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1/17/2025, by: SheldonResident:

What are the next steps to get folks up on what's happening (with the issues about the proposed new zoning law presented at the public hearing on Wednesday, Jan 15)?

1/17/2025, by: SheldonZoning.com:

In Answer to, "What are the next steps to get folks up on what's happening (with the issues about the proposed new zoning law presented at the public hearing on Wednesday, Jan 15)?”

A basic problem with the entirely new zoning law proposed by Supervisor Brian Becker is the manner it was generated.  There was essentially no public input or comment as the drafting process went along over the past 18 months. 

1. The Zoning Officer was tasked by the Supervisor to come up with a new zoning law that fit some of the important political objectives of most of the members of the Town Board.  There was no public announcement of this important project.  No one in the community knew there was any problem with the existing Town zoning law. 
2. The Zoning Officer and his staff have no expertise or previous experience in drafting legislation.  They basically looked for provisions in other zoning laws that matched the Supervisor's objectives and put them together into a new law.  It took quite a long time for them to come up with a draft.  Meanwhile, no one in the community knew that any draft project was underway or that it had been assigned to the Zoning Officer who would be in charge of enforcing the new law.
3. Once the initial draft of a new law had been completed, the Planning Board was assigned by the Supervisor to review the law.  The Planning Board adopted a review procedure that excluded the public.  Consideration of the draft new law was set for non-official "planning sessions" that occurred after regularly scheduled Planning Board monthly meetings.  No public announcement or agenda was published for these "planning sessions" and no publicly available report of any kind was generated at these "planning sessions."  So, in general, the process proceeded outside any public awareness.
4. The Zoning Officer did not provide the Planning Board members with a printed version of drafts of the law.  This 157-page document was presented to the Planning Board with a few key slides projected on the wall in the Town Hall meeting space.  So, as reviews proceeded,  individual Planning Board members had no printed or digital version of the drafts with which they could have consulted with the public, had they wanted to do so.
5. No votes were taken as the Planning Board process moved slowly along, although members of the Planning Board made substantive comments for the Zoning Officer to take into consideration.  Some points were included in the next draft; most were not.
6. The Zoning Officer's main point of contact during the drafting process was with Supervisor Becker. 
7. The Planning Board passed along to the Town Board a draft of the zoning law dated September 2024.
8. The Town Board currently is mired in a zoning lawsuit with an individual property owner that has had fairly major budget impacts both on zoning operations and legal counsel fees.  In order to avoid expensive legal fees for a detailed legal review of the proposed law, this usual part of a legislative process may have been foreshortened or avoided altogether.
9. The Town Board then set a public hearing for a cold January evening and published the required notice.  Members of the public were invited to download the 157-page draft new law and print out copies for themselves.
10. The postcard and website urging attendance at the public meeting may have been an unexpected response to the above.

The Town Board may regard the public comments at the Wednesday meeting to be not representative of the views of the community.  The Board took the highly unusual step of asking for written comments from the community within 21 days, perhaps so that the Board has some basis for balancing the highly negative comments at the public meeting.  Most people in rural communities do not provide written comments on anything, much less a 157-page draft law. 

So that's where things stand.

The next steps should involve:

1. A step-back in the enactment process to publish information materials justifying the need for and specific provisions about traditionally contested matters such as property maintenance, wetlands, super-large windmills, conditions under which the Zoning Officer can enter private property without the owner's consent, and such like.  Most people know what those issues are.
2. Address the fundamental question whether any new law is needed as the current Town Zoning Law appears to be adequate.
3. Hold public education sessions with the Planning Board as to the need for the contested provisions that are being recommended by Supervisor Becker.
4. Produce a revision of the current draft law to:
1. shape public consensus on important issues
2. correct technical drafting errors, of which one critic has counted 73.   Examples are readily available if you are interested in the weeds.
3. correct problems with definitions and the way terms are used in the draft
4. submit the revised draft to a thorough legal review D. Bring the revision of the proposed new law back for a public hearing

The next steps may involve:

Approval by the Town Board with a vote of 4-1 at their February meeting.  

1/27/2025, by: SheldonResident:
Thanks for all the info,we will take our postcard up to the town hall so there's no risk of slow mail not getting there on time! Call us,we would love to help, although our lives have already been ruined by Invenergy's wind farm.

1/27/2025, by: SheldonZoning.com:

Thanks for the helpful info about Brian's financial connections to the prior windmill project. I do not have much information about the situation back then because I was working overseas at that point on a four-year contract out the Pacific -- basically just for fun. My family has been in the western New York area since the 1880s, first in Ellicottville, then in Orchard Park. I have owned my farm in Sheldon since 1971. I didn't start to pay attention to local politics until I came back to the farm in 2009 and found the town full of windmills. I looked into the deal the Town Board and Planning Board made on those windmills, and my view then (and now) was that the town gave away a lot and got back very little. But I wasn't there, so I don't know what affected their decision to make that deal.

Invenergy's current plan for 26 465 ft. windmills in either Sheldon or Bennington, run out of the station Invenergy already has in Sheldon, appears to be one of the factors affecting the Town Board's desire to press forward with the new proposed zoning law as it makes several changes helpful to Invenergy. I am primarily interested in the Town not being taken to the cleaners by Invenergy again. Invenergy is a tough customer. The company is owned by a Russian (now U.S. citizen) and is a private entity, so much of the usual corporate information is not available on them. However, one can predict that their attitude toward Sheldon is about the same as Vladimir Putin's attitude toward Ukraine -- "I want it, so I shall have it, whatever it costs."

Hopefully we can get together enough folks determined that they won't win again in our back yard.

2/4/2025, by: Race:
I am senior 78 yrs, only way I can help is with a donation and I am only to happy to do that. I would like front yard sign to put on rt 78. Thank you for your initiative with this transgression. I was pleased that there was no requirement to empty my mailbox within 5 minutes of delivery.