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Joe Wetmore called out the Lansing Town Planning Board and Town Supervisor Ed LaVigne Monday when he rebuked LaVigne for saying public comments made at the scheduled October 30 public hearing would not be considered before the Planning Board votes on sending their draft of the comprehensive Plan to the town Board for approval.  Wetmore quoted a statement LaVigne posted on Facebook and sent as a 'Letter to the Editor' in the Lansing Star' in which he wrote, "If you wait until the October 30th meeting, there will not be time for them to consider your requests, comments or concerns. There will be no debate at a public hearing. They will only listen and then vote."

"Now, according to our Town Supervisor, you are going to hold the public hearing, but 'there will not be time' for the Planning Board 'consider' our 'requests, comments or concerns'," Wetmore told Planning Board members.  "Let me repeat that, at a formal public hearing, there will be no time to 'consider' Lansing's residents 'requests, comments or concerns'. Really?"

LaVigne (R) countered that the sentence was taken out of context.  He angrily accused Wetmore (D), who is running for the Lansing Town Board in November's election, of politicizing the comprehensive plan review process.  He said the point of his letter was to urge citizens to mail, email, or call in their concerns ahead of time in order to give the Planning Board a reasonable amount of time to consider them.

"What I said publicly was 'I hope this does not become a political issue', but obviously it has," he argued.  "My full statement was to get your questions in as soon as possible to give people a fair chance to look at these questions.  My intent is to push people forward to submit these questions.  Since the informational session I have had no questions submitted to me from the group that was there.  I had feedback from two other people that I shared with our (Planning Board) chair Tom Ellis and our planner Mike Long."

Typically municipal boards vote on issues right after a public hearing unless there are significant new concerns they haven't yet considered.

"Once the Planning Board hears public comments they can make adjustments to the draft plan that they have, or they can send it the way it is," explained Lansing planning consultant Michael Long.  "The Board will decide that after they have the public hearing.  It would be premature to say that they're not going to have any changes."

Wetmore posed three questions in his statement to the Board.

"If there is no time to 'consider' 'requests, comments or concerns' from the general public at a public hearing, what do you do at a public hearing?," he asked.  "If there is no time to 'consider' 'requests, comments or concerns' from the general public at a public hearing, what do you expect the public do at a public hearing?  If you have no time to 'consider' 'requests, comments or concerns' from the general public, whose requests, comments and concerns have you considered? The public deserves to know."

LaVigne said that getting comments from more members of the public early to allow more time to consider them was the intention behind his letter.

"You can get hung up on a word or two, but the bottom line is this is more than just a political election," he said.  "This is about our town.  Our whole town.  You can politicize things -- as Mr. Wetmore has said, 'of course it is about politics', quoting from his Facebook page.  That means that people who lose the election are going to be at a disadvantage to those who win the election.  That is exactly what you do not want with a comprehensive plan.  The comprehensive plan is for everyone.  You listen to all their comments, so once again I urge people to get their questions in as soon as possible to give the Planning Board and the Town Board fair enough time to analyze them."

Planning Board Chairman Tom Ellis said his board is not a political entity, and noted that every Planning Board meeting is open to the public.  He said during the year the Planning Board has worked on its draft no members of the public attended to give input on the plan.

"The committee worked literally years on the draft that we got," he said.  "We had at least 13 meetings open to the public, and we went over that thing three times, word for word.  Believe me there's not a political bone in my body, or in this body.  We don't care.  We looked at the structure and the syntax, and we went solely on that.  There were lots of chances for someone to come in a and say, 'gee I'm worried you guys talked last week about something up on Farrell Road'...  We didn't hear that.  We never heard once."

Long also noted that two public hearings had been held, one each by the two comprehensive Plan Committees.

At some point after the October 30th public hearing the Planning Board will vote to send its draft to the Town Board, which will also hold a public hearing before voting on whether to accept the final draft.

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