- Special Board meeting, last December, when vote to recommend the draft plan was held (Photo by Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong)
Requests sent to Village Board
On Dec. 9, 2010, the Special Board responsible for drafting an updated Comprehensive Plan for Cold Spring voted in favor of recommending the new plan to village trustees. The culmination of some four years of work, mainly by community volunteers, ended in a 5 – 4 vote in favor of recommending the plan. Now that it has received that plan, village trustees must decide what to do with it, a process that must include a public hearing. How the village board decides to treat the recommended Comprehensive Plan is significant – all land use regulations within Cold Spring must be brought into conformity with it. Trustees can accept the recommended plan “as is” or they can opt to revise it as they see fit.
A document dated Dec.31, 2010 and signed by the four Special Board members who voted against recommending the plan – Catharine Square, Cathryn Fadde, Marshall Mermell and Anthony Phillips – has been submitted to village trustees. The 3,500 word document lists areas “where the plan has failed” as well as items that the authors “believe should be in the Plan and items we found to be missing, ambiguous, inconsistent, duplicative or unclear.” It concludes by stating that the recommended Plan, “should be sent back to the Comprehensive Plan Special Board for further work and clarity.” Michael Reisman, another member of the Special Board, has also sent a letter to the Mayor imploring the village board to act promply on the draft comprehensive plan. Both documents may be read in the Letters/Opinions section of Philipstown.info.
