File photo
The Town of Plattsburgh has rejected the City of Plattsburgh’s request to serve as lead agency on a procedural environmental review necessary to move forward with an annexation petition. Pictured above is the MLD site plan for a portion of the Rugar Street property.
PLATTSBURGH | The City of Plattsburgh has hit a potential roadblock in its push to annex property on Rugar Street from the Town of Plattsburgh, and a state mediation is now on the horizon.
The Plattsburgh Town Board unanimously passed a resolution Feb. 21 rejecting the city’s request to serve as the lead agency on a SEQR, a procedural environmental review necessary to move forward with filing a formal annexation petition.
After hearing of the town board’s rejection, the City of Plattsburgh Common Council subsequently voted last Thursday to in turn contest the town’s request to serve as lead agency.
That decision sends the conflict to the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), who will weigh the dispute and rule in favor of either municipality.
This dispute between the two Plattsburghs marks the latest in a series of hurdles as the city attempts to annex 230 acres of city-owned property from the town.
Asked if the town was using the SEQR as a way to purposely delay the city’s filing of a petition, Plattsburgh Town Supervisor Michael Cashman told The Sun “unquestionably no.”
“We have said right from the beginning that our municipality follows process and we are a community that has a rich history of sound planning and discovery using process, and that is what we will continue to do,” he said. “This is for the environmental impact. We are prepared to lay our case out before the DEC if the City of Plattsburgh doesn’t seem to acquiesce to our request.”
LEAD AGENCY ARGUMENTS
“The Town of Plattsburgh feels, in doing a comprehensive review of the request, that we are much more capable of addressing that process and doing the deep-dive in regards to the environmental impacts,” Town Supervisor Michael Cashman told The Sun Feb. 23, citing the town’s close proximity to the uptown commercial corridor.
The town’s senior planner, Trevor Cole, noted that the town has documentation related to the area, traffic studies, prior SEQRs and other planning, dating back years.
Mayor Colin Read retains that the city is better positioned to conduct the review.
“We had proposed we act as the lead agency because we have been renewing permits, granted SEQR status on that property before, and documenting and doing the analysis for that land we’ve owned for many decades,” he told The Sun in an email, referencing a recent move to renew permits at the old compost plant on site. “Hence, from a legal and practical perspective, we are in the best position to investigate various environmental aspects of our proposed annexation at that location.”
Read said that as a result of the town’s decision, the two municipalities will now have to proceed with “this more time consuming and cumbersome process as demanded by the town.”
“We regret that this will further delay and hinder projects for which we believe there are significant benefits that will accrue to our entire region, most notably the Town of Plattsburgh,” Read said. “Meanwhile, we remain ever hopeful that the town will at some point take us up on our requests for a collaborative approach.”
MUNICIPAL LIGHTING SITE
A 42-acre portion of the property on Rugar, owned by the city but within town boundaries, was purchased by the city Municipal Lighting Department (MLD) last year for $1.2 million.
Citing a need to attract 3,000 families to the region by 2040, Read in the past has described the city’s annexation push as critical to the city’s survival.
For the city to survive, the tax base must grow — and moving the MLD to Rugar from its lakeside Green Street property, paired with the sale of its Miller Street office, would open up land for potential development, he has argued.
“This is definitely a case in which delay after delay will be costly to our region as we miss out on significant opportunities for that property,” Read said.
The MLD submitted a site plan to the Town of Plattsburgh Planning Board last year for a proposed new complex on Rugar, the first step toward relocating the utility inland.
The site plan showed that the department was seeking to build a complex, with several buildings, that would take up nearly 53 acres. It was anticipated that the project would be completed in 2020.
But the plan was rejected by the town planning board, sending it to the Clinton County Planning Board, who ruled it a local issue.
That ruling would’ve sent the plan back to the Town of Plattsburgh Planning Board.
But according to Cole, the department has not yet resubmitted the site plan.
“We rejected the site plan in November,” he said. “They never returned.”
‘COLLABORATIVE APPROACH’
The city’s position has been that a “collaborative approach” would involve the two municipalities moving forward and working consensually on the city’s annexation request, without legal disputes.
This would have been possible — according to the city’s corporation counsel, Dean Schneller — because the property is vacant and owned by a municipality, not a private entity.
The town’s position since Read announced that the city would seek to annex the property has been, and remains, that a “collaborative approach” would be the more traditional route, which would involve public hearings and meetings between all entities involved, including local fire departments and school districts.
