BERNE — Berne will soon be reviewing and updating its plan for land use, and the town’s planning and conservation boards have drafted a wind-tower ordinance. 

The town’s comprehensive plan was completed in April of 1992.

The town board will soon appoint one member each from the planning, town, and conservation boards and four or five residents to evaluate the plan.  Nan Stolzenburg of Community Planning and Environmental Associates, who has worked with the town on several other projects, will work with the committee and schedule meetings with the public.

“We want to try and have as much public input as possible,” said Stolzenburg this week.  She listed many ways to gather information — sending a survey to all of the town’s residents, holding a series of workshops, and forming smaller focus groups.  There will be required public hearings, Stolzenburg said, and articles will be published on the town’s website and in its newsletter. 

“The comprehensive plan is old,” Supervisor Kevin Crosier told The Enterprise last week.  “Now, a lot of the data might have changed.  A lot of the visions that people had may not have changed like protecting their rural character, protecting their scenic views, promoting agriculture,” he said.  “All that stuff, when you look at communities that review their comprehensive plans, you find that the residents, actually, even 20 years later, will still mirror that.  So, even if they mirror that, we still need to talk about these other alternative sources and find ways that they may fit into the new comprehensive plan so that everybody will feel protected.”

Crosier said the town will apply for a $25,000 grant through the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets.  The grant is to be used to develop agricultural and farmland protection plans.  Municipalities are eligible for up to $25,000 or 75 percent of the cost of planning.  The grant stipulates towns pay $8,333 of the $25,000 and $1,667 has to be cash; $6,666 can be in kind services.  Two towns can join together and receive $50,000.

As Berne did not have an ordinance for personal or commercial windmills, the planning board reviewed and last year approved a personal windmill to be erected at a residence on Woodstock Road. 

Councilman Peter Vance told The Enterprise yesterday of the draft of the wind ordinance, “I don’t think it does any good to let it lie.” 

The planning board is currently meeting in workshop sessions to study the comprehensive plan.  The board is primarily looking at definitions, he said.  “We need to plug some things up,” said Vance, and “shore it up so that people can’t circumvent the intent.”  The comprehensive planning process, he said, is scheduled to last 18 months “under optimal conditions.” 

“I don’t think we can wait that long to deal with wind,” said Vance.

Minimally, he said, the town needs to have a law in place for residential windmills first.

The update to the comprehensive plan, Crosier said, will include wind energy.  As the town updates the plan, he said, “We will be talking to the public and residents about wind power because the new plan has to reflect those types of things.”

“Our zoning, our ordinances, all come from our comprehensive plan so we want to make sure that the public is well informed, that they’re well-educated, and that both sides of the issue are discussed so that, in the end, we’re able to put together a comprehensive plan that has been given a lot of thought,” he said.

“I mean, these things are so controversial,” said Crosier, siting recent public outcry in Schoharie County. 

Rensselaerville, located just south of Berne, adopted a comprehensive land-use plan last year.  After the town board had unanimously adopted the plan, the chairman of the committee that designed it resigned.  He didn’t agree with the majority of the committee voting for smaller lots in the agricultural district; he formed Rensselaerville Farmland Protection, which has sued the town over its new zoning law. 

“And we don’t want that,” Crosier said of the controversy in Schoharie County.  “What happens when people get in a rush to do this type of stuff — and the public isn’t aware or they’re not informed enough — that’s when all the misinterpretations happen and that’s when all the problems happen.”