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Public Workshop To Focus On Saratoga Springs Comprehensive Plan

Saratoga Springs City Hall
Lucas Willard
/
WAMC

As Saratoga Springs residents consider future development in their city, a meeting next week will continue the process of updating the Spa City’s master plan.

The City Council will hold a public workshop on proposed updates to the city’s Comprehensive Plan Tuesday.

The document that was last updated in 2001 had been under consideration by an appointed Comprehensive Plan Committee over the course of 20 meetings.

After its last meeting in December, the Committee voted to send the “November Draft” of the comprehensive plan document to the city.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the draft plan was language approved by the Committee in a 7-6 decision to allow Planned Unit Developments, or PUDs, in the city’s so-called “greenbelt,” an area of protected open space that surrounds the city.

Harry Moran, Chair of Sustainable Saratoga, was one of many to attend a city council meeting in early December to speak out against the plan to open the greenbelt to limited development.

“Allowing PUD’s in the Conservation Development District will open the door to denser commercial development in exactly the wrong location,” said Moran.

At that December meeting, the city council adopted a measure blocking PUDs in the greenbelt. Mayor Joanne Yepsen said the city council will now place that language into the draft plan.

“So the council will be inserting, essentially, the resolution that they passed into the final recommended document for the consideration of the public, and then a final vote by the city council.”

But there’s still a difference of opinion on the issue of allowing PUDs in the greenbelt. Todd Shimkus, President and CEO of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Comprehensive Plan Committee, said banning PUDs was the wrong way to go.

“I agree with others in the majority who believe strongly that an outright prohibition, that prohibiting either a resort overlay or a Planned Unit Development out there is a recipe for disaster, because that will simply lead to single-family homes on 2-acre lots. And I don’t think that’s the kind of city we want. That’s not how you create a city in the country. That’s how you create a city surrounded by McMansions and a suburb,” said Shimkus.

The November Draft contains 53 separate questions for the city council’s consideration. Shimkus said the council could be challenged by the all the “pieces and parts” in the document.

“Some which make a ton of sense, and others which could cost the city a fortune, and they’re going to have to wade through that to figure out which pieces are right and which pieces are not, because our committee wasn’t facilitated in a way that brought us to consensus to where the city could go,” said Shimkus.

Yepsen said the public will have plenty more opportunity for discussion on the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

“When the council puts all these pieces together, comes up with a final recommend document as the updated version of the Comprehensive Plan, we will have public hearings and we will ask the public to comment regarding what is considered the final recommended document. Certainly, they can give us comments at any point during the process, and we do appreciate the comments we’ve received thus far.”

Lucas Willard is a reporter and host at WAMC Northeast Public Radio, which he joined in 2011.
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