Planning Board alternates spark debate
by ELIZABETH TAUFA Reporter

A public hearing at the Monday, Dec. 17 meeting of the Williamsville Village Board on the potential addition of alternate members to the Williamsville Planning Board engendered a prickly discussion between Mayor Mary Lowther and trustees Jeff Kingsley and Brian Geary.

Last year, Geary attended a meeting of the New York Conference of Mayors and heard a recommendation to add alternate members to the Planning Board, a suggestion he brought back to the Village Board.

At the village meeting, Geary addressed the public hearing, saying that alternate members would be copied on all Planning Board e-mails, and they would have to meet the state requirement of hours, including all meetings and work sessions.

The purpose of the alternates, according to Geary, is to ensure that a Planning Board quorum would always be able to meet to vote on decisions and that in case of a Planning Board member's absence, those votes can be made by alternates who are up to date on the issues.

"There have been many times where people are on the phone trying to get a quorum together to vote," Geary said in an interview after the meeting. "As the village develops and grows, especially with the Community Plan, there will be more and more decisions to make."

Geary noted that an inability or difficulty getting together a Planning Board quorum could potentially dissuade developers looking to do business in the village.

"It looks like we don't have our act together," he said.

But Lowther had some reservations.

"We have researched the last three years, and there has never not been a quorum in attendance for any Planning Board meeting," she said. "Our prior village attorney, Jim Coniglio, told us that this is common in farm communities due to agricultural cycles of planting and harvesting."

Lowther also questioned the effort to establish the alternates on the Planning Board as a political maneuver to "stack future boards," an accusation that did not sit well with Kingsley and Geary.

"The Planning Board is an independent governing body that makes decisions that the Village Board has to accept," Kingsley said. "An alternate position would be more of a training ground, and to see it as a political maneuver is just seeing too much into it."

"Alternates would help protect the board," Geary added. "It's recommended by Albany and NYCOM."

Trustee Brian Kulpa said the alternates could be very effective as a training tool for the Planning Board but that the resolution adding them should be specific on length of term - limited to one or two years - and the exact and consistent order that the alternates would be called to vote.

"If there were a problem with maintaining a quorum, I would look more favorably on this, but

do not see that," Lowther said.

"I'm sorry that people fear things in the dark that don't exist," Geary said. "There's nothing political about this, and I take great offense to that."

A vote on the alternates will take place after the first of the year. e-mail: etaufa@beenews.com