Friday, September 16, 2011

137- Planning Board Public Hearing on Revocation of RUPCO Special Use Permit

The "public hearing" was pretty predictable.  Many people attended, some spoke, mostly complained of RUPCO's illegal and blatant disregard for private property and the terms of their Special Use Permit.  The glaring and disgusting and unfortunately also expected aspect was that Planning Board Chair Paul Shultis, Jr. asked RUPCO personnel to stay away.  Now, it seems as though the point of a public hearing is so that RUPCO can actually HEAR the complaints, however it is obvious that Shultis wants to string this out as long as possible, in order to give RUPCO two more weeks to violate the terms so that they can then, two days later, do what they want, when it becomes legal (Oct. 1).

By way of clarification, the bats are protected on the site until Oct. 1, so by giving RUPCO until Sept. 29 to respond to complaints, the planning board will have only one more day before RUPCO can come around to the other side of the project, which is where they were supposed to be working the last two months.

Woodstock Land Use attorney Drayton Grant was there, sleazy as ever, claiming that she was not prepared to produce the notice of revocation that would be required to get the ball rolling to revoke the special use permit.  She claimed more research on the documents needed to be done.  To this I must counter that this public hearing was set two weeks ago, and any person who was taking this seriously would have prepared by reviewing the documents on the topics of the already alleged violations.

I remember a couple of year ago when I first attended planning board meetings.  My neighbor Iris York told me who all the RUPCO personnel were, and their functions.  Then I asked her who that woman was who frequently showed up and worked for RUPCO.  Iris said that it was Drayton Grant, and that yes, it did appear to an outsider that she does work for RUPCO, not for the town.  She had a great time last night, laughed a lot.  That's because she lives in Rhinebeck, where there are no trucks driving over her property, none of her trees being cut down, no trucks idling in her driveway, etc. Plus, she gets paid, unlike everybody else in the room last night except for RUPCO's attorney.

RUPCO's attorney, Michael Moriello, reported that he was trying very very hard to get the DEC to allow RUPCO to build the bridge over the creek before October 1.  This is the equivalent of trying very very hard to get the DEC to NOT protect an endangered species.  He also said that in his opinion, RUPCO was not violating any terms of the special use permit.  All one has to do is hear that to know that these are NOT people with whom we want to negotiate.

So, of course, at the end of the meeting, Moriello asked Shultis the chair to sit down with the attorney Drayton Grant, and one other planning board member, before Sept. 29, to try to work some things out.  Yes, in the face of violations, the town is going to sit down and negotiate, instead of enforce the terms of the special use permit.

RUPCO is a bunch of bullies, and central to their arguments these days is "responsibility to investors," which seems to have taken the place of their angelic self-representation as providers of affordable housing for the people in need.

Last night, I introduced myself anew to the planning board, citing my professional experience with cars, urban issues, planning, and that experience is ample.  I told the planning board that many lawsuits as a result of accidents would occur, and there I will be, with everything on tape, and ready to repeat everything, and there they will be, called to testify, with no good reason they did not listen to reason and stand up to the violations when they had the chance.  Paul Shultis Jr. once said to me, "What are you going to do to me, Robin, I'm a volunteer!"  Well, volunteer or not, he chose to work on the planning board, to uphold town law, to protect the public safety through his decisions.  So what is going to happen to him and others in the town who cower to the bullies with the deep pockets, is that he will have to face the music when accidents, resulting from these violations, occur, and when legal action against the town, and him, occur.

What nobody is talking about is that what results from violations are accidents.  Sometimes.  Sometimes it is merely a truck running over a lawn, or pollution coming into somebody's house, but the RUPCO that does these violations and does not have any construction oversight is certainly violating codes and regulations in other ways.  And the town should be much more interested in stopping these violations immediately.

I tried to explain this last night.  It appears that Shultis is penny wise pound foolish.  This will result in his being pounded later on, and I will have done my part to prevent it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

136- That New York Times Article

Thanks to Peter Applebome for a good overview of a town in conflict.  While it is true that space limitations can be blamed for many omissions in a busy newspaper, I would like to point out the important fact that this blog began not because I was opposed to this housing project, but because the traffic study used seemed incomplete, and seemed to ignore what was and is, to the eye, and to any statistician, an unsafe intersection at the project's main access road.  I have shown the traffic study to be indeed manipulated to ignore car activity in that intersection.  I also have shown that the width of the access road is not as wide as the developer claimed, and narrower than universally used design standards.

I also have shown that RUPCO, the developer, intentionally misquoted a town official in the environmental impact statement's water supply section in order to have the town approve the project.  RUPCO also claimed that the project site is in the town water district, and in fact it lies outside the water district.  Later, through quite an effort, some citizens and a consulting hydrogeologist convinced the NY Department of Environmental Conservation that there is not necessarily enough water, and this is why the town now has to spend $100,000 on well testing.  That test would have been paid by RUPCO if the test had been ordered before the project had been approved by the town.

All this to say that my opposition, and this blog, began because of two SAFETY concerns: traffic and fire protection.  The New York Times article is fine, but as far as I am concerned, its referenced "errors and problems the planning process missed" that I found and wrote about, are life and death problems of ignored safety precautions, and trump anything else on the table.

Friday, September 2, 2011

135- PUBLIC HEARING ON RUPCO SITE VIOLATIONS

135- PUBLIC HEARING ON RUPCO VIOLATIONS


Thursday, September 15, sometime around 5:30, Woodstock Planning Board will hold a public hearing on the construction site violations RUPCO is committing on the housing project site.  This was decided on last night at Planning Board meeting, as a result of reviewing Iris York's excellent work to alert the building inspector, planning board, deputy supervisor, to the problems, as well as coordinating neighbors.


By law, the planning board has the authority to hold this public hearing, and if RUPCO does not cease the violations, their work will be shut down as a result of a rescinded Special Use Permit.

 Nice to see the planning board has a spine.  Chair Shultis has been driving around, yelling at various RUPCO officials, and with good reason.  As he pointed out last night at the meeting,  RUPCO submitted the plan, and all the planning board did was authorize it.

 Now let us get into the violations themselves:


First, and most obvious, RUPCO has been bringing all their heavy machinery, and everything and everyone, in and out on the Elwyn Quarry side, even parking in residents' driveways.  The entire act of site access from the western side is a violation, as the initial work to clear the trees from that side over to the east/Playhouse Lane side was the only work permitted to commence from that western side. I found out the reason RUPCO is doing this, but when I told the planning board last night, Alan Duane tried to shut me up, arguing that the meeting was not a public hearing.  Alan Duane was very concerned that a fight might break out between town departments, and it seems much more important to him to have interpersonal harmony, even if it leads to accidents or fires, (which are, by the way, not exactly harmonious events for those involved,) than to face the music and deal.

 Anyway, enough about foolish Alan Duane.  The reason RUPCO is doing all the work from the unauthorized side is because they did not clear all the trees in which the protected Indiana bats are nesting.  Nesting, protected, until November 1 (correction: Oct.1).   I am guessing that RUPCO finds it easier to meet the DEC conditions than the conditions imposed by the Woodstock Planning Board.  It is the DEC that protects the bats, and the town that says which road to use.  If were caught between a DEC and a group of tired volunteers, I know whose rules I'd try to violate.

 Shultis told me to submit my comments in writing.  He was trying to keep harmony with Alan Duane, or stop me before I told the board any worse news.  I got the news about the bats from construction site personnel, (addition Sept. 15: although he said November first was the date they could build the bridge,) at the edge of the site, just walking my dog, sometime last week.  That's about it, and now here it is, submitted in writing.  Submitted to everybody.

So there it is: RUPCO cannot build the bridge until November.  RUPCO will continue to violate the access condition until then, or it will have to stay off the site.

 Another violation: RUPCO has no person overseeing the project on site, and a condition of the Special Use Permit, as described in the DEIS section 2.5, is that an independent inspector be engaged by RUPCO.  RUPCO's Chuck Snyder claims that the contract engineer Darin Dekoskie is the inspector, (who is not exactly independent of the project anyway,) but Darin told Iris that he is only overseeing stormwater management.  This leaves the entire remainder of the project with NOBODY looking out for the town's interests.  And another thing, we just had a hell of a storm, and to my eyes, Ferguson was absolutely unprotected.  There is a little mesh fence delineating the 5 or so acres of serious digging into the berm, and then downhill from that is the brook.  Imagine how much of that construction debris ended up in the brook.  I hate to think about it.  Nice going Darin.

The public hearing will be good entertainment.  RUPCO personnel certainly will wear their best tap shoes and do some slick numbers.  The key will be what the planning board does with it.