On Thursday, November 8, 2007 the Town of Tuxedo Planning Board conducted a special workshop with their consultants and representatives from Tuxedo Reserve. The purpose of the workshop was for the Planning Board to hear from their consultants on the status of the 102 waivers requested by Tuxedo Reserve and to ask any questions they might have regarding the preliminary application for Phase One of the development, Northridge.
The workshop began with a question and answer session, during which members of the Planning Board asked general questions of both their consultants as well as the Tuxedo Reserve representatives concerning the preliminary plan and Highway Superintendent Joe Tripoli’s responses to the waiver requests. Many issues were discussed ranging from the water district to be owned by the Home Owner’s Association to the preservation of wetlands and blasting protocol. There was disagreement as to the timing of a $1,000,000 payment to be made to the Town’s Revitalization Fund.
Board Alternate Susan Goodfellow inquired as to what type of general oversight and supervision the project will have once it has begun and specifically what role the Town will play in that oversight. Currently, the Town’s consultants are monitoring the early stages of the project with exploratory inspections. However, once construction begins, the Town Board, together with the Building Department will be responsible for running regular inspections and making sure that things are progressing according to plan. Mrs. Goodfellow asked if the consultants might be able to provide a description of how the system of inspection will work.
Following the question and answer session, the representatives of Tuxedo Reserve presented the Planning Board and their Consultants with a draft version of a resolution for Preliminary Approval. Because the consultants had not been presented with this material prior to the meeting, they were unable to answer questions from the Planning Board regarding material in the draft. The consultants explained that they would need to review and amend the resolution and then present the changes to their lawyers. In addition, Tuxedo Reserve has amended their waiver requests but the consultants did not have time to review these changes. Therefore, the workshop was not able to proceed as planned.
In the new version of the preliminary plan, the number of requested waivers has decreased from 102 to 55. Board Member Mary Hanson expressed her dismay at the Planning Board’s lack of involvement in preparing this revised list of waivers. She made a plea to both the town consultants and the representatives from Tuxedo Reserve to work together with the Planning Board during the revision process so that they might understand what is happening, which waivers are being removed and why.
Board member Jim Hays wanted to know if there is a detailed outline of how the construction will take place, specifically in what order things will be done. He was informed that such an outline will be prepared between the preliminary and final approval. Since the Board has been told that countless issues will be worked out between preliminary and final approval, Mr. Hays then wanted to know who was keeping track of everything that needs to be done between approvals. He was told that the resolution for preliminary approval will lay out all these issues and that final approval will be conditional based on satisfactory solutions to these issues.
The consultants are confident that they will be able to review and amend the preliminary draft resolution in time to make a presentation to the Board at their next regularly scheduled meeting, which is Tuesday, November 13, at 7:30pm in the Town Hall. The Public Hearing on Northridge will also be continued at that time. The Public Hearing will give residents an opportunity to learn about the multitude of issues that are still unresolved with regards to Tuxedo Reserve.
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