Residents critical of latest draft of comprehensive plan for town
Town board under fire
By ROB PRICE THE COURIER-ADVOCATE

PHOTO BY ROB PRICE Bath town Supervisor Fred Muller responds to a comment at Thursday's public hearing on a draft comprehensive plan for the municipality. Bath residents were critical of the draft, which did not contain extensive recommendations drawn up by an ad hoc committee charged with developing the original plan.

BATH - The second draft of a comprehensive development plan for the Town of Bath came under heavy criticism Thursday during a public hearing attended by nearly 100 people, most of them residents of the municipality.

Objections to the plan focused on its deletion of dozens of specific recommendations drawn up last year by an ad hoc committee charged with writing an initial draft of the general guide. After that committee submitted its draft to the Bath town board in 2007, a second committee with a smaller membership that included two board members revised the document, removing the individual recommendations the initial committee had developed while retaining general guidelines for future development.

What was left, is a considerably pared down plan critics warned would not offer sufficient guidance for future action by the town board.

"You've emasculated the plan that was presented to you," said town resident Tom Daulton.

Added Bath village resident David Walczak, "Deciding not to incorporate (the recommendations) in the plan is ludicrous to planning. ... This community deserves better."

Board member Robin Lattimer, a member of the committee that revised the original draft of the plan, defended the decision to delete the recommendations as a way of keeping the comprehensive plan flexible.

"We felt the comprehensive plan should be a broad guideline," she said.

Town Supervisor Fred Muller also insisted the board would not ignore the scores of recommendations, many of which included suggestions on how to regulate the future location of adult products stores and the protection of town aquifers. The board would keep those recommendations separate from the comprehensive plan, Muller said, but would refer to them in developing actual land use regulations and legislation.

Critics of the board's process were not won over. Town resident Edward Spencer, a member of the original ad hoc committee, noted other municipalities' comprehensive plans reviewed by his committee included specific recommendations. "To take these recommendations out creates gray areas," Spencer warned. "Lawyers love gray areas." He urged the board at a minimum to append the recommendations to the comprehensive plan.

Other residents urged the board particularly to reinstate recommendations related to handicapped accessibility issues in the town.

The board took no action at the close of the hearing, and Muller announced no action would be taken at its regular meeting May 12. The board would take up the issue at its June meeting, Muller said.

Future action, according to Lattimer, would be to consider the comments offered at Thursday's public hearing; eventual adoption of some version of the plan, then development of formal legislation based on the plan.