Progress in Completing the Comprehensive Plan

Report prepared by John Mathiason, Chair, Comprehensive Planning Committee

The playwright and diplomat Claire Booth Luce once said “in public service, no good deed goes unpunished.” That may be a fitting epitaph for the Town of Shandaken Comprehensive Planning Committee. We have now completed one year of substantive work and I believe it is my obligation as Chair to report to the Town Board on progress.

The Committee was established to complete the work started by a previous Committee. We were to take the draft prepared by that Committee on which there was broad agreement on goals and, taking into account comments made by the Ulster County Planning Board, to provide the specificity that had been found lacking if the plan was to achieve its objective of providing a context in which the Towns’ zoning and planning boards could make their determinations.

The Committee had a number of factors that should have favored its work. First, it was larger and had a broader representation than its predecessor, while including a significant number of members from the previous committee. Second, among the members were a number who had had experience with planning. Third, it had the detailed comments of the County as a guide. And fourth, it had the detailed results of the 2000 United States Census for Shandaken that showed clearly the town’s composition and the changes that had occurred over the past decade.

At the outset, the Committee agreed that it should try to reach all decisions by consensus. Consensus means that all parties accept an agreement without necessarily being enthusiastic about all specific elements. Consensus is a particularly appropriate method for comprehensive plans, because to be successful, plans have to have broad support in the community. A consensus form of decision-making implies a willingness to compromise in the interest of a greater good. In fact, through all of 2002, the Committee was successful in making decisions by consensus.

The Committee also set a fairly ambitious timetable as its goal. It hoped to finish its work by the end of 2002. There were several reasons for this decision. First, it was assumed that by building on the previous Committee’s work and essentially providing more detail where needed and filling gaps, the task was not too complicated. Second, if the job could be finished during the year in which there were no municipal elections, the plan could be somewhat divorced from partisan politics. Third, because all of the Committee members are volunteers, completing the work expeditiously would allow the members to return to their other pursuits without being forced into an unending series of meetings. Fourth, the Committee could benefit from the work of an intern from Bard College’s Environmental Planning program, who would work almost on a full time basis through the fall semester with the Committee.

Over the period from June through November 2002, the Committee held meetings and began to develop agreed text. The process was systematic: for each of five areas of the first Committee’s draft, there would be an exchange of views, often involving an expert presentation. In advance of the meeting, a background paper would be prepared that set out important facts, presented the agreements that had been made by the first Committee and posed questions that might be addressed. The background papers and analyses constitute an additional diagnosis of the Town’s real situation of the town in the areas covered by the plan and provide a factual basis for sound planning, now and in the future. Then, a subcommittee, open to any interested member, would prepare proposals that would be discussed in a meeting, and agreements reached. The Committee followed a practice of leaving text that was not agreed for further discussion. This text was placed in square brackets. It was assumed that a final review of the plan would lead to these texts either being modified or deleted based on the shape and content of the whole document.

On the whole, the process worked for many of the areas covered by the plan, including the economy, housing and infrastructure. On review, the original section on “development patterns” was found to be duplicative and the elements from the first Committee’s draft were redistributed to other sections of the draft plan. The Committee also favored a more direct presentation of objectives than was done in the first Committee’s draft, based on placing all of the agreed goals at the beginning of the text rather than after an extensive introductory section. The Committee also agreed on a format that would more clearly link objectives and actions to the specific goals that had been agreed by the first Committee.

The exception was the area of the environment, which in many ways is the most contentious of the sections. After the general discussion, and after reviewing a first draft presented by a subcommittee, it was clear that there was considerable work to be done. The subcommittee itself, despite many hours of work, was unable to reach agreement on many areas of text.

The Committee having reached the target date that it had set for preparing a final draft, held a meeting on December 9 to review the full text. It made considerable progress in removing many of the brackets from text, but many remained, especially in the area of the environment where there were disagreements about how far the plan should go. One alternative would have been to continue to discuss the issues at further meetings. Many thought that this would be a slow process. It was recognized that under State law, the Committee had to have a public hearing on its draft. While often in local governance public hearings are a final stage when the purpose is to fulfill a legal obligation but there is little intention to change things after the hearing (they are often scheduled to take place just prior to a decision being made), public hearings can also be used to obtain public input to help a Committee make its final decisions. The Committee decided to follow the second approach and submit the draft, which contained large blocks of text that had not been agreed, to a public hearing in January. The draft text was widely circulated in the town. Comments were received in writing from many residents.

It was at this point that the process broke down. A group of residents organized a campaign to bring people to the public hearing. The campaign included advertisements in the local newspapers that characterized the plan as attacking various kinds of rights or seeking to impose new regulations on landowners. The characterizations referred to sections of the plan that had not been agreed by the Committee and in many cases exaggerated their meaning and intent.

The public hearing, when it was eventually held on January 27, 2003 at Belleayre was attended by a large number of residents. A majority of those who addressed the Committee were clearly hostile to the draft plan as a whole or in parts, in contrast to those who sent written comments that, in general, were more supportive. A clear conclusion was that the community was very divided about the plan. Those who were critical of the plan tended to express this by applauding those with whom they agreed and booing those with whom they did not. While this was unpleasant for many members of the Committee, it was not unusual for a public hearing.

When the Committee met again on February 10 to continue working on the draft, I proposed a set of five criteria that could be applied to the text that had not been agreed as we would move toward conclusion of the work. These were commonsense criteria that were based on the idea that the plan should not be duplicative, that it should be forward looking and should work towards a consensus, if at all possible. While there seemed to be a consensus on these criteria, it has become clear subsequently that even this was not the case. Moreover, the meeting was characterized by open conflict among the members that eventually led to the resignation of one of the officers of the Committee. In an effort to apply the criteria, the Committee reviewed the first substantive section of the draft, which happened to be in the area of the environment. The first goal, which was from the draft prepared by the first Committee, was accepted without change. However, a majority of the Committee felt that the remaining text did not meet the criteria and were deleted after a vote.

This meeting was characterized by a very active participation of a large audience. They would applaud statements they liked and boo those that they did not. It was difficult for the Committee to transact its business. One factor in the Committee’s work was that, as is usually the case when issues are brought to a vote, Committee members became less willing to compromise.

While the procedure followed demonstrated that voting could eliminate text, it also showed that it would mostly work to delete text rather than modifying it. After the meeting, in reviewing the next texts that would have to be considered it was obvious that this procedure ran the risk of eliminating positive ideas that, if they were better formulated, could be found acceptable. It ran the risk of alienating a significant section of the community, even if it would satisfy another section.

Since that meeting there has been no substantive progress in the Committee’s work. We held meetings on March 10, April 14 and May 12. At the March 10 meeting, the Committee was informed that one of its grant proposals had been accepted that included the services of a professional planner in the area of transportation and that there were prospects of obtaining a grant from the Department of State for a planner to assist in finalizing the plan. The idea that a professional planner could help facilitate the Committee’s work had been suggested in the public hearing by a number of speakers who had been critical of the draft. Based on this and lacking another agreed option on how to proceed, the Committee decided to suspend its work until a planner could be obtained using these funds. While it did not agree on the criteria for the planner, it agreed that the selection process had to be completely open. It agreed to meet in a month to review developments about the grants.

The April meeting consisted primarily in a report about the lack of progress in obtaining the grants, largely because of the State’s financial and budgetary crisis. Some members were concerned that if the delay persisted, the Committee should consider other alternatives to complete its work.

The May meeting, which I called after consultation with the Committee’s vice chair and secretary, was intended to be an exploratory meeting to consider alternatives. Even before I formally advised the Town officials that we would be meeting, an advertisement financed by the same group that had been critical of the draft plan appeared in a local newspaper urging people to attend the Committee meeting “to make your views known.”

That meeting showed the extent of disagreement within the Committee. More importantly, the audience, largely consisting of the same people who had been regularly attending, continued the practice of applauding statements that they liked, booing those that they did not, but with an added element of making verbal insults to Committee members. This was widely reported in some of the local press. As a result, the Committee did not agree on anything, other than to meet again in June.

As a result of this meeting, I have reluctantly concluded that even were we to obtain a planner, given the situation in the Committee and the lack of civility in the meetings, we will not be able to finish our work. I have shared this appreciation with a number of committee members some of whom also reluctantly concur. Others would like to continue to try to work. Many are concerned that the many hours of work that they have put into the process will have been wasted.

The major factor impeding us from completing our work is something that we, as a Committee, tried to avoid: the proposed Belleayre project. A comprehensive plan is not supposed to be site specific: it is supposed to reflect a community’s view of where it is going so that this can provide a context for reviewing development proposals. There are many in the community who clearly believe that a plan should favor the Belleayre development project, and staff of the project developers as well as announced supporters of the project have been part of the audience throughout our process. There are many in the community who clearly believe that a plan should include obstacles to the Belleayre development project. They have also been present at our meetings, although much less vocal. For those members of the Committee who are in the middle, this has meant walking a thin line between favoring either side.

The truth is, however, that much of what we have done, especially in the draft text that has not been agreed, has been seen in terms of the Belleayre development project, even if that was not the intention. The irony is that if we had completed the plan, it would neither help nor hinder that project, but rather would have set the context in which the Town bodies would review those aspects falling within the Town’s competence as with any development project.

The fact that we tried to avoid doing anything that would imply a position on the Belleayre project meant that we, like the predecessor committee, did not ask many of the questions that should be asked in a comprehensive plan, such as “to which size would we like to see the town to grow?” If approved, the Belleayre project would have implications for the size of the town. If not approved, there would be other implications for economic development.

Until the outcome of the Belleayre project is decided, through the official process now underway, I do not believe that a comprehensive plan for Shandaken can be agreed. The community is simply too polarized to reach an agreement. Once the Belleayre project is decided one way or another, a comprehensive plan can be completed and adopted. If the project is approved, the plan will take that into account. If it is not approved, the plan will take that into account.

An additional factor to be considered is that there will shortly be municipal elections. The Committee itself, like its predecessor, is composed of Republicans, Democrats and non-enrolled members. Both Republican and Democratic members of the Town Board supported the Committee’s creation and terms of reference. We have made an effort to try to keep the plan and the Committee’s work out of partisan politics. However, the closer that we come to the election, the more that we run the risk of becoming embroiled in electoral politics. A plan that is perceived as a partisan document in a town where party loyalties are so evenly divided, could not achieve the necessary broad support.

This factor is important because, even if a grant were to be received for a planner, there would be almost no prospect of selecting and contracting a planner until the fall, assuming that the Committee could even agree on who to select.

Since the Town Board created and charged the Committee, it is for the Town Board to take whatever action it deems necessary about the future of the Committee.

May 29, 2003