Planners delay action on Wave Farm site
Panel to vote June 3 pending appeal of court decision
The Daily Mail
May 8, 2009

CAIRO — Tom Roe, free103point9 program manager, has been told by the Cairo Planning Board that no vote or action would be taken on his Wave Farm Site Plan.

Daniel Benoit, acting chairman of the planning board, announced that the panel would vote on the Site Plan June 3 if the Town Board decides not to appeal a recent court decision against the Planning Board’s previous rejection of the plan and if an outstanding balance of roughly $5,200 in an escrow account is settled.

“I am not surprised,” Roe said about the delay, adding that he could wait another month for the decision. Roe and organization Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter started the process to construct a residential and not-for-profit art study center in 2007.

An April 17 ruling by State Supreme Court Judge Joseph C. Teresi stated that a previous denial of the arts organization’s site plan application had been “arbitrary and capricious.”

Roe was told the planning board would also not take action on the plan conditional to those criteria being met.

Roe noted that conditional approvals had been made on other sites in the past and said the Planning Board’s position to treat his plan differently than other plans was “arbitrary and capricious.”

“No, it is not,” Town Attorney Tal Rappleyea countered, “because we have been asking you and your attorney for several months to reimburse this escrow account and it has not been done. So you saying you will give it to us is something that has fallen on deaf ears on your side.”

Benoit explained that the planning board has withheld action on other site plans due to outstanding balances on escrow accounts.

Roe, engineer George Schmitt of Morris Associates and engineer Elliott Fishman of Santo Associates answered questions posed by the planning board regarding the width of a ingress and egress route as well as parking spaces.

Schmitt said that a section of driveway would be widened to 18 feet across in order to accommodate two-way traffic.

The board asked Roe whether the plan included an appropriate number of handicapped parking spots.

“If it was not correct, the judge would have noted that handicapped parking was still a question,” Roe said.

Benoit and the engineers counted and discussed the number of parking spots included in the plan and decided that at least 60 in the plan, with some room for more spaces would be sufficient.

Roe said that the issue of insufficient parking had not been mentioned in the past.

Benoit and the board agreed that another public hearing on the Site Plan was not necessary and Roe did not need to submit any additional information before a vote was held.

Planning Board member Frank Pambianchi recused himself from Wednesday’s discussion.

After the discussion, Roe hinted his feelings about what further litigation would cost the town.

“I would be doubtful that the Town of Cairo would want to raise taxes to shut down a library,” he said.