I called my shot; it took a little longer than expected though. The absurdity of Yorktown's position is obvious, but it will take you an hour, or two, to get up to speed.
I challenge you, gentle reader, to watch--in addition to the attached 5 minute video snippet--the entire reply I had to the Faith Bible Church proposal at the last PB meeting [it begins around 1 hour, 23 minutes into the 3/10/14 YT planning board meeting--skip ahead after you click on the link of that meeting video].
If you do watch my entire reply, after the 1:23 mark in the video, and acknowledge such feat in the comments, I will dine with you during the work week at the Pizza Hut in Mohegan Lake for an all you can eat buffet you will never forget; my treat.
What is amazing, to me, is that my tax dollars pay for an attorney, from a firm that ultimately will not represent the town if push comes to shove, to sit around at planning and zoning meetings; if you ask her any substantive questions, her answer at that time will--inevitably--be that it would be "inappropriate" for her to answer a question, while she's on the clock. In fact, she may follow up your question with a question to the applicant's attorney (like in the video attached, who already had a lengthy address to the board), and ask him to re-address the board; to bad he couldn't undress my argument and ended up furthering the point I made. It's about the "owner."
We Yorktown, via the town board, need to agree to additional professional services, before she'll actually chime in with an opinion of any real consequence. The PB special counsel actually deferred to the applicant on a legal matter, which seems really, really lame. Why do we pay her firm if she's just going to "defer to the applicant." Lastly, did you notice how Al was all lurking behind me, and THEN she's all like "Al, you look like you have something to say" even though he spoke for the good portion of the hour before I got to comment?
If the outside firm that oversees PB meetings is to actually defend their oversight of the public hearing, that costs each and every one of us even more; what are we paying for?
The question is when does Yorktown renew their contract with
Wormser, Kiely, Galef & Jacobs LLP?
The system's broken and I know how to fix it. Won't you join me?
I have a lot of ideas about how we can improve the planning, zoning, and permitting processes in Yorktown. We can make it faster for applicants, and easier on our volunteer boards. I'm confident in my position--professionally [trained architect that brings home bacon doing building code and zoning consulting], but I think that the attached video demonstrates I'm not completely crazy. Agreed?
Lastly, please watch the upcoming 3/24/14 Planning Board meeting for Faith Bible Church on your teevee or computer. It's likely to be the last one they will have on the subject:(
We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here
