Building Freeze Looms

Last night the Town Council voted 3-1 to move forward with an 18-month moratorium on subdivisions of four or more lots.  David Lewis was not present, and Toni Hokanson cast the dissenting vote.

• The vote shows that, at least sometimes, the Town Council doesn't blindly follow Toni's lead, as I've often seen written in That Paper's letters column.  It may happen, but it didn't happen last night.
• Toni has been consistent in her opposition to a moratorium before the comprehensive plan update is done - she feels that the time for one is afterwards, when the zoning code changes are tweaked.
• Kitty Brown was consistent in her position that this type of idea should really come from the Planning Board.
• Jonathan Wright, the gadfly and Planning Board member who has pushed for this for over two years, has been unable to get that body to recommend a moratorium.  He has always maintained that having the moratorium now is critical, because the zoning is broken and we should not be allowing any more bad subdivisions (read:  McMansions and strip malls) to be approved before we take a look at what types of development will really benefit the town, economically, culturally, and environmentally.
  
• Jeff Logan worked hard on getting this passed, and showed a real commitment to doing to research and work necessary to be on the Council.  In other words, he's now officially underpaid ;) .

The language must be reviewed by the Town Attorney before a public hearing date may be set.

Man with a Plan

So Ken Wishnick, former town board member and longtime REALTOR®, is set to become the town's new planner. Ken has a degree in urban planning and, as I've learned with conversations with Ken over the past few years, a sincere interest in how things work in this community. We both were participants in the Chamber of Commerce's Economic Discussion Group, facilitated by the late Peter Rossi. Ken later took up the mantle of that group, reshaping and broadening its purpose. He also renamed it, but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called now.

Kitty Brown broke ranks with the remainder of the town council in voting against hiring Ken for this newly-minted, $41,000 a year part-time job (although at those rates, I seriously should consider working part-time for the town myself). She was concerned that only two candidates had been interviewed for the position, one that would wield considerable influence over the town's comprehensive plan. Toni Hokanson poo-pooed Kitty's misgivings, saying that she ran ads in several papers and advertised it on the planner's web site, so two candidates was all they were going to get.

According to Toni, they're just waiting for the green light from the town's Ethics Committee, since Ken plans on keeping up his real estate license. After all, Town Planner is only a part-time job worth about $60,000 a year with benefits, so Ken will need to do what has to do in order to keep food on the table.

Now I know Ken, and it's very likely that he is qualified to do the job. I do have a couple of questions, though.

1. Did you think about a consultant? What's the rush to hire a new town employee when professional planners can be hired on an as-needed basis? The village uses Greenplan, a professional planning firm right in New Paltz, and there are probably a few others in the area that could be hired for big projects, or even on retainer.
2. He wants to keep his real estate license? Are you kidding me? Why was this even brought up for a vote? I might not have voted for Ken even if he had already given up his license, because his perspective and experience are focused on land-as-investment. This is an important consideration for a businessman, but a municipal planner must consider issues in a broader context. If the Ethics Committee decides Ken doesn't need to give up his license, someone needs to take a long, hard look at our local laws.
3. $41K and benefits is a part time job? I can hear Toni now explaining that the town needs to be competitive. I don't buy it. At the very least you need to find enough work to keep your planner busy for forty hours a week. I don't care if he's unbending staples, Toni, just keep him at his desk for forty hours. I'll bet Paul Brown is qualified to do that job, and he doesn't have a degree in Urban Planning, and he's at town hall for close to forty hours a week for free.

The bright spot is that having a planner in place is one of the stumbling blocks that the town has used to impede any meaningful update of the comprehensive plan. There are a lot more of them ahead, but this puts us one step closer to fixing what's broken.

Crossroads Makes No Economic Sense

Crossroads at New Paltz is a heavily opposed 58-acre development slated for prime real estate just off of exit 18 on the New York State Thruway. It's a contentious parcel of land, having been the site of an historic fight against Wal-Mart in the 1990s. Crossroads is one of the primary reasons I invited Ira Margolis to write for this blog; I know he and I have differing views on this mixed-use development, and I know it would be a lot more fun around here if other viewpoints were represented. I'm still hopeful about Ira, but I digress.

I had ample opportunity to study this project during my year on the Town Planning Board, and certainly would have voted against it had I continued in that capacity. (The reasons I had for leaving would be best left for another post, perhaps closer to the 2009 elections.) My main reasons for disliking Crossroads were simple:

1. Economics.
2. Economics, and
3. Economics.

I won't deny that there are real environmental issues with this project, but they pale in comparison to the bad economic choices for the New Paltz community. Thank goodness we had a major economic crisis in this country that would throw this bad plan into sharp relief!

The Problem with a Consumer Economy
The United States is driven almost entirely by consumerism. A quarter of our GDP is driven by Christmas presents. Since World War II we have increasingly imported goods from elsewhere, because it's impossible to pay a decent wage and produce affordable product here (and one of these days I will have to talk about how unions have violated their trust and caused much of this meltdown, but again, that's a tangent for another day). We just don't make anything anymore.

Since we're so dependent on buying crap, we have gotten sucked more and more into a credit economy. No one waits to buy things until they have the money anymore. First houses, and then cars, became so costly that it seemed that borrowing was the only option. Of course now that credit is hard to come by, I'm praying that everyone will realize that, if you don't borrow the money, the prices will have to come down, since a big reason for that inflation was credit itself. It's very easy to by today's toys with tomorrow's money, at least as long as you expect to be making more money tomorrow.

Crossroads and Consumerism
So the direction of our country is towards a retail economy that can't be supported on a retail paycheck. Crossroads would bring that home to roost. New Paltz is already heavily tourist-dependent, with few opportunities to get a decent-paying job for skilled workers. The development as proposed would sacrifice one of our few chances to tilt that balance back, by giving up land that is zoned for light industrial use, and converting it into retail instead.

Mind you, there will be plenty of housing on this tract, but even the "affordable" section will be well beyond the price that one could expect an employee at, say, the Gap to afford for rent. The residents will go elsewhere to find jobs, and the employees will come from outside our community.

It just doesn't make sense in light of the flaws in our local and national economy, flaws which I have wondered about for years but many others are just now noticing. Toni Hokanson has argued that the plan would have been much worse under existing zoning, but I think that's a lousy way to govern. I like Toni and agree with many of her positions, but this one issue is going to ruin New Paltz if her defeatist attitude is allowed to hold sway. Reactive planning and zoning is exactly why Jonathan Wright has been arguing for a moratorium for years now - let's tell developers what makes sense for New Paltz first, so we don't have to consider one crappy plan after another. However, as I have found out myself, calls for a moratorium to allow us to plan intelligently fall upon deaf ears.