Petersburgh Town Board Action – The 2011 Budget Site Plan Revisions

by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board held a rather brief meeting on Monday, November 15, in which it approved the 2011 budget.
The budget picture has deteriorated since the preliminary budget was last discussed in these pages in the October 8 issue. Since then  the Town has learned that the assessment for State retirement will go up sharply in 2011 and mortgage tax revenues are estimated to be about $10,000 lower. This created a hole of over $20,000. In addition, Board Member Bill Seel said he felt the Town should leave the Supervisor’s salary in the budget even if Supervisor Peter Schaaphok does not take it, because if something happens to Schaaphok, the Town would have the funds to pay another supervisor. The Board agreed to put $10,000 more in the budget for that purpose. So budgeted expense for 2011 was suddenly up by about $20,000 and revenue down by $10,000. Much of this was absorbed by raising the amount of the unexpended balance to be applied to the budget so that the amount to be raised by tax is now about $8,500 more than it was in the preliminary budget. It’s a total increase of $24,537, but that includes a reduction of about $5,000 in the amount to be collected by the two Lighting Districts. So for most people in Town the tax levy will increase by about 5%, but for those in the lighting districts, it will be somewhat less.
The budget passed by a vote of 4-0, as Councilman Broadwell was not present.
Site Plan Review Law Revisions
A Public Hearing was held before the regular Town Board meeting on some proposed revisions to the Town’s 2003 Site Plan Review Law. These revisions were written to clarify the intent of the law after the ruling in the O’Donovan Shaving Mill case made it clear that the language of the law did not conform to what the authors of the law intended. In particular, Schaaphok felt that Judge Montgomery’s contention that the law seemed to apply only to projects needing a certificate of occupancy largely nullified the intent of the law and needed to be clarified immediately. The law now says that all new land use activities require site plan review unless specifically exempted.
There were also some changes to the definition of logging, which now clearly does not include sawmills or shaving/chipping mills.
There were no comments on the changes at the Public Hearing, and the Board approved the changes by a 4-0 vote at the regular meeting.