The way to "Wolf Road"

The never ending effort to pass the completed Comprehensive Plan continues with Al Spain and his new committee dragging it out and starting over again.

The committee's snail's pace is evident, meeting just once a month to ensure that the development interests they represent have an open door policy in North Greenbush. Remember Spain's brother Jeff, the so called Chairman of the Democratic Committee in town advocates turning RT 4 into another Wolf Road with its jam packed traffic and congestion of strip malls along the road and it's side roads. You might say that the snail's pace of Al's Comprehensive Plan Committee is a not so subtle reminder of Wolf Road's traffic flow, Sloooow! What better way to achieve Wolf Road status on RT 4 in North Greenbush than to run a committee the way traffic moves on the idyllic route you're trying to emulate?

To do that, or at least hold the door open for a couple of years for developers, the Spain's are dragging out passage of a plan and they are advocating spending more money to redo the process. The money will likely come from the second half of the grant of $50,000 given to the town by the county IDA. Half of the money has been spent to create the finished document Spain, Evers, Kern and Desso are holding up. The other half was promised to help the town implement a zoning review that would allow the town to restructure its zoning code to compliment the Comprehensive Plan's vision for the community.

So what happens if Spain and company are allowed by the IDA to spend the phase two funds to redo phase one? Will, the IDA come up with another $25,000 to redo the zoning? We don't know, and neither does Al Spain.

This month's meeting is supposed to include updates on new RFP's, Requests for Proposals, to redo the work already completed. The costs of the redo will be telling and may put Spain in a box for simply not approving the existing document and amending it wherever needed. That apparently is not the way to "Wolf Road".

The new CPC meets at the town offices Tuesday May 20th at 7PM. The public is invited to attend but not allowed to speak until the very end of the 2 hour sessions, a stark contrast to the openness which the prior committee operated. Also, none of the Committee's minutes have been posted to the town's web site. Kind of like the absence of any mention of the Town IDA which is presumably under cover because the Town Board majority appointed Party Chairman Jeff Spain to the IDA, politicizing it for the first time.