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The Town Board working meeting agenda was truncated Wednesday after a presentation and discussion of the Comprehensive Plan revision stretched close to two hours.  While some speakers, including Councilman Joe Wetmore, said major changes to the language should be made, the remaining four board members seemed satisfied that judicious edits would be enough to address public concerns so that the Board can vote on whether to approve the plan at its May 2nd meeting.

After a flap about rushing the plan's adoption in December, the Town Board scheduled extra monthly meetings like the one Wednesday, and specifically added Comprehensive Plan public comment sections to those and the regular monthly meetings.  But at least four out of the five board members were feeling pressure to get the plan approved by May 2nd, because not having an approved plan would take Lansing out of the running for a half million dollar grant for improvements to Myers Park.  Lansing Planner Michael Long said he wouldn't recommend approving it later than May 2 if the Town is to qualify for the grant.

The grant would pay for improvements including a second bathroom structure, reconstructing the pavilion near the kayak racks that is currently listing to the east, and to dredge and reinforce the side walls of the marina so it will be safe to enter.  Half the money would come from the State, and the other $250,000 would come in in-kind labor by the Town Highway Department, something they have done on many other projects.

"On the grading system (to qualify for the grant) we scored 20 out of 20," LaVigne says. "We weren't considered because our Comp Plan was not approved.  We didn't know that last year, so that was an honest mistake.  But this year we do know that, and we do know it will make us vulnerable again if we don't."

The meeting began with a presentation by Wetmore that explained what the plan is, what is in it, differences between the Comprehensive Plan Update Committee's draft and the Planning Board's draft, and points of contention he feels should be addressed.  Some major areas of contention Wetmore identified are language in the draft plan  about the environment, and the fate of close to 500 acres of land, called Bell Station after a nuclear plant that NYSEG hoped to build in the 1990s.  Today part of that land is undeveloped, and the rest is rented to farmers for crops.

The nearly 500 acres are located in the northwest-most corner of Lansing, north of the power plant at Milliken Station. The eastern part of the property is leased farmland, while the property closer to Cayuga Lake is wooded. When NYSEG sold the plant in the 1990s the land to the north was retained as the future location of Bell Station Nuclear Plant. That project never came to fruition. NYSEG now wants to sell the land to New York State for a public recreation area.

In 2012 the Town Board was asked to (and did) support a plan by which the Finger Lakes Land Trust would purchase the property and then sell it to New York State so that it could become a state park or state forest.  The State had expressed an interest in doing that, but the intermediate role played by the Land Trust was offered because of the time it would take for the State to budget the money for the purchase.

An earlier draft of the Comprehensive Plan suggested rezoning the land for recreation, but the Planning Board opted to keep the zoning as-is.  That would still allow a state park or forest, but it could also allow luxury lake houses along the 3,400 feet of shoreline.  But town officials noted that Iberdrola SA, which owns NYSEG, has expressed no interest in selling, or even talking about it despite town officials attempting to reach out to the company about it.

"Since our last presentation we have reached out to Iberdrola," said Town Supervisor Ed LaVigne.  "Waiting... waiting... waiting... The reality is that it can still be changed to recreational use with a special use permit.  My understanding is you try to do a wide lens presentation because if you do change the zoning and there is a decrease of value they can sue for compensation.  Do you really want to out the Town in a vulnerable position when nothing, really, is at stake right now?"

Another area of contention is a large-scale rezoning of the northern portion of the Town as an Agriculture district that was recommended in the Agriculture And Farmland Protection Plan that was adopted in September, 2015, and is heavily referenced in the Comprehensive plan draft.  But Wetmore pointed out that none of the changes represented on the future land use map represent actual zoning, but, rather, an idea for what the zoning could be.

"The future land use map is not the zoning map," Wetmore said.  "It's descriptive of how the Town wants to develop.  That's a contentious area in this town as to whether it should develop as park land or whether it should develop as low density housing."

Town Attorney Guy said he couldn't predict whether the plan would trigger a major change or whether the result of the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR)  would show positive or negative impacts (a negative declaration, in this case, means there are no significant impacts) until he sees the final draft.  If the Board makes major changes it will trigger a new 239 Review by the County Planning Department, which can take up to a month to complete.   Krogh advised that the short form SEQR is usually used to evaluate comprehensive plans, but said he believes the long form is more appropriate for a document so far-reaching in municipal planning.  He warned that if the long-form SEQR shows positive environmental impacts it could delay the plan for a year.

"It wouldn't be the volume of the change - it would be the materiality of the change," he said. "If you reordered the sections or teased out the different public health pieces to repeat them in their same section you probably wouldn't have a material change.  If the plan itself is going to materially change, then County Planning probably should have an opportunity to look at it."

"I don't have an interest in this going on for another nine months," said Councilwoman Katrina Binkewicz. "But I do think some very specific compromises to language should be made to make it palatable to all parties.  With respect."

Board members scheduled a special working meeting next Wednesday (April 11th) to discuss the public input, and to recommend specific changes to the plan.

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