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How bad is Hamlin’s management?
Consider this episode from our prestigious Planning Board. About two years ago a local businessman announced that he intended to build a carwash adjacent to the Dollar General Store.* The parcel with the carwash is zoned Commercial-General Business. Next to the carwash, to the south, is a residential parcel.
Hamlin zoning code states that wherever a C-NB parcel adjoins a Residential parcel there must be built a 50' buffer. The code includes a definition of a buffer which describes it as mainly agricultural.
The purpose of a buffer is simple. The new commercial activity may significantly change the character of the neighborhood and impact the residential property owners. The buffer helps reduce that impact and encourages the installation of an attractive barrier protecting the homeowner from the effects of the new commerce.
Attractive is an important consideration. It is important for the long term development of the community.
Well, fellow residents, OUR PLANNING BOARD IGNORED THESE REGULATIONS! Apparently, nobody bothered to remember, or look, up the regulation on the buffer set-back distance! As a result, the tarmac for the carwash is now about 10' from the boundary with the residence! They are off by FORTY FEET!
Imagine how you would like that!
Great job Planning Board! Thank you for your due diligence, your caution and your over-riding concern for the careful development of the town!
Naturally, everybody wants to find a scapegoat. One member of the Zoning Board told me it was the Building Inspector’s fault! WHAT?? Hamlin’s Building Inspector has only had the job a few years but there are people on the Planning Board who have been there for over a decade! The obligation of the Planning Board is to APPROVE a proposal as it is shown on the map. The authority to approve obliges Planning Board members to KNOW THE RULES! Don’t blame the BI, sure he might have mentioned it, but the legal obligation lies with the “experts” on the PB.
Once they discovered their monumental screw-up the PB was at a loss how to fix it. Since the map and plan was approved, the developer of the carwash had no obligation to change it. His plan, with the incorrect set-back was approved by our “town fathers,” He is off the hook. (His plan required a variance, something the PB directs developers to do all the time- just not this time.)
Subsequently the Planning Board met to find a solution for the aggrieved residents to the south. They proposed first a stockade fence, then a chain link fence.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
One of the most important duties of a Planning Board is to protect and promote the aesthetics of the community. In fact, it is their duty to IMPROVE the aesthetic quality of the community. So the solution to their horrendous screw-up on a parcel which has a great deal of exposure on our main thoroughfare is to install a chainlink fence!
Thank you Hamlin Planning Board. Thank you so much. Thank you for failing to do your job. Thank you for contributing to the ever increasing commercial ugliness of the Town. Thanks you for hurting everybody’s property values.
You are the poster children of municipal incompetence.
*[Many Hamlin residents know the background of the Dollar General mess- about how the Planning Board didn’t even bother to ask the developer to show them a sketch of the building! Consequently they installed the cheapest, ugliest structure they had in their inventory! Dollar General was not permitted to build in Hilton because none of the designs presented were acceptable to that town’s Planning Board!]
