Board disagrees on Scoping Plan
July 31, 2008
CRGD applauds Town Supervisor Ryan Courtien for using executive privilege to define the language concerning the 245,000 square feet of non-residential space in the adopted Scope; he has displayed strong leadership skills in bringing the Town Board members together on this issue and protecting the interests of all the tax-paying residents of Dover.
“In her report, Councilwoman Katie Palmer-House referred to the scope that had been adopted in her absence and said that she felt the town had made some errors in its scope. Palmer-House said that she was concerned about the commercial and community service uses and felt that the wording in the scoping document was unclear.
As adopted, the scope states that the project would contain 245,000 square feet of commercial floor area and community service uses. According to Palmer-House, this was not what the applicant had specified in their application and therefore the town should not have amended the scope in a way that could be misconstrued to indicate that commercial and community service uses would share the square footage indicated.
Town attorney Thomas Jacobellis, from the firm of Hogan & Rossi, reminded the board that a scoping document was in no way an approval of the plan. Councilman Richard Hawthorne said that he would like to see commercial space and community uses space to be detailed and researched separately.
“I don’t like to see the two uses mixed in,” said Hawthorne. “It leaves the door open.” Hawthorne said that he was further concerned about the possibility that the wording of the scope would allow for the developers to dedicate a larger amount of the aforementioned 245,000 square feet to community uses, leaving an insubstantial portion for commercial use.
Jacobellis reminded both Palmer-House and Hawthorne that the scope had been adopted according to the rules of democracy and could not be changed after the fact. He also said that the town had the authority to ask the applicant revise their DEIS throughout the review process. ”You can still ask the applicant to review the commercial space as 245,000 square feet and then the community service uses separately,” Jacobellis said. Hawthorne expressed a concern that the applicant would not be bound to such a study, given the wording of the scope.
Town Supervisor Ryan Courtien said that he would personally ask the applicant to treat the two uses as separate in their studies to prepare the DEIS document.”
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