During the public comments at the August 8th Town Board meeting a Stony Point resident respectfully offered his thoughts on the need for an updated Master Plan. As he was finishing his comments a Board member attacked the speaker by declaring,
“In 7 years on the Board I haven’t heard you say once that this is a great project and try to help the people.”
“I actually walk in the street talking to people who are in business or want to invest in SP. They’re not going to come here. You know why?”
“Because of You!”
This attack was uncalled for and disrespectful.
Town Board members are elected officials who work for us! No matter what their personal feelings may be about any individual person, ridiculing, blaming, and attacking residents in their official capacity, especially at a public meeting is just wrong. It’s an abuse of power.
A few weeks later we answered the Board member with a list of things we're FOR. The Town Supervisor promptly dismissed our concerns as Democratic politics.
It would be refreshing to have a Town Board that realizes that there are many Stony Pointers who aren’t Democrats that would like to see the Master Zoning Plan revised. Especially since the Town’s own planning consultant has said in public that the present plan is too “long in the tooth” (old) to be helpful in making zoning decisions today. That alone should be enough to move to the Board to action but in addition if we don't update the plan what's happening at 111 S. Liberty can happen again. What's to stop it unless we change our mixed use regulations.
And there are other items in our Master Plan that need to be tightened up like the interpretation that private balconies and rooftops can be substituted for recreational space when building high-density housing. Certainly the original zoning regulations were meant to be “ground based” recreational space.
What other issues are hidden in the zoning code that we won’t discover until the next developer finds a loophole we didn’t see 10 years ago?
