2- RUPCO Project Approval Process; Where We Are Now

A little background is in order here, if you have not been sitting on top of the Woodstock Planning Board's every move for the last five years. Not that I am able to fill you in on everything, but I have a good grasp of the most recent rounds of approvals.

The Draft environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) was received by the Woodstock Planning Board (the Board) on Dec. 18, 2008. If you would like to read any part of it that is available on the Woodstock town website, you can access the table of contents on this pdf document "and click on the underlined entries to open the various sections, attachments and appendices":

http://woodstockny.org/content/Generic/View/1:field=documents;/content/Documents/File/27.pdf

If you want to skip that and read a summary of the safety-related concerns, read on in this blog.

A public hearing was held on Feb. 5 and then continued and concluded Feb. 12, 2009. Many groups and individuals spoke on both sides of the issue. A period for written comments extended from Feb. 18 to Feb. 27, 2009.

RUPCO addressed the concerns brought up in the oral and written comments, and issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), which was received by the Planning Board on Sept. 10, 2009.

Currently, meaning this October and November, the Woodstock Planning Board is reviewing this very large document in a series of workshops. The workshops will address the issues by topic. On the list of topics is "Traffic."

The workshops are open to the public, for listening, but not for participating. The public will have the opportunity to comment on the FEIS for what is expected to be a ten day period after the Planning Board has finished reviewing the FEIS in its workshops.

You may have heard that there was, last month, a public hearing at the Community Center, but this hearing was limited to comments and questions about the "Site Plan." The site plan is defined as the land that will developed by RUPCO. Since the intersection of Playhouse Lane and Rt. 212 lies outside that land, it is considered part of the "environment" that is "impacted" by the development. This is the case even though every car heading into the development under normal conditions will drive up Playhouse Lane.

At least that is my understanding of the process. If I have gotten any of this wrong, please do correct me in the comments section.

Now that the structure of the process has been prsented, let us go on to the next blog entry, the highlights of the traffic and safety related comments on the DEIS (Feb. 2009) , followed by RUPCO's responses in the FEIS (recieved by the Town Board Sept. 2009 and currently being reviewed in workshops by the Planning Board.)