Tonight (2017-06-26) was a special meeting of the Mendon Town Board. There was also a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
As the Town opted to hold a ‘special’ meeting, I attended two meetings tonight. Or at least parts of two meetings, as I left before the Town finished. They started at 7, whereas the Village Zoning started at 7:30.
As has been stated previously, I do not like it when meetings happen off schedule. I can understand it when there is something time sensitive or otherwise critical that needs addressing. From what I Observed, and the agenda, everything tonight looks like it could have waited until the next regularly scheduled meeting. Perhaps this is a case of holidays wreaking havoc with schedules, as their next meeting is also off schedule (July 17). Who knows.
One year ago today there was a fire at 4 Parks Crossing. This is of interest because the property owner was before the Town Board about the remains being an unsafe property. The whole thing seemed unclear to me. If it was unsafe, why wasn’t action being taken? It sounds like the owner had 60 days (from an unstated date in the recent past) to make it safe. No one opposed him demolishing as a ‘make safe’ method. Seemed odd to me that the situation rose to the level of ‘public hearing’. Clearly I missed something…
After that came the controversial issue to whether or not commercial solar farms should pay town property taxes for the improvement that is the farm. Again, I’m sure I’m missing some context here. It mostly seemed like those who stood to gain personally wanted to be able to rant at the board. As there were a fair sized number of them, and they were rather long winded, I didn’t get to hear them all.
It was amusing how some of the ‘comments’ attempted to move to ‘question’. As usual, the Town’s Attorney would have none of that. I don’t agree with him, but he is consistent on this issue. He isn’t so consistent on the stated ‘rule’ of three minutes per speaker. Which isn’t a complaint, I think strictly sticking to time limits and not answering questions is not in the public’s interests. Reserving the right to cut long winded speakers off and/or defer complicated answers, that makes sense. But using ‘rules’ to prevent the public from having a say in what is going on? Not how I think government should be run.
In any case, as the Town had set up a ‘special’ meeting that conflicted with a ‘normal’ meeting, I left before they finished so I could make the next meeting. I’ll have to ask the office staff how it turned out.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the June 26th, 2017 meeting of the Mendon Town Board.
As mentioned at the top, next up was the Village Zoning Board. They had a much simpler agenda. I was a few minutes late, as I did run over from the Town Office, but I don’t think I missed much. I did beat the Village Attorney to the meeting.
The Methodist Church was requesting three variances so that they could install a lift for wheelchairs (or similarly impaired people). Unfortunately, due to the building being ‘preexisting nonconforming‘ their options are limited. Thus the variances. Only practical way to make the building handicapped accessible was to be closer to the property lines that is normally allowed. The board approved the variances, and I agree with them (not that my agreement matters). It’s a church, it helps the handicapped (without inconveniencing the public at large), and (all things considered) the requests were relatively minor.
With that done, they closed the formal meeting and moved to an informal discussion session, appearing to skip both public comment and the legal determination. Not that I minded, I was the only audience and I had no comment.
During informal discussion the Code Enforcement Office (CEO), and the rest of the board, brought the new board member up to speed on some recent activities in the village. As well as some quirks of the current zoning, and potential fixes that may be coming down the road. While they did get a bit rambling here, I liked it. The core business portion of the meeting was done, if the board wants to entertain itself (and anyone else present) with rambling discussions, so be it. Rambling is only bad when it prevents getting the job done.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the June 26th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Zoning Board.
Link to agenda on Town website.
Link to agenda stored on this site, should the town lose their copy.
Link to agenda on Village website.
Link to agenda stored on this site, should the village lose their copy.