by Ken Signorello
July 30, 2020
At the Trustee Meeting on July 28th, George Tyler highlighted the challenges facing the planning functions if they merge, and suggested they be addressed before a vote to merge was taken.
Tyler pointed out “there is no overlap or duplication of effort. … And merger is not going to reduce the overall volume of work that’s being done”, thus, for planning, merger may not save money. https://youtu.be/CsWWmOWN0p8?t=3908
Tyler proposed converting from the current Zoning and Planning boards to a Development Review Board and Planning Commission. He asked whether we would want to continue all current projects and, if not, we'd need to identify those things we would sacrifice.
He was especially anxious to see that investments continue to be made in the Village downtown, whose current planning model is named Design Five Corners (D5C). The Town plan for developing its densely-populated core is known as ETC Next.
Is Downtown District at Risk in a Merger?
He asks, “Prior to entering into a merger agreement / discussions, do we not want to have pieces in place to make sure our downtown development continues. ... What do we want to do to ensure that (D5C) continues prior to having any formal merger agreement?” https://youtu.be/CsWWmOWN0p8?t=3482
About half-way through his presentation, a slide from a different presentation was briefly displayed. It apparently showed a 2018 revenue breakdown for the Town, the Village, and for the TOV and Village, assuming separation. https://youtu.be/CsWWmOWN0p8?t=3547
It seemed ironic that this chart was inadvertently displayed after the request for difficult-to-calculate separation information had just been approved. More on this in a future article.
