Virginia Martin
Claverack, New York
December 26, 2006
Donald Alger, Chair, and Members of the Greenport Planning Board
Greenport Town Hall
600 Town Hall Drive
Hudson, New York 12534
Re: Application of Widewaters, Greenport
Dear Mr. Alger and Members of the Board:
I ask of you two things:
As I see it, this project will have impacts far beyond the Greenport town boundaries, and I fear that many of those impacts (including the impacts specifically on Greenport) will not be positive ones. New York State Town Law recognizes that surrounding and potentially affected municipalities have a right to examine proposals and then to voice their opinions. That’s what I, as a resident of Claverack, and as a 2006 candidate for New York State Assembly, want to do. (And by the way, if it had been up to Columbia County, I would have won that seat instead of losing it to Marc Molinaro, and then I would be representing the Town of Greenport in the state legislature coming January 1st. Of course I must admit that Greenport voted for my opponent.)
Consider a reversed scenario to the one we consider today. If a resident or business in Claverack, upstream from Greenport on the Claverack Creek, wanted to undertake a project that would have an effect on the creek and therefore on the residents and businesses in the Town of Greenport, I have no doubt that you would want to evaluate it and then to share your concerns with the decision makers in Claverack. Or perhaps you would opt to become a decision maker by entering into a SEQR uncoordinated review with the Town of Claverack, instead of granting the Claverack board lead agency status.
Over the course of the past ten or so years I have been very active in local and regional politics and government, and in Stuyvesant I served on the Zoning Board of Appeals. One special concern of mine is that people have an opportunity to know what their elected and appointed representatives are doing and what actions are being taken that have an effect on them. To that end, I have made it a point to help others to understand how their laws work, and I especially do that by helping people to find the laws that impact them, and interpretations of those laws, and other resources that can shed further light on questions and issues that concern them. I also encourage them to interact with their governments, such as their planning boards, to learn what they are doing, why what they’re doing is or is not appropriate and fair, and what they can do to try to change a vexing situation.
So as the Widewaters project seemed to be nearing a point at which the Greenport Planning Board might simply approve it without requiring much disclosure or mitigation from the developer, and apparently without a significant amount of public input, I decided to get involved.
A second part of my interest in this project is my understanding that projects like these tend to wind up being tax burdens on the people of the towns and county, and economic boons only to the developers, who are not even County residents.
I came to the Town Hall several times to look at documentation, and of course I was treated very graciously by everyone there. While I found a lot of what I was looking for, there were quite a few documents that I could not find. I asked for them on December 13th, giving Planning Board secretary Madaline DeCintio a list of items that I needed, along with my phone number. To date no one has called me to say that documents either are or are not available. Elizabeth Nyland, in Town Hall one day, asked if there was anything for me and was given an envelope with my name on it which was lying on the Planning Board desk. One of the seven items that I had requested was in the envelope. There was and has been no mention of the other six items.
Also, in my research, I found the Town of Greenport website where I hoped to learn something about the town and about the project. I visited it on November 24th and found that it apparently had not been updated in months, nor had there ever been very much information on it. I couldn’t even find regular meeting dates or names of people on the boards or in the office. So I wrote to the “contact us” address asking for a variety of information. I have never been contacted in response. I also made a notation on the Planning Board page asking for information about Widewaters. None has been posted, nor has there been any response to that request. Finally, on December 24th, thinking that someone else might be looking on the Town site for Widewaters information, I published a note on the Planning Board page directing people to a site I had set up a few weeks earlier that did provide some information. If you have not yet seen that site, I invite you to take a look; it is at http://www.mhcable.com/~vmartin/WW/index.html and it is essentially a repository of information, largely as I would expect to see from the Town itself, along with a handful of other resources people might find useful.
Per the attached copy of a page from that site that is named “Documentation Needed from the Town of Greenport,” the first seven items, requested on December 13th, are what I asked for. I have received only the first.
Furthermore, after reviewing Planning Board minutes that the Town Clerk had graciously copied for me, I became curious about the number of Planning Board members. I consistently saw that six members attended meetings, and gathered that one seat was vacant, since Town law allows for planning boards of either five or seven members. I was perplexed to read, at http://www.generalcode.com/webcode2.html, that a local law adopted in 2002 changed the number of board members from eight to six.
But Section 261 of Town Law provides that boards may have either five or seven, and one or more of those members can be deemed an agricultural member if s/he meets agricultural revenue requirements. Greenport law, however, allows for five members plus one agricultural member, for a total of six, as stated on the attached copy of the code. I do not understand how this is legal, nor do I understand how a vote can properly be taken with a board of six members. My inclination is to believe that Greenport should by law have another Planning Board member. Further, in the case of a contested vote, a majority of a seven-member board (even one with vacancies) equals four, and a supermajority equals five. Or perhaps I am simply not understanding the law.
In summary, I for one would like to know much more about this project and I am disturbed that more information has not been immediately available, or provided upon my request.
I would be delighted to see something better at the proposed project site than what exists now. However, I believe we all have a responsibility to help make sure that whatever replaces it is good for the area and its people.
Thank you all for your service on the Planning Board. I know that the volunteer service that each of you contributes can be extremely time-consuming and difficult to do, and you are to be commended for your service.
Sincerely,
Virginia Martin
Attachments:
Chapter 28: Planning Board, from Greenport Town Law
Widewaters/Greenport: Documentation needed from Town of Greenport