Archive: News

After a contentious meeting last week, Village of Lansing residents and Village officials were in a more cooperative mood Monday when Village Trustees met to decide which consulting firm to hire to study traffic issues in the area of the village north of Route 13 and Dart Drive.  Residents presented the board with their own proposal, and gave input on which, if any, consulting proposal they liked best.

Mayor Donald Hartill began by asking residents for a more civil session than occurred at a joint Planning Board and Trustees meeting last week.  That set the tone for a productive discussion that resulted in a vote to choose a consultant.

The study was prompted by access issues for the proposed Lansing Reserve project that will consist of 65 town home units, each with an attached one car garage on a 23 acre lot north of Dart Drive.  By the end of last year Trustees decided they need a professional assessment of the area to decide how best to provide access and services for existing and future development in the area.

The project brought out neighbors in droves who are opposed to the development.  That opposition was one of the factors that led Trustees to seek out more information.  The Tompkins County Planning Department was engaged to create a Request For Proposal (RFP) from interested consulting firms, and that yielded five responses ranging from $17,350 for a 45 day study to $128,226 for a study that would take a year to complete.

Resident Paul (Dong-Yoon) Kim read a letter that had been submitted to the board.  "We appreciate your willingness to recognize the rights of the Village of Lansing residents to provide input into matters that directly impact the quality of our lives and our neighborhoods," he read.  "In that context, we would like to follow up on the concern regarding the Village’s concern for a “second connection” to Wood Thrush Hollow Rd.  We believe there is a way to address the safety issues without having to hire consultants at this juncture."

But Hartill said there are legal and other problems with that idea.  he said it was unlikely that the fire department would accept the proposal, and that the Village probably does not have the right to maintain Woodthrush Hollow Road because of the need to pass over private property to get to it, and noted that normal villagers don't have the right to access the wild areas in the Dart area community.  He said those two things make the proposed solutions difficult.

Hartill said he was anxious to choose a consultant, but also proposed a committee that would include area residents that would work with the consultant and Village Trustees and Planning Board members.

"My intent is that early in the process there will be some community input," he said.  "I am thinking along the lines of setting up a subcommittee of two concerned residents, a couple of concerned owners of the property that might be involved, and two trustees to explore various possibilities in a quiet, reasoned setting.  I hope that will be acceptable to those concerned."

Some residents have accused Hartill and Trustees of supporting the project at the expense of current residents they represent.  Village resident Yasamin Miller has been a vocal opponent of the project.  She has been critical of NRP, a developer that is trying to raise funding for the project with tax credits for investors.

"We're not opposing development.  We are opposing our village supporting subsidizing corporate America," Miller told the Board of Trustees.  "This is the issue at the table.  The application before you from NRP had a series of misstatements and exaggerations and claims about what the Village was going to do such as providing almost $200,000 in tax revenue, approving of zoning... it's all documented."


Hartill has insisted the board is not biased toward one project or another, but says that it can't prevent landowners from developing their properties.

"One of the things I continuously point out is that the property is not going to remain as it is now," Hartill said.  "It's going to be developed.  The purpose of this exercise is to try to understand what are possible scenarios, what are logical scenarios, what are likely scenarios.  We're not predisposing what we think it is. The goal is to try to understand what will be best for the entire area."

Better Housing of Tompkins County is a partner in the project, and will manage the property if it is built.

"I am very much in favor of the comprehensive study," said Better Housing Executive Director John Spence.  "We applaud the effort of getting comprehensive information. If access is the entire nut of the issue I'm pleased that our site hass access to Dart Road.  If avoiding Woodthrush Hollow is what we need to do we are certainly prepared to change our design accordingly."

Trustees considered the five proposals in depth, and then solicited community input from residents who had read the proposals.  After each Trustee ranked the five proposals, they voted unanimously to hire Barton & Loguidice for a two month study that will cost the Village $17,900.

Trustee Lynn Leopold said the company looks like a good match for the project the Village is proposing.  Trustee Julie Baker agreed.

"B&L have the range of experience that looks like it the right mix for the kind of project that we're paying for," Baker said.  "All of them had the approach of talking with residents and people who would be effected."

v8i6