Tonight (2018-09-19) was a special meeting of the Honeoye Falls Planning Board.
Occurred on a Wednesday, not the regular Monday, which I’m not a fan of. There was also inconsistent publication on the meeting time. Most of the sources, including the agenda, said 7:30PM (which is the regular meeting time), while a few sources, including the front page of the website, said 7PM. Expecting the meeting to start at 7:30, but being unsure, I showed up at 6:55. At which point there were a two people waiting for the doors to be unlocked.
By the time the meeting started, the place was packed. Extra seating was needed for all the people. Which was easy enough to arrange, we looted the court room. Although, for the number of people there, the number of comments were surprisingly few.
First agenda item was Muffy’s subdivision. To start it off, Brian (Planning Board Chair) read a statement, which basically said this was a time for taking comments from the public, but that no decision would be made now. Also pointed out that written (emailed/whatever) comments could also be sent to the office. Good to have that detail mentioned, as it rarely is.
While comment time was supposed to be limited to 2 minutes, in practice that was ignored. I can hope that was because they recognized the absurdity of such a low limit, but it was probably because so few people chose to comment. The first handful of people off the sign up list declined to comment, said they would write something instead.
Those that did speak up during the comment time were against the subdivision. Generally spoke about sticking to the intent and plans the original creators of the area had. Which is a nice enough idea, except it also prevents any future change. And things that do not change, die. Although I would agree there are definitely times to consider original intent. US Constitution comes to mind, especially as Monday was Constitution Day.
It was stated that the written comment time would end at noon on October 1st, which I thought was odd. I would have expected 4PM, the end of the business day at the Village office. It has to end sometime, I guess noon is a good a time as any.
The next meeting of the Planning Board should be October 1st, at which point I would expect them to discuss the comments and then NOT make a decision. I hope they do, but considering how long this has taken, I no longer expect them to actually make a decision. I look forward to being wrong.
Apart from that comment time, the meeting went quickly. Four applicants, all approved. As was said by board members for most (all?) of them, were straightforward requests. Still two tidbits of irony.
The first was the apartments at 12 North Main (old Oppedisano’s Bootery). While it was quick and simple tonight, that was only because of the previous meetings. I count five of them, but I could be off. I would hope it was an easy approval after all that.
And second was a question on the view from 13 Creekside. Someone in the Audience pointed out the amount of focus on a subdivision on one end of Rittenhouse, yet no one seemed to care about building on the other end. I thought it was a great comment, as it wasn’t for/against either project, but pointed out the apparent inconsistency in how the two were being handled. To be fair, the projects are different, so it would make sense to treat them (somewhat) differently, but the contrast was stark.
Which brings us back to time. The Board decided to move the regular meeting time to 7PM, instead of 7:30PM. Makes sense to me, most other Board’s in the area meet at 7PM.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the September 19, 2018 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Planning Board.
Link to agenda on Village website, for whatever that is worth.