Planning Board - Regular Meeting

My cousins who were there most recently said it's all spiders. Because no one's been there recently.

Okay. All the meeting to order for planning board meeting Tuesday, May 26 6pm. We can all eyes for the allegiance.

To the flag of the United States of America. and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call, please.

Jim Abdallah?

Yes.

Abby Muserhurst? Yes. Tom Cosgrove?

Yes.

Hartley Leary? Yes. Kurt Rubin? Yep.

Hey, everybody's packet. We do have meeting minutes for the April 27th meeting. And a motion to accept those.

I will make a motion to accept the meeting minutes from April 27th. What's that? We'll call.

Yes, I've been used to her. Yes. Tom Castro. Yes. Yes. Kurt garbage.

Yes. I think it's moving to our 1 application for tonight again. This is a returning application planning board application. 26-03 for historic site review. Project name is 132 court street garage rehab and the owner applicant is Robert Spencer. Emily, do you have a brief?

So what agenda item tonight? This is, as the chairman said, a returning application. As a reminder, this is a request to straighten the existing carriage garage, replace rotting wood, footers, and foundation, and repave the driveway in front of the structure. The residence is located in the 4th Street Historic District. at 132 Corp Street. The zone is residential historic. An applicant is with us tonight. As we reviewed last time, there is historical history and significance at this location. I have provided a series of pictures of the property. These are applicant-provided photos. And in your packets, you have materials and methods that has been provided by the applicant. I have all of those summarized on this slide here. Last time we reviewed Seeker as a type one or a type two action. There were no comments made by any city departments on this application. We did receive a SHPO letter, which notes the carriage house as a contributing resource, but had no comments on the project specifically as it was proposed as an in-kind replacement. That's all I have.

Mr. Spencer, you have the opportunity to offer any additional information about your applications.

Uh, no, I don't have anything to add to that. Okay.

Yeah. Board members, if you have questions, I know there were some questions in the Pre meeting and some questions from last month opportunity for us to ask questions. Get clarification. Okay. So, I think. One of the main questions in terms of the use, do you see any of the uses changing with the garage of what it is today? It sounds like it's a garage with storage.

Yeah, same. No changes. Just storage.

Along the side of the garage, there's doorway access to the first main garage floor and the upper story. Do you plan on... Creating new stairs or resuming access to those doors.

No, we don't we don't, um. Uh, they, they. They might even be removed. We're not exactly sure, but once once the contractor gets in there and sees what's going on. Yeah, um, we don't use them. There's there's obviously the 2nd floors. There's. There's no way to use that. There's no access to it and we don't use the 1st floor. Door as well. So, and we don't, we don't see a need for it. So, if it's if it helps to. Increase the structural integrity of it to take them out and put siding back up so that they're not there anymore. We're going to look at that.

Oh, I would say. Again, the building inspector has the authority for referral and what they refer for is very general. So if you're perhaps, if you're looking at a potential of removing those doors, we add that to the application. If it's removal of doors, then there's no question if for some reason it came up and you wanted to remove them, it's been approved here. And, you know, Removing with, uh, and refinishing with like siding.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I figured that would be okay. 1 way. The other if they either state, or they were returned back to.

Society like, it is it most likely would be, you know, what Jim's saying and what the board usually tries to do with all the applicants is just let, you know, through the, that there is a process that the building inspector may take. And if you have that on the application now, they won't stop the work if at some point they come to inspect and they say, hey, I noticed you were removing doors. The building inspector won't know if they're historical or not or they're part of the application or not. I don't think the board has any objection to removing them, but I think they're along the lines of if they're not on there, if the building inspector does object, they might stop the work and we don't want that to happen to you. And so I think that's the conversation.

Can I add it on and not have it delay my timeline?

Yes. Yeah, that's really the... I would say the goal for us is to capture anything that maybe isn't clear in the application so that when you go get your billing permit, there is no... That you're not going to get referred back to us because it's not right covered.

Sounds good. Yeah. Anything done to the exterior of the building. The reason we're asking about the doors is if we wanted to add a staircase, for example, and it's not on the permit. Because it's part of the historic district, you would then be referred back to us and then you might have to wait and then that might stop you from doing that work. We don't want that to happen. We don't want to see you for an exterior in their face. We'd rather just give you the all clear now. For that good idea from experience.

Yeah. so again aside from matching like siding same thing on the front you know do you plan on replacing any of the garage doors or any of the i hope not okay um they're they're a little wonky from all the settling over the years but otherwise they function and i would like to keep it that way keep them in place okay uh how about the uh the roof gutters Those.

Or the 1 that shows the down.

Yeah, there's 2 on either side.

Maybe it's possible that that the downspouts there get removed during the construction, but we would intend to put them back up people. Okay. They're, they're, they're vinyl. They're. Anything that's easily replaced if they don't make it. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. You can see how, like, we would like to maintain those to keep the ice off of the, the, the front.

Yeah. Is there any, uh, question about any, adding any kind of plumbing to this building?

Not for me. There's no intent to add any kind of plumbing or drains or anything like that. Okay. Yep. We're not going to add any new electricity. And this has ever the service that's there. We're just going to keep that.

Well, can I ask a question about this? Isn't like really playing board, but I was just like going to recommend to you that thinking about people are moving towards electric vehicles for your tenants. If you're doing all this work and you're already jacking it up and looking at all that stuff, if you looked at the electrical to see what they could handle for EV chargers for your residents. But again, that's not like a planning board recommendation. That's just, I wanted to throw that out there while you're doing the work to think about.

Yeah, not this time. Yeah.

Is the electrical service that's on this building solely for this building?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. That is its own separate meter.

It's own separate meter. Okay. And that'd be all keeping as is you're not moving it or anything.

There shouldn't be any reason to disturb that.

Okay.

Um, so there's been, and there's no consideration of ever having a accessory dwelling unit. Like, if I don't make up there.

No, not by us. No, that would be a. Okay.

Think that generally covers the list unless.

Yeah, the other clarifying question I had was. In the list of work, it talks about. You know, matching the siding as closely as possible. Is there concern that the actual siding can't be matched?

The profile or whatever the specific historic looks like that's just it's a standard kind of a. Sightings, but I didn't actually look for that specific. Dimension.

So that might be the latter of what we were, you have a few engineers and architects on the board who read a lot of the specs and things that come from contractors like that. So we weren't sure what they meant if it was just canned language that says, you know, we will try to replace in kind and that's what they would do. Or if there was a separate conversation, you know, around it because of anything specific historic to this building. It doesn't sound like it from what you told us. So I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to dig into with it, but. Most of the recommendations from the board, because you've said it's going to be a replacement in kind, again, just trying to get it all in one fell swoop on that conversation along with it. I don't know if you want to go to the... picture of the window on top. Yeah. This one here. So yeah, I think that was the other conversation that we had had as a board was if there was going to be any damage to, if anything was to be damaged during the process, which happens, um, that, you know, I think that uh you know half circle window and the uh the wood ornamentation uh up at the top was i think maybe a discussion a point of discussion for the board to make sure that that was preserved as the the type of renovation was like a an in kind with materials and in kind uh products there so right

Uh, that that's our intent is if anything like that is to to break. But maybe what we could do is I was thinking about this since the questions. From the last from last month is that maybe remove some of those. During the construction actively, just remove windows all around because they are old wooden sashes. And that would include that. I mean, it's removable. That one's going to take a little bit more work, but it might be worth it to make sure that they're all safe and ready to put back in when it's done. That's probably a good idea. A lot of them. Yeah. Because there's nothing else in there that we really have to worry about, and it's not freezing anymore. Yeah. Maybe the only thing we might do is during the construction is maybe just put up some kind of a light, plywood or something like that over the openings just to keep animals out yeah and animals have been finding their way in under for the years yeah big reasons why we have to do this is to stop them from getting in there yeah okay yeah great

And I'm curious about the cement floor that's coming out.

Yeah.

And I'm just curious. It looks pretty beat up and it's things have been stored in there. I'm curious if we know or what will happen if there are any hazardous materials that have leaked into that brake fluid or a gas can or something.

Oh, I know of nothing.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that material is going to the landfill?

It's broken up, but there's like this. that any kind of fluids were kept but i mean at least from us we didn't really keep many fluids out there because you don't heat it in the water yeah and oftentimes with certain types of chemicals or liquids or gels whenever once they freeze you can't really use them anymore yeah yeah i can't say what happened years ago but yeah i don't know of anything okay

Do you plan on doing anything else with the exterior site, repaving, restriping, that kind of thing?

I think the only thing we plan on doing is, you can't really tell so much in this picture, but the blacktop is kind of raised up a little bit too high. It's over some of the woods. So we're going to try to put the building back about the same level where it is, but wherever it makes sense. We might take a little blacktop down. I think that was kind of the thing we were looking at. Or if the building ends up being a couple inches higher, it would be less of an adjustment to make. But really, it's a little bit high right there. It's just been paved over from the last, you know, but we'd like maybe try to restore some of that previous grade. I don't know what the original was, but go back a little bit toward original grade or contours.

So it turns from moving the doors. I mean, we don't have any documentation, you know, what would have been historic or not, these could have been added. You know, I'm not beef. Is that something that SHPO should have an opinion on or?

I'd like to keep that bottom floor, the first floor door, because that one's a little nicer. It's got that nicer molding. I don't know if that's original or not, but I just want to make sure that doesn't compromise. That's partly where that wall is coming out, is under that bottom floor door. But if that can be adequately reinforced and then structurally sound again, we'll keep that. The one above, you know, we don't really have any interest in keeping that. We don't want to have any.

Yeah.

And that just looks like any accidental access opening or anything like that. Sure.

Yeah.

And, and we don't need any you don't need any stairs we have stairs right inside right with the other person door is on the front, you just open the door and we'll just go straight enough the stairs season.

So from a store motivation perspective and the absence of any information as to what we can store if you're not on a building it do we is it. It's all on the table. You know what I mean? I mean, because you could assume like, oh, this window is historic in nature and those, the detailing in the gable, but things that aren't obvious, like these windows look older. They actually match the windows in the picture of the house from the 70s. But like, to your point, these don't look necessarily historic at all. So can we assume that they're not?

Right. The front, the overhead doors are different.

Yeah.

Two wooden ones with windows and then an aluminum one with no windows.

Or are we adhering to as something is today? You know what I mean?

I would say that's up to the board.

Yeah. Truly.

I mean, we've got a SHPO letter now, which was in terms of raising the structure and securing it. You know, SHPO's advisory in nature as it is. Yeah. Up to the board if they want to include that or just leave it off for now.

What do you mean leave it off?

So we were looking to put that in as I was offering that as a potential condition that the board could add to the application if the owner decided that when they get into this they were going to remove the doors.

Yeah.

Just include it so that there's not the potential of returning in the future again because they want to

Oh, yeah. I think we should include it. I mean, even if the hole was there when the building was built, that's clearly not a historical door. And if you're not going to put a staircase on, I think it just becomes a safety hazard from the inside. So I think that if you can structurally get rid of a door that leads to the sky, that's probably good. Yeah.

I hear what you're saying, though, Abby. I think you're talking process of this. We're going to make a decision on this. Does it have to go back to SHPO or any other advisory board for that?

And they wouldn't necessarily have any documentation.

So where do you... I don't know. I mean, I'm talking personal opinion now, you know, it's, it's, yeah. And I, I had to agree with Jim, I think on this case that I, I think this is the decision that the board could make. I think if there were more, I don't know, aesthetic concerns in line with, with the project that might have a different answer, but since this is a side door on an accessory structure, I guess I'm less concerned with the historic nature of it than if it was, you know, say the ornamentation on the front of it, for example.

Hmm. or the cupola, for example, you know. Any other questions or comments from the board? If not, we do have a public hearing still open from last month. Emily, is there, I don't see anybody in the audience, so Emily, is there anybody online? No. Okay, then I would move to close the public hearing for the application. Um, and then we do have a proposed resolution 26 dash 0, 3 B. For consideration of approval of the application. Again, whoever the not some motion, a couple of conditions or potential conditions if you want to add those. For clarity for bar on the agenda, there's no.

resolution for the closing of the hearing since we left it open and we just closed it do we have to we never do a resolution to close that we normally do a closed meeting but I just didn't know I'm asking I don't know that's typically how it's been done in the past okay I've never seen one that was held open until the next meeting so okay so we just close it like now

Do we include the public hearing staying open in resolution? We did in the meeting minutes from last week.

Yes, I adjusted the resolution to A and B to reflect that we opened the public hearing last meeting. It's still open and we're closing it tonight.

Okay. So can I have a motion to close the public hearing?

I'll make a motion to close the public hearing.

Good.

Second it.

Roll call.

Do you want to tell? Yes. Abby, will you serve her? Yes, Tom Costco. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay.

Okay, now to, uh. Resolute or proposal resolution 26 that 03 B. Do you have a motion.

Make a motion on, um. uh resolution number 26-03b and the motion is uh to approve the resolution um with I think I heard two conditions one may not even be a condition all all changes as proposed in kind with like materials, in-kind materials. And if there is damage during the process or the decision to remove the second floor exterior door or other minor modifications, that those changes continue in-kind. Did I miss anything?

I don't think so. That sounds good. Do you have a second? I'll second that. Roll call.

Jim Abdallah? Yes. Abby Musser? Yes. Tom Castro? Yes. Carly Leary? Yes.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Spencer.

Thank you. I have a question. Yes. So if I want to add to maybe remove that second.

We captured it in the conditions. Okay.

Yeah. I don't want to do an update.

I think we captured that in the doors.

We captured it in our condition, but in getting a building permit.

Yeah. Anything moving forward would be coordinated through the buildings department when you're building applications.

So when you fill out the building permit application, you'd want to add that. So right now you have that you're straightening the existing carriage garage, replacing rotting wood, footers and foundation, repave the driveway, potential to remove exterior doors.

If structurally necessary.

Yeah, right. So it'd just be added to that scope of work when you fill out the building permit. So that way it's on there and you have board approval.

I'll also be reaching out to them tomorrow and telling them, That's the information.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah.

I don't think we had any other business tonight.

So I have a question. Okay. So Tom had shared with the planning board a couple of months ago, an article this last month, an article from the pioneer press from, First, first Republican from like 1981. Um, it was like from archives. It was about a, uh, the Pittston bulk petroleum storage facility that was on route nine. Um, not technically on the base, but across from dollars general. So that area where the memorial park is going, um, there was like a thousand gallon. Well, petroleum leak and a tanker was loading the, uh, thing. So there was a vapor cloud. This is the conditions. And the fire department came and sprayed all their foam on it. Prevent an explosion. So, when we did that evaluation, I don't, I don't recall what our secret determination was, but we didn't have that information at the time that there could be fast. On that entire site, so I. did some reading and looked up like historic information as best I could, and I found a report from 2015 from a consultant out of Texas that did the evaluation of a potential PFAS contamination sites in the city and base area. And there were about 11 and they obtained them from interviews with the fire chiefs of the time and looking through archives, newspapers, etc. But that Dollar General, Pittston bulk petroleum facility site wasn't one of the sites they identified. My question is, does the city, like, what resources am I missing other than this report from 2015 I found on, like, the DEC website? Is there more updated information with more sites on it that evidently there are that have maybe at the time the newspaper wasn't scanned in? So, like, that information, unless you go to the actual archives, it wasn't. Available. So is there a newer site or resource that we have to look up what might be PFAS contaminated sites in the city to inform our decisions in terms of the seeker evaluations? And then is there a more updated report than the 2015 one? Because I feel like that might have been a miss, you know, like there's probably PFAS in that dirt. Yeah.

the only thing um that comes to mind is the the county is doing a brownsfield investigation and we provided them um multiple sites in the city that we knew um or thought we knew had various contaminations that one was not on the list yeah um Other than that, I can't say without doing some more research on.

There was some resource that we were looking at at the time of approval for that one, and it was maybe archaeological.

Well, so the DEC has.

And it was from the base.

The Department of Health or something has like a super fun stuff. Okay. And some of that. It's the base, but this isn't technically on the base.

Because it's just off.

It's just off.

Right.

But not all sites that are in the 2015 report, which I was going to email out to everyone. And just so we all saw, because it's like the airfield, there's like, there was a fire at this other place in the city that the fire department came to and helped out and sprayed foam, you know, so it's just all those historic records. But yeah, it seems incomplete, unless there's more complete information that we should be. that's the environmental scientist guy on the board i'll get a student on it okay i'll send i'll email the board the report i found from 2015 from this consultant um because because i feel like really it's just been the last 10 years that this has been an emerging yeah talk you know this yes yeah wasn't a great talent 20 years ago chemicals yeah yeah i'm pretty sure that yeah um

Within our dollar general file, we requested their phase 1 and phase 2 for that site.

Okay.

Which. I don't know. I don't know what it said, but that would be the potential identification of it as the center of my experience with the base. So, when you talk to say. My experience with the base in general is every site. on an adjacent is suspect and you test. Typically it'll show up.

They did test?

It'll show up. Like I know other projects, it'll show up in the phase one in the report for the site and

will identify potential testing so as PFAS would have been in like the required soil sample because I'm not familiar with this either so I'm just asking but like because they were over an acre right of disturbance so we thought that that was going to require potentially additional soil testing as a result of that it would typically on a private transaction like that it would fall down to the transaction

You're going to get a phase 1 environmental completed because. Because the purchaser is going to be fine. We have the environmental reports from I'm pretty sure we requested that as part of our application review.

I was not sure I'm pretty sure we did.

if you have i'm curious you know i'm i'll i'll ask for it it's interesting i i don't know if it's possible to get that information just to review the next time we all get together i don't know that we can do anything about it at this point if there is a what would you have done about it before i don't know i don't know i don't know either like if they test it and they find it what are they going to do but then they have to remediate it potentially you would have had you would have asked for uh

plan during construction to protect workers on site. At least that it's in place. Because they're on public water, it's probably not something that would rise beyond construction.

The dirt they take out of there isn't clean fill, right? They might have to go someplace else. Yeah, it can't just go into the neighbor's backyard for the kids to grow a garden.

Can't go to the Plattsburgh landfill. It's got to go somewhere else.

We don't have a link.

Interesting. I think that the person from that consulting firm in Texas that did the work lives in town and we could find out more about how that was done. And you didn't have anything to do with the dollar general work.

Is it just the dollar general site?

That was the only one that, yeah.

But was it actually in that article it said, like, this is the second gas leak in two weeks. And it was, like, a bad season that fall in 1981. And so there might have been another... I don't know if it's...

I guess I'm asking, is, like, Claire and Carl's and all those houses around it? Like, it's just...

I don't know the vicinity of the vapor that they would have sprayed. But you can...

But the pretty sure like those areas and over the air. You know, our job people. Delivery.

Yeah, the whole area photos and you can see like the all the tanks.

I had no idea that was a full petroleum still field is going through a brownfield right now remediation or a jet fuel storage that served the base. So you could talk to his name is Greg. I could hook you up with him. He's working on this right now.

I'm mostly, I'm mostly curious just for like, if the, if it's something that the board needs to request that we're working around the base, you know, we've had other applications come in from on the base for additional building moving forward.

I'm kind of curious. Like, I don't, cause right now I don't know where these like, Like, is there a GIS map that I click and I can see where the brownfields are?

There's an environmental resource map with the DEC. Yeah, that's all. But other than that, I'm not sure.

I don't know what they've. Because to your point, like it's been 10, you know, I mean, 10 years ago, this was a big concern that kind of came up for places. And I don't know how much, you know, reporting has been done on that. But a lot of it has been around the air bases because of the firefighting fault.

I would say within our secret review, you know, there is no firepower factor. That's what I was thinking. Number one. Number two, if there's questions on the site, application-wise, you know, request from the applicant, whatever necessarily environmental documents, you know, you can be older.

I feel like, but maybe the DCC environmental topic isn't going to be.

Oh, that's not a good enough thing.

Right. How would they know? Well, that's what I'm saying. It's incomplete because the PFAS sites were all just determined from in 2015 in that report. And unless there's been subsequent interviews and research, like Tom just came across an article that identified another site that was never documented yet.

Yeah. Yeah. Is there a gap right now? I think there's a gap everywhere for brownfields. I think that we don't know because people had uses and unless people are keeping track of those uses over time land gets sold and turned over quickly you might not know what's a brownfield and what's not yeah so like part of it does rest on the people who are buying the property to like test their own properties as well like our new house it's at the outlet of the salmon river which is the all the outlet for the water that drains off the airport's format so i'm like

I mean, before we get to plan that sand, I think I want, like, a sample of the sediment in there. Yeah. Sorry. We're getting off.

Yeah. We can chat more about this, but I think we should close the meeting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. We got that on the records, too. So, Emily, if you can check the application for the Dollar General based on the requested information.

Thank you. Thank you.

And maybe we can do it next fall.

But I do have a resolution to make. A resolution to thank Abby, user her, for her years of service to the planning board and an official resolution and bringing her architectural knowledge and expertise and service to the city. And yeah, I guess that's the end of it. It's short and sweet.

I'll second that.

Okay. Can we third something? I'll third it.

All in favor?

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Thank you.

Abby, you close the meeting, then I'll tell her about this other thing.

Okay. Motion to close the meeting? I'll make a motion to close the meeting. All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

Have you ever used a DEC info?