Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman Discusses Town Issues

The Town of Plattsburgh is growing. That’s according to Town Supervisor Michael Cashman.  Late last year town officials unveiled a Smart Growth concept plan for an area of the town. New medical offices have opened in the Smithfield Boulevard area and nearly half a dozen national and regional chains are considering locations in the town. As it grows, the town is clashing with the adjacent city of Plattsburgh as that community tries to annex town properties. Supervisor Cashman says the status of that dispute hasn’t changed for several months.“We communicated that we would take a comprehensive review of the proposal that they were putting forward.  Mayor Read has kind of proposed as a thought leader some big ideas and what we’re asking for is not just the ideas: what are the plans? And you know we found greater success in planning and in data and you know big ideas can result in big failures and our success really has been gradual from a sustained and informed non-dramatic type of way. And what I mean by that is the Town of Plattsburgh has led the way with comprehensive planning. We are the first community in the region to have been designated a Clean Energy Community by NYSERDA. We are doing Smart Growth. We’re looking at the old county airport for redevelopment. So through our lens we’re going to make the commitment to take a comprehensive review of what is being proposed and we also want to do that with the stakeholders. I mean there are a lot of stakeholders. It’s the residents of the city of Plattsburgh, the residents of the Town of Plattsburgh. Within that though there are the groups like the fire departments, both paid  and volunteer, there’s the school boards and we really owe it to those stakeholders to have a public vetting about the ideas that are being presented. What the city has requested is to be what’s called the lead agency for SEQR for the environmental impact. We do not believe they are the best suited to be the lead agency so we are challenging that. We will both present our case to the DEC Commissioner and he will make a determination. It’s not going to court at the moment. What this really is is about process.”