Comprehensive Plan for Riga-Churchville discussion November 29

Comprehensive Plan for
Riga-Churchville discussion November 29

A project more than five years in the works will be presented to the public when the Town of Riga and the Village of Churchville's Comprehensive Master Plan information meeting is held November 29.

The plan will be Riga's fourth update, according to Supervisor Pamela Moore. "Riga was in the forefront in New York state of developing a Comprehensive Master Plan in the 1960s," Moore said. "It was updated in the 1970s and in the 1980s a joint plan with the Village of Churchville was written."

The purpose of a comprehensive master plan is to provide guidance for a community for its future growth and development.

A committee was formed to develop an inventory of the municipalities' assets, speakers were invited in and committee members educated themselves on demographics, other factors and identified issues the communities were likely to face in the future.

As part of the process, surveys were developed and mailed to residents and businesses, information was gathered and disseminated. Moore said there was a 38 percent return rate on the surveys. "That is far above average for such a survey," she said. "Results and comments were put into a data base and the results were analyzed by the committee and made available to all elected and appointed officials and the community."

In 2005, consultants were interviewed and Steinmetz Planning Group was the choice to put the plan together. The plan has been presented to the town and village boards and the Churchville Chamber of Commerce.

The proposed plan is available at the town hall, village hall, Newman-Riga Library and on-line
At the November 14 town board meeting, discussion was raised by Councilman Bob Ottley on the wording of the meeting planned for November 29 to present the Comprehensive Master Plan to the community. The meeting was billed as a public hearing and Ottley felt that because neither board was personally hosting the meeting that it was legally a public information meeting. The consultant and the committee would be presenting the plan to the public.

"We talked at length and you said the RFP (request for proposal) allowed the consultant and the committee to do a public hearing but we didn't vote on that," he said.

Moore said a resolution was not needed to call for a public hearing for the plan's presentation and that the RFP called for the consultant and the committee hosting a public hearing before moving toward the SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) process and eventual adoption.

Ottley agreed that the RFP said a hearing would be held. "But as far as I am concerned, the town board will not be hosting this public hearing. I was surprised when I read the notice in the paper that the town and village boards were holding a public hearing on this," he said. "I have no intention of conducting that as a legal public hearing and if that's what the RFP stated, it was incorrect."

"This has been going on since September and I see this as nothing but a personal agenda on the part of the people who don't want to move forward with the plan. If you didn't like the wording of the RFP, something should have been said before this," Moore said.

Ottley said he had "very specific problems" with the comprehensive plan. "I'm not ready to move ahead. I talked to the village mayor (Churchville's Don Ehrmentraut) and he was surprised that the meeting was put forth as a public hearing."

Councilman Jim Fodge said he was under the impression that the meeting was a committee meeting, not a public hearing.

"We aren't ready for a public hearing," Ottley said. "We owe it to the community to discuss the plan as a board. I want to have this document pretty close to what we want before we move forward."

Moore said it was a philosophical difference. "This isn't a document I would expect everyone to embrace 100 percent," she said.

Ottley called for a resolution to change the name and purpose of the November 29 meeting from a public hearing to a public information meeting. It passed by a margin of four to one. Moore cast the dissenting vote.