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Lansing Town Board members struggled Wednesday to incorporate public concerns into a final draft of the Comprehensive Plan revision that would not spark further review, and, thus, a delay that would remove the Town from consideration for a half million dollar grant that would pay for significant improvements to Myers Park.  The Board was presented with a number of proposed changes by Councilman Joe Wetmore, who said that he wanted to find ways to incorporate a number of public concerns in a way that would not trigger another County review of the plan.

Wetmore's changes were challenged by Planning Board Chairman Tom Ellis.  Ellis said Wetmore lied in last November's campaign when he accused the Planning Board of crafting their draft of the plan behind closed doors, when, in fact, the work was done in more than 23 public meetings.  He accused Wetmore sneaking in his own edits in 'the back door' without public input.

"Here we are now, and there were only a few additions, corrections, and add-ons created, not in the public view, not in the planning view, but in the very narrowly looked-at view by one or two people," Ellis charged. "There was no public input on these new changes, so it was ironic to me that the big issue last fall in the election was that this was not a moment of discussion on the Comp Plan.  It was made an issue.  And it was a lie.  And here we are today, and we can't get this passed because we're trying to shuffle stuff in the back door into a plan that was already approved by the County, our planner, our legal department, and seven planning board members with a combined 70 years-worth of experience in this town.  Four of us are lifers.  We know this town.  We're going to screw this town."

Former Lansing representative to the Tompkins County Legislature Pat Pryor was one of five people who spoke in favor of rezoning the Bell Station property for recreational use only.  She said new business construction generates more taxes than residential building, explaining that the cost of providing services to residential properties offsets the tax income they provide.

"We need to remember there a lot of costs associated with housing," she said. "In a case like this you would have to build roads that have to be maintained over a period of years.  There are likely to be children in those houses who have to be educated in the school system, and that's going to be additional cost to the Lansing population.  So overall, what planners have determined is that the value of additional housing in a municipality does not equal the cost of that housing."

But others argued to keep the zoning as it currently is.  Planning Board member Al Fiorille said that land is valued according to it's highest and best legal use.  He said the Bell Station land is currently assessed at about $4,000 per acre, but that would be reduced to a quarter of its value if the land were rezoned for recreational use only.  He estimated the loss to the taxable assessment would be roughly $1.5 million.  He noted that the current zoning allows for recreational use, and noted it could be changed later if and when Iberdrola decides to sell it to the State for park or state forest use.

"It's important as the beginning of some really good discussions," said Planning Board member Deborah Trumbull. "If we begin to try to edit it more it's going to be an endless regress.  It's already taken forever to get anything written.  I urge s to pay a lot of attention to what people have said about the Comprehensive Plan, to have a systematic mechanism to consider those changes as we move forward."

Resident Aaron Thompson said rezoning would have a negative impact on current residents, who are already stressed by the property tax burden.

"I'm concerned that people are getting taxed out of Lansing," said Thompson. "If we restrict building when people still want to come to Lansing, and restrict how much land is there, that continues to drive the land value up.  My two brothers -- one didn't come back to Lansing because he can't afford it, and the other is being taxed out of Lansing."

In a working meeting discussion, immediately after the regular Town Board meeting, Wetmore said he was not trying to delay passage of the plan, but simply trying to make the plan better reflect the public's desire for a future Lansing.  He said that people would feel more comfortable if the property were pink on the future land use map, reinforcing the Town's desire to see a state park or state forest there, even though it has no intention of changing the zoning for now.

Bell Station is just under 500 acres of land that includes 3,400 feet of Cayuga Lake shoreline on which NYSEG had intended to build a nuclear plant in the 1990s.  Today part of that land is undeveloped, and the rest is rented to farmers for crops.  Iberdrola, which now owns NYSEG, had indicated it was interested in selling the land to the Finger Lakes Land Trust as an intermediary that would then sell it to New York State when state funding became available so that it could become a state park or state forest.  But the company is not interested in selling at this time, and repeated attempts to contact Iberdrola by Town officials who want to sound the company out on its future plans for the property have not yielded a reply.

Wetmore said there is a place in the text of the plan for indication what the pink area means, and would be a way of showing the state that that the current Town Board still supports its 2013 resolution to support the plan to locate a state forest or state park there.

"That lake-shore is a really scarce resource," he said.  "I think the reason everyone's focusing on the Bell Station land is that it's the largest single undeveloped parcel (on the lake) and those are not replicable.  We're not going to get another one."

Town Board members said they were supportive of most of Wetmore's edits, but indicated they needed to be made in a way that doesn't further delay the process.  The Board hopes to accept the plan no later than next month.

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