside of that treed area. Basically we are proposing to clear all of the trees from Meadowbrook to the edge of the wetlands area, and if you look to the left hand border of the property, which would be north toward the Town of Queensbury, you’ll see the existing tree line is just that little finger that’s going to be left. Basically, the retaining wall that we’re proposing would be a wood structure, non-treated, and it would be engineered for the height in the application that we’re looking at. In reference to the area in the back corner, where George had indicated that we are adjacent to the wetlands, we are indicating that we are right on the edge of the flagged wetlands. If we needed to pull that 50 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) forward to minimize or completely disregard or basically to minimize the disruption to the wetlands, we could certainly do that. We know that the property is very small. We have tried to provide a building which would allow for two tenant spaces, one of which would be occupied by ARMA, which is a property maintenance company which Dan is a partner in. We know that any snow on the site would have to be removed and he certainly has the ability and the equipment to be able to do that because he maintains properties and he would be doing this as well. With regard to lighting on the site, the fixtures that we have indicated are a cut off fixture, and if you look at the cut that was submitted, you will see that the cut off is indicated on that. We do have a dark area along the walk on the front side of the building, and we’re trying to decide whether we will provide a small bollard along the walk, but because of the bedrock, we’re concerned about being able to anchor something for a foundation in there, or we will go into doing something in soffit lighting along the front of the building, and try to highlight the front of the building which faces Meadowbrook. With regard to the comments from the Town Engineer, the review engineer, test pits were dug on the property last Fall, I believe. MR. FORD-By whom? MR. JONES-They were dug by ARMA, they dug them, and our civil engineer was on site during that. We have not indicated the logs. They have to be added to the drawings, the locations of the test pits and the logs as well. We have that information but it has not been put on the drawings yet. So that would be provided. MR. FORD-The depth of those pits. DAN KRUEGER MR. KRUEGER-Four to six feet. MR. JONES-Yes. Basically they were dug on the, what would be the north side toward the retention area that we’re proposing, toward the Town of Queensbury site. It is our intent to also dig some additional test pits through the center of the site from the rock outcroppings that you see along the Meadowbrook side of the property, back toward the wetlands into the retaining wall area that we’re looking at. The parcel itself is a very difficult parcel to build on because of the front yard setback for the building, which we cannot comply with, the 100 foot setback to the wetlands, which we cannot comply with. When you take all those into account, there’s a very, I don’t even think there’s a strip in the middle that we can build on. It’s technically impossible to build without a variance of some type, whether it be from the wetlands or from the front yard setback. In reference to green area, we more than comply with the requirements in that regard. I know at the hearing for the first meeting at the Zoning Board, several of the members of the public were speaking in reference to massive runoff that they have to the north of this property, and, as you go north from this property, the next parcel is the Town of Queensbury site, which is for the Water Department. The next one is the storage buildings, which are built right over the top of the wetlands, and I don’t know when there were built or how they were allowed to build in that style, but they did, and in essence, they have paved and built buildings over the top of the wetlands in that area. To channel the wetlands from our property north, there’s actually a three foot culvert that runs under that property and spills out on the north side of that property, and the owner of the property to the north of that was indicating that the flow out of the culvert in the Springtime was tremendous. It was just a full culvert of water, and I’m sure that they have restricted the flow from our position and along the Quaker Road side along the, what would be the north side of Quaker Road, and basically they have one culvert that runs under that entire thing. MR. FORD-How do you say they have restricted that runoff? MR. JONES-Well, basically they have one three foot diameter culvert under that entire area, and we’re dealing with a wetlands area that’s approximately anywhere from 10 to 20 feet wide on the back side of our property, and that’s just on our property. It also goes onto the property which is to the west of us, which is Midas Muffler. Midas Mufflers’ building is built in the wetlands as well. So basically everybody around this property is restricting the flow to the north, and now everything is being funneled through one culvert under that one developed area. So, I don’t think it’s this property that’s creating the problem to the north. I think it’s the development to the north of this property that’s creating the problem, and it’s our intent to try and mitigate our drainage problems on our own site, and that’s what our intent is through the design that we’ve come up with and the calculations that have been included with the. MR. FORD-For the record, the height of your retaining wall proposed is? 51 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. JONES-It ranges from approximately 12 inches along the Meadowbrook side to approximately six feet in height on the back corner, and the property itself slopes about six feet from Meadowbrook to the back side along the wetlands, and I know that the Town Engineer had a comment in reference to the flagging. The flagging is clearly delineated on Drawing SP-1 as well as the survey that was submitted as part of the submittal packet. That was flagged by DEC last year, and we had Van Dusen and Steves come back in and indicate the flagging, both on the survey, which was used for the layout drawings. MRS. STEFFAN-How long have the folks own this property? MR. KRUEGER-A year and a half, two. MR. HUNSINGER-You understand that the Zoning Board has requested a coordinated SEQRA review? MR. JONES-Yes, we understand that. MR. HUNSINGER-So the most that we will do this evening is accept Lead Agency Status and then table the application. MR. JONES-Yes, I didn’t think you’d give us an approval tonight. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay, just to make sure. Part of it was for the Board’s benefit as well. MRS. STEFFAN-When you folks bought the property, did you know that there was restrictions by, you know, that there were wetlands and issues with the property? MR. JONES-Yes. They realized that there were wetlands there, but if you look at the Town of Queensbury maps that are on the website which indicate the wetlands, the property in the far upper corner, next to the storage building, that’s the only corner that’s indicated in the wetlands. So it’s not. MR. FORD-But if you walk the property, as I’m sure you did. MR. KRUEGER-Yes. The property, when you’re looking at it, is built up, and basically fill has been pushed up into it. So they’ve effectively made the wetlands a culverted area. As Mr. Jones was saying, before all that was wetlands to the left, and now it’s no longer, and what is left is this stream that’s considered. MR. JONES-It’s all channeled along the back property line now. MR. KRUEGER-So if anything, this property was the only property that wasn’t wetlands prior, but when we had it reflagged by DEC, then it was moved in, but still the variance is required, yes. MR. TRAVER-It certainly is a difficult piece of property to imagine building on. When we looked at it on the weekend, it was, wow, you know, it drops off on the back and then you’ve got the bedrock sticking right out of the ground in the front. MRS. STEFFAN-Plus it’s very hard to see with the snow. MR. JONES-Yes, there you go. MRS. BRUNO-Now you have a property management company, and I see your garage there. Will you be having larger, are you bringing vehicles in to fix, plows, that type of thing, that is part of your company? MR. KRUEGER-Any of the garage space would be mostly used as a shop area for just general repair of furniture and things of that nature, not so much vehicles. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have a comment, George? MR. HILTON-I will in a moment. Yes, I mean, this data is provided by New York State DOT. So we have no control over the accuracy of the data, but we certainly let everyone know, if there appears to be wetlands in the area or in the vicinity, to go get a delineation and, you know, seek out the advice or the direction of DEC as well. 52 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. SEGULJIC-So just to clarify, the Zoning Board was looking at this and had asked us to take, seek Lead Agency? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. They want to do coordinated review. MR. SEGULJIC-Coordinated review. MR. HUNSINGER-So what we would do this evening is seek Lead Agency status. We would then notify any of the affected parties. They have 30 days to say whether or not they’re okay with us being the Lead Agent, and then they would come back here. Presuming no one else wants to be Lead Agent, we would be Lead Agent and it would come back and then we’d start the Site Plan Review process. MR. SEGULJIC-For the wetlands and the Site Plan. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. SEGULJIC-And then it would go back to the Zoning Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. HILTON-Well, just to maybe clarify it a little bit more. Assuming that this Board seeks Lead Agency status this evening, a 30 day time clock starts. Assuming everybody, all the involved agencies sign off, at that point this Board, as Lead Agent, would conduct the SEQRA review, prior to any Site Plan Review, prior to any variance review by the Zoning Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. HILTON-Once the SEQRA review is conducted by this Board, it would then go back to the Zoning Board of Appeals for review of the variance, and then, potentially and ultimately back to this Board again for Site Plan Review. MR. HUNSINGER-Ping pong ball. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. So I guess right now we’re just going to seek Lead Agency. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. I mean, the one question I do have is we do have a public hearing scheduled this evening, and I assume you’re here to comment or? AUDIENCE MEMBER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Do we typically open the public hearing at this point? MR. HILTON-I would. I mean, I think we have in the past. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. HILTON-Whether you choose to do what you did earlier or let the public speak. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, I think there’s just one person. So we might as well. Yes. We’ll open the public hearing, and we did see your comments when you appeared before the Zoning Board. We did get the Zoning Board minutes. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED JOHN ENGELBRECHT MR. ENGELBRECHT-My name is John Engelbrecht. I live at 113 Meadowbrook Road. I’m not so much opposed to them building something on that property. My concern is is because I brought these photos before, my concern is that there’s a culvert that goes underneath Meadowbrook Road, which is part of that wetland part, and it’s woefully small, and that’s what causes this, and from what I understand, years ago, when the house was built, it was a 15 acre celery farm, from what I understand. It’s almost become 15 acres of worth of asphalt now with all the different car dealerships there. I don’t know if this is going to add too much more to it, but it would be wonderful if they could do something with that culvert, so we don’t have to have a back and a front yard that looks like that. 53 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-So the back up is caused because the culvert underneath Meadowbrook Road is too small? MR. ENGELBRECHT-Yes. Well, what happens, the culvert fills up, yes, the culvert gets totally flooded and it works up onto the road itself and it’s just, it’s not big enough. So when we have these excessive rains that happen occasionally, that’s what happens. So his, what he’s wanting to do is going to probably add to that, unless we can do something with that culvert. Because every time it rains, this is what we have. MRS. STEFFAN-Is this the culvert that was blocked two years ago or is that down farther? Actually, I think that’s near the Hoffman Carwash. I think that’s different. MR. ENGELBRECHT-Yes, but this is when it goes underneath Meadowbrook Road. MR. TRAVER-Are you the gentleman from the Zoning Board minutes who was talking about the foundation of your house was actually in the water? MR. ENGELBRECHT-I made a comment on it, yes. MR. TRAVER-Yes. Okay. I read that and I thought that seems hard to believe, but looking at your pictures, I can see. MR. ENGELBRECHT-Yes. It’s a crawl space in there now, and that’s, of course the crawl space gets flooded in there, and so it’s not the best conditions, but there again, that culvert is just, I guess they changed it a number of years ago, that culvert. They did something to it, but it’s not big enough, it’s big enough when it doesn’t rain, but when it does, then we’ve got this taking place, and so this will add a little bit to it, but I think if they can do something with that culvert, this shouldn’t be anyway. MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you for coming. MR. ENGELBRECHT-Thank you. MR. HUNSINGER-Written comments? MR. HILTON-Sure, one letter. I’ll try to get through it. It’s from Joseph and Stella Valenti, the owners of the Meadowbrook Mini Storage. It says, “We are very concerned about the prospect of development of the land at the West side of Meadowbrook Road north of Quaker Road Intersection. We have been doing business for 30 years in this area, first at Midas Muffler for 8 years and now Meadowbrook Mini Storage for 22 years. The water situation has always been an issue. We installed a 36” culvert to direct and keep the flow of Halfway Brook within its banks. Before the storage buildings were built and the culvert in place, Bernard Healy’s home (now John Engelbrecht’s) was an island. When heavy rains or spring melt of snow filled the area, his home was completely surrounded with water. After the culvert was installed, it kept the runoff confined to the brook for the most part. Even now with heavy rain and runoff, John Engelbrecht’s backyard floods. From his pictures, you can see he has built a bridge from his home, thru his backyard, over the brook and onto the back of his property by Nemer Ford. Our culvert has helped contain the flow of water so it stays within its banks. As it is now, during heavy rains Mr. Engelbrecht’s backyard is totally underwater. The property under consideration would be clearing the land of its trees and plants that now use the rain and runoff. If the land is cleared, all that extra water would end up in the stream, even though Mr. Jones mentioned running channels toward Quaker Road. That water would eventually flow into Halfway Brook and thru our culvert and into Mr. Engelbrecht’s backyard. Fortunately, our buildings were constructed high enough so that they aren’t affected by high water. But on some very rare occasions the water ran so high and fast that the water came up and over the banks so much that the culvert could barely contain it. Thank you for your consideration of this matter.” MRS. STEFFAN-Do we know, is this area. We had a presentation, two years ago now I think, near the golf course, where Cronin Road runs through. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, that’s further up. MRS. STEFFAN-But this area, there’s a designated floodplain or a floodway, over near the golf course. Is this part of that? 54 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. JONES-We checked the floodplain maps. It’s not in there. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s not on it? MR. JONES-No. MRS. STEFFAN-Although they haven’t been updated in 20 years. MR. SEGULJIC-I hope it’s not in a floodway, right. Let’s hope not. MR. HILTON-It appears to be outside, based on the information I’m showing. It’s a Zone C, which is outside the 100 years floodplain. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Well, we do have a sample resolution in the package to accept Lead Agency status. I’m sorry, to request Lead Agency status. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion. MOTION THAT THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD REQUESTS LEAD AGENCY STATUS FOR SITE PLAN NO. 7-2008, FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT NO. 4-08 K TWIN HOLDINGS AND AREA VARIANCE NO. 5-2008, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: WHEREAS, the Town Planning Board is in receipt of a Site Plan and Freshwater Wetlands application: Site Plan: Applicant proposes construction of an office building with associated site work. Office Buildings in the HC-Int. zone require Planning Board review and approval. Freshwater Wetlands: Applicant proposes disturbance, filling and construction within 100 feet of a DEC designated wetland. Construction within 100 feet of any regulated wetland requires a Freshwater Wetlands Permit from the Planning Board. The Planning Board may request lead agency status for purposes of SEQR review. WHEREAS, the Planning Board of the Town of Queensbury has determined to begin an environmental review process under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), and WHEREAS, the Planning Board of the Town of Queensbury has identified the project to be an Unlisted action for the purposes of SEQRA review pursuant to 6 NYCRR 617, and WHEREAS, the Planning Board is the agency most directly responsible for approving the actions because of its responsibility for approving the land uses for the property, and NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, The Planning Board of the Town of Queensbury hereby indicates its desire to be Lead Agency for SEQRA review of this action and authorizes and directs the Zoning Administrator to notify any other potentially involved agencies of such intent. That Part I of the SEQRA will be sent to the following agencies [as identified in EAF]: TOQ ZBA, NYS DEC MOTION THAT THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD SEEKS LEAD AGENCY STATUS FOR SITE PLAN NO. 7-2007 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT NO. 4- 2008 AREA VARIANCE NO. 5-2008 K TWIN HOLDINGS, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: Duly adopted this 18th day of March 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: None ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MRS. BRUNO-Is that the floodplain, George? MR. HILTON-No. That’s something that’s supposed to indicate the potential presence of Army Corps wetlands, but in fact that darker green is the DEC wetland layer. MRS. BRUNO-Thank you. 55 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-So for purposes of tabling the public hearing, when would this likely come back to the Planning Board? th MR. HILTON-Well, I mean, 30 days from now is, what, April 18. Assuming we hear back from everybody within that timeframe, I guess you could schedule it for the second, well, I don’t know, I mean, we’ve passed the April deadline. I don’t know. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, and the second meeting in April is already full. MR. HILTON-Yes. So, I mean, if you table it to the first May meeting. th MR. HUNSINGER-May 20. Is that too late? MR. HILTON-I don’t know. MRS. STEFFAN-It’s certainly past the 30 days. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. FORD-Table it until the wetland goes dry. MR. HUNSINGER-That’ll be a long time. So for purposes of the public hearing and the Freshwater Wetlands permit, we should have a resolution to table the application to May thth 20, which is our first meeting in May, with a submission deadline of April 15. You have the Staff Notes and the engineering comments. MR. JONES-Yes, we got those yesterday. We’ll respond to those. MR. HUNSINGER-So you can certainly address those. MR. JONES-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-That sounded like a motion, Chris. MR. HUNSINGER-Would someone like to make it, then? MR. FORD-I think you just did. MRS. STEFFAN-I think you already did. MR. HUNSINGER-I think I already did. I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 7-2008 & FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT NO. 4-08 K TWIN HOLDINGS, Introduced by Chris Hunsinger who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Ford: thth Tabled to May 20, our first meeting in May, with a submission deadline of April 15. To address the Staff Notes, and engineering comments. th Duly adopted this 18 day of May, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Ford, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUNSINGER-You’re all set. Thank you. MR. JONES-Thanks. SITE PLAN 30-2002 MODIFICATION SEQR TYPE ADIRONDACK GIRL SCOUT COUNCIL AGENT(S) THE LA GROUP OWNER(S) SAME ZONING SFR-1A LOCATION 213 MEADOWBROOK ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES MODIFICATION OF PRIOR APPROVAL TO SHIFT PROPOSED MITIGATION WETLAND TO THE WEST BY 60 FEET. MODIFICATIONS TO APPROVED PLANS REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. CROSS REFERENCE SP 30-02; NOA 3-07, AV 37-05, AV 47-02, SP 30-02, FW 1-02, UV 12-02, UV 44-92 WARREN CO. PLANNING 56 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) APA/CEA/DEC DEC & NWI WETLANDS LOT SIZE 13.53 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 296.16-1-10 SECTION 179-4-030, 070 JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-I think we can dispense with Staff’s summary. MR. LAPPER-Yes. This is pretty simple, I hope. For the record, Jon Lapper with Dean Long, wetland biologist from the LA Group. As you saw in the application, when they went to do the last part of this project, the creation of the mitigation area, they hit bedrock. So they did soil tests right there on the site and found a suitable location, applied to DEC to modify the approval, and the only issue, which was pointed out by the Town Engineer, is that the DEC letter has a typo. Where it says 2400 square feet, and it should be 2600 square feet of the mitigation area. So we have no problem getting documentation from DEC correcting that, but they have approved the plan. They had the plan in front of them, Dean’s plan, when they approved it, and they referenced that. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I think this was pretty straightforward until we saw the engineering comments. I don’t know if you’ve had an opportunity to review them. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-I don’t know if you’d like to address the comments that the stormwater basins weren’t properly constructed. DEAN LONG nd MR. LONG-Well, again, this is part of, last year on March 22, we had a submittal to the th Town, and that resulted in an April 5 meeting between LA Group, the Town, and th VISION Engineering, which on April 6 we agreed with VISION Engineering to make a modification to the stormwater basin. That modification was constructed last November, to remediate that issue. So that work has been completed, now, and, you know, when I drove by there tonight, on the way here, you know, it has been completed. Hopefully it’s accomplishing what everybody had intended or hoped it would do. It was a modification of putting a riser pipe on the end of the inlet structure that was in a basin right along Meadowbrook Road, and then putting gravel down the basin, and that was the agreed to remedial measure. So, it’s been, you know, completed at this point. So hopefully everybody will agree that that’s what was decided to be done last year, and that it’s working as best it can. MR. LAPPER-You can see the gravel when you drive by. MR. LONG-Yes. MR. LAPPER-It used to be a pretty unattractive hole in the ground. MR. LONG-Yes. MR. HUNSINGER-Any other questions, comments? MR. TRAVER-I just had a question. When we visited the site recently, there were, visible from the bridge, some blooms stretched across the waterway that looked like the kind of thing that would be used like for an oil spill or something, and we were just curious as to what they were there for. MR. LONG-I believe that’s the left over oil bloom for the spill control from the Connors semi-accidental dumping last year, right at Christmas Eve. MR. TRAVER-Okay. MR. LAPPER-That was a vandalism issue. MR. LONG-Yes. MR. TRAVER-Now, to follow up on that, presumably these absorb some of the trace oils that come down the thing. Although, are they going to be removed at some point? Because I would, if they’re retaining this oil, their goal, okay, at some point they’re going to start re-contaminating the area again. So once they’ve served their purposes, let’s get them out of there, and I’m just wondering when that is, and who does it. 57 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. LAPPER-I can talk about that a little bit. The DEC spill remediation group was called in that night when it was discovered, or that morning, and they, DEC hired a contractor, because when something has to happen immediately, they have a list, and they just get a private contractor in. So that is all part of the DEC process for dealing with that. That’s under their regulations. It’s not something that the O’Connor’s control. It’s the contractor working for DEC. MR. TRAVER-So somebody has to call the contractor and say, okay? MR. LAPPER-DEC would have to decide when it’s safe to take that out. MR. TRAVER-Okay. MR. LAPPER-But it’s certainly not a Girl Scout issue. MR. TRAVER-Right. I understand. I was just curious, because we did notice that there. MR. LONG-And part of the reason that the booms are probably still there is of course it happened when the ground was frozen. So they’re expecting probably pockets to pop up, as everything thaws out. That’s why they’re still sitting there. MR. TRAVER-Okay. MR. HUNSINGER-That makes sense. Did you have a comment, George? MR. HILTON-I did. Just as far as the stormwater basin to the west of the parking lot and the one on the east side of the property being constructed as previously approved, I guess ultimately that would go by Bruce Frank in our office, and he would check for compliance and if there were any issues, they would certainly be brought to the attention of the applicant and quite possibly ultimately the Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Thank you. Anything else from the Board? MRS. STEFFAN-So, George, we wouldn’t have to include anything like that in our motion? This would be, the VISION Engineer comment letter would trigger Bruce Frank going over to take a look at those? MR. HILTON-Well, I think he’s going to look at it, Bruce is going to look at it anyway, but if you were, I mean, you could choose to say that the site be developed as previously approved or that the stormwater basins be developed as previously approved. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. MR. FORD-I think that’s good wording, based on the history. MR. HUNSINGER-Anyone see any reason to re-visit SEQRA? MR. FORD-Do you, Chris? MR. HUNSINGER-No. I wanted to bring it up for the record, before we get to the resolution. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So just two conditions. Stormwater basins be developed as previously approved, and there’s a correction on the DEC permit, the 2600 square feet. That’s it. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO APPROVE MODIFICATION TO SITE PLAN NO. 30-2002 ADIRONDACK GIRL SCOUT COUNCIL, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: 1)A site plan application has been made to the Queensbury Planning Board for the following: Applicant proposed modification of prior approval to shift proposed mitigation wetland to the west by 60 feet. Modifications to approved plans require Planning Board review and approval 58 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) 2)A public hearing is not required for a modification and 3)This application is supported with all documentation, public comment and application material in the file of record; and 4)Pursuant to relevant sections of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Code [Chapter 179], the Planning Board has determined that this proposal complies with the requirements as stated in the Zoning Code; and 5)The requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered and if the application is a modification, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered, and the proposed modification[s] do not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts, and, therefore, no further SEQRA review is necessary; and 6)Final approved plans, in compliance with the Site Plan, must be submitted to the Community Development Department before any further review by the Zoning Administrator or Building and Codes personnel. The applicant must meet with Staff after approval and prior to issuance of Building Permit and/or the beginning of any site work. Subsequent issuance of further permits, including building permits is dependent on compliance with this and all other conditions of this resolution. 7)The applicant will provide as-built plans to certify that the site plan is developed according to the approved plans prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and 8)If applicable, Item 7 to be combined with a letter of credit; and N/A 9)The Sanitary Sewer connection plan must be submitted to the Wastewater Department for its review, approval, permitting and inspection; and N/A 10)MOTION TO APPROVE MODIFICATION TO SITE PLAN NO. 30-2002 ADIRONDACK GIRL SCOUT COUNCIL, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Stephen Traver: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. This complies with Paragraph Five, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered, and the proposed modification does not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts and therefore no further SEQRA review is necessary. This modification is approved with two conditions: 1) That the stormwater basins be developed as previously approved, 2) That the applicant will make a correction on the DEC permit for accuracy to make the change from 2400 square feet to 2600 square feet. th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Ford, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Traver, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUNSINGER-Thank you. MR. LONG-Thank you. SITE PLAN NO. 33-2006 SEQR TYPE STEVEN & DEBBIE SEABOYER AGENT(S) NACE ENGINEERING OWNER(S) SAME ZONING WR-1A LOCATION 83 ROCKHURST ROAD APPLICANTS PROPOSE PARTIAL DEMOLITION AND REBUILD OF APPROXIMATELY 2300 SQ. FT. SINGLE FAMILY DWELLING. SITE PLAN REVIEW REQUIRED FOR EXPANSION OF A NONCONFORMING STRUCTURE AND HARD SURFACING [CONTINUATION] WITHIN 50 FEET OF THE SHORELINE. APPLICANT IS REQUESTING THAT THE PLANNING BOARD RE- CONSIDER CONDITION OF 9/26/06 TABLING MOTION RELATIVE TO RECEIVING SEPTIC APPROVAL FROM THE TOWN BOARD OF HEALTH. CROSS REFERENCE SP 61-05 AV 81-05, NOA 6-07 SP 33-06 SEE PB RES. DATED 12/18/07 WARREN 59 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) CO. PLANNING 2/13/08: APA/CEA/DEC APA WETLANDS; LG CEA LOT SIZE 0.20 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 227.13-2-36 SECTION JON LAPPER & TOM CENTER, REPRESENTING APPLICANTS, PRESENT MR. HUNSINGER-Do you want to summarize Staff Notes, George, briefly. MR. HILTON-The applicant is, as indicated in the description, proposing a partial demolition and re-build of a 2300 square foot Single Family dwelling. There have been some discussions previously to the septic system and approval issues and the applicant has obtained a permit from the New York State Department of Health for the proposed system. The Planning Board has agreed to review this without the local Board of Health approval. We’ve mentioned some outstanding engineering issues, an engineering signoff, and a notation that no chemical fertilizers shall be applied to the lawn has not been included on the plan submitted. That’s really all I have at this point. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. Good evening. MR. LAPPER-Good evening. For the record Jon Lapper with Tom Center, Project Engineer, and Steve and Debbie are both here. Let me try and explain, as quickly as I can given the hour. The project is to take the existing house, jack it up in the air and construct a new foundation underneath it. So it’s not, there’ll be interior renovations, but it’s not a reconstruction, except with respect to the foundation that needs a new foundation. So it’s not an expansion of the house. It’s just a renovation of the house, and right now there is a non-compliant septic system, and the site is not long enough to permit 100 foot setback. So when this was before the Town Board originally, the Town Board felt that under the circumstances with this lot, with the undersized setback, that they would like to see an aerobic treatment system, and the Seaboyers agreed to that, but as a result of the aerobic treatment system, under the Town’s septic code, it had to go to the Department of Health because the Department of Health has to approve a non- standard system. So what we needed, instead of requiring variances from the Town Board acting as Board of Health, it required waivers from the Department of Health, and those waivers were granted, and we submitted, we actually got a permit and we submitted that permit to you. MR. FORD-Jon, excuse me, but when you’re referring to that Board of Health, you’re talking about the State? MR. LAPPER-The State Department of Health, right, rather than the Town Board of Health. MR. FORD-As opposed to our Town Board acting as the Board of Health. MR. LAPPER-Yes. Usually the Town Board, acting as the local Board of Health, has jurisdiction, but for this type of system, the aerobic system, it required Department of Health approval and we got Department of Health approval. So there’s been some debate with Planning Staff, in the Staff Notes, as to whether or not, additionally to DOH, Town Board approval is required, and we can have a discussion with that, but the simple answer, from our perspective, is that the Town Code is no more restrictive than the Department of Health Code, so it’s covered, there’s a provision that’s right in Section 136 that says that this type of system has to be approved by DOH, and it was approved by DOH, and we could get into more of a discussion about that if you would like. Beyond that, this is a project that’s taking a site that has no stormwater protection, and a septic system that doesn’t comply, and it’s bringing those into compliance. We had the signoff from C.T. Male originally, and it went to VISION, and VISION, in their letter, said we haven’t seen a stormwater plan, and the reason was because that didn’t get, from the file that didn’t get, we were asked to submit the septic plan, but not the stormwater plan. So the stormwater plan didn’t get transmitted to VISION until we saw their letter, and then Tom talked to Dan and we provided copies, but all of that stuff has been done, and we did have the complete signoff from C.T. Male. Do you want to talk about the engineering? MR. CENTER-Yes. If we can just address the four comments that Mr. Ryan had. Comment Number One was in regards to treating this as a Major stormwater project. The previous submission where we have C.T. Male signoff, was treated as a Major stormwater project. We did do a stormwater design. That was how we included the berms on the front of the property. We are reducing asphalt, hard surface on this site. Currently we’re taking off a driveway to the north side of the house, turning that into a grass lined swale. Detaining, we are actually detaining the 100 year storm on site. 60 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) We’re decreasing the flow currently that goes into the lake. We’re decreasing it less than the existing 100 year flow. So that, I submitted that to Dan. His one change, that one addition that he was looking for in regards to that was permanent stormwater maintenance, which he has asked for on a couple of other projects, and we’ve included that. I included that permanent stormwater maintenance into that stormwater plan to address his comment. The second was in regards to the specific waiver versus variance and the septic system, which we’ll talk about and Jon’s already talked about. The third comment was in regards to erosion and sediment control notes addressing 147-10B, C, and 2, 3, which we have added those notes to Drawing Three, 49-1-10-3. You don’t have that copy. We’ve submitted those for engineering review, along with any other changes, if there were any, but that, those are notes that have been on previously approved projects where you folks were looking for 147-10B and 2C & 3. We’ve added those same type of notes to the erosion control drawing to address that. The fourth comment he had was just in regard to the pump station detail. It was more of a question than any change, did we have one day storage. A part of the Department of Health approval was to ensure that we had one day storage in the pump station, which we do. The house is designed for 220 gallons a day at two bedrooms. We have 235 gallons of storage. So we meet that criteria for a minimum of one day storage in the pump station, in case of power out or any other problems. MR. SEGULJIC-So what it really comes down to is you’re requesting that we lift the condition that you had to get Town? MR. LAPPER-I guess it’s our belief that that’s moot because it’s not the Town Board. It’s the Department of Health that grants it, and that we have it. We actually have that permit. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. So what action are you proposing to take? MR. LAPPER-Site Plan Review, too, because we never got finished with Site Plan Review. MR. SEGULJIC-We tabled. MR. LAPPER-For that condition. So we’d like an acknowledgement that we’re all set with the Department of Health permit, and grant Site Plan Review. MR. HUNSINGER-How does the Zoning Board’s motion play into that? Because they moved to, I’ll just read it, “MOTION TO SUPPORT THE ZONING ADMINISTRATOR’S DETERMINATION THAT THEY DO NEED TO GO TO THE TOWN BOARD REGARDING NOTICE OF APPEAL NO. 6-2007 STEVE SEABOYER”? MR. LAPPER-What ultimately happened was that the Town Attorney intervened, at that point, read all the papers, and said that we should come to the Planning Board, and prevailed on Craig that we should be at the Planning Board. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. LAPPER-So it wasn’t ultimately deemed necessary, even though we appealed it to the Zoning Board. Craig said we can go to the Planning Board. That’s how we got here. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. FORD-As the New York State Department of Health permitted this, did that include specific waivers, or was that a straight permitting process? MR. LAPPER-No, it included specific waivers. Here we have the permit, and the waivers are listed. MR. CENTER-The waivers are listed in the packet that you have that we submitted. The specific waivers were for four items, the absorption system, you know, cannot maintain the 10 feet to the property line. The absorption system cannot maintain the 100 feet to surface water. The proposed aerobic treatment unit cannot maintain the 10 feet separation from the foundation, and I regards to the 50% replacement reserve area, they found that they granted 1, 2, and 3, and under their purview of the Code, that there is not, a specific waiver was not required for Item Four, because it does say in the Code that an additional usable area of 50% shall be set aside for future expansion, or replacement whenever possible. 61 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. FORD-Whenever possible. MR. CENTER-What we have added to the drawing in regards to replacement is how to replace it if it ever does fail, and that, to them, was acceptable for, you know, the 50% reserve area, another form of addressing that. MR. LAPPER-Because it’s the aerobic system, it’s a higher level of treatment than a standard system, and that helps justify the waivers. MR. CENTER-And to give some background on the aerobic treatment, it was something that the Water Keeper, during the sewer variance, requested that we look at and go to. We did the research and actually got a signoff of this system, as it is here, from the Water Keeper, and after the aerobic treatment, it goes to an Eljen system, and we’ve provided 154% more length of Eljen than is required. So it is an overdesigned septic system in all essence, and that’s a lot of the criteria that DOH used was, is it better, and that’s how we got the. MR. LAPPER-In general applicants try to stay away from these systems because they’re more expensive to install and they’re more expensive to maintain, but under the circumstances, the Seaboyers were willing to do this. They have a small lot, and it was a fair tradeoff to put in the more expensive system to get the approval, and here we are. MR. SEGULJIC-So once again, you’re back here for Site Plan approval. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. I have one question, and that’s on your landscaping plan. Maybe, it’s been a long time, so maybe I’m misunderstanding. When you identify the various vegetation, and I look at your table, your notation table, I don’t see them matching up. MR. LAPPER-Let’s make sure that we have that. Could we take a look at yours, Tom? MR. SEGULJIC-Sure. I just don’t see, there’s some of those that aren’t noted on that table. It’s just not consistent. MR. CENTER-Certainly, if you were to make it conditional, I know. MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, I don’t have a problem with it, it’s just got to match up. MR. CENTER-I know that the intent here is to use the Lake George Association and the. MR. SEGULJIC-Right. Everything looks great, it’s just that things don’t match up. That’s all they’ve got to do. STEVEN SEABOYER MR. SEABOYER-At the last time we were before this Board, we were asked to get a planting plan together, landscaping plan together, in a very short period of time, and those things normally take four, five weeks, but we got Gould Landscaping to whip it together in, I don’t know, a week or so, and I’m not too surprised that there’s a discrepancy. I didn’t look at them. We’re going to do what’s right, but it’s going to be the amount of setback that is required. It’s not a problem. MR. SEGULJIC-I have no problem with moving this forward. The only thing we’ve got to do is straighten that out. I think we can just condition that. Does everyone see what I’m talking about? MR. SEABOYER-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-The landscaping plan doesn’t, you know, they have a number of things on the landscaping plan that aren’t identified. MR. SEABOYER-Okay. I would stipulate to that. MR. SEGULJIC-And we could just condition it on that. MR. HUNSINGER-The Staff comment, and I’m not picking on you, and I’ll just read it. Applicant is requesting that the Planning Board reconsider a condition of 9/26/06 tabling 62 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) motion relative to receiving septic approval from the Town Board of Health. I mean, since that was the only reason to table the project, if we remove that condition, than is that your assumption that that would be defacto approval? MR. TRAVER-I think we’d have to have a separate motion to approve, though. MR. HILTON-Well, I guess. MR. TRAVER-Because we never did approve it. MR. LAPPER-That’s right. MR. HUNSINGER-I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page, that’s all. MR. HILTON-Right. Well, I’m not sure if we’re going to be, after what I say. In reading the notes, I’m seeing that there are references to the Town Code, Section 136, which speak to more restrictive local standard, and that the Town Board of Health is the sole jurisdiction over the more restrictive statute, if you will, that’s in our Town Code, and again, resolving, I’ll almost read word for word from the notes, resolving the approval of the proposed septic system remains the jurisdiction of the Queensbury local Board of Health, and it’s our belief that the Planning Board cannot rule on this. So I think we’re looking at it that the Town Board, local Town Board of Health is still required. MR. HUNSINGER-Will still need to approve the septic. Yes. MR. LAPPER-We’ll give you the long version of the answer that I didn’t a few minutes ago, cite you Chapter and Verse. First of all, the sections, there are two sections that we have to talk about. One is in the Town Code and one is in the State Code. Under 136-7, this was in our cover letter, B, alternative systems, as defined in the Waste Treatment Handbook, individual household systems, except fill systems, which are permissible under 136-10 below, may be permitted by application to the New York State Department of Health, and that’s right out of the Town Code, and that’s why we have to go to the State, but what was pointed out in the Staff Notes was the question of whether or not, if the Town has more stringent requirements, then we might also need a variance from the Town, and that was, and the issue about whether it was more restrictive was a question about where you measure the 100 feet from, and, with reference to the 100 foot minimum setback distance required between water bodies and a leaching facility, in no case shall any disposal field, seepage pit or other leaching facility be located than 100 feet from the mean high water mark of any lake, pond, river. So that’s the Town requirement, and that’s 136-8C, that it’s measured from mean high water. So what Stu did, when he wrote the Staff Notes, was that he was questioning the language in the DEC waiver, I’m sorry, the DOH waiver. It didn’t refer to mean high water. It’s Number Two, it says the absorption system cannot maintain 100 feet to surface water, and so he’s questioning whether surface water is less restrictive than mean high water, and we did the research, in terms of the DOH requirements, and their requirements are mean high water also, surface water is mean high water, and I’ll let Tom go through. MR. CENTER-Appendix 75A, where they talk about the 100 foot separation distance, Appendix 75A, which is the DOH law, refers to, in Table Two, to, they give a note to stream, separation for stream, lake, water course, Note B, Note B under the table is for mean high water mark. On their figures for both bodies of water for whether it’s a seepage pit or a leach field, they also depict the 100 foot separation with the mean high water mark noted on the drawing. So, in essence, they’re the same standard. The Town’s isn’t more stringent than the State’s. An example, if you will, would be the Town requires 36 inches of separation when you’re within 1,000 feet of the lake, to high water, high groundwater to the bottom of the stone. The State requires 24. So if we had 24 but not 36, the right place to be is in front of the Town Board of Health, but in this instance, the Codes are the same. It’s mean high water, whether you’re in the Town or you’re at DOH. MR. LAPPER-With that said, that’s the general rule, in terms of this. On our site, they have a seawall. So as it relates to this particular piece of property, there’s no issue about mean high because it’s a seawall. So the distance is measured from the seawall. MR. HUNSINGER-My feeling tonight is the same as it was when you were here in 2006. What you’re talking about, to me, is not a Planning Board issue. It’s a Town Board or Department of Health issue. 63 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. LAPPER-Okay, and that’s why we went to the Department of Health and got a permit. MR. HUNSINGER-Which, you know, I mean, it’s not exactly what you just said, George, but, I mean, lots of times we’ll pass a Site Plan Review, you know, with the septic design as designed, and if you can’t get the permit, then you have to come back, you know, you may have to come back for Site Plan modification. I mean, that’s just my opinion. MR. SEGULJIC-But isn’t the problem that we haven’t given them Site Plan approval, though? MR. HUNSINGER-We haven’t. MR. SEGULJIC-We have not. MR. HUNSINGER-We have not, but they can’t get it because the condition that we’ve placed on them. They’re saying they can’t, they don’t need. MR. SEGULJIC-But it’s not really their decision or our decision. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, that’s what I’m saying. MRS. BRUNO-Did you go in front of them again, now that the plans have been altered? MR. LAPPER-We could. We just don’t think we need to because we have the Department of Health. When the Town Board said go do an aerobic system, it never got discussed again with the Town Board because we realized that we needed to go to Department of Health. We went to Department of Health, and they gave us the permit, because Department of Health agreed that they had jurisdiction that they had to review it because it was an alternative system. So we went to the Department of Health, and they gave us the permit, and it’s not just like an approval. It’s an actual septic permit. MRS. BRUNO-It seems like it would have been a probably quicker thing than this evening to have gone, after you’ve had the thing from the State Board of Health, to go in front of the Town Board of Health, since we’ve had that in our motion, and had it taken care of. MR. LAPPER-Well, we viewed it as it was sort of a technicality. What you were saying was, we need the system to get approved. Then it’s a question of who should approve it. So we felt, under the law, that the approval comes from the State rather than the Town Board acting as the local Board of Health. So we thought that we went to like the superior agency, and of course that took many months to get back here, but we certainly have a permit, and if you wanted to condition it, you know, somehow that we have to get confirmation from Dave Hatin or something. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, you have to anyway. MR. LAPPER-Right, we do. MR. SEGULJIC-So what’s the harm in us approving the Site Plan? They have to go there anyway. MR. HUNSINGER-Well, that’s what I’m saying. Am I missing something, George? I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I’m just trying to understand. MR. HILTON-I understand completely. I don’t know. I guess, you know, again, I can only speak to our local Code. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. HILTON-And that Section 136-18, as identified in the Staff Notes, designates the local Board of Health as the agency that can vary our local septic code. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. HILTON-That’s all I can really comment on. MR. SEGULJIC-But, I mean, that still holds, whether we give them Site Plan approval or not. 64 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. Right. MR. SEGULJIC-Right now they don’t have Site Plan approval. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. SEGULJIC-So we give them Site Plan approval and they’re on their way. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MR. LAPPER-If we get Site Plan approval, we can’t get a building permit unless Dave says it’s okay. So, Tom’s right. MR. HUNSINGER-And Dave’s going to look at that and make a determination and either send them to the Town Board or not send them to the Town Board. MR. LAPPER-And if he sends us to the Town Board, we go to the Town Board. MR. SEGULJIC-Right. Because if we didn’t give you Site Plan approval now, you’d have to go to the Town Board and then come back, and that’s exactly the issue. MR. SEGULJIC-So you’re just short circuiting the process. MR. LAPPER-Right, because we’re certainly not trying to do anything on the Site Plan that you’re not happy with. MR. SEGULJIC-I have no problem with doing that. MR. FORD-I’m all for it. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SEGULJIC-My only comment would once again be, and I think what happened here is it says perennial and small shrubs on separate sheet. So they’re somewhere else. MR. CENTER-Well, it could be an eight and a half by eleven that was not attached to it. MR. HUNSINGER-We do have a public hearing scheduled. I will open the public hearing and close the public hearing. PUBLIC HEARING OPEN NO COMMENT PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. HUNSINGER-So, what’s the wishes of the Board? MR. SEGULJIC-I say we go forward and approve it. MR. FORD-Proceed. MRS. STEFFAN-The tabling motion from, this is ’06, it’s ancient history now. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-New drawings to reflect the septic alteration as approved by the Town Board on January 24, ’05, to update the Site Development Data Sheet to reflect changes including permeability calculations, to specify on Site Plan impermeable areas, location and size, remove concrete walk from the house to the lake and replace with flagstone with eight inch spacing to increase permeability. MR. LAPPER-That’s all on there. MRS. STEFFAN-Include a 20 foot deep buffer strip along the lakefront planted with a mixture of native and woody and herbaceous plants. A notation no chemical fertilizers on the lawn, and a C.T. Male signoff. 65 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. LAPPER-And all that stuff was on the plans. We didn’t add the chemical fertilizer. So we’ll add that as a condition on the Site Plan, and that’s 20 feet, not 15 feet, for the record. MR. HILTON-Mr. Chairman, just a, I guess, clarification. On the agenda the SEQRA type doesn’t really show anything, but, in checking the record, it appears that this application has previously been identified as a Type II. MR. HUNSINGER-Type II. Okay. MRS. STEFFAN-I can’t believe it, but I actually have the whole package here. MR. HUNSINGER-I was surprised that I didn’t. I couldn’t find it. MRS. STEFFAN-I actually have the motion that I wrote. Wow. MR. LAPPER-Did anybody notice that on two separate applications people were talking about celery farms on Quaker Road? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, isn’t that interesting? MR. LAPPER-Yes. I’ve been here 22 years, and that’s before my time. MR. HUNSINGER-We don’t have to do SEQRA. So the only thing we need to do is. MRS. BRUNO-I’m sorry. Did we determine that the plantings were going to be what we typically approve? MR. TRAVER-Yes. I think they stipulated to use LGA. MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Thank you. MR. LAPPER-We’re just missing a detail sheet that identifies the species. th MR. HUNSINGER-So I think we do need to address that September 26 motion. Because we did say that we’d table it until they got the Board of Health. So, we can’t really act on it until that condition is met. MR. FORD-Can we rescind that? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, either that or in a motion for approval, we can state that we are accepting the Department of Health permit in lieu of the requested Town Board of Health action. MR. FORD-That’s what I’d recommend. MR. HUNSINGER-Which would be cleaner? MR. HILTON-Well, I’m looking at a, it’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth, but I’m looking at a December 18, 2007 resolution from this Board which states that they would allow the applicant to come back without satisfying that condition. MR. HUNSINGER-That’s right. We already addressed that. MR. HILTON-I mean, it would probably be a safe bet, if it’s your intent to rescind that previous resolution, to lift that condition, but you’ve agreed to at least have a discussion, which you’ve obviously started this evening. If you follow me. MR. HUNSINGER-So we don’t need to do anything with that, based on that resolution. MR. HILTON-Probably not, but, I mean. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. The only thing is if we want to include in any motion whether or not they need Town Board of Health, but that would be up to the Building Department. Right? MR. HILTON-It sounds like, from what I’m hearing, you’re considering a condition that some type of signoff from the Director of Building and Codes on the proposed septic system. 66 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MR. HUNSINGER-But he has to anyway. So do we even need to say anything, then. MR. HILTON-I don’t know. MR. HUNSINGER-Did you have some language about that that you wanted to include? MRS. STEFFAN-Well, now we don’t want to include anything on the septic. The permit process is in place. We don’t need to mention it. The only conditions I had, the landscaping plant list needs to be included, as Tom identified, that there wasn’t a corresponding, and we need to get a VISION Engineering signoff, and do we need to identify the system? The Planning Board accepts the New York State Department of Health approval for the septic system, or do we have to say the aerobic system or? MR. HUNSINGER-Well, it’s already part of the record. So I don’t know if we need to specify it. You’ve submitted that. I mean, we have it in our package so it’s part of the record. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. CENTER-Yes, that’s the Site Plan we just submitted. That’s the Site Plan that, minus the VISION changes, that was submitted to DOH. MR. HUNSINGER-Right. MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So it’s just those two conditions. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes, I think so. MRS. STEFFAN-They’ve requested a waiver for lighting. Is that okay? MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MRS. STEFFAN-I’ll make a motion. MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 33-2006 STEVEN & DEBBIE SEABOYER, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: A site plan application has been made to the Queensbury Planning Board for the following: Applicant proposes partial demolition and rebuild of approximately 2300 sq. ft. single family dwelling. Site Plan Review required for expansion of a nonconforming structure and hard surfacing [continuation] within 50 feet of the shoreline. Applicant is requesting that the Planning Board reconsider condition of 9/26/06 tabling motion relative to receiving septic approval from the Town Board of Health. A public hearing was advertised and held on 8/22/06, 9/26/06 and 3/18/08; and This application is supported with all documentation, public comment and application material in the file of record; and Pursuant to relevant sections of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Code [Chapter 179], the Planning Board has determined that this proposal complies with the requirements as stated in the Zoning Code; and Final approved plans, in compliance with the Site Plan, must be submitted to the Community Development Department before any further review by the Zoning Administrator or Building and Codes personnel. The applicant must meet with Staff after approval and prior to issuance of Building Permit and/or the beginning of any site work. Subsequent issuance of further permits, including building permits is dependent on compliance with this and all other conditions of this resolution. The applicant will provide as-built plans to certify that the site plan is developed according to the approved plans prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and If applicable, Item 7 to be combined with a letter of credit; and N/A The Sanitary Sewer connection plan must be submitted to the Wastewater Department for its review, approval, permitting and inspection; and N/A 67 (Queensbury Planning Board 03/18/08) MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 33-2006 STEVEN & DEBBIE SEABOYER, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: According to the resolution prepared by Staff. Paragraph Four complies. Paragraph Five, this is a Type II action. Paragraph Eight and Nine do not apply. This is approved with the following conditions: 1) That the applicant will update the landscaping plant list to reflect the plantings on the plan. 2) The Planning Board accepts the New York State Department of Health approval for the septic system. 3) The Planning Board grants a waiver for lighting. However, all additional lighting must be downcast. 4) That the applicant must put a notation on the plat that no chemical fertilizer shall be applied to the lawn. th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Ford, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. LAPPER-Thanks very much. MR. HUNSINGER-What a long, strange trip it’s been. MR. LAPPER-Sometimes it’s better to be late and have an easy application. MR. HUNSINGER-Sometimes. If there’s no other business before the Board, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. MOTION TO ADJOURN THE QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING OF MARCH 18, 2008, Introduced by Thomas Ford who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic: th Duly adopted this 18 day of March, 2008, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Traver, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Ford, Mr. Hunsinger NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Sipp MR. HUNSINGER-See everybody next week. MRS. STEFFAN-I will not be here next week. It’s Pete’s birthday. On motion meeting was adjourn. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Chris Hunsinger 68