Tonight (2017-03-06) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Planning Board.
There was an unusually long agenda for this group. Usually it’s minutes plus two or three items. Tonight was minutes plus six. It was helpful that one of them (Hyde Park barn demolition) didn’t show up. And the first two (Peer street garage and Ontario street porch) were more formalities then anything else.
Which raises the question: How short does an application hearing need to be, before it shouldn’t have happened? If the hearing is so short as to not need discussion, then why have it? Most people have better things to do with their evenings then attend governmental meetings. Not complaining about Planning board, they work with what they are handed. Just sometimes, I wonder why some of these issue rise to the level of needing approval in the first place.
Which brings us to the third applicant, which was also the first with any discussion. And that discussion was about how many trees a properties owner had to have on their property. The Pinebrook development wanted to move planned trees (do not physically exist, only on paper as part of a plan) from one part of their property to another. Same number of trees, just different places on the property. I can understand the technicality of it being a change to an approved plan, and therefore needing re-approval. But for there to be actual discussion, beyond confirming the number of trees has not decreased, just struck me as sad.
Although, it did provide an opportunity to observe an interesting event. Someone from the property next door (Pinehurst) was interested in the project, and wanted to take a picture of the plans. No one objected, as they are public documents. But it had me thinking: How can someone be well informed, to make comments at a public hearing, if they haven’t had the opportunity to read the relevant documents ahead of time. If I’m going to be making comments, based solely on what I have heard at the meeting, I’m going to sound like an idiot. Which I’ve done often enough, and will do again. But I would expect most people would rather not sound too foolish. Shame there isn’t someplace that the relevant documents could be stored, that could be accessed more or less anytime, from anywhere. Where the documents that the board has before the meeting, could also be made available to the public. Before the meeting, as opposed to after (or never).
Which brought us to the big discussion item of the night, 12 Monroe street and the (potential) future restaurant. Yet again I didn’t catch the name at the meeting, although the agenda tells me it’s ‘Joel’. Considering this is the third time I’ve heard this plan, there wasn’t really anything new to me. At least on the plan itself. What was new is there being someone else in the audience to raise questions. Mostly parking related, although there were other issues brought up.
I think the concerns raised were good and valid: where will the patrons of this restaurant park. Best of all, a solution was also proposed: village issued permits to park overnight in the village owned parking. I’m probably missing part of the idea, and I’m sure it would need fine tuning in practice. Yet a criticism was followed by a potential solution. Something I hear too rarely at this sort of thing, usually it’s NIMBY and done. Better to hear about (and resolve) issues now, then next year. Again, we’ll see how this works out in time.
Putting aside the details of this issue, I think the best part was how the discussion was handled. Technically, it was a ‘concept discussion’, which means (among other things) there is no public comment. Which means the board would have been legally permitted to ignore the public on this topic. Yet they choose to engage in dialog. What I felt was useful and constructive experience. This is how it should be, government openly discussing the issues that those they serve have brought to their attention. Good job all around.
Although, I thought it was humorous that the idea of creating a new zoning district was mentioned. We already have three districts that are literally one lot (LI, RC, and SC), and a fourth that might as well be (MULICD). We need fewer zoning districts, not more. Or at least that’s my opinion, clearly there are those that disagree.
And that left the last agenda item, a (potential) code change. In particular, Planning board feedback on a code change the Trustees are considering. Tonight’s group can’t make the change, but offered their feedback to those who can. Offering of feedback is a good idea. That in this case, happens to be the law.
The board is split on this topic, with one of them being vocally against it. The other four are more or less in favor of adding self storage units to the allowed list for Traditional Village. With a collection of conditions and such, in an attempt to control development.
I don’t particularly care about self storage, one way or another. Much like I didn’t care about drive thru restaurants, fund raising, etc. I do care about the details. Care must be taken that, in the interest of solving one problem, we do not create three more.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the March 6th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Planning Board.
Link to agenda on Village website.
Link to agenda stored on this site, should the village lose their copy.