By “Jack” Buell

On November 10^th, 2009, the Town of Burlington Board unanimously disapproved the final draft of the Comprehensive Plan for the town. Recently, I had an opportunity to speak by phone with Mr. Deuvall, then Chairman of the Comprehensive Plan Committee and the current Chairman of the Planning Board to ask some questions regarding the entire process and result.  The interview was taped with his permission.

JACK:  So the Town Board met last week and, by my watch, there was only 4 minutes of conversation between board members before they disapproved the entire comprehensive plan.  What happen?

 DEUVALL: Four minutes… really?  It seemed longer than that.  After hundreds of residents thoughtfully filled out surveys, 18 months of effort on the part of the comprehensive plan Committee,  bi-weekly workshops, 18 regular monthly meetings, 16 monthly reports to the Town Board and 4 public hearings, it doesn’t appear to do it justice does it?

JACK:  What were board members concerns with the plan?

 DEUVALL: That is a great question.  Unfortunately, I don’t have an equally good answer.  You heard, as I did, what they said.  I spoke with one board member the afternoon before the meeting and he was firmly in favor of the plan.  Another member, Gary Rathbone said at the beginning of the meeting that “the only part of the plan that I have a problem with is the transfer station, it shouldn’t be in there” but 4 minutes later they both voted to disapprove the entire plan.  Pete DeJong said “I’ve been against this plan from the beginning, but I’m fighting to find the words to explain it” and Dale Mayne said “I think it [the plan] needs to be fuller”.  Mike and I both asked them to clarify what they meant, but as you know, no one offered any further explanation.

JACK: The board wasn’t particularly interested in the County Action report on the plan, at least during the meeting, it was hardly mentioned. But the board did distribute that confusing four page document. What was that all about?

 DEUVALL: State law 239 requires a town to submit their plan (assumptively the plan the town wishes to see approved) to the county for review.  The county, under 239, is to review the plan for county and inter-community (between towns) impact.  It is to approve, disapprove or approve with modifications.  They are not supposed to base their judgment on the town’s internal issues or content of the plan.  It says this quite clearly in 239L.  Due to a miss communication with the County Planning Board, both Mike Powers and myself were told that the meeting was at 7PM when in fact it was at 6PM.  So when we arrived the meeting was about to adjourn.  According to the minutes of the meeting, Betty Ann Schwerd led a discussion on how the plan was just a cabal between Deuvall and Powers, how there was no public input, little public participation, that no mention was made of affordable housing, and senior services, that the survey questions were leading, how a majority of the residents who attended the meetings were dissatisfied with the plan, that the TOB comprehensive plan Committee wasn’t interested in getting help from anyone, and the list goes on.

Now lets just say for a moment that all of these issues were true (not one of them is, but follow my reasoning here). If the town wishes to pass a plan that didn’t mention affordable housing or services to seniors, wouldn’t that be the town’s prerogative?  What business is that of the county?  If the town wanted to pass a plan that was only the sole creation of the town board, isn’t that within the authority of the town?  If the town wanted to completely ignore even thoughtful concerns of its residents, where is that a county or inter-community impact?  In fact, in the presence of Dr. Powers and myself, the one attorney sitting on the County Planning Board told the other members, that the board really had no other option but to approve the plan since it had no county impact at all.  It is important to note that very few of the members had even read the plan, but based on the rhetoric and, I believe political ambitions, of one member, they voted to disapprove (the attorney abstaining since neither Dr. Powers or myself was there).  Attached to this disapproval was fourteen items, one of which was “required” items.  When Dr. Powers and I arrived, the board was gracious enough to re-open the meeting.  They started throwing one item after another at us. Now remember, we were not privy to any of the prior discussion.  But we were effective enough to get the board to reverse the Disapproval and change it to a “With Modifications” retaining all 14 points, even though we had disproved most of them.   Bottom line is, the county planning board interjected itself in Town of Burlington issues and even legal issues that should have been left to the Town’s attorney and Board.  The county should have approved the plan and made its fourteen items within an informal recommendation memorandum as prescribed within 239L-N.

JACK:  So did the town have to make the modifications that the County issued?

DEUVALL: Again the answer is found within 239.  The Town can set aside any recommendation from the county, even a disapproval, with a majority plus one vote.  So no, the Town did not need to follow any of the recommendations. It could have approved the plan, accepted or rejected any or all of the recommendations.  It could add to the plan if it wanted.  I explained all of this to the Town Board that evening and further explained that the county’s “required” elements were lacking as well.  The reference to the “consideration of the Agricultural and Farmland Protection plans” was adequately covered throughout the comprehensive plan (another reason I believe no one at the County had actually read the plan).  The other “required” element had to do with a maximum interval at which the plan would be reviewed in the future.  This was not required within the plan itself but could, and should, be handled as a separate motion by the Board.

JACK:  Earlier, you said, “none of the issues raised at the county board meeting were valid”. Can you elaborate?

DEUVALL:  Certainly.  Anyone who was at any one of the three public meetings, that the Comprehensive Plan Committee held, would know that there were extraordinary efforts to include public participation and input into the plan.  One of the phrases within the plan that is often taken out of context, and for which I have been criticized repeatedly, is how the Committee kept an “arms length” position when dealing with the Town Board.  This, as explained within the plan, was necessary to assure the residents that their voice was being heard.  It was actually presented to the Committee that it should just find out what the Town Board wanted and build the plan around that. In other words, the Committee was to just parrot the positions of the Board regardless of the findings within the survey.  Input from the survey and other letters and calls drove the Committee to recognize the concerns from the public that their desires would not be viewed.  In fact, one resident wrote us, “what’s the point of doing this, the Town Board is just going to do what they want to do?”  We felt determined to make the plan (at least the one submitted to the Town Board) a plan of the people.  The Board, of course, could modify it to whatever extent they wanted.  Again, the Committee held three public meetings, three times that required by law; 18 regular meetings, bi-monthly workshops, a report to the Town Board every month (all open to the public) and a survey to every household. I think we fulfilled our public participation responsibilities.

Another issue was the claim that the Committee did not refer to model or other town plans.  This is simply not true in any form.  Each member of the Committee was assigned various town plans to review.  We ended up using a little from each, but found the New Lisbon and Edmeston plans to be the most helpful.  At the time we started (18 months ago), the county did not have any model plans posted, but they do now.  We looked at and considered it also. 

JACK: How about the claim of leading survey questions?

 DEUVALL:  This is a very peculiar assertion.   Leading questions in polls are usually Yes or No questions that are worded in such a way as to prove a point either way you answer it, such as “Are you still cheating on your wife?”  All of our questions were multiple choice with a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree to no position.  Its nearly impossible to make this type of response leading, even the “cheating” question above.

JACK: Why was the transfer station issue raised in the plan?

 DEUVALL:  A comprehensive plan is just that.. comprehensive.  Every major issue facing the town needed to be considered.  Certainly the survey reflected a good deal of unrest with the taxing policies of the town.  The transfer station came up repeatedly in letters and other correspondences to the Committee and during meetings. The main issues dealt with the inequity of how people pay for the service, the rapidly increasing cost and the low percentage of residents who actually use it.  We addressed it as impartially as we could within the plan and made a recommendation (not part of the formal plan) of how these types of services could be taxed in the future through the use of special use districts. 

JACK:  Do you feel you could of done anything differently, do you take responsibility for what happen?

 DEUVALL:  I was the Chairman of the Comprehensive Plan Committee, I obviously take responsibility for our actions.  We were tasked by the Board to formulate a plan with a number of elements as defined within the plan.  We researched what was required within the law and proposed a timetable and checklist to the Board. This was approved and we proceeded as described above.  We had our “marching orders” and quite honestly, I don’t know what we would have done differently, other than do a better job anticipating the potential political misuse and abuse which was ultimately at the expense of the Town’s interests. I guess I wasn’t a very good politician in that sense.

JACK:  What is your take on what the residents wanted?

DEUVALL:  Metaphorically speaking, a comprehensive plan is like a compass.  It points the town in the direction it should go.  Should we go “east” or should we go “west” is a question that is answered in the vision statement of the plan.  We held a public meeting after determining this vision statement.  Then we worked on narrowing our vision, should we go “northeast”, “east” or “south east”.  This is the purpose of the goals section.  We had three goals. 1) To recognize and preserve the natural beauty (quiet, cleanliness, charm etc) and resources (wooded areas, open space, farms) of the community 2) To maintain the infrastructure (roads, bridges) and assure that the payment of these is fair and equitable. And finally 3) To promote the economic health of the community by protecting local farms and home-based businesses, and to seek out other town enhancing enterprises (grocery stores, ATM machines and the such). That’s it. That the entire comprehensive plan in a nutshell. For those who are elated at the outcome of the disapproval, I would ask; “Which of these goals is objectionable?  Which one are you particularly proud of defeating?”  I believe the majority of the town’s people, even if many did not come to voice their support, in fact did support the plan.  I can point to the many letters and comments we received and the survey itself to support this position.

JACK:  There were some who voiced objects though?

DEUVALL:  Yes, objections were raised at the public meetings the Committee held.  They were the same objections, from the same three or four people, that were raised at the Board’s public hearing.  I responded to all of these objections in a previous post called “Clarity, Common Sense and the Comprehensive Plan”.  You can go read that at your leisure.  By and large however, the objections were not issues even addressed or mentioned within the plan and it certainly was not a majority.  No one, as far as I know, has ever objected to the contents of the plan directly, some of the recommendations perhaps, but those are just recommendations.

JACK: The Town Board apologized to you several times, saying they were sorry for all your hard work?

DEUVALL:  Yes, I noticed that too.  It was as though I was personally submitting plans to build a skyscraper and they couldn’t approve it.  Ironically, if I was planning on building a skyscraper right across from the central park flags, there is not a thing the town could do about it.  Look, I volunteered for the job.  I was willing to put up with the time commitment, the unwarranted insults, a few veiled-threats, my kids “crying at night when I had to go to another meeting” because it was a worthy effort.  It seems to me that the board should be apologizing to the people of the town for ostensibly wasting their time and money on something that, common sense would dictate, the board never intended to approve.  There was no debate.  Four minutes and an unanimous vote to disapprove – do you think you deserve more?

JACK:  So what’s next?

DEUVALL:  Well Pete DeJong thinks that a new committee should be formed, a new survey, a new 18 month process started, etc, etc.  Again, the three goals of the now defunct plan were never refuted and all of the initial guidelines from the board were met but regardless the entire plan was disapproved.  What would be the point of starting the process over?  What would they come up with? A plan that says the natural beauty and character of the community isn’t one of its greatest assets?  That taxes shouldn’t be fair and equitable? That farms and home-based businesses aren’t important? Make it fuller? How exactly?  I would find it hard to image that anyone would even respond to another survey considering how the obvious message of the last one was discarded. I know that no one on the old Committee has any interest in going through that again, not with the toll it took on self and family.  This may be surprising to some, but I really don’t see any purpose for even having a planning board within the town.  It serves no purpose.  Absolutely none.  The subdivision laws within the town serve no purpose.  They do not afford the town one once of protection against any type of growth.  And by the way, neither is there any protection afforded by any county or state law.  It is quite literally a “rubber stamp” process that does nothing to preserve open-space, farms, roads, infrastructure, vistas, aquifers, streams, wooded areas or anything else.   The assessor could and should take over the function without any increase in man-power or cost.  As to the town, it is in a more precarious position because now there is some evidence, something to point at, that the town doesn’t hold the town’s natural beauty, resources etc in high value (as bizarre as they may sound, they did disapprove a plan whose whole purpose was to protect it).  So we’re not just back to block one, we’re farther behind. In my opinion, we are …a drift.  If and when an objectionable project does come to the town; and I assure you, word gets around very quickly that Burlington has no land use protection in place and they can’t even pass a comprehensive plan that wants to protect the resources, have fair taxes and supports local business,  it will be the same people who objected to the plan that will probably be calling for heads because “nothing was done”.  What can be done is in the hands of the residents.  They need to start beating their “drum”, insist that the plan be revisited and fix whatever part needs to be fixed.

JACK:  Thank you for speaking with me.  I would like to thank you and your committee, on behalf of the Town, for your unselfish donation of time, energy and talent to better protect the Town. 

DEUVALL:  On behalf of the Comprehensive Plan Committee, you’re entirely welcome and thank you.