WESTERLO — The town board revisited measures last week that would temporarily halt development and place restrictions on subdivisions within the town.

Last Tuesday, Councilman Ed Rash made a motion to halt subdivisions of more than four parcels until a master plan for land use is adopted. The town’s zoning ordinance was adopted in 1989.
"Let’s change the law," said Rash. "Whoever wants to argue it, they’re welcome to it. But I think we owe it to the people we’ve appointed — to the planning board — to have sufficient enough time to survey the people and know what we want and where we want to have it and what percentages of land are going to be residential, commercial, and everything else," he said.

The town board recently appointed a new planning board after disbanding the planners 15 years ago.
Since 2005, Rash has been pushing to change the town’s zoning laws to limit development. He had drafted a proposal to increase the minimum lost size, which Councilman R. Gregory Zeh had rejected as a "Band-Aid," advocating in January of 2006 that the town create a comprehensive land-use plan.
Rash’s motion last week was not seconded as Aline Galgay, the town’s attorney, wanted to clarify language before proceeding. "If I go through all the work to draft it, I want to make sure it can stand up if there is a challenge to it," she said. She estimated two weeks to draft a local law.

The town board will hold a workshop session open to the public on May 22 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

The board, Galgay said, needs to designate a specific amount of time for a moratorium on development — eight months, one year, or 18 months — and have a reason for the amount of time chosen.
Galgay said, under case law, moratoriums are looked at "very stringently." When adopting a moratorium, a town must provide a reason to its constituents for the time designated. One year, she said, is "a relatively acceptable time frame" that is not "overly scrutinized."
"Most of the time, unless you have invested a significant amount of money in your application already, you have not ‘vested,’" said Galgay. She doesn’t know of any current or upcoming applications before the planning board that had invested considerable sums, she said. "The only one I can think of is Properties of New York, Inc. They’re significantly vested," she said.
Galgay defined "moratorium" as "stopping a process for a limited duration of time."
"You keep using the word ‘moratorium,’ which I really don’t want to use," Rash said to Galgay.
"This town — we’re losing our ability to do what we want. Day by day, with all this technical and changing of laws and what is enforceable and what isn’t," said Rash.
Councilman Zeh said he’d made a similar proposal two years ago. "I used the word ‘moratorium,’ and you were dead-set against it because of the word ‘moratorium,’" Zeh said to Rash.
"I agree conceptually with what you’re trying to do"My question to you would be: Is one year a sufficient time frame" I think we don’t have the resources in place to do the master plan within one year," Zeh said. "So I think we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to say one year is a sufficient time to do this," he said.

Resident Edwin Stevens was concerned a moratorium would give the town board too much power and place a burden on farmers.
"To me, it just seems like you’re trying to control too much private property. You’re taking some guy that’s got a farm, that ain’t making any money anymore, and you’re taking his ability to maintain what he’s got by selling off a little bit at a time. You’re killing the guy," he said.
"There has to be a point in time when we have to take a step back and take a look at things," said Rash. "If we don’t stop now and watch how this town grows, it could get too expensive to live here for everybody, not just farms," he said.
Galgay said a moratorium is not intended to block property owners’ rights. "It’s to be able to give"everybody a chance to determine the direction you, as well as everyone else, want the town to take," she said.

Rensselaerville, which lies just to the west of Westerlo, recently drafted and adopted a comprehensive land-use plan, which, starting in April of last year, halted subdivisions of over three lots for one year. Many residents were opposed to the moratorium from the onset.

At the town’s public hearing, many on the committee that designed the plan said they needed more time and farmers and owners of large parcels of land thought a change from five-acre minimum lot size to 10-acre zoning burdensome. A six-month extension of the moratorium was approved by the Rensselaerville town board May 1.

Other business

In other business, the town board:
— Heard from Supervisor Richard Rapp that, during the last snowstorm, damage to Town Hall occurred, and Town Clerk Gertrude Smith’s office was flooded. "I was here in time to move everything around," said Rapp. He said he will contact an engineer to examine the damage and report back to the board next month;

— Voted unanimously to award the National Bank of Coxsackie a one-year band for $30,000 at 3.53-percent interest to pay for the town’s new street broom;
— Voted unanimously to close an escrow account with KeyBank designated for the planning board that hasn’t had any activity in 15 years. The account had "a couple hundred bucks," Rapp said. The town board also voted unanimously to open a new account designated for the newly-created planning board with the National Bank of Coxsackie; and

— Revisited regulations for signs in the town. Last month, resident Gaye McCafferty, a nurse who had recently attended a meeting about sign height and tobacco use, asked the board to investigate regulation of tobacco advertisements.
Galgay said her office had done "extensive research" on the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965. Currently, she said, the town prohibits signs larger than 32 square feet. The FCLA Act says labeling by the surgeon general is required on all cigarette packages and "states are preemptive from further regulating advertising of tobacco products."
Galgay said courts say, "If you want to regulate all signs altogether, that’s fine. But you can’t segregate out, or separate out, tobacco advertising separately from any other kind of advertising." If the town wants to address tobacco signs, she said, it has to do so on a "global scale."
"You have to be careful. You can’t specifically target tobacco advertising," she said.
"You can certainly pass a resolution indicating that you’re against children smoking, but the ability to regulate it"I think is very problematic," Galgay said.