CPAC shrinks to 6 members

The Town Board unanimously passed a resolution at a special meeting Tuesday to change the number of members on the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee (CPAC) from nine to six.

The action was in response to the resignation of three CPAC members at the Sept. 23 public forum. Council-women Meg Larsen and BJ Ianfolla, two of the three Task Force members leading the effort to update the 30-year-old Comprehensive Plan, had told their Town Board colleagues last week they didn’t think it wise to try to add members to the CPAC so late in the process. Both women said the remaining six members of the CPAC would ably take on the work ahead.

Former CPAC member Petra Schmidt, speaking at the public forum on behalf of herself, Lily Hoffman and Benjamin Dyett, said they felt left out of the process in which only the Task Force members communicated with BFJ Planning consultants. Mr. Dyett had said he once emailed the consultants directly and was chastised for doing so.

And when CPAC members raised concerns about a process where all communication would be through the

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Task Force, the consultants agreed to attend meetings. Ms. Larsen, in response to a question Tuesday from Supervisor Gerry Siller about Ms. Schmidt’s statement, said everyone had ample opportunity to raise questions about development of the document. She said if had Ms. Schmidt felt left out of the process, she would have stayed to ensure her voice was heard.

“It’s not the public’s job to write a Comp Plan,” Ms. Ianfolla said, explaining that a lot of ideas have come forward from CPAC members and residents and the effort has been to bring about a consensus.

Going forward, Ms. Larsen said continued outreach to the community and work with CPAC members will help to get different perspectives on the document, helping to move it in the direction residents want.

At the same time, Ms. Ianfolla dismissed an exercise that occurred during the forum. Attendees were given green and red stickers and asked to put the green ones on ideas on posters they liked and red onces on those they disliked. But Ms. Ianfolla said she saw some people using all their red stickers on single issues on a posters, skewing results.

Nonetheless, many people wrote statements about their views either on the posters or on Post-it Notes.

Councilman Jim Colligan has spent time in the past week compiling the comments and predicted the document that emerges will be “what everybody wants this thing to be.”

That so many people attended the session on a rainy Saturday indicated to him that the draft has people engaged.