Troy’s planning commission will become a planning board.
After the commission’s future was thrown into question earlier this month, the council’s Republican majority voted to dissolve it at a special meeting Thursday.
Mayor Carmella Mantello proposed replacing it with a planning board. The mayor says the board, made up of executively-appointed people, would better serve residents by streamlining approvals.
The first-term Republican, who was not available for comment following the meeting, said previously the decision to eliminate the commission follows the alleged delay of several projects and the insertion of commissioners’ personal bias in decision making. Mantello calls the decision apolitical and said she has a job to do.
Mantello also contends the commission was not given proper training and the new board will go through workshops.
Over the last three years, the commission has approved all 118 projects brought before it.
At the earlier July meeting, the city's Corporation Counsel Dana Salazar said she watched as commissioners made gross requests to applicants during a May meeting, calling it a "check the box job when it comes to site plan approval."
Salazar says the city has received several calls from attorneys threatening Article 78: a challenge to state or local government actions.
Following a recess called by the majority, Council President Pro Tem Thomas Casey backed the mayor, whom residents were calling corrupt, saying Mantello has the city's best interests in mind.
"Maybe you don't realize it, but these people feel they're in your hands, whether you realize or not it's putting the finger on the scale, " Casey said.
Roddy Yagan, the now former chair, had been on the commission for more than three years. He says the commission is asking the necessary questions and making reasonable requests, including requests for ADA compliancy, green space, and fencing, as laid out in the site plan checklist and chapter 285-64 section E (c),which says:
"The location, size, and height of all existing and proposed structures on the property that is the subject of the application; and all related fixtures, accessory equipment, appurtenances, and apparatus, including materials color, and lighting."
“There are so many things that are not just prescriptive in the code. There are architectural guidelines. Even the word guideline tells you it is not a strict, prescriptive requirement," Yagan said. "There is room for discretionary evaluation. That is why the commission exists. That is why this entire action is so egregious. It completely ignores what the function of the planning commission is. It's people who have never read the zoning law, making legal decisions, changing the way the city functions without ever having done the work to go look at what it says we're supposed to do. It was completely misinformed decision making."
Nearly all members of the abolished commission spoke before the council during the public hearing, finance, and special meeting. They agree that they were completing their job as stated in zoning code. Some even went as far as describing the ordeal as cronysim.
Former commissioner Suzanne Spellen was one of many to receive a standing ovation from members of the public following her comments. Spellen says commissioners were not given the chance to defend themselves.
"I do not appreciate being used as a tool or an excuse for policy change based on slander disseminated as truth and on the public record forever, I ask that all the language used as a tool to smear us be removed from the record," Spellen said. "An apology also on the record would be really nice, too."
Council President Sue Steele, who was thrown off of a former planning commission by then-Republican Mayor Harry Tutunjian when his administration moved to a planning board, offered an apology to the commission on behalf of the administration.
"I would like to apologize for the mayor, because I think you folks absolutely treated horrifically," Steele said. "There were so many other ways this could have been handled, and it's just another, another example of poor leadership."
Steele questions the validity of the local law because at a previous meeting, the ordinance was passed without a super majority, which the Democrat says is required under the city charter. Mantello and Corporation Counsel disagree.
Others questioned the administration's need to entirely replace the commission when tenures are expiring. Additionally, the public expressed concerns about transparency regarding city finances and Troy’s ability to transition properly to a board without a full understanding about whether the city can financially support a board. The city's newly hired comptroller resigned in June after coming under fire for being unable to deliver first quarter finances timely.
A second public hearing scheduled for Thursday night regarding an agreement with Spectrum Northeast LLC was moved to August 8th.
Mantello says a call for applicants for the new planning board will be issued in August with members expected to be announced after Labor Day.
