Gardiner residents will get an opportunity to weigh in on the configuration of a new Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) at a public hearing scheduled for the January 12, 2021 town board meeting, with the intent of adopting a new local law the same evening. The CAC is being designed to replace the town’s Environmental Conservation Commission (ECC), which has been inactive for many months due to a flurry of resignations and an inability to achieve a quorum. The board has been grappling for a year or more with questions of what the powers and duties of the own’s official environmental advisory body are, and with the discrepancies between its mandate and the technical definition of a “commission” according to New York State law. The town’s boards have long been frustrated with the vague language in Gardiner’s zoning code – adopted back in the 1980s – about what the ECC was expected to do, and whether the planning board in particular was under any obligation to adhere to its recommendations. Councilwoman Laura Walls said that the new proposed law being drafted is largely based on a template for CACs provided by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and “gives a lot more clarity on the powers and duties” of such a municipal entity.
According to the current draft, viewable on the town website at www.townofgardiner.org/announcements, the role of the newly reorganized CAC will continue to be advisory. Its members would be expected to “conduct studies, surveys and inventories of the natural and man-made features within the Town of Gardiner,” collaborate with the Open Space Commission to maintain inventories and maps of open space and natural resources, and “advise the Town Board on matters affecting the preservation, development and use of the natural and man-made features and conditions of the Town insofar as beauty, quality, biologic integrity and other environmental factors are concerned,” as well as “major threats posed to environmental quality” by development.
The draft law defines CAC’s mission: “By providing a scientific perspective on matters related to the environment and conservation, become the go-to source for evidence-based documentation on the natural environment of the Town of Gardiner. These data sources are to be used by the Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, Open Space Commission and the Town Board as well as applicants for land use proposals to ensure the information applied is current, relevant and accessible.”
No mandate is placed on any other town body to follow recommendations from the CAC, however, which raises the question of how to keep its volunteer members from quitting when the fruits of their labor are repeatedly ignored. A previously discussed plan to reduce the size from the ECC’s seven members to five has been dropped, so a quorum of four will still be required.
Former ECC members Roberta Clements and Janet Kern asked for more time to offer input into the shaping of a new version of the draft law, leading to a postponement of the public hearing from December to January. Gardiner residents may also send comments on the new law to the attention of town clerk Michelle Mosher at townclerk.tog@gmail.com.
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