Grafton Planning Board Action – Silence Should Be Golden

by Kieron Kramer
Three public hearings were held before the regular Grafton Planning Board meeting on Monday, June 17. At 6:15 the subject was the Edelmann/MacNaughton major subdivision application; at 6:30 it was the Lawrence Meracle minor subdivision, and at 6:45 it was the Halloran-Minbiole lot line adjustment. None of these applications were controversial or opposed, and the comments were very brief.
Fifteen minutes were allotted to each hearing. The hearings should have been only five minutes long. Apparently the members of the Planning Board abhor a verbal vacuum. Led by impish Board Member Owen Grandjean, they began playfully trash talking each other. [private]“Do you know who was known as the Limbo King?” Board Member Pete Gundrum asked. Turns out it was Board Member Jim Goyer in his youth. “I’m lucky if I can walk now,” was Goyer’s riposte. Joe Allain, who acted as Secretary in Jessica Crandall’s absence, received some ribbing and rather wisely turned off the recording during these episodes.
School Daze
During the down time in one of the hearings, the topic turned to education in Grafton circa 1960 and 1970. According to Gundrum, a teacher in West Grafton beat Billy Baker “until he peed his pants and it run right down on his shoes, but she couldn’t make him cry.” Grandjean and Goyer remember crawling under the school bus to put chains on the tires. Grandjean said, “We didn’t have to wear helmets when we rode bicycles then. (This may account for the quality of these recollections.) “Those were the good old days.” Grandjean said.
During one of the down times the topic was streetlights in Grafton. Planning Board Chairman Tom Withcuskey said, “Probably 25% of the streetlights in Town don’t work.” According to Withcuskey and Goyer the Town pays $6,000 to $7,000 per year on lighting. “There is a leaning pole on Shaver Pond Road that will hit the middle of the road soon – you’d think somebody would do something about it,” Goyer said. Tales of overturned trucks at a Grafton gravel mine were mentioned. After a discussion on the stone walls in Grafton Gundrum said, “There are a bunch of dead crows up on Slide Mountain; they died from exhaustion because there is no place to light on.” Slide Mountain is near the two subdivisions being considered at this meeting. Both subdivisions are on Edelmann Lane near the town line with Pittstown.
Back To Business
The major subdivision by Clark Edelmann and his sister MaryLou MacNaughton will create five parcels. There will be a 42 acre lot, a 67 acre lot to be remaindered and three building lots of 6.6 acres, 6.6 acres and 8.3 acres. The access road will be maintained and plowed for the Fire District by a Homeowners’ Association in an agreement which will be filed with the plot map. The Town’s attorney, Sal Ferlazzo, had reviewed the major subdivision and recommended that the agreement to the Homeowners Association be included in each deed. Edelmann agreed to this readily.
A three lot minor subdivision of the old Harbinger estate by Lawrence “Jamie” Meracle, Jr. is composed of six lots in Pittstown and three lots in Grafton. Two building lots in Grafton, of 6.7 acres and 7.2 acres, will be developed and one, of about 144 acres, will be “remaindered.”
The lot line adjustment is for the Halloran parcel abutting a parcel owned by Dan Minbiole. Apparently, Minbiole has heavy equipment stored close to land that belongs to Halloran. The adjustment will increase Minbiole’s lot by .77 acres. All parties seem to agree that adjusting the lot line is easier than moving the equipment.
Environmental Concerns
David Hunt of Jay Hakes Road in Cropseyville was the only speaker during the hearings on the subdivisions. He said that there are three environmental features of County and regional importance that are on or adjacent to the planned Edelmann subdivision. They are Slide Mountain, one of the most important rocky summit and slope ecosystems in the County, the Ward Hollow Brook Network, an important intact stream network, and the largest forest-interior habitat on the Rensselaer Plateau, Grafton Lakes Forest. He hopes to help conserve these features or minimize any impacts to them from the subdivisions being considered.
He said that Slide Mountain is a 352 acre site which has several animal and plant species that are county rare – such as denning bobcats. It is one of only two known County sites for Allegheny vine, a very rare, native, flowering plant.
Hunt said, “The northeast edge of Slide Mountain occurs on the Edelmann subdivision, specifically two parcels that are reportedly being remaindered. The landowner has apparently historically taken good care of this area, contributing to its regional importance, and fortunately, there seem to be no plans to change its state…as new development is shown on the site plan further northeast of this habitat.”
According to Hunt, the Ward Hollow Brook Stream Network is the best network in the Tomhannock Creek Watershed with relatively unpolluted water, intact streambanks and riparian corridors. It is habitat for important stream communities and native animals and plants that live most of their lives in water. Much of the smaller of two stream branches of this network flows through the Edelmann subdivision, specifically through two parcels that are reportedly being remaindered. Fortunately, there seems to be no plans to change its state in the current subdivision proposal, as the site plan for the three parcels on the northeast part of the property is outside of the stream influence zone.
Hunt said that the Grafton Lakes Forest is an important forest interior habitat on the Rensselaer Plateau with a forest-interior core of 1,013 acres. This forest contains native animals and plants, especially resident animals such as bobcat, black bear, moose, fisher and several birds that require habitat sufficiently removed from any human disturbances such as roads, houses and forest clearings. This site is known to be important habitat for resident bobcat. The new development shown on the site plan for the Edelmann subdivision is within the outer zones of the forest-interior area and likely to only slightly reduce that habitat area.
In other words, the Edelmann/MacNaughton subdivision and the Meracle subdivision, which is right next to it, will not have significant impact on these environmental features of the Rensselaer Plateau. Hunt said he was glad the Edelmann development has been wisely planned and that it is a family subdivision which will give added security. Regarding the Meracle subdivision, Hunt concluded that the development would affect only 14 or so acres of the 9,500 acre forest that runs through the north of Grafton and reduce the interior forest from 1,013 acres to about 1,000 acres. He recommended that the road and house development be done at the north end of the subdivision and that the amount of cleared forest be kept to a minimum which, he said, seems to be the plan.
Withcuskey thanked Hunt for his presentation and said that the Planning Board is grateful for his input. “Clark [Edelmann] has been a good steward of the land,” he added.
Clark Edelmann said that “so far it [the process] has been pretty painless. Then he and MaryLou MacNaughton handed over checks amounting to $1,250 in subdivision fees. Edelmann said his family was the fourth owner of the land being subdivided, which they acquired in 1952. Before that it had been owned by the Knowles [sic] family since 1879, before that it was owned by Brenenstuhl and before that Van Rensselaer.
The regular meeting began at 7 pm and ended at 7:05 pm. A negative declaration was made on all three applications which means that it was determined that they have no significant environmental impact. All three negative declarations will be filed, Withcuskey said, and the Board voted unanimously to approve both subdivisions and the lot line adjustment.
There was no new business. In the open comment period a discussion was introduced by surveyor Rod Michaels questioning the need for public hearings on minor lot line adjustments. Withcuskey said, “A Public Hearing gives the opportunity for neighbors to have their say.” On that note, the meeting adjourned.[/private]