RAC Letter to Town Board

After a hamlet meeting called by the advisory council on December 22, 2008, at which over twenty residents of the hamlet expressed their displeasure with the town board’s recent actions, it was decided that the council should communicate that displeasure, and explain its sources, in a letter to the town board.

The action that provoked the most heated response was the town board’s decision to insert into the Comprehensive Plan a provision allowing for the construction of up to 200 units of senior housing at the Holy Cross site. Neither the members of the council nor the residents at the meeting could understand why such a major change in zoning, one that is out of keeping with the zoning in the surrounding area and that would increase the existing traffic problems in Rhinecliff, would be decided on at the last minute without the benefit of input from the community. The council strongly supports the position, articulated in a petition that is currently being circulated by some of the hamlet’s residents, that supplementary DGEIS hearings should be held on this matter. After so many years of painstaking efforts to solicit input from the community on the details of the Comprehensive Plan, it makes no sense for the town board to approve such a radical proposal at the last minute without any feedback from residents.

The members of the council and the residents at the meeting were also upset by the town board’s retention of the so-called Hamlet Extension—49 units of housing on the northeast edge of the hamlet—in the Comprehensive Plan. Given the town board’s general support of the conservation subdivision principles in Alternative F, we do not understand why this exception is being made. Why is the board turning its back on the principle that the location of housing should be determined after unsuitable land has already been taken off the board? (As we have repeatedly pointed out, the land in question consists primarily of steep slopes and wetlands and is the site of Indian artifacts dating back 10,000 years.) And why is the board turning its back on several years of powerfully expressed resistance to this idea from a wide swath of the residents of the hamlet? As the board will see if it reviews the materials that the council has presented to it during the two and a half years of its existence, the council conducted a survey in January 2007 in which nearly two hundred residents strongly opposed the building of a so-called Traditional Neighborhood Development on that location. The council’s opposition to the Hamlet Extension is not the opinion of a minority. It is an expression of the voice of the community.

It is, moreover, not a rejection of future development. It is a call to the town board to locate future development as fairly as possible. The density-on-density logic of “smart growth” is only smart in locations where it is possible to hook into existing infrastructure and where the presence of stores and businesses encourages new residents to get out of their cars and walk. As we have repeatedly pointed out, we have no sewage system, our roads are narrow and mostly without sidewalks, and our clay-on-shale soil leads to frequent flooding, a problem that will only worsen if new housing on the edge of the hamlet takes away permeable soil and pumps more water into the ground. In addition, there is very little to walk to in the center of the hamlet, and as anyone who did walk there from the area of the proposed development would quickly discover, the steepness of the slopes makes for an arduous return trip. A development on the northeastern border of the hamlet would only add more cars to our already overburdened roads, several of which can barely allow for two-way traffic.

In the absence of any explanation of your actions, we can only conclude that you have simply decided to disregard the concerns of the people of Rhinecliff. We would appreciate a response that addresses the concerns that we have expressed and outlines the reasons for your actions.

Respectfully submitted,

The Rhinecliff Hamlet Advisory Council