I've always wanted to write a headline like that, and I can thank the Town of Dryden Republican Committee for giving me the opportunity.
Why? Because they wrote this in their Shopper insert:
Negatitve effects of the proposed Zoning and Subdivision law:
...Cutting trees over 6" in diameter will sometimes be controlled by the Planning Board.
Now, I wrote earlier that I don't love the draft subdivision law, and when I saw this, my eyes popped out of my head. I imagined a different headline, "Provision suggests clearcut before subdivision", because the only time the Planning Board has that "sometimes" is while a property owner has a proposal in for subdivision.
However, Craig Anderson and I talked with Town Planner Dan Kwasnowski while we were al locked out of the executive session at last week's meeting, and he said he was pretty sure it was a direct inclusion from the previous version of the subdivision law (10.4MB PDF, page 32, section 7-F.), the one that's been in effect for at least twenty years. "Trees were a big deal back then", he said, or something similar. This is current law, even if I think it's an overreach.
So yes, I'd like to see that clause removed, but it doesn't come from an overzealous Democratic Town Board. It comes from some long past Republican Town Board, whose influence is still felt both in current laws and in draft laws that no one's really read yet.
Posted by simon at October 19, 2011 12:54 PM in The Shopper , planning and zoning , politics (local)