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Planning Board Meeting Draft Notes 6/15/2000 7-9 PM or so At the Town Hall I got there at 7:30 or so and the public hearing on the Cellular One addition to Peters Cell Tower was over and a guy named Bill from Cellular One was talking about technical issues. These involved radiation and output from the antenna itself. He said the maximum radiated power was 100 watts and that that was small compared to TV and Radio. True but not much comfort to the folks living right next to the darn thing. My heart goes out to those (Betty Ann Pitman was sitting behind me) who live with that thing every day. It must be a constant irritation especially the way it was shoved down their throats. I digress… Because it is already there (the tower) adding another antenna to it is in our code book and will be tough to stop if not impossible. At about 8 the discussion shifted to Flying J and the buffer zone. Most of it was picking up where they left off on the 6th. See my report on that meeting. They haven't gotten the finding from Staley as I thought they would and it came down to making a decision to get it from him by the 23rd. Things will move slowly for awhile. If they decide that it is OK to use the buffer zone then it goes through the same drawn out process as last time. We'll have to wait and see. Amanda Shaw from Shafers office was the only one there representing Flying J. The next meeting was changed to the 18th at the fire station or the 27th at the Town Hall if the 18th is no good. The reason is that Dean has a conflict for the regular date. Amanda and Fran left and the board did a normal subdivision for Elinor Currie. This is the first time I witnessed this and to see a non-controversial issue before the board was refreshing. When that was over I spoke to the board about this web site and the plans I had for it. I have covered this is a 'Mission Statement' that I haven't put on the web yet. I won't bother with it here. The end of it was asking for the minutes to the planning board meetings on disk and the large EIS document also on disk to put here for the public to see. I had an interesting discussion with Vincent who convinced me that because both the minutes and the document contain too much non-text information that it would be difficult to properly put up on the web in a way that would be useful to the reader. I have to take his word for it, as I haven't looked at the public planning board information to see if it is true. I'll do that at some point and decide what to do then. I don't think that our Town Board yet realizes the advantages this site has for the public. While it is true that anyone can go down to the Town Hall at any time to look at the records… wait… that's not true. The Town Hall is only open from 9 - 12 and 1 - 4 on Monday and Wednesday. That is when most people are working, so I guess the records are not realistically available to the public. By putting the information here on the web the information is available 24/7 to everyone with web access. Most people have web access at work or through their kids at school or at the local library. And for those with web access at home this is a real asset to the town because it will allow more people to become involved in the activities of the town. By the time the next Town Board meeting comes around this site will have developed to a point that I'm sure they will see the advantage to the people to have it up here. The meeting ended around 9, and a bunch of us gathered outside and gabbed. It was a beautiful cool night and we had a great time. |