Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Just what Megan said. What she said is, she said basically that the only thing that's really stopped is the D.C. Oh, oh, this is where it first happened.

Yeah, and if there's a negative, continue with your education. Yeah, that's what I said.

No, you've got to do X, Y, and Z. You don't have to deal with that stuff anymore. These are our project folders for just the four projects.

This is two of them.

Welcome, everybody. We're going to call the meeting to order here and have Kelly call the roll, please.

Amy Caffrey? Here. Sandy Conlin? Here. John Duthie? Here. Al Fiorelli? Here. Daniel Nemi? Here. John Lusitra? Here. Freddie Villano? Here. Tom Butler? Here. Dean Shea?

Here. So our first action item tonight is Minor Subdivision 204 Wilson Road. Do we have anybody here for that? Please come up. Daniel, do you have a slide for that you can put up on the screen? Do you want to introduce yourselves, please?

Hi, I'm JBR. And I'm Emily.

So we're going to do the short environmental assessment tonight.

So we left the public hearing open.

We left the public hearing open. Right. Okay. Boards, everybody had a chance to review the letter from the engineer, town engineer?

Yeah.

Any questions on that? Comments?

Okay.

Should we be doing the hearing first or the environmental assessment first?

I recommend doing the hearing first.

OK. So do we need to reopen it? We left it open, so just ask for comment.

If you have to continue it, ask for comment.

Anybody here in the public want to speak about this project? We'll leave the hearing open for a moment here.

So just to clarify, was the letter from the town engineer also shared with the property owners?

Correct. It was shared with both the property owners and the concerned neighbor.

Okay, thank you.

Motion to close the hearing. You're second? Second.

Tom seconds. All in favor? Aye. Okay, the public hearing is closed. Do I have a volunteer to read the short environmental assessment? Okay, go ahead, Tom.

Will the proposed action create a material conflict with an adopted land use plan or zoning regulations? No. Two, will the proposed action result in a change in the use or intensity of use of land? No. Three, will the proposed action impair the character or quality of the existing community? No. Four, will the proposed action have an impact on the environmental characteristics that cause the establishment of a critical environmental area? No. Five, will the proposed action result in an adverse change in the existing level of traffic or affect existing infrastructure for mass transit, biking or walkway? No. Six, will the proposed action cause an increase in the use of energy and it fails to incorporate reasonably available energy conservation or renewable energy opportunities? No. Seven, will the proposed action impact existing a public private water supplies? No. B, public-private wastewater treatment utilities? No. Eight, will the proposed action impair the character or quality of important historic, archeological, architectural, or aesthetic resources? No. Nine, will the proposed action result in an adverse change to natural resources? For example, wetlands, water bodies, groundwater, air quality, flora, and fauna?

No.

10, will the proposed action result in an increase in the potential for erosion, flooding, or drainage problems?

No, or small impact.

11, will the proposed action create a hazard to environmental resources or human health?

No. Okay, so that's a... Negative declaration. And we have before us a draft resolution for this minor subdivision approval. Any questions on this draft?

I would move the motion.

Should we move the resolution? Yes. Do I hear a second?

Yes.

John, seconds?

Tom Butler? Yes. Amy Caffrey? Yes. Sandy Conlon? Yes. Al Fiorelli? Yes. Daniel Hottanemi? Yes. John Lusitra? Yes. Dean Shea?

Yes. You're all set?

You're all set. All right.

Did you get a copy of the draft resolution? Did you get a copy of the draft resolution?

We'll provide a copy of the final version to you. Okay.

So Nathaniel, you'll be in touch with them, or Kelly will? So they provide the final plats, and I'll sign those, and then you'll be on your way. There's no stipulations? No, it's just the sealing and endorsement of minor subdivision plan.

That's it. Effectively, it just says you have to file with the county. So I'll send that over to you.

Thank you.

OK, John, you're up.

Do I need to recuse myself again? Yeah, let's go ahead and do that. Okay. I will recuse myself from the planning board to speak as a property owner's agent on this project.

Okay. Dean, if there's any questions, we can bring them back in, or his representative, who are you?

He's going to present and be available for questions.

Makes it easier for me.

So specifically tonight we are focusing on the subdivision of the property and really that's all tonight. So this, you can see that there's lot one to the west, lot two to the east, Nathaniel, do we need, what's happening with the portion that is going to the town?

I'd likely have to go in front of the town board to accept the dedication to extend the public road. I will note one legal issue that has been identified by our attorneys fairly shortly before this meeting is the lease for Sixth Horizon Lane does not clearly stipulate whether it's for within the fenced area or for the entirety of Sixth Horizon Lane. And currently the applicant only has a right of way over the area that would be dedicated to the town. So there is an open question of whether or not there would be issues with if this land was granted over to the town, it could cause a situation where the applicant violates Verizon's lease. So that issue was uncovered. I requested that he provide a statement from Verizon confirming that they would not have any concerns with creating a public road there. Unfortunately, due to the timing, it was not possible to get that back. That is why there is a condition there with regards to getting a statement in writing from Verizon that they have no concerns with dedicating the public road. So you can choose to make a decision now or we can wait to receive confirmation from Verizon that they have no concerns given the open questions with that lease. We have to have a public hearing on this? Oh, we've already held a public hearing on this. That's already been done.

John, what's your take on, do you have somebody you're talking to at Verizon?

Yeah, because I heard that so late just a couple days ago. I reached out to Verizon, and I got a contact. I'm just waiting for his response back in the email. Basically, I told him, You've granted me the right-of-way, so basically it's just changing from me as the owner to the town as the owner. It doesn't change anything as far as infrastructure. It doesn't change anything, so I'm just waiting for something in writing to say, yep, we've got no problem, because it's just unclear in the lease. As soon as they've done that, then it's hopefully maybe tomorrow.

I will note that the one concern that is possible here is if the planning board were to vote to approve and then Verizon were not to be able to send something in writing or not be able to send it within 62 days, that could wind up voiding the planning board's approval and then cause this whole situation to cycle again and have to go through a fresh minor subdivision process. So that is the one concern with if you were to move forward before we get any confirmation from Verizon.

Sorry, just lights a fire under John, make it happen.

I mean, I'm okay just continuing with this, just approving it subject to the letter. How about anybody else? I'm okay with it. Yeah.

Still got a lot of steps to go, so it'd be nice to get this step done. Board, any questions? Any questions on the draft? Other than the tax parcel number at the top of page two, it's got to change.

I have just a question. If they come back and say it's fine after we've already, we just, there's no going back, obviously. The only situation we would be starting over is if we approve it and then sometime after or sometime... they get back and say that they've got some sort of issue with it. And that's the only sort of downside.

Well, there are two ways that could occur. It's either if they do not make any statement within 62 days, or they say, no, we are not willing to give up this land for a public road. Unfortunately, right now, how it's worded in the lease is it's explicitly a right of way, not ownership of the land, and it is explicitly granted to the... landlord, so it's not something that's easily transferable. So that's why it's going to likely be something on the applicant side to have that discussion. It's the only question of how quickly it can happen, because even if they don't say no, if they drag it out, if they take too long, that's where the concerns come in. That's also why if you look at the resolution, I had it set up so that the maps will not be signed and sealed until after we get that letter just so that we have confirmation that the town can take that as a public road or do something with that viably without causing legal issues. And just also for the planning board's information, The segment that would be turned into a public road, which that would still be continued on going before the town board was actually created by the town at the same time as the public road to the same standards as the public road. It's unknown from my discussions with the highway department of why the public road was extended onto private property, but it is effectively entirely up to the standards of a public road within the area for the subdivision.

So if he can't get it within 60 days, can the planning board extend that to 90 days?

I will have to check. I do not believe so. why would there be i don't know why we couldn't extend it because you have already finished with your review when you vote to do an approve officially this matter is ended before the planning board and it is back onto the applicant to handle the matters before the county so if you make a vote you are effectively done with this review which is why you can't easily just reopen it to extend that period. I'll have to check if there's a method, but I do not believe that it's possible.

Well, then why is it 60 days? Why isn't it 30 days? Who came up with the 62 days?

I believe it is New York State law that it's 62 days.

All right.

It's New York State's substitution law. It is 62? Okay. Okay.

All right. So, John, I guess you've got to get going on this.

So it's up to me to get that in writing by that 68. Or else I start over.

That's what makes sense.

Yeah, that's why I'm recommending if you're not sure you can get back from Verizon, you may want to wait until the next planning board meeting on this. If you're confident you can get back from Verizon, then it is to the discretion of the planning board to vote to approve and then... you could be done with this matter. I will also note for everyone's reference, whether or not you vote to approve tonight does have implications for the site plan review. Given in the, I believe 2016 and 2023 site plans, the applicant was required to file SAMRA, Stormwater Operations and Maintenance Reporting Agreement. That did not happen in either of those cases, despite it being required in the resolution. So we are currently requiring it before any site plan approval. The problem is creating a SAMRA when you have one legal parcel with two separate tax IDs has issues and would cause long-term implications of having one agreement that spans two properties. So if you were to vote at this meeting, we could meet with the applicant and we could get that SAMRA dealt with so that it would be ready before the next planning board meeting.

So there'd be a time benefit in that instance for acting on this tonight, whereas there's the potential risk of Verizon not getting back to John within that 62 day period.

Yes, it's effectively a situation of if it goes, If he cannot get a response in 62 days, that would mean that you would need another subdivision before you can viably do the site plan given the Samra situation. So if he cannot get a response at the very quickest because he would need a new public hearing, it could be a four month delay. If he gets a response, then you can decide tonight.

So it's John's call. Do you want us to consider it or do you want to wait until the next meeting?

Well, I'll wait because I'm not sure. Hopefully I can have tomorrow. But if I don't, I don't want to go through it again.

So you would rather the planning board not consider this tonight and wait until the next meeting?

yeah i'd rather wait for the approval but the next meeting if i do have it i do have a letter could we approve this and finish up the site plan at the same time i will leave this up to the discretion of the planning board my recommendation if we were to do that

is that if people would be all right with just signing the SAMRA in the meeting, we already have an agreement that has been agreed upon by lawyers on both sides. So we could have a situation where you vote to approve the subdivision, sign the agreement, then move on to the site plan. it'd be a bit unusual, but that is a possible process that could wind up having agreements that only impact the parcel that they're intended to impact.

I'm okay with getting this out of here as soon as possible.

We've looked it all over, we've tackled all the concerns other than the timing on things, so that's my opinion.

Well, we're trying to bring it into compliance as soon as possible. So if John is not confident in the 62 days, then I would say we wait until next time. Is that the consensus of the board?

Yes. I agree. Okay. And just to confirm, is everyone on the board all right with – If all the materials are ready by the next meeting, potentially signing the SAMRA in that meeting so that we can have everything dealt with and we can have all the approvals done. Excellent, yes. I'll make sure that agreement is prepared for that meeting.

Okay, thank you. All right, we're on to our third agenda item. Site plan for 339 Jerry Smith Road, the BESS. Battery energy storage. Large scale. He gave us plenty of stuff to go through.

Could you guys go through detail on the noise, how you did that? So you went right on the sites and then you just added what a typical noise level would be for it. So you didn't produce a noise on your site to test it. You just tested the ambient noise on each parcel and then added a factor to that. that to come up with a number. Is that the way it works?

Yeah, correct. So the key is that you get the background ambient noise so you can kind of do pre and post. And then you apply the standard noise generation profile and noise modeling from the equipment at, you know, in our case, applied to the two different standards, the kind of 40% noise level and then 100% noise level exceeding the standard case, which is the 40% and the

So can you explain to us a little bit about the 40%?

Yeah, so the vast majority of noise generated by these systems is generated by the cooling systems, the ventilation and cooling systems. So when we're studying a 100% noise output, that is essentially what you would expect for, say, one of these systems doing full charging during the middle of It should be noted that our charging windows for this site, we can't really charge during the day. The charging windows are actually overnight. So we wouldn't expect that full output really ever, A, in this climate, and B,

So you're saying that you're going to be charging at night when it's cooler, it's not as hot during the day. So it's really the difference in the running of the cooling system, the level that that's running at is going to reduce the noise level.

Yeah, and it should be noted that the charging and discharging schedule is not discretionary. It's mandated by the utility. So the utility wants us charging these systems when the load profiles are lowest because it gives us the greatest ability to kind of do that energy arbitrage that brings value to these systems. So you want to charge the systems when there's very, very little load, and then discharge them when there's a lot of load to help regulate the system. So it's not like all of a sudden you can say, oh, just kidding, we're going to start charging this thing at 1 PM every day. We're actually going to do that at 8 to 9.

So you showed, what was it, four different locations? Correct. And where on the map were those four locations?

So the four locations

So closer to the neighbor to the east.

We tried to capture if there were going to be direct kind of line of sight.

So you weren't on the neighbor's property at all? No. Did you contact the neighbors to see if you could go on their property to test it?

We don't need to. If you get the general ambient noise and then we have survey data like we have, so we can say, okay, we know that the trees are here, we can model trees in a certain way. We don't necessarily need to go get ambient noise data from every single receptor point in order to run the noise study. But we do need field data as to what are the obstructions, how is this going to be interacting with different structures, with trees.

Is there a big difference with the trees are leafed out versus not?

I would expect reasonably large impact if it was, say, a hedgerow. But we're talking about a two-acre area of trees that's got some swamp lands in it as well.

So if the utility were to change, or if something about the rates were to change, there is a world in which you could be running at above that capacity, above 40%, right?

I wouldn't expect it. But it is possible. It's possible, and that's why we like to show that information and give people that feedback. But again, the climate that we're dealing with here is very, very unlikely. When we're modeling full output, again, you know, when these batteries are installed out in the California desert, right, that's where they're at full tilt, 110 degree days, full sun, you know, that's not the type of environment I think any of us think we're going to be having in upstate New York. I guess anything's possible, but I certainly wouldn't expect it.

So when you did that analysis Were you looking at what could we expect as a worst case? That's 100%. No, I mean for nighttime here. Yeah. And what did you come up with? What are the results? Is that like 85 degrees at night with 80% humidity?

I can double check as to exactly what that impact would be. I don't know off the top of my head. But generally speaking, based on our experience, we certainly see noise profiles on these systems meet And what's what's the specific charging times Discharge So if you're not charging or discharging, there's still fan usage in that? Yeah, there's still fan usage just to keep the system cool, but it's going to be lower.

Right. And this is a closed-loop water and glycol system?

It's air-cooled. It's an air-cooled system. So there is some coolant in certain portions of the system, but largely the system is air-cooled.

So it's mostly fan noise that you're talking about.

Yeah, it's almost entirely fan noise. Granted, there is some inverter noise since it's an electrical system, right? But that noise is largely obscured by the fan.

So if your model is wrong, and you're making more than six decibels increase in the sound near the residences, would you reconsider mitigating that? I mean, you want to keep it below six decibels?

Yeah, so obviously there's two pieces expect and are certainly going to be compliant with underlying town noise ordinances. If for whatever reason we are cited and measured as exceeding those, then it would be our legal responsibility to mitigate that and make sure that the town noise ordinances exist for a reason. So the mitigation has already started. As we did this study and saw that we was added between the last time you guys saw this project and now. So there is already some mitigation that's taking place there. There certainly are more drastic mitigation that we could do if the board felt that it was necessary. But generally speaking, at peak levels, we're still

And I would just like to state for everyone's reference, the town of Lansing does not currently have a noise ordinance. There have been discussions around having a noise ordinance, but there's not one currently enforced. So if something were to be improved under the current law, are limits to how much action could be done given the lack of noise ordinance.

Unless, of course, the board decided that there was some need for a condition associated with the approval that could give you guys .

So we could put in a resolution not to exceed six decibels over the ambient conditions. you would mitigate that if that happened.

Correct, yeah. We certainly would be open to that conversation and talk through a resolution with you on that.

I think noise is probably one of the biggest issues. 100%, yeah. In terms of residents.

Yep, absolutely. We expect that. That's why we've got to study what it is.

Nate, can I ask you to... That photo, it's changed now because there's new solar panels. Can you call up the new aerial photo? Would you mind doing that?

You mean the farm to the east that was installed?

Yeah, in other words, it looks different. So they've taken some trees down, I think. The one house that's closest to the solar panels now. It looks a little different, the new aerial photo from the old one.

Yeah, so... These trees have been removed, if you look at my mouse.

So where's the house where your pointer is, is the house that's closest, is that correct?

This is the house that is closest, this is the house that is second closest.

And then the proposed site is in the bend of the road, can you point that out, please? The proposed site is right here where my mouse is now. Okay, and so you'll be clearing some of those trees. Will there be a line of sight from the proposed site to that southern That's one of my concerns.

No, there won't be. So the vast majority of that tree area you see there is actually wetlands. So you can actually see that denoted on the over here. So this is under two acre wetland area. So obviously, to preserve environmentally sensitive areas, we're not proposing any tree clearing in any of the wetland areas. The small amount of tree clearing that we have and that there aren't any obstructions to the stormwater that's being produced.

Okay, so again, there will be no line of sight from that southern residence to the proposed site for battery storage. It'll be screened out by those woods. Correct.

Have you talked to the lease owner for this property in terms of mitigating noise and visuals for his home?

Well, the acoustic fence is really the first pass at that. So we've been keeping the landowner apprised of all the submission materials ongoing. I'm not aware of us having a specific conversation about the noise concerns and their concerns on that front. They haven't raised anything, but we've been releasing the materials so that knows each other.

I think that that's an important discussion. You never know. They may own it now, but they may sell it next year or tomorrow. And then you would have a new leaseholder there who might object to, you know, not having screening.

Yep. I will say, you know, the proposed is helpful both from a visual perspective and from a noise perspective. There were some mentions in the MRP letter that we received this morning around additional visual screening in that area as well. which I would love to have a more nuanced conversation about, just because, frankly, it's going to be a little tough in that area, because we have the main line of sight that you have between that residence and our We can't put trees in the road. But we can certainly look around that. And I know that the board had also mentioned that there was going to be some level of conversation about the restoration of the screening for the Lansing Renewables Project to the west, some of which had died and you guys were wanting us to replace as well. So we kind of pulled that all into one broader plan if necessary.

So can you talk a little bit more into detail on the acoustic fence, what it does in terms of how much mitigation it does for the sound, what it looks like?

Yeah, it honestly looks like a construction fence that you would see screening a construction facility. So it really, from the outside, just looks like kind of woven PVC. So I'm not going to say it's a particularly beautiful solution per se, but it certainly gives you a visual barrier. It's basically just a thick plastic screening that provides an air buffer. So it's not too robust. It doesn't change the overall physical structure of the fence drastically.

How much reduction is it giving you in the noise?

So from the road there will be a line of sight to the north portion of that noise fence, is that correct? Correct. You'll just be able to see a little of that from the road.

Yeah, so there's really two areas in the line of sight that you can actually see. We did kind of three different studies. What you actually see from that is the solar facility, not the energy storage facility. The one consistent line of sight is the one straight down this road, which when you're looking between these homes where you're looking straight down, you're going to be able to see the facility that way.

Can you plot that on the new map? Can you show that line of sight on the...

You guys want to take a look?

We're going to go from there to in between the, is that correct? If you draw an arrow.

From the site to what?

To the road. Yeah. So it'll be in between. It won't be there. It'll be further to the west, correct? That line of sight?

Further to the west, but that's approximately the end of that.

Well, you got trees there, but I mean, if you go further to the other side of those improvements, keep going to the west, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, so like, you know, from. The other side of those trees.

Right, you follow my logic there? Yeah. There, right there.

Yeah. So if you're looking from where that cursor is. Yeah, right there. Yeah. what you're actually going to see is the solar array. Yeah. All right. OK. And that's the .

It seems like the solar is going to dominate the visuals. Yeah. Yes.

OK.

where we're seeing it on the representation here. So the way that he's drawn this, it looks to me like if you're standing there, you would be able to see.

So what I'm saying is that the circle point where that line is terminated is not actually where the energy facility is. It's a little bit southwest of that. So it's tucked into that corner. Oh, I see. I gotcha.

It's more in the field area.

planning a screening, you were contacted to put, what was that recommendation? You mentioned just a few minutes ago.

Yes, we got a letter from MRD group that I contracted with through this project and they had mentioned that they were recommending some type of additional landscaping plan to be installed. Obviously we haven't responded to this letter yet because we just got it today, but that was one thing I wanted to discuss with this board just because there is, By virtue of the line of sight being the road, the principal line of sight being the road, there is relatively minimal options for us there. Not to say we're not willing to entertain something, but I just want to temper expectations about the impact that that screening might have.

And I will note that that letter was sent to the applicant before our staff saw that letter. So typically, we coordinate with our consultants to make sure we get one set of letters from our stormwater and our planning consultants. So that was a bit of a work in progress. You will be getting something more complete in the near future.

Yeah, it's still helpful. And there's still things that we look to clarify. But good to know we'll have consolidated reviews

So on the site plan here, you're not giving us a lot of dimensions. The pad where everything is going, I don't see dimensions for the pad. You did call out what's in the northeast corner there. It's 12 by 15. On the big pad, there's in the northeast corner of the big pad, there's, you called out a 12 by 15. What was that particularly? 12 by 15. That's the only reference we have for scale here. So for instance, the dimension between the double row to the west and the single row to the east of the Tesla batteries, is that about 10 feet-ish?

It is, yeah, roughly 10 to 15 feet. Yeah.

So it'd be good to have some of those so that we can reference that. I mean I'm assuming that the two rows of Tesla batteries obviously are kind of back to back. The ones that are facing, you know, in the middle aisle there. 10 feet, 15 feet is obviously better. The one report on purposefully setting the batteries up to burn, they talked about temperature being like 425 degrees in a worst case situation at eight feet from the front of the Tesla battery. then that's probably a pretty substantial amount of space. If we're at 10 feet, then that's maybe a little close. But it'd be nice to have some dimensions on here.

Yeah, so would it make sense for us to have a specific sheet that was just showing the fenced area with all the requisite dimensions?

Or get the corner on one of the other sheets or something. Yeah, absolutely.

And I will note, just with regards to those dimensions, it was mentioned in our last meeting, but I'll mention it again. The dimensions for the entry road is currently 20 feet wide. As per Appendix D of the New York State Fire Code, when it goes above 500 feet, it needs to be 26 feet wide. So I would recommend just verifying with Fire Code if your dimensions are matching with New York State requirements.

So my understanding is that 26 foot requirement is what's called a fire hydrant road, meaning that you're directly adjacent to or accessing a fire hydrant at the road. Is when that's triggered. I don't know. Am I speaking out? Is that correct?

I believe that to be true. That wasn't the interpretation of our code enforcement officers and my discussions with them. And that's not my understanding of that clause of Appendix D of the fire code. If you have a reason for believing that, you could share with me, that would be appreciated.

Yeah, absolutely. We are happy to expand on that. But that's, you know, that 20-foot standard is certainly what we're seeing. See right here table DU 103.4 requirements for dead end fire apparatus access roads.

If it is 501 to 750 feet it's required to be 26 feet wide and it's for all dead end fire apparatus access roads. So, of course, I'll leave it up to our co-enforcement officers to do further interpretations on this, but I would highly recommend looking at Appendix D for your turnaround dimensions. we do not have sufficient dimensions to verify that. The one concern that I did hear from discussing this with co-enforcement is the solution in the documents for dealing with a fire is to let it burn out because you cannot sustainably use water and the fire truck turnaround is located If you look on this map here, directly next to the structure, which is intended to be left burning, so there may be concerns there, but we don't know the dimensions, so we don't know if it's close enough for that to be a concern. If it's not close enough to be a concern, we don't have sufficient information to make that interpretation.

Yeah, that's a good point, Nate, that they won't be able to turn around if there's a fire there. They're stuck in the driveway, so to speak.

So I will point out that if there was, in the worst case scenario, a thermal runaway event, as shown in the UL testing, you're not going to be seeing actual planes leaping out of these containers, right? during fire inside of the unit itself. And generally speaking, we're going to be 25 feet or more for many of those units in that turnaround area. I would be very surprised if a first responder was concerned about turning around a truck when they got 30 feet of space between the potential point of a smoldering fire. Again, it's not going to be leaping flames. That's not the way these things burn. So just being noted, I'm obviously deferential to the first responders in this case about what their preferences are. We have circulated these sets to the fire departments to get their comments. We haven't gotten them yet. But we'll leave it up to them to see if it's a concern of theirs. But generally speaking, based on safety and best practices, it's not one that's overly concerning to us.

While you mentioned it, there was something that there's no fire alarm system on the site. Did I read that?

No, there are fire alarm systems integrated into every single battery. So there's redundant systems on every sense.

So if there was a fire or smoldering, what would happen? Where would that go? Who would be notified on that?

So the first thing that happens is the BMS, the battery management system, would trigger a notice to us. Well, first thing it does is it automatically turns itself off, right? So that's the first piece. The second piece is that there would be a notice to our asset management team so they can go look at the fault and see what the issue is. Depending on their evaluation of that issue, it would then either immediately be escalated to the fire department or not. In our conversations that we had during the last meeting, you guys had indicated that at least for the initial operations of this system, you wanted all errors to be communicated to the fire department. And I believe that is the language that we have included in our emergency response plan, that any triggers of the DMS system, that we would be notifying the town and we would be notifying the fire department of those. You would, okay. So that's our intention, because it was expressed by the board in the last meeting.

And I will note it.

No, I was just going to say, on that note, I did notice that the wrong jurisdiction is named.

In the ERP?

I think Town of Clay in 1207, and then Moyers Corner. I'll double check that. Fire Department in the HMA. Yeah.

So it would just be good to just- That might have been a mistake because we have four projects going on in Clay right now.

Yeah, no, but just given sort of the site specific, right, I think it would be good to just certify that every single clause has been reviewed for this specific site. Yeah, absolutely.

And that was what I was also going to say. It was the fire safety compliance plan that calls us the town of clay.

If you say if it starts burning, don't go put it out. We don't want a fire truck down there. Does that mean the driveway from appendix D wouldn't apply or do they have to have adequate fire turnaround even though they say don't come down and put it out?

They'll still need to handle Appendix D. It's mainly in a case of, if you look, there's forest, there's potential for the fire to spread off site. Now whether or not it has the likelihood with the buffering it has there, it still recommends a response to the site, which if there's a high chance of a fire response, it needs the apparatus access roads. Unfortunately, for better or worse, the fire code is set out by New York State, so the town of Lansing can't do any variance from those access road requirements. The only variance process is through New York State.

My understanding is with the fire code, it is, again, it's about the apparatus design. It is not nuanced in that the recommended responses. It's basically get the right infrastructure there and let the first responders decide how they want to respond, just make sure that they have what they need. So I wouldn't expect there to be a change based on best practices.

I saw some, I was doing some reading and it said there's different cabinet levels for fire protection, the quality, average quality, good quality, excellent quality. This is probably, is this one of the top of the?

Yeah, yeah. The Tesla batteries are widely regarded as the most rigorously tested and strongest units. And the cabinet quality is? Yeah, extremely high. You can see if you read through some of the relatively thick UL certification documents that we gave you that generally propagation between cabinets, as you can call it, is extremely rare. Those cabinets are rated, I believe,

Can you talk to us a little bit about the existing rubble drive and how that's going to integrate with the new driveway?

Yeah. So we're going to propose a new entrance.

It's not going to be off that existing rubble drive.

The new entrance is going to extend to that rubble drive around that barn area. Then we're going to completely remove that rubble drive as you're calling it and put in a new 12 to 18 inch thick gravel pavement section so that'll be compacted to 95 percent that'll be improving the existing conditions on the site

So I'm assuming you're potentially going to ditch both sides of that so that you have drainage. You're going to crown it.

Yep. Yep. Should be on the drainage plan. We'll have swales on both sides. One side will have a vegetated filter strip to treat stormwater running off.

There are going to be questions on that stormwater, bringing it to a stormwater management area.

And then upgrading, we're going to have some swales diverting water so water's not running over that area. If you go to C500 of those plans, you can see. 500.

I was going to say, some of these you don't label the buildings. Some you do.

Yes, so you can see that upgrade sign at the entrance. There is a swale here. And then we've got the filter strips over here to the east. And then an additional swale that can phase back to the right of the section.

so so the leases building that's closest to the south or i'm so yes that that one it says building what kind of building is that it's a barn that's that's a barn okay so that's where the rubble drive kind of right now goes through that area correct how is that going to integrate with this new driveway so that they can drive up and on to that okay we'll have to pull everything out as you said when we're doing

We have to dig down, you know, 18 inches or so and bring everything back to level.

So is that going to be something where they're going to drive the tractor through or you're going to put a culvert in so that they can access from the rubble drive to the driveway? It should be flush. It should be flush on that side. Okay. So it would just be graded off and flush.

And it should tie out on the end portion of our proposed gravel access drive as well. And that should be flush.

existing so they so they're gonna be able to access this driveway and continue around to the east okay and we talked about a gate at the road

And we did get that, we did run that by the utility as well. Sometimes they can be a little bit persimmon-y about having those gates up there, but a nice thing to sign off on having that locked gate.

Is that shown on one of the drawings?

Yes, you can see it. It's on this drawing, it's on a couple of them, but you can see that 20-foot swinging access gate right there.

Which one are you looking at, 500? Is that where the angles are shown? Yeah. Okay, so that's the gate.

Yeah.

Okay.

Can you walk us through the decommissioning plan?

Yeah. Well, what particular questions do you have?

Well, so what's the use for life of this?

Generally speaking, these batteries are warrantied for 15 years. They can operate longer than that. The important thing to understand about decommissioning of these facilities versus a solar facility is that almost nothing, as far as the energy storage unit itself, happens on site. the same way that these get brought in they get brought out so if we're going to decommission the system you bring that crane truck back in and deliver them you pick the entire contained unit up you put it back on that on that the dolly that came with it and then you roll it on out of there so unlike a solar facility where you actually have to disassemble the equipment in the field you don't have to do that with these systems because they're containerized battery systems so And in fact, the decommissioning is actually a lot more straightforward in that way. There's still obviously conduit and some other transformers and equipment that needs to be hoisted up and pulled out of there, and the ground remediated accordingly, and the pads removed, so on and so forth. But it's a much less intense process than the solar facility, where you need to be going bolt by bolt, pulling out every single pile, so on and so forth.

Would you replace the batteries?

We certainly have the option to. Generally speaking, these systems are slightly oversized, so we plan ahead for a certain amount of battery degradation over the life of the system, and we plan ahead for that. um so while it would be possible to recondition quote unquote and bring new energy storage units in we wouldn't be assuming that during the initial lease life of the facility that there would be any new new batteries brought in i will say that it's very common for for towns to basically require a site plan amendment if any change of equipment, substantial change of equipment occurs on the site. Certainly we would expect this board to do that as well. But that is not in the plan. We are not counting for battery replacements on the site in normal operation.

What's your lease time with the landlord, the owner?

It is a 20 year lease and a five year extension, if I remember correctly. What's the extension? Five year. So, 25 years. That's 25 years of operating period, though, just to be clear. Right now, we're obviously in what's called the development and construction period, or at least we're going through the process of working with everybody. So that 25-year clock starts when the site is commissioned.

And if you do pull the batteries out, And you need to clean up the rest of the conduit, like you're saying. What kind of time frame? Is that built into the description?

Yeah. So generally speaking, we would expect the decommissioning time frame for a project like this to be roughly half the amount of time it takes to build it. So these facilities usually can get constructed in six to eight months, depending on equipment delivery timelines and weather, obviously. So we would expect that decommissioning timeline to take roughly half of that, maybe three to four months.

But it says that in the, is it in there? Yes, it's in there.

Right. We did also get a bunch of comments on the decommissioning plan from MRB, which obviously got precirculated. So we have a couple things in there that they have asked for us to make changes, one of which is they want us to go through and have the decommissioning plan certified and stamped by an engineer and some other things like that. So we'll go through the motions of getting those pieces together.

Sean, question for you and Nathaniel. In terms of the decommissioning plan, the leasee, the property owner, do they potentially get a say in the decommissioning plan or an option in terms of, let's say it's time to decommission this. These guys come in, they pull their batteries out and all the stuff that's on the pad, but the landowner decides that you know i just love this i've got this pad here i've got this power coming in underground to it it's three phase i i want to put something here or potentially put something here market this to some other use is there an option in the decommissioning plan for the pad not to go away the conduit you know that over to the pad not to go away

Right now the current plan says that the site will be regraded flat, top soil will be re-added, and effectively it will be restored to a natural state. So there are options to do that. The current decommissioning plan doesn't really mention that as an option. It just says return to what it was before things were developed.

Because obviously you've got simple clause in there stating that, you know, to the discretion of the property owner.

Yeah, because we've got embodied energy, you know, bringing in concrete and all that. There's potentially no need to rip that all out if the property owner says, hey, that's useful to me and I don't want to see it disappear.

Yeah, and generally speaking, what I would recommend in a case like this is, you know, the plan is very informative as to normal course of action, right? This is what we would expect to do in the order we would expect to do it, the permits we would expect to need. Generally, we will see a companion document, which is actually a decommissioning agreement specifically with the town that's contractual in nature rather than a plan. We could certainly stipulate some of those things in that contract to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that there's a written legal agreement that's binding all the parties to that optionality.

Quick question on that agreement. The parties would include the landowner? It depends.

Sometimes it's just the town and the bond issuer. Sometimes it's the landowners included in there. It's largely at the discretion of the town and the town's legal representation how they want to handle that, but we don't particularly have an issue with that. I'll say the one thing that we do feel relatively strongly about is that the bond is, you know, the homology of the bond is in fact the town and not the landowners. That is usually something that we are relatively firm on, but everything else, open to negotiation.

Yeah, and I ask, because I understand the point about the existing infrastructure and potential reuse on the site, but we would want to make sure that there is a built-in checkpoint for somebody coming through any approval requirements that are needed for that, whatever that next use might be. I mean, people have the best of intentions sometimes, but sometimes a use just starts. We've seen it, as we have seen the cleanups here. I'd like to not create conditions in which a board following us would be doing cleanup. So just a check point on that saying, you know, that would include the landowner if they were to keep existing infrastructure, that if uses are changing, that there needs to be a check with the zoning laws at that point in time, and a check in with the town. The other question I had on the decommissioning, would you mind? Just quickly is, so looking at the financing, it says the decommissioning of the system will come from the existing balance sheet, doesn't mention a bond.

Oh, interesting. Normally we would bond that. Okay. Yeah, and we're more than happy to bond it. Similar to how we did on the Lansing renewable site. Okay, yeah.

The way I read that, it was like, so does it mean it comes from current operating? Because that's probably not going to be acceptable to the board.

Correct. Yeah, well, I would double check that. Based on my reading of the code, the bond is, we're obligated.

I thought you had a great point, Dean, as well, saying that maybe the owner has a first right of refusal for any infrastructure that is not toxic or inert in nature, especially. There's a lot of value in things you say.

So obviously that's something we're going to want to follow up with town council in terms of potentially decommissioning and how we deal with that with the property owner. Are we doing it on there? Questions from that end?

You said you're working on one in the town of Ithaca as well? Did you say that?

We're building, right now we're building, it's a solar plus storage facility similar to Lansing Renewables that's being constructed up on West Hill on Mecklenburg Road right now. The exact same Tesla batteries are being utilized on that site. We're also going through permitting for another facility up near Ithaca College right now, which is also a solar plus storage facility using the same energy.

So it's a solar and a battery storage at Ithaca College and the one on Mecklenburg Road. And the size of those battery storages are similar to this?

Slightly smaller. The overall units are slightly smaller by around half a megawatt. So we have six units being proposed here. I think there's four on the West Caramore Solar Project up on West Hill, and I think there's five that are being proposed on the industry college facility.

And I think, did we talk about IDA? You're going with the IDA on this?

That's our intention. Obviously, we can't really approach the IDA until we get secret handles for their rules and regs. But I have a standing relationship with that group.

And what kind of cost is this project ballpark?

It changes every day to be frank. The supply chain on these projects is pretty wild. But rough order of magnitude, I would say somewhere in the $10 to $12 million range for the entire facility.

This project is $10 million? Yeah. Now, have you worked IDAs in other areas of the state or outside? How do they approach the cost of the project versus the taxation, in other words, Do they look at it as, okay, we're going to work at it as a $5 million value and then look at the tax rates and then back into it, or is it 25% of value, 10% of value? What have you found in the past?

So the way the IDAs do it is they basically do a cost-benefit analysis, which looks at, okay, what would be the full market value taxation rate? What would be the... the IDE taxation rate, what's the overall benefit being sought by the applicant. They communicate all of that and do all of that study throughout the process of making a decision on whether or not to fund an individual project. One thing that complicates that is that there is not a uniform standard assessment methodology for energy storage in New York the same way there is on solar projects right now. I know that New York State Tax and Finance is working on it and it's potentially forthcoming, but I'm not holding my breath that it's going to be done anytime soon. Ultimately, the underlying assessment of a facility like this is largely subjective based on the assessor you're working with and how they're looking at it. Are they doing a replacement cost type evaluation? Are they looking at an MPP evaluation? There's a million different ways to kind of skin the cat, so to speak, on that. So I can't speak to exactly how the assessment is going to be calculated on this just yet, because we haven't gotten into those conversations. So it's hard for me to say what that cost-benefit breakdown will be. But rest assured, when we're going through that process with the IDA, all of that is public building information that we communicated to the town when they come to you and say, hey, are you guys cool with us doing

Another question related to that is that the small solar farms typically give the community most times a cash amount as a host benefit, right? Do you do that with these solar farms? Do you make an offer to the town?

It certainly depends. I don't believe that there's a host community benefit agreement that's mandated by the town law at this time. No, there isn't.

But I'm just saying, would you consider that?

Yeah, we could certainly consider it. We need to consider it in the scope of understanding what all the requisite underlying costs are with the pilot and so on and so forth as well. But it's certainly something we'd be open to discussing, presumably with the town board. I think that would probably be-

you would consider potentially making a payment similar to the solar farms do to the town as a host community. You would do the same thing with the battery storage. Okay. So town board members, you've heard that. Okay.

So I have a couple of small detail observations or sort of questions. One looking at, it's the plan C601A. And so if you do have a source on that, if you could cite that. And I have a little, and everything honestly looks really good in there, is one of the reasons why I kind of pulled that out. I thought, oh, that's really interesting. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is the eastern red cedar. Dear love, cedar. Getting chewed up into nothing. Everything else looks, but you know. If you just develop this over time or there's a particular source you're using, it would be good, I think. I'd be interested in knowing that. Maybe not everybody else would be. In terms of longevity of your plantings and suitability for the site, it'd be nice to see that. But what you've provided so far looks really good and really interesting, minus the cedar.

Yeah, I can run a check with my landscape architects. I'm not personally a landscape architect, so I can try and get into that area.

Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, again, because there are some really interesting and really appropriate choices, actually, for this area. The other thing in looking at your review, so the Fish and Wildlife Service review for endangered and threatened species, I did note the northern long-eared bat listed. And again, this is like a small detailed thing. You are taking down, there are some trees coming down, not a lot, but some coming down for creating the site. I was wondering if you would consider putting any bat houses in along the edge.

You got six poles going in.

Yeah, we certainly could consider, you know, obviously the main mitigation when it comes to northern Longyearbad is adhering to the tree clearing windows and making sure that we're adhering to those windows between November and March, which is certainly something we can be able to consider. Yeah, we can take a look at it and see if there's an opportunity to utilize some of that infrastructure. give it some additional habitat.

It could be great habitat for them.

Great consideration. Some projects that are more public-facing, we like to encourage bike storage. This is a nice idea, encouraging some bat storage. Bat habitat.

I don't think the bike storage would be as appropriate.

No, no. And some of the species you pulled out for plantings would be very good for the monarchs.

Modest request, but yeah.

It is small compared to the other things, but... You gave us a lot to look at.

Yes, I know. And like I said, there will be more. I'll be printing more.

Have you been in touch with the two neighbors closest to the east?

Yeah, I believe my colleague Alex Riley, who's kind of the running point on a lot of that coordination, has been in outreach with folks. I'll double check with him and make sure. Generally speaking, what we like to do is actually bring folks out to the site and do sidewalks with folks so they can understand things. I know that we wanted to get through some of the initial engineering reviews before we have that kind of consolidated walk with everybody.

Obviously with the site walks, it would be great for, as we get closer to getting final plans here.

Board members too.

Yeah, to do a walk of the prior site and the amount of dead trees. It didn't really take, I think, a real number on how many should get replaced as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

So will this be a public comment next month?

I think we have a pretty complete application except the, it sounded like the seeker needed to be fixed. We've got some issues between the short environmental assessment form filled out and some gaps and differences with that in the long form.

And just to explain why that situation occurred, when they were first going for their last meeting, As you remember, what was included in the packet was very limited at that time. When they initially sent in that submission, they did not know many details of what the final site would look like. So they just included a full environmental assessment form with just what information they knew. And then once they submitted the complete application, they sent in a short environmental assessment form that was fully filled out. The reason why the full environmental assessment form was left in is for better or worse, there were difficulties with our digital system and they were having a lot of difficulties deleting the original full environmental assessment form. Correct me if I'm wrong, the short environmental assistance form seemed to be what I was told you would want to move forward with?

Yeah, that's our intention, and our understanding is the same as, you know, NRB's and everyone on this board, which is that this would be an unlisted action, and just that it would be a coordinated review, but the short form would be appropriate, so. That was our understanding. I know that there were some mix-ups there. I've had similar issues in other towns with open vote where it's hard to get rid of things. It's easy to add them. So it's certainly not the first time I've run into this kind of confusion, but we feel that the form is in a good place for circulation if this board merits that evidence.

I want to clarify the comment that I believe what the comment was agreed was that, yes, it's unlisted, coordinated review, but the full EAF would be required.

That's not our understanding.

Because with unlisted action, the board at their discretion has the ability to require a short or require a full. Typically, with a project of this, you'd want more answers. So that's where I would think a full AAF would answer more questions, especially when you have short-eared bats and you have

Well, just pull the board field that you'd like to see. I mean, the short form doesn't get into any of that at all. The long form doesn't have to be overly complex, but it allows us to go with a deeper dive into areas that we want to discuss.

Yeah, I agree. You probably ought to, it's not that much more to fill that long form up.

I think the long form would help summarize a lot of the information that we've been provided with in different packets currently.

So we're going to ask for a long form.

Okay. So can we have public comment next month or not?

Well, we're going to set a public hearing for next time. Next time. We can do that. Move it along.

So would the board's intention be to open the public hearing, presumably declare leave agency?

I think between now and the next meeting, we can get the FOIA out with what other resubmissions that are going to be required. At the next meeting, the board could declare intent, start the coordination with the process, send out the lead agency packages, and then the following meeting is where they'd be positioned to make a determination of significance. we still have to consider that 239 county referrals are still required. So if you want to do those in tandem, you can. So we don't have to add, rather than doing 30 days, add 60 days. So keep that in consideration as well.

So should we be setting our public hearing for the next meeting?

So we can always keep it open? Yeah.

I want to hear the comments from the neighbors if they have any that's going to take on what I'd like.

So Kelly and Nathaniel, is it possible in where the submittal lives on our website, is it possible to do anything in terms of page numbers for the individual documents so that people can find them? Because I think that for me, the most germane things were the fire protection engineering report was important. And the noise report was very important, but obviously it's hard to wade through that 936 pages of stuff there to try to find them. And I'm concerned about the public being able to find them as well. To be able to find the things that they need to read up on and address their concerns before public hearing. So I don't know if it's possible or not.

Well currently we have it set up so each of the documents, fire safety, site plans, all of that are showing separate documents on the public facing portal. That's what I've been using.

Oh okay, that's perfect.

yeah each of them shows up as a different document the ones that have page numbers do the ones that don't have page numbers don't it's based on whether or not you put page numbers on it but if when you open it up it does show the number of pages through the public portal and which number of page you're on good and perhaps what we could do just to ease that is we could provide maybe in a table of contents format on the narrative

So if folks wanted to go in there and they're like, I'm really interested in X, Y, or Z, then this is where you go. You go to document number four, you go to document number six. I could use some of that access to make it a little bit less infuriating for people to try to navigate file naming conventions and figure out what's going on. I think relatively easy across the board.

Yeah, I was super concerned about the safety of the system in a relatively, you know, it's not super rural there. There's a bunch of residents very close by in Lansingville. So reading through, for instance, the fire protection engineering report was something that really calmed a lot of fears, for me at least. Any other questions or comments? So it sounds like we're going to set up the public hearing next time. And we'll be addressing, hopefully the long form will be in our hands. And at what point do we need to declare lead agency? Or we've already done so?

meeting okay yeah so that'll be on our agenda for next meeting and that i'll just point out you're just declaring intent you're not making any decisions you're just and it's important because you're sending out to those interested in involving agencies that's where you get some valuable feedback from u.s visual wildlife and dc and you know other

particularly keen on having us list as involved or interested agencies i mean generally speaking we would obviously do all the requisite town boards we would do all the requisite fire departments and fire protection districts the county planning county idea Okay, great. As long as you let us know, we can .

Yeah, if you're doing it on the full environmental assessment form, you'll list a lot of that information for the additional reviews that will be needed. So, you know, we can coordinate on that. Okay, perfect. Yeah, we just want to make sure we get the .

Or you could, whatever you did in the town .

Yeah, but every town is different. You know, sometimes folks want us to circulate to a water protection district.

So that's probably a good idea, soil and water, since it was ag at one time.

Are there any mitigation projects in the area that we know about? Because that's the only interest I can think about. Specific interest that Soil and Water Protection District would have, mitigation, any fencing that was put in?

I mean, it's directly next to a wetland, but I don't know of any mitigation projects in that area.

So if I may, just a quick procedural question, because I find that obviously we've got a relatively good timeline here worked out, and I think that we should be able to get all the necessary materials into folks in a meaningful amount of time. and I say this on behalf of Ben because I drive him crazy with this, is getting in review letters from any engineers that are reviewing stormwater, for example, consolidating that in the kind of planning comments, MRB comments. I guess my question is when should we expect Additional documentation for stormwater review in particular. Um, we just want to make sure that we have enough time to make revisions, be update materials and see, get it all to the town in such a way that the actually captures the full nature of the facility and what proposed mitigation.

I received our stormwater engineer's comments at the end of last week. I didn't send it through just so you wouldn't be rushing to update things right before the meeting. So you will receive everybody's comments in the next couple of days. I have those letters. It's just a matter of sending them to you.

Great. Yeah, and we'll be cracking as soon as we get them and crack their responses and any requisite changes that we think need to be addressed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll see you next month. All right, Britton Woods is next. Come on up.

Thank you. These guys to pack up. Late reading, yes. Compared to terrible. Ben.

So we're so sad that Scotty passed between, between that and COVID kind of put a big damper on things over on North trip hammer road. So, so now you're back. we got going on here so sketch review and we'll set a public hearing for next time um so this subdivision was approved when back in 19 2019 correct yeah and uh so it's no longer valid and we are kind of starting from scratch here so you want to tell us a little bit about the uh the proposal

proposal is to divide this property into 10 lots and put in the road to support that and add water main and utilities to support them as well in such a way that they can support a house in a needed septic system.

And this is market, a plan to be able to market individual lots for sale?

Yes, that's correct.

Correct, okay, I couldn't recall.

Yeah, initially we had thought about possibly I think without Scott's presence and the amount of time that's gone by, A plan would be to sell off some lots as soon as possible to pay for the road and that sort of utilities. And then market the rest of the lots over a period of time.

Dan, do you want to talk to us a little bit about the conservation plan here and stormwater and size of lots?

Yeah, so just so everyone's aware, the vast majority of lots within this subdivision are below minimums in the town of Lansing in the R1 district, which is what this is. The minimum lot size is 40,000 square feet. As you can tell, only one lot is above the minimum lot size. That's lot seven. Every other lot is below that. Also, minimum road frontage is, I believe, 150 feet in this district, so most of the parcels are also below minimum frontage. The reason this was able to be approved was due to the fact that it was being treated as a conservation subdivision, which is clustering certain units so that certain natural resources can be conserved. I mean, I think it's an open discussion and something to be looked at this board right now is whether or not this qualifies as a conservation subdivision and whether or not it makes more sense to go the conservation direction or to view it as needing variances to go below the lot size minimums. There's also some unusual situations ongoing with this due to the fact that if you look at the stormwater documents for this, Currently, as per the provided site plans and what was approved, each of the lots has separate stormwater infrastructure with two dedicated stormwater parcels. The intent and the requirement when this was originally approved was for there to be a drainage district. Unfortunately, due to the original applicant's passing, that drainage district was never created. So there were some plans around a drainage district. But currently all we have is a set of site plans with individual stormwater infrastructure on each parcel that would be up to the individual future owners to maintain.

And or the town?

Correct. Likely the town if we don't have a drainage district built.

So wait a minute, the dry ponds next to the Trip Hammer Road, those parcels will be deeded to the town, is that correct?

I do not believe that is stated. I think the intent was for that decision to be made when the drainage district was formed and the previous site plan approval was contingent on a drainage district being formed. We have documents from something being halfway created with discussions around what would happen with those lots. Unfortunately, none of those ever concluded. So it was approved by the planning board, but certain discussions still need to occur.

The planning board can say we would like this to be its own separate stormwater district, so there would be a fee charged to each parcel on their tax bills to help maintain the two ponds that are next to the road, and those ponds would be on town land. Is that correct? Correct. Anyone have a problem with that? Settle.

That's effectively what was required in the last site plan approval, it just never got finished.

You guys okay with that?

Yeah, that sounds great.

So what's the story with the berms on each parcel?

So you're going to have a stormwater catchment.

So it's just a berm that's going to stop the water from flowing further downstream, is that?

It's going to hold a certain amount of water on each parcel after or during rain so that some of that's going to disperse.

Per go, yeah.

Right, quickly on that existing lot instead of continuing downstream.

It slows it down, right?

Yes. Yeah. OK. So they're sort of a retention pond, but not really. Correct. So it's a combination of a berm. Yeah, those are retention ponds.

State of retention ponds.

Right. But the berms are to slow the water down before it even gets there.

Right.

so nate what was the open space that was going to be is that going to be that's going to be conve so those lots two three four and five that area is going to be conveyed but it's going to be reserved for the public to use how was that going to work i don't remember and if you look

North of the ponds in the road going in and there's the next neighbor to the North. Then there's is that an easement there between those two neighbors to the North? It's hard. It's hard to see on there and if you can blow that up, it's so tiny here I can't read it. Whether that's an easement because there's the reserved open space area. Yeah, there we go. What's that say? Easement to County of Tompkins. So that potentially allows for public access through on the north end of the parcel into the wooded area?

Right now, we know that previously it was planned as a conservation easement, though I do not believe we have the exact documents of what the original easement, whether it would include public access, said.

So did you want to convey public access to that shaded area? Was that the intention? Do you want to do that?

I don't think so. Because that would... My thought was it was an area that was to not be disturbed.

Not be disturbed, but it wasn't to be open to the public at all. no i was considering that it was still part of the individual lines okay so and then at one time i thought we were talking about a trail a walking trail that's what i was wondering didn't we get the easement there i thought we were talking about perimeter trail right i thought we had a perimeter trail at least through the north part

That's not in the documents that I received, though we have a lot of documents on that subdivision. We have two folders that are about this large on it. Just in my office right now, we have more in the basement, so there were a lot of discussions about potential options for making this a conservation subdivision, though some things may have happened, some things may not have. Ultimately, this is a completely new review.

Well, I think we need this to go to Trails Committee, John, for a comment on it anyways. Right?

Yeah, so there's this hammerhead in the back, too, and you turn around and you see the north end there. We obviously have to be concerned that the town has the right to... continue that road between that north spur and the property line if the neighboring parcel wants to develop and we want to do completed streets through there and not dead ends. We want to make sure we don't have a 20 foot strip of can't touch.

Dean, do you know the house number of the property just north? Just like for references. I don't. Okay.

It's with Pete Scrivani's property is just to the south. Oh, there you go. Henry Vandeville?

It doesn't say the property number on this. I forgot where this exact location is.

There's about four houses north of Asbury Road. And you'll see the trees have been taken down, so it's open. Isn't there piping on the site? There's some ductile iron water pipe there on site. It's probably back in the bushes now.

It's kind of grown up.

And were the individual water services located on the map? I don't know if I saw that.

There's probably an infrastructure map in here somewhere that shows the water line coming in.

So Nate, between lot five and lot six, it shows the road going to the north. And we had that in there in case the parcel to the top, to the north, they wanted to develop that, they could access it. Would that section of the road be built when the other section, the whole section of the road be built? Or what's the story on that? You follow my question?

I'd assume it was intended to all be built at the same time, given this would be dedicated as a public road.

Okay. So that was the intent. You were going to build a road all the way to the neighboring parcel to the town.

Right, as it's shown on the... So you will build that, okay. That was the intent, whether... If it's not needed, why wouldn't people?

Well, we ran into problems in the past where we didn't build it, and then who builds it? So I would recommend that you build it, because in the future, should that lot to the north be developed, who puts that road in? Let's just get it built now. I know it's not going to be used, but it probably should be built. Yes, Dean? Board?

Yes, I think we discussed that last time.

Yeah, I think my major concern here is that we get the drainage district going. Even though these are sub 40,000 square foot minimum lots, there's room for storm water. There's room for, we've got municipal water here. There's room for septic and replacement septic. Having a little more density there compared to the rest of the neighborhood, some of the rest of the neighborhood that's developed.

I mean, with the county, the county is a half acre if there's municipal water. And so, you know, you're talking 20,000 square feet. So this is bigger than the county's standards. Right. I don't have a problem with this being only, you know, it's being less than 40,000 square feet. There's still spacious lots with municipal water. It might happen.

John? I have two questions. Is the homeowner responsible to maintain those little swales or keep them, or how does that work?

That's a question for Nathaniel on how stormwater

Well, that depends on if there's a drainage district or not. If there's not a drainage district, then yes, it would be up to the individual homeowners. If there was a drainage district, then it would not be. So that's why a drainage district, from my understanding, was conditioned in 2019 and why it was required for this subdivision to happen.

And if it's a drainage district, essentially those 10 houses will pay for it. Correct. Is there a reason we wouldn't do a drainage district? and have the town take that cost? Why would we want the town to incur a new cost when we can pass it on to them?

Yeah. We have other drainage districts in the town, subdivisions. So yeah, you're right. It would be a drainage district. Yeah, it would be a stormwater district, drainage district. So they're responsible. No reason for the rest of the town to pay for it. They're enjoying it.

The main reason that one wouldn't do that is just administrative costs and time of creating the drainage district and costs of the background engineering. So we'll probably need a developer's agreement to fund the engineers creating that district. But if everyone is fine with the additional time and costs there, then yeah, you are completely correct. It is largely beneficial for the town as a whole.

And what does creating a drainage district involve?

There's a lot of specific details that I think would be best to discuss after I have a conversation with T.G. Miller. I know there are documents we have related to the planning around the drainage district for this parcel. I don't know quite the specifics of what was done for this parcel in the past. So I know there's a process to do that. I know T.G. Miller has gone through it and in the previous case where it occurred it was The town created a developer agreement with the applicant and then T.G. Miller did all of the background work on creating it. Specific to the process, I will have to check with them.

It's essentially created by local law, isn't it? Correct. It's a new taxing jurisdiction.

Effectively, it's a special district that it would be creating.

So there's a separate... legal process that would occur as well too.

And that's a town board thing?

Yeah.

So timeline wise should we be setting up a public hearing for next time and seeker review next time or is that kind of jumping the gun?

I believe you can set the public hearing for the next meeting. The biggest thing is just discussing whether or not you are fine with this being a conservation subdivision. And I can also check with the trails committee, see their opinions on whether or not the conservation areas could be effectively used. That's fine.

Well, Christine, you mentioned that some of the

After they were approved the first time, yes.

Yeah, okay. So that's no longer.

Well, they haven't cleared the hatched areas.

And those were the areas.

The shaded area has not been cleared.

This is badly needed in our community. We really need lots available for sale for single family homes. It's really badly needed. So if we can work with these guys and get it to to them to be able to start marketing it. It really would be beneficial for the community as a whole.

So Nate's got it up there, Nathaniel, so you can see that kind of.

Yeah, the cleater is roughly where that road would be. And this is a photo from 2025.

If you zoom out a little bit, you can see Asbury Road is just to the south.

Hey, Dean. Yes. Could we get the applicant to show on their plans where the water main and all the taps would be and get approval from Boat Point ahead of time with their subdivision? Because you're going to want the water main dedicated. I just don't see on the sheet. I don't know what the sheet's on.

Yeah, I'd have to go through all the sheets and see.

And I will note that some of those, such as things with the SWPPP, what's that? I believe they referenced the town of Ithaca's storm water requirements and like water.

So I'm seeing ST3 is giving some of the details for like hygrants and what have you.

Yeah, there's a detail sheet. It just doesn't show where they're all located.

It includes the town of Ithaca inter-municipal sewer system specs on there. So it's some details, not sure if they're the right details.

I wouldn't want to approve a plan unless you know where the water main is. That's pretty critical.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to have to look through all the plans. Hydraulic.

as well, too, to have a resolution sheet so we can have a, for those of us who were not on the board when this was originally approved, have a better sense of where the potential connections may be, or through roads or future developments. We talked about parcels to the north. Another thing is I do see there is, there's a fair amount of detail around soil types, but at least on some of the maps, but I mean I know this is a very wet area and there's some discussion clearly the drainage district would help with with that but understanding how placement of houses or those the septic fields and the replacement septic fields would be impacted by the soil types are we talking engineered systems I mean that's not, I don't think it's necessary for our approval, but it does give a better idea to what are the costs that are going to be built into constructing. The engineered system is pretty.

Is it going to be a sand filter? Yeah, exactly. Engineers can be a raised bed.

I speak as someone also who has an engineered system. I know they're not.

Yeah, if you can see here on the Google map that southwest and northeast, that's cleared is where this would go, and you can see just north of that, it's a different neighbor, different property owner, I believe, and it's all undeveloped, so.

You've got the potential connection up to Maple Lane and that neighborhood that's developed there, but, you know, an indication in the seeker of, so assuming we'd be doing a new seeker for this, we'd have to get a new approval. of any reference to existing town plans that this would complement in that use of connectivity to existing road networks, the creation of additional housing options, obviously something that we know we need.

What's the plan for the electric service? Is it going to be underground with vaults or poles?

I'm not sure that. I guess my initial thought in the ground would be preferred.

Well, I think that would be preferred as well, but probably something that you need to be talking to NYSEG about and figuring out with Mr. Buell so we can get that on the plan, which way that's going to be, whether it's going to be poles or vaults and underground, along with making sure that we've got the layout for the curb boxes in the main for the water. Nathaniel, what else do we need before our next meeting?

Other than scheduling the public hearing, I don't believe there's anything else.

Okay. Well, we'll get public hearing scheduled for our next meeting. Board, anything else for tonight? I think we're all set for tonight. Thank you. alright looks like we've got everything on our agenda taking care of except Joe you want to come up I'm assuming you can't speak to what's happening on Wednesday it looks like it's some kind of matter that's gonna be executive session so what else is going on at the town

Well, obviously, we approved a special use permit for John Duthie's project for the last meeting. And that got passed on to you, along with a recommendation that came from our public hearing about questions about sidewalks. About what? Sidewalks in the property. We figured that was better for you guys than for a special permit. So that's gotten bounced to you as a permit that we got. OK. We accepted a couple of grants for the trail system. One is to look into liability for the town and what kind of changes one would make to a trail design to lower town's liability. And also a signage study to determine what kind of signage would be best on the trail systems. Those are grants that we just approved accepting, so that would be moving forward.

So that is you would contract with somebody who's going to come in and evaluate?

And do all that work for us, yeah. Okay. Congratulations to Nathaniel on his promotion that happened on the last meeting.

Yes. He's a director or planner?

He's director.

Director? Okay. We're hiring on a new planner. That's great. So how is that going?

Any applications yet?

We've actually got a surprising number of applications that I have a pile on my desk right now that I was halfway through sifting through when this meeting started. Awesome. Hopefully we'll get another person soon.

So those are the big things from the town board. I'd like to bring up the whole idea again of the sheet for people to do comments to various boards. I know that's been passed around. I would like to see that implemented because I think it's going to make your life easier. I think it'll make staff lives easier. I think it'll make the public's life easier to just help guide comments in a way that is sorted and more directed at what you actually need to hear. So I'm not sure how to move that forward, but I'm going to encourage it.

Okay.

That's my report, if there's any questions.

And you had at the data center, you had a petition. What happened on that? I just saw it in the paper.

That should be passed on to you guys. I'm hoping to get an electronic version of it.

There wasn't anything for you to act on. There's nothing for us to act on. Because we haven't gotten a completed application.

Do you have an application in yet?

We haven't, they're telling us they're gonna get it in soon. We haven't had anything, and I haven't received a copy of the petition, so they did give me a few red comments that I've scanned into the comment folder that everyone has for that project, but we don't have an application yet, so we're in holding pattern.

They gave us two paper copies, Debbie has them, and I've asked the community to give us.

So who did the petition come from?

Finger Lake Strong.

Did they give us any kind of breakdown? People who live in, you know, Vermont, how many live in Tompkins County? How many are within a 50-mile radius?

Off the top of my head, it's 8,000 people who are within a 20-mile or 40-mile circle. 20-mile, I believe. 20 mile circle of Lansing. It's really hard to say how many of them were in Lansing because zip codes don't match town boundaries. I live in Freeville. So the north in 14882, about 5% of the population signed that petition. 14850, a bunch of people signed that and we can't tell whether they're Ithaca and I'm not going to sort it out. ithaca lansing but if you look at the map that was generated um basically most people signed right near the property on both on our side and on the other side of the lake so ulysses had a big strong and then as you move out the concentration gets less and less so it really is the closer you are to the project the more people signed

And did they provide specifics on concerns? Did they get into any detail there at all?

Not that I saw.

No? They did hand me, right before the meeting started, a copy of their written statement. The head of Finger Lake Strong did. So I've scanned that. That is currently in the comments folder for that project.

Yeah, that was what I was interested in, is what are people signing their name to? what FLX Strong specifically lists as the potential issues or grievances that people.

Yeah, I don't have that off the top of my head. Hopefully we'll get that out to you soon.

And it's in a shared folder that all of you have access to. Okay, so we can go ahead and read through it. I've been uploading all of the comments we received to the shared folder, but I'll send out an email tomorrow specifically for the things that I got handed when that petition was being brought in.

I haven't visited the folder. Is there much in there? There is a lot in there.

We have it sorted right now into some general categories. Just for your reference of how we're planning on doing it, I know the playing board wants to split the review up into topics. We're going to split up the comments into topics and effectively do one folder for each of the topics for the review, so that we could provide you effectively just a, this is all the comments we got on the topic for the meeting, and so that you can, whenever you want, check into that folder, see all the comments we have received. Very large number right now.

If they submit an application, have we scheduled a second meeting? Or is it gonna be all... the same with the regular town business?

The planning board still needs to vote to schedule that second meeting. It's until there is a vote to schedule the second meeting, it's just going to be on a regular meeting. Right now, they have told me that they will be intending to submit for being on the next regular meeting, but... I'll say this.

It's not fair for regular town business to be conducted when a room's packed. I'm just telling you that from my experience. No, we agree.

That's one of the reasons why we recommended to have a split, you know, two meetings.

But if they put their application in, they're on the regular meeting next month. And we haven't made a decision.

and we've circulated a draft schedule but we can't move to a new meeting date without a formal action by the planning board if there is an application in we don't know we were told the date and then it got delayed two months before the last meeting they were on so who knows if it's going to be soon or not they've said soon we honestly don't know but that will mean that we will likely have a planning board meeting at the school just to handle the

The thing for sure though, they should be last on the agenda item. That way other items can be that are more easier for local residents that not a mega national company can get processed.

If we break tonight and they submit an application, we won't. I mean, they'll be on the agenda.

So what's the meeting date in July for the planning board? The 27th. The 27th. So if they brought something in, if we had two meetings, it would be what day would it be in July if we had an early meeting? Could we have an early meeting? We couldn't do that.

I would advise that if you're going to be doing, moving it to a second meeting, We start in August mainly because they have told me that they will be aiming to submit for the July meeting so we've pushed back the project review committee meeting to deal with the volume we're expecting to review given Just because they submit materials to us does not mean they're going back before the planning board. We still need to do a full internal review to see if they're actually meeting all of the requirements which were set out by the planning board at the last meeting. We need at least a few weeks to go through and see if they're actually.

So can we schedule an early meeting in August right now if all the information comes in in time? Can we do that now?

take care of it? I would prefer that we wait to make sure we get their application and then put them on the schedule for our regular July meeting in that the action item would be to just go over scheduling for them and that's it.

All right. And I will say the one risk to if we schedule them to a second meeting before we receive a full application is there may be some practical and legal issues with saying this application will be on this meeting before we even receive a formal full application?

That's a good idea. So you can advertise that we are not going to get into the nuts and bolts, This meeting is going to be strictly about setting up a schedule and the topics on the schedule.

So we make sure that we get a completed application, that the committee is able to review that, then we're able to put it on the agenda for July, and our agenda item would be just to discuss scheduling. Scheduling is what it means. Because we've got a lot of we, meaning staff, has a lot of legwork to do to line things up.

So if that worked out that way, we could schedule for them to appear and start going through the details. Going through all the details of the, okay.

And just for everyone's sake, I'd recommend looking again at the draft schedule that we provided everyone on the board, see if that still makes sense for you because If we do receive a full application and that's the route that everyone wants to go, it's probably going to make sense for us to reach out and meet with the school in advance just so we have the space reserved. So potentially if we have a meeting that is exclusively for scheduling, it may or may not make sense to schedule that at the school. But the second meeting a month will definitely have to be at the school and we'll be working around their schedule.

Is that going to be in the auditorium or will that be in the board meeting?

That'll be in the auditorium. We've already met with them. We found out specific with audio. We've already had all those discussions. It's just a case of reserving it around their board meeting so they have enough microphones for all of us.

So their initial presentation was in the auditorium, whenever it was, six, nine months ago. It's going to be that same setting? Yeah, middle school auditorium.

And we're able to live stream from there?

Correct, it's effectively, I believe there was a school board something with the candidates a while ago. I don't know how many people in this room saw that. It will effectively be a very similar setup to that.

and we will all be on stage like this, and the applicant will be on stage with us.

Correct, which is why there was a discussion of being worried about having regular residents have to deal with coming up onto the stage.

Right, right. Okay, yeah, that sounds like you guys did a good, that's a good idea, so we just have to make sure. The regular meeting will be in July, and it'll only be talking about the agenda, the schedule. for a regular meeting and then we move it to the first meeting of the month at the school. That sounds like a plan.

And I will state, the deadline for submissions that if we receive anything from them would be this Wednesday. I have heard some questions from them, but I have still not received any documents. And I know when they were originally submitting things for a sketch plan, they were delayed by at least one month. It may be in July, it may not be in July. We still have to do staff review. So exact timing of whether it's gonna be the July meeting, whether it's gonna be August meeting is up in the air. We just know that it's going to be sometime soon. So we can work through that process once we actually have documents to look at.

I just want to remind you back seven, eight years ago when you were doing two meetings a month because you were doing a working meeting, working on various projects, not what you're doing. Yeah, that kind of stuff. All of your applicants said, can we have the thing at your next meeting? They kept trying to push theirs to the secondary meeting. I think you guys should set a strong policy as to what you want to do. Is this TerraWolf only? Are you going to allow other business at this meeting?

No, it's TerraWolf only.

But I think you need to set that as a policy very strongly or you're going to see a lot of people pushing.

We'll really want that stated explicitly when you are creating the second meeting. That it will be a second meeting exclusively for this matter to prevent it from causing any conflicts with regular business before the board.

And regular business can't jump into a TerraWolf meeting to get some sort of approval. They have to wait a month. Right.

I would highly advise that. That's what I would advise them. Not going to mix up the two. Oh, right. That would cause serious issues around getting things prepared before deadlines, internal staff meetings. It would be a logistical mess if we had regular business on for the second meeting.

Yeah, we'll have to check with Megan because we're going to want her at all the TerraWolf meetings.

Are you guys going to do a ribbon cutting for the new DPW?

Oh, that's coming in October. We haven't started planning that yet. But it's looking good so far.

Confetti.

How is the town barn coming up?

I don't know if you guys realize that there was a spill that was ages old that got cleaned up there and so they dug a big hole and most of that soil is now sitting I think where the brush pile used to be at the moment. They've cleaned out the hole so they're able to continue construction. They seem to be on schedule. There's been some minor modifications to the front entryway because there were some issues about how it was designed and there were going to be water issues if it was left the way it was designed so that's being redesigned but they should be on schedule they're hoping to be done sometime in october and i'm sure we'll all get a tour of it because that's where you know headquarters is going to be back to the school today in the auditorium do they have the option for some screens for us to be able to project on Yeah, that terrible thought. Yeah, terrible.

Oh, that's right. They use screen. So it's probably going to be projection instead of TV.

Yeah, but they had no problem projecting something from somewhere. I don't know how they did it.

I believe there is something weird with seating with projecting. I don't remember the specifics from that meeting very well. But I do. I remember we had something worked out where we'd be able to see the board and the applicant and we'd be able to have a screen up so everyone in the audience could see all the materials we were bringing up.

Probably better than here.

So when is the deadline for Tara Wolf to hit? Wednesday.

Wednesday for July.

And I will note when they did their last submission, they did it three minutes before the deadline. So it's technically Wednesday.

But you may get it. You may say it's still inadequate, right? You may go through it and say, all right, you missed an X, Y, and Z.

We don't know if it's going to be complete. We're going to be doing our own completeness review because I believe we had a total of 80 points on the main list and two points that were sent by planning board members after that main list. So they had 82 things to add to their application for it to be considered complete. So we will be reviewing after we get a submission to determine whether or not it's complete. it'll take our staff looking into that to actually know whether or not July is going to happen. We don't know at this point.

Can I ask a question? So if Governor Hochul puts a moratorium on a debtor's center, what does that mean for this debtor's center? Are they grandfathered or?

Well, Megan had a statement she intended to send to everyone on the planning board. I was under the belief it was sent to everyone on the planning board. It appears that some of the emails were not correct. So I will be forwarding that to everyone on the planning board after this meeting. So tomorrow morning you'll get a full thing from our attorney on that.

that the gist of it was that it sounded to me like it was mostly the DEC permits would not be considered, but that her interpretation or thought process was that Tara Wolf would likely want to continue with the site plan approval process during that moratorium and then try to get their permits on the tail end in order to be able to execute.

It would be open question for us to the fact that if we follow her interpretation that we can move forward but the DC cannot take any action. Coordinating seeker review for that when we're going to be discussing lead agency and they're going to need a mining and reclamation permit from the DEC. We're going to need to coordinate with the DEC to determine lead agency. So I think there's going to be a lot of discussions to have to occur about how viable and how things would function if the DEC cannot take any action but a site plan is still occurring at the local level. So I think there's a lot that's up in the air and there's a lot that We will have to figure out, especially given the moratorium has not been signed and conditions will likely change as it gets signed.

You know what makes no sense is the moratorium is for a year, but in the verbiage of the moratorium, it says the DEC has a year and a half to come up with their study. So how can you have a moratorium for a year, but the DEC has a year and a half? Did you guys notice that? Did you pick up on that? Did you see that at all? I did not, no.

I think that's part of the negotiation of it started as a three-year moratorium.

Three year and they just reduced it to a year and they didn't adjust the body of the report.

My interpretation is it might have been an intent to do a moratorium at the local level so that local could start after a year and the DEC permits start six months after that. I think there's a lot of open questions about the moratorium right now that we're not going to be able to actually feasibly answer until we see what the version that actually gets signed looks like.

The DEC has a year and a half to come up with it, then they have to advertise, they have to have meetings throughout the state, then they have to assemble the comments, and then they have to rework their, it's a three year plan for the DEC, really.

I think what Nathan keeps saying is we have to wait and see what she actually signs because that's not going to be what's on the plate right now in all likelihood. And until we see something that's finalized, we can't plan around it because who knows what's going to change.

And so the deadline for her to sign so that there's not a pocket veto is the end of 2026?

Something like that, yeah.

Yeah, I think so, yeah.

And I wouldn't expect anything this summer.

Yeah, that was one of Megan's other comments, is that Hochul likes to drag her feet on this kind of thing.

It's election time. You're not going to sign it before the election.

She drags everything. The bridge naming for the Peter Wheeler Bridge took her six months to sign. And that's not a big controversial. The voters are hammering her. She's being lobbied. She's slow at signing everything.

Okay, board, any other comments or questions tonight?