New committee won 146 t update master plan
NEW SCOTLAND Many people, including some members of the towns newly-appointed master-planning committee were surprised to learn last week they wont be the group that updates the comprehensive land-use plan for New Scotland. Rather, they will over the next four months, review the 1994 master plan and tell the town board what sections, if any need revision.
The committee met for the first time last week and talked about their approach and mission. Under the advice of legal counsel Louis Neri and professional planner Chuck Voss, it was decided that this committee of 8 will not be making specific recommendations back to the town board on how to update the plan. The group is just the first phase, an umbrella group, that will review the plan and report back to the town board about which sections of the plan need to be changed, why and where, but not how.
"There’s one more step in the process than I realized," said committee member Paul Cantlin. The discussion really broke down the committees task to less than what he thought he was charged with, Cantlin said.
"How specific should we get"" he asked. If this committee is just saying whether or not the master plan needs to be revised, then who will be looking it over and making the recommendation on exactly how to change it, Cantlin asked.
"It could possibly be the same group," committee Chairman, Douglas LaGrange said.
Neri said that the final review committee, by law, has to have at least one planning board member, and he said he was not sure if elected officials were allowed to be on the committee.
In all the towns he has worked for in the past, Voss said, the town-board members served only as liaisons to the comprehensive-plan committee, and were not voting members.
Neri outlined the town boards three options: update the comprehensive plan itself, have the full planning board do it, or appoint a second comprehensive-plan committee.
Councilman Richard Reilly said on Wednesday night that the report from this first phase committee will help the town board determine the scope of the second committee.
Voss said he envisions the final review committee having up to 12 people on it, representing a broad spectrum of community interests, including town planning and zoning officials and also agriculture and business interests.
The current committee has eight members, all of whom are already town officials: town board members Richard Reilly and Douglas LaGrange; zoning-board members Robert Parmenter, William Hennessey, and Adam Greenberg; planning-board members Chairman Robert Stapf and Voss; and Cantlin the towns zoning administrator.
LaGrange said on Wednesday that he thinks it would be counter productive if the town board does not appoint many of the same people to the second committee.
Stapf said another issue the current committee has to deal with is that it doesnt have a budget.
The committee decided to break down its overview into chapters to tackle a few each month.
There are some editing changes that need to be made, town engineer R. Mark Dempf pointed out, such as there is a section of the plan that says New Scotland has one water district while now, 11 years later, there are more. The question is whether or not substantial changes are needed or just editing changes.
At the next committee meeting, Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall, the officials will be discussing chapters 1, 3, and 4 of the plan.
Chapter 1 is an introduction, which includes a summary of surveys and public meetings from the 1990’s and discusses the process by which the master plan document was formed. Chapter 3 entitled "Environmental Considerations," addresses topography, geology, watersheds, agriculture, and land development suitability. Chapter 4 is about groundwater resources.
