To Re-Authorize Its Planning Board
by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board and Planning Board held a joint meeting on June 29 to seek agreement on enabling legislation for the Planning Board, because the Planning Board was established in 1967 by a resolution of the Town Board, rather than by a Local Law which would be required for valid enabling legislation.
Town Attorney David Gruenberg supplied a draft of the local law which he had written and compared it with drafts offered by Town Board member Tom Berry and Planning Board Chairman Frank Sheldon.
The basic organizational plan is a 7 member board and 7 year terms, so that one member of the Planning Board is re-appointed or replaced each year. The Planning Board’s mandate is to review and approve building proposals based on four local laws: the 2010 Site Plan Review law, the 2014 Subdivision law, a 1999 law concerning sexually oriented businesses, and a 2000 law concerning wireless communications installations. The Board did not include reference to a 2015 Mobile Home law because Tom Berry said he believed that law had serious flaws, and others agreed. The Town Board appears to have an intention to revisit that law and include it in the Planning Board’s mandate only after it has been revised or replaced.
The draft law will give the Town Board the power to appoint the Planning Board Chairman and to remove Planning Board members for cause. Planning Board members objected to both of these provisions. Concerning the former, Town Board members said the Board would certainly take into consideration the wishes of the Planning Board about whom to name as Chairman, but they wanted to retain the ultimate authority over appointment of the chairman. Concerning the latter, the Planning Board members were particularly concerned that a member of the Planning Board not be removed because the Town Board did not like the way they voted on some proposal before them. Gruenberg said the focus of this provision was more aimed at removing a Planning Board member for failure to attend meetings or failure to meet training requirements.
Training requirements was another issue raised, as at present continuing education requirements for Planning Board members have been waived by the Town Board, but State law mandates 4 hours of training annually for members of Planning Boards. Tom Berry and other Town Board members expressed support for keeping in place training requirements, but this was resolved for the moment by a clause in the local law saying that Planning Board members must meet training requirements unless waived by the Town Board.
The Planning Board does not have enforcement responsibilities in the event that anyone builds something in Town either without Planning Board review or not in compliance with the terms of Planning Board approval. This responsibility falls to the Town Building Department, but Planning Board members Tim Church and Brandon deWaal vehemently stated that such enforcement is not happening on a consistent basis, and urged the Town to engage in more active enforcement.
A series of more minor additions and revisions suggested by Tom Berry and Frank Sheldon were considered and some of this will be incorporated into the draft which Gruenberg will be finishing soon. A public hearing on that local law will be held on July 20 at 6:30 pm, prior to the regular Town Board meeting.