Important Letter to Rhinebeck Town Board regarding the Comp Plan
I am sorry to say that, having followed the Comprehensive Plan meetings consistently and having studied the present Proposed Comprehensive Plan and its backup material as well as I could, I am unable to support its basic goal. The saving of every possible square inch of open space does not seem a sensible goal to me. Like others I like open space, but so do I like motherhood and apple pie – which is how that Visioning question was asked. At any rate, it is how the preserved open space fits into a coherent plan that we should be examining here.
Nor do I support the TNDs as a solution to exclusionary zoning. I agree with the statement made at the hearing that the Stop and Shop high density zone is badly located and, in any case, would prove almost impossible to bring about.
The Rhinecliff TND is worse. It would add over 50% in population to an already fragile, historic hamlet. That the anticipated inhabitants would use Amtrak and walk the steep route to and from the station rain or shine, snow or sweltering heat, is highly unlikely. So too is that any great number of TND residents would use Amtrak with its current high charges. In addition, Rhinecliff offers none of the ordinary requirements for households – bread and milk, vegetables, chickens and laundry soap, for instance. To be viable, any new commercial endeavor in the hamlet must depend on a plentitude of purchasers from outside the hamlet. Even a small coffee shop would have a tough time surviving on the immediate population.
However, I was glad to see the reliance the Plan placed on the Critical Environmental Area designation. It is a useful planning device. Certainly it would work for Rhinecliff which is attractive because it is a unique melding of the natural environment and the built environments; houses in Rhinecliff are placed in varying patterns because the steep, rocky topography dictates that is how they must be.
It would be a big help to readers of the proposed plan to have a large, easily readable map of Rhinecliff with clearly marked topography lines. There is none. In fact, the only map in the Proposed Plan book that shows Rhinecliff at a readable scale is the proposed zoning map and it is misleading; having no topographic lines, it implies the land is flat. Many of the lots in the existing hamlet are so steep they are unbuildable. (This may explain why, as late as December 2005, the Planning Committee thought that over twenty lots in the existing hamlet could be built upon and were surprised to learn that at most only two or three were.)
Not even schematic lot lines appear on the proposed TND area. Among the myriad questions the TND poses, in addition to the watercourses and upland terrain, are:
To what open space will its residents have public access; the very small areas labeled green indicated seem entirely inadequate.
Will the proposed one way road through the TND to Rhinecliff Road be used as a short cut from the hamlet to the village.
Will Orchard Street be used as a route to Route 9S that by-passes the village; it is little more than an asphalted trail supported by a laid stone wall that is known to be crumbling as I write.
I also believe Design Standards should not be included in the Comprehensive Plan. That level of detail is too great. Moreover, mimicking goneby styles does not necessarily promote good design; rather it runs the danger of promoting a “cute” rather than a lively environment. (Is only Rhinecliff subject to such stringent design controls or is the rest of Rhinebeck?) Could not many of them be included in the Building Code or some other instrument. From my fifty years of working with zoning ordinances and neighborhoods, I have come to believe that when too much power resides in one agency, even good plans can go awry.
Finally, I understand the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, twenty years in the making, is now close to passage by the town and the state. (The Proposed Plan erroneously assumed it had been passed.) It is important for the Proposed Comprehensive Plan to state how it and the zoning ordinance will relate to the powerful LWRP. That is, which controls? One or the other or both or even one in certain cases and the other in other cases?
In conclusion, I do not believe that the goal of the Comprehensive Plan of preserving every possible bit of open space should be accomplished at the expense of the historic hamlet which already has enough difficult pedestrian and automobile problems to solve because of its rocky and very steep topography. There are other solutions, but, although I have attended comprehensive plan meetings on a regular basis, I have never heard of their being explored.
Cynthia Owen Philip
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