Letter to Town Board

To: Members of the Rhinebeck Town Board
Re: Proposed Comprehensive Plan
Date: July 24, 2006

In the three years since participating in the Rhinecliff visioning session, I have attended many, if not most, of the intervening Comprehensive Plan meetings and public hearings. I also served as a member of the Rhinecliff Zoning subcommittee. I have unfortunately come to the conclusion that the members of the Comprehensive Plan Committee believed that they knew what was best for the town from the beginning and that the so-called process was all about supporting their original conclusions.

In their zeal to promote their plan, the Comprehensive Plan Committee missed out on the opportunity to include the community in the process and to learn from the experience of similar communities. One of the greatest failings of this Plan is that it does not include the work of Randall Arendt. Randall is the author of more than 20 publications, including “Rural by Design”. Mr. Arendt’s work is particularly well suited to the needs of our community. Other failings of the plan include the misguided use of “Smart Growth” to promote “Traditional Neighborhood Developments” (TNDs) in Rhinecliff and on Route 9, and the failure to include zoning specifications for the hamlet of Rhinecliff.

I believe that the Comprehensive Plan Committee’s reliance on “Smart Growth” is misguided and that the principles of Smart Growth have been poorly applied. “Smart Growth” is perhaps the best Orwellian name ever. How can anyone oppose smart growth? Would you rather plan your community around dumb growth? Smart Growth is a huge movement financed by developers who love density and infrastructure, and is supported by land conservancy groups who cannot see the forest for the trees. That aside, let’s look at how the Comprehensive Plan Committee applies the principles of Smart Growth to their plan.

Of the ten “Principals of Smart Growth”, there are three that are site specific.

1 Create Walkable Neighborhoods…
walkability, according to most experts - including the Congress of New Urbanism, is ¼ mile of flat open land with something worth walking to.

2 Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities…
directs development towards existing communities already served by infrastructure, seeking to utilize the resources that existing neighborhoods offer - i.e. water, sewer, stores, roads and parks.

3 Provide a variety of transportation choices

The biggest problem with the so-called TNDs is that they have been fixed in their locations without any supporting studies of environmental impacts and constraints, traffic impacts, and walkability.

The only rational place to locate a Smart Growth TND would be directly adjacent to the village. This is where all of the infrastructure is and the only place that would be walkable to the village and its services, the Star library, the pool and the proposed Thompson Mazzarella park.

I am very troubled that the Comprehensive Plan Committee continues to suggest that their TND experts, invited to address the committee and community, were supportive of the proposed TNDs. There is no supporting documentation in the plan. I was at this meeting and I would conclude that these experts were anything but supportive. I would like to see something in writing that indicates exactly their professional conclusion about these TNDs and their proposed locations.

At one hearing I asked that the Committee provide three examples of successful TNDs that are similar in size and circumstance to the proposed Rhinebeck TNDs. The subsequently provided examples are nothing like the proposed TNDs, and include mostly urban and suburban developments. One example was in a brown field in urban Denver. In all examples, the TNDs were developed on flat land. I have spent a lot of time looking for TNDs similar to those proposed in Rhinecliff and on Route 9, and have been unable to find any. This leads me to conclude that there was something seriously wrong with the process that led to these proposals.

It has been more than two years since the Comprehensive Plan Committee came to Rhinecliff with their plan to drastically expand the hamlet through the addition of the TND. There have been small modifications, but it is essentially the same plan that appears in the final document today. Frustrated by this plan, a group of Rhinecliff residents informally organized and began to look into alternatives. We found that the most recent work of Randall Arendt on Conservation Subdivision Design seems to be perfect for our community. We went as far as to demonstrate how this concept could be applied to the Creed property (the location for the proposed TND). A great deal of time and effort was put into a presentation that we made to the Comprehensive Plan Committee. This presentation can be viewed at rhinecliff.org. The reaction from the Rhinecliff community was great; the reaction from the Comprehensive Plan Committee was completely dismissive.

Believing that Conservation Subdivision Design was a very important but completely overlooked planning tool, we continued advocating for its inclusion in the plan. At one Comprehensive Plan Committee meeting, I was told by the Committee Chair that they had been using Conservation Subdivision Design for years and that it is already in the plan.

When the first draft of the plan was presented, the words Conservation Subdivision Design appeared once in quotes, but none of the provisions were spelled out. There was a recommendation that any developer wanting to subdivide would have to watch a video “Conserving Rural Character”. This video was produced by the Center for Rural Massachusetts in 1988 and was in fact narrated by a younger Randall Arendt. In my comments in response to the proposed plan I pointed out that the video was terribly out-of-date. I even provided two recent videos to the Comprehensive Plan Committee.

In the Comprehensive Plan Committee’s written responses to the Public hearing on December 12, 2005, the Committee acknowledged the error and stated on page 21:

“The video by Randall Arendt noted by the commenter is one of several that have been produced over the years on conservation subdivision design. The Committee will ensure that the most recent efforts by Mr. Arendt to illustrate Conservation Subdivision Design concepts are available at Town Hall.”

In the final draft of the Plan, Conservation Subdivision Design again appears only once in quotes and the video is the same 1988 video from the first draft. I wonder if it will be available on VHS or BETA.

As a member of the Rhinecliff Zoning Subcommittee, I would also like to point out that despite repeatedly voting to retain the current 1-acre zoning in Rhinecliff, the plan fails to include any zoning recommendation for the hamlet. It is the only place in town for which the Committee has made no zoning recommendation.

Based on all of my involvement with the Comprehensive Plan Committee, my inevitable conclusion is that the Committee decided what they wanted to push on the community from the beginning and never even looked to see what tools are available and being used by the best communities to preserve rural character.

My first involvement in this process was more than three years ago, as a participant in the Rhincliff visioning session. The overwhelming response of the residents of the hamlet was - and still is - that the hamlet should be protected by a greenbelt and that any development in the area be very limited.

I urge the Town to take a serious and critical look at the Plan and adjust its many inconsistencies. Part of this process should include examining the work of Randall Arendt and other conservation tools used successfully by similar communities.

The Town should also, through the Comprehensive Plan, clearly state.

“Due to the historic importance of Rhinecliff and the surrounding area, its fragile narrow streets and natural constraints, it is inappropriate for any significant increases in density. Rhinecliff should to be protected by a well-defined greenbelt.”

Thank You

Andrew Sheppard