by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board did not have a lot of pressing business before it this week, but it had two audiovisual presentations.
The first was by the local Youth to Youth group (Y2Y), which tries to reduce alcohol and drug abuse through teens talking to their peers. [private]They showed the results of surveys the TRACS group does every year about drug use and prevalent attitudes toward drug and alcohol abuse. The teens, three high school freshmen and a junior, talked about the experiences they had at the annual Youth to Youth Eastern States Conference and how it supports the outreach work that they do here during the rest of the year.
TRACS President Biffy Cahill said that in previous years, when their organization was funded by grant money, they paid for some of the local students to go to the Eastern States Conference, but they no longer have funding.
She said they are asking each town to sponsor two kids from their town to go to Eastern States conference.
It would cost $850 to sponsor two kids.
Tom Berry offered to donate $100 if others could be found to donate the rest. Town Supervisor Siegfried Krahforst said he didn’t think the Town could contribute these funds, but he thought he could find enough donors in town to get the sum requested.
Planning Board Protocol
The other presentation was a very lengthy, detailed presentation by Planning Board Chairman Frank Sheldon about Planning Board protocol, the steps necessary to get a subdivision approved. The chart he was speaking about can be viewed as a pdf on the Planning Board page of the Town website at the bottom of the page under “documents.”
Why it was necessary to explain all this in such detail was a bit of a mystery to this observer. It seemed to be for the purpose of emphasizing the role of the Code Enforcement Officer in seeing to it that the subdivision is done as approved by the Planning Board. The Town has had some push back from Code Enforcement Officer Martin Conboy about his role as Planning Board enforcer, and it is not clear if that dispute has been fully resolved. Conboy was not present at this meeting because of a death in the family.
Close Call
Tim Church told the Board that the fuel tank at the Memorial Hall was allowed to run dry and the building had no heat. Luckily Roger LeMere happened to go in there for some other reason and realized it was cold, and he was able to get the tank filled before any damage was done. Tim urged the Board to get some kind of low temperature alarm installed in the building to make sure to avoid the possibility of a disastrous freeze-up in the future. The Board agreed to research its options on that immediately.
Board Seeks Planning Board Member
The Board announced once again that it still needs to fill one vacant seat on the Planning Board and is actively looking for Petersburgh residents who would like to serve on the Planning Board.[/private]