MINUTES<= o:p>
JOINT MEETING
TOWN COU=
NCIL/
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION/
PLANNING=
AND
ZONING COMMISSION
WEDNESDA=
Y, FEBRUARY
15, 2006 - 7:00 PM
PRESENT: Town Council
=
M=
s.
Elaine Adams
=
M=
r.
Carl Mancini
=
M=
r.
Joseph Pawlak
=
M=
r.
Jack Walton
=
; &n=
bsp; Economic
Development Commission
=
M=
r.
Norman Marcoux
=
M=
r.
Joseph McGrail, Chairman
=
M=
r.
Jack Traver, Vice Chairman
=
M=
r.
George Velezis
=
Planning and Zoning Commission
=
M=
r.
James Lukasavage
=
M=
r.
Gary Martin
=
M=
r.
Michael Masayda
=
M=
r.
David Minnich, Chairman
=
M=
r.
Ron Russ
=
M=
r.
Mark Tedesco
=
M=
r.
George Velezis
=
M=
s.
Judy Wick, Vice Chairman
ABSENT: =
; Town Council
=
M=
r.
Antonio Guerrera
=
M=
r.
Robert Kane
=
M=
r.
Raymond Primini
=
M=
r.
Paul Rinaldi
=
M=
s.
Suzan Plowman
Economic Development Commission/
Planning and Zoning Commission/
Joint Me=
eting
February=
15,
2006
Page 2
=
M=
r.
Carmine DiPietro
=
M=
s.
Anne Kuegler
=
M=
r.
John Manno
=
M=
r.
Theodore Migliarese, Secretary
=
; &n=
bsp; Planning
and Zoning Commission
=
M=
r.
Jeff Franson
=
M=
r.
Ray Rondeau
OTHERS: =
; Ms.
Mary Barton, Zoning Enforcement Officer
=
M=
r.
Chuck Berger, Town Engineer
=
M=
s.
Meredith Robson, Town Manager
=
M=
s.
Lisa Taccardi, Chamber of Commerce
1. =
Convene
Joint Meeting - 8:30 P.M.
Mr.
Pawlak, Chairman, Town Council, Called the Joint Meeting to Order at 7:00 p=
.m.
Mr.
McGrail, Chairman, Economic Development Commission, Called the Joint Meetin=
g to
Order at 7:00 p.m.
Mr.
Minnich, Chairman, Planning and Zoning Commission, Called the Joint Meeting=
to
Order at 7:00 p.m.
2. =
Roll
Call
Mr.
Pawlak, Chairman, Town Council, executed the Roll Call. Mr.
McGrail, Chairman, Economic Development Commission, executed the Roll Call.=
Ms.
Allen, Clerk, Planning and Zoning Commission, executed the Roll Call. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 3 3. &nb=
sp; Introduction
by Chairman of the Economic Development Commission, Joseph McGrail Mr. McGrail: Some months ago, the E.D.C, wi=
th the
consent of the Town Council and Town Manager, entered into an agreement wit=
h N.E.
Willow Group to conduct a survey of our residents concerning issues related=
to
economic development. The ide=
a for
the survey came by way of John Buccarelli of the Southbury E.D.C. His group conducted a similar surv=
ey and
found it to be extremely useful in bringing their quest to bring needed and
desired businesses to their Town.
It also helped the Commission to better understand their people's wa=
nts
and needs, as well as their expectations in the area of economic developmen=
t. The Watertown E.D.C. was no differ=
ent in
these desires and requested the funding for this endeavor. The E.D.C. hopes that like the Pla=
n of
Conservation and Development the survey will be used as a tool when decidin=
g future
growth issues for our Town. Just
to start off, several people asked questions pertaining to how we arrived at
the questions that were asked, and these questions were developed between t=
he
Willow Group, Bill Simonsen and Mark Robbins, the E.D.C, Meredith Robson, a=
nd
several other invited guests. So at
this time I'd like to introduce Bill Simonsen and Mark Robbins, they're the
principles of North East Willow Group.&nbs=
p;
Both Mark and Bill hold PhD's in their respective disciplines and are
currently professors and department heads at the 4. &nb=
sp; Overview
and Power Point Presentation by N.E. Willow Group, LLC on Economic Developm=
ent
Survey =
; Mr.
Simonsen: Thank you. I'm Bill Simonsen and that's Mark =
Robbins As Joe mentioned we are N.E. Willo=
w Group. One of the other hats we wear as
professors in the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecti=
cut,
which is actually in West Hartford, not Storrs, Mark is the department head=
for
the Public Policy Department, and another hat, I wear many hats, is the
Director of the Master Public Administration Program. Mark has a PhD from Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 4 I'd
like to thank all the groups that are represented here for asking us to come
and talk about the survey that we did for the E.D.C. What I'll talk about today is firs=
t our
task, what we wanted to accomplish, the approach that we used, the results =
of
the survey, and then finally we'll take questions that anybody might have.<=
o:p> We
worked with the E.D.C and their guests to try and put together a process for
assessing resident's preferences for economic development and these element=
s are
ones that we developed with them as ways of trying to gauge that. First
preference is for retail shopping; information about shopping behavior, what
people expect from development, the kinds of development that residents
preferably want and how much residents are willing to pay for some of these
various strategies that might be used for economic development. Our approach, one of the things in=
our
approach is to try and avoid some of the problems or issues with citizen
preference work generally. Mo=
st
citizen participation is non-representative. What that means is it provides opp=
ortunities
for folks who are the most motivated, and with the most time, to come and i=
nfluence
policy. This is to folks that=
act
proactively, to come to meetings, forums, and that sort of thing and that's=
a
very important part of our democratic process, but that doesn't represent
generally the citizen will of everybody in the community. There
really is only one way to do that, through probability sampling, and we'll =
talk
about that in a minute. But t=
he
E.D.C. was interested in understanding what the community as a whole though=
t,
and that's sort of complimentary to the other ways of gathering citizen inp=
ut,
through meetings, hearings, and so forth.&=
nbsp;
The only way to really gauge this in a way that represents the commu=
nity
as a whole is through what's called representative sampling and probability
sampling or random sampling. =
Using random
samples have been compared to tasting soup. If you stir the soup you only need=
a
couple of mouthfuls to know what that soup tastes like. You don't have to have the whole p=
ot of
soup to know what it tastes like.
When you go to the doctor, and the doctor takes blood, they don't ha=
ve
to take all of your blood to know what's going on in your blood, they can t=
ake
a sample of your blood and be able to do that. Well using the soup analogy, the r=
andom
sampling is like stirring the soup pot.&nb=
sp;
Each household that in this case had a telephone, had an equal chanc=
e of
being selected for the survey, and so that allows us, through the wonders of
probability sampling, to be able to say something with a confidence level a=
bout
what people in the community think.
So we used random selection and something called random digit dialing
with is the common and state of the art way you would do this for telephone
sampling, telephone surveys. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 5 As
Joe mentioned, before the questionnaire was used, it was designed and revie=
wed
by the E.D.C. and folks that worked with them and us in collaboration. We went through several iterations=
of
the survey questionnaire until what came out the other end is something that
everybody was happy with. We
completed 400 telephone interviews.
That's a standard number in survey research because what it produces=
is a
margin of error of +/- 4.9% at a 95% confidence level, or about 5%. What that means is that if you too=
k 100
random samples of 400, you would be 95% sure that what came out would be wi=
thin
+/- 5% of the true number. So=
for
example, when we asked respondents whether they shop in First
retail shopping - the question that we asked specifically here was "how
satisfied are you with the selection of current retail businesses and servi=
ces
in the Town of We
also asked about specific retail or eating establishments. So for example we said to the
respondents, "think about the retail shopping and eating opportunities=
now
available in the Town of Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 6 Those
preferring retail tended to want more department stores and discount stores,
we'll talk about that more on the next slide, but overall there is a prefer=
ence
for smaller retail versus larger retail, cause again we're talking about pe=
ople
who selected into this, they said yes, we want more retail, so what would y=
ou
like, and then they tell us. =
Okay,
so here's the question: "=
;think
about the retail shopping and eating opportunities now available in Waterto=
wn,
what type would you like". 189
total mentions upscale, 28 family fast food, some people like small, some
people just wanted more variety and 3 people wanted diners. Mr. Joe McGrail: Is that a number or percentage? Mr. Simonsen: That's the number of people. It's an open ended questions. (Inaudible) who said retail, 49 sa=
id
large retail department store kinds of things, 33 book store, clothing disc=
ount
and hardware stores. As I said
before 108 just threw up their hands and said we have no suggestions about
(inaudible). Then
we asked what brand of business they'd like to see. Of those who responded about retai=
l,
here is the list: The largest=
vote
getter so to speak was Target, followed by Wal-Mart, and a couple of people
said KMart or Super KMart. Ba=
rnes
& Noble leads the book store group.&nb=
sp;
Then you have a slew of other things, Loew's, Kohl's, Sears, Home De=
pot,
Walden Books, Gap, Old Navy, TJ Maxx got 2 votes. Restaurants: Outback, Applebee's, Olive Garden,
Chili's, Ruby Tuesday, one person wanted McDonald's. Ms. Wick: Which of those is fine dining? Mr. Simonsen: That's an interesting point. There are, Carmen Anthony's is the
closest thing to the fine dining on there, but if you think about what come=
s to
people's minds if you ask them about a particular restaurant, it will be ch=
ain
restaurants cause that's what people know.=
They see them in other places, they say chain restaurant, they see t=
hem,
they might say that. Fine din=
ing
tends to, in my experience, fine dining tends to be not chain restaurants so
that's not inconsistent that you don't see a lot of them up there, they're =
hard
to name, but Carmen Anthony's is probably the closest. We
asked residents where they shop, we asked them first if they shop in Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 7 Was
it close to home? Close
to work? Wide
variety of goods? Easy
parking? Lower
prices? Never
shop in Other? Specify? 84%
said their main reason is because the stores were close to home. The exception here was for purchas=
es
over $200, we specifically asked about that, excluded automobiles, other th=
an
an automobile, and only 35% of residents reported making purchases like tha=
t,
over $200 in We
also asked when they shop outside of Town, why they do that, and we gave th=
em
the same set of answer choices that I just said, close to home, close to wo=
rk,
wide variety, and so forth. A=
nd the
mogul reason here was wide variety of goods, and that's what folks were loo=
king
for when they shipped outside of We
also asked about services, where folks shop for services, such as attorneys=
, dentists,
things like that, and most do that in the Town of The
way we led off the survey actually was to ask folks what they like best abo=
ut
the Town of Watertown and here's what we saw, people really liked the small
town, the sort of safe, quiet, friendly atmosphere here, we'll see it in th=
e next
slide, but also location, schools, and taxes were important to some people,=
but
if you look at this, 117 people said something not like, we like the small =
town
atmosphere, we like that it's quaint, quiet, clean. 59% said people are really nice,
friendly people here, we like that.
People like the community and the neighborhood atmosphere, they felt
safe. Some number, 27, said t=
here's
good police protection here, that came up, it's safe, it's family, children
family. It's very nice. Some affirmation that people reall=
y have
nice things to say about living in Town. In fact when I saw this I said mayb=
e I
should move here, it sounds like a really nice place to live and that came
through very clearly based on this question, people enjoy living here and t=
hey
have good things to say about it in terms of these sort of nice
characteristics. But
there were some other things. Some
people said we like, the thing we like the best is the location and
convenience, good schools came up, some number said they like the low taxes=
in
the Town, and there was a history part here too, that 24 folks said we have=
a
long history here in Town, our family has been here a long time and we just=
are
part of the Town we grew up here and this is where we are. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 8 Next
we asked about preferred development strategies. So we asked a series of questions =
about
whether residents felt the Town would gain financially from certain forms of
development, and we asked whether or not, whether they expected, not themse=
lves
personally, but whether the Town would gain financially from retail, and 65%
thought that would be the case, from industrial development over 3/4 thought
that would be the case, the Town would gain financially from industrial
development. The reverse of t=
hat is
true for housing. 66% thought=
the
Town would lose financially from new large housing subdivisions. The vast majority agreed the Town =
should
encourage more business development in order to lower taxes. Later on we asked whether or not p=
eople
were willing to pay something for that, and it's a much smaller percentage =
when
you see that. But this is the=
part
where they're not asked to pay anything, they would like to see that for lo=
wer
taxes, new development. In
some places you might see a significant number of folks who really think th=
at the
Town needs to add business development in order for the Town really to surv=
ive,
or you might see the opposite where business development is really a threat=
to
the Town. So we asked that
specific, do you think that, which part of the statement comes the closest =
to
your opinion: "the Town =
of
Watertown needs to increase business development in order to service, or
business development is a threat to the character of the Town, or you can s=
ay
if you fall somewhere in the middle".=
And as you can see from the chart here, most folks fall in the middl=
e. 57% said yea, I'm in the middle ab=
out
that. 27% a little over 1/4 s=
aid we
really need business development to service, and a smaller percentage said
business development would be a threat to the character of the Town, and a =
very
small percent said they don't know. We
asked also about whether or not there should be, the Town should encourage =
more
development in various places, and so we asked for instance about office
development, retail development, and industrial development as well, whether
they thought encouraging that was very important or somewhat important. 55% of the respondents thought that
encouraging office development was either very or somewhat important. The way that breaks down is that 1=
4%
thinks that it's very important and 40% think that that's somewhat
important. 20% felt, are on t=
he
other end and think office development is not important at all. Retail
development, 69%, a larger percentage, thought that retail development was
either very or somewhat important, very important 25%, and somewhat importa=
nt
43%. Industrial, 66% thought =
that
was either very or somewhat important. In this case, so far we've s=
een
the very important was smaller than the somewhat important. In this case that's reversed. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 9 In
terms of industrial development almost 40% thought that was very important =
and
26% thought that was somewhat important, so there's a little more peaked
preference there, in this compared to the others, that's masked a little in=
the
overall number there. The
opposite was true for residential development, that only 24% thought that t=
hat
was either very or somewhat important, and in fact 51% thought that that was
not important at all, and 25% not too important. As
you'll see on the next slide, we asked about the kinds of development that
folks liked, and the preference for some development far exceeds the
preferences for no development.
Here was the question:
"now we'd like to ask you some questions about the business
development of the Town, what kind of development would you favor the
most? Would you favor retail,
office space, manufacturing, or no development at all?" So no development was an option for
folks to choose. And spread o=
ut
across the board, you see no development though is only 23% of this, manufa=
cturing
development about 1/3, office space 12.5%, and retail 25%. So if you add up the kinds of all =
the
development, retail, office space, manufacturing, it far exceeds no develop=
ment
at all. It's kind of analogou=
s to
you get together with your friends and you can all decide pretty easily that
you want to go out to dinner, but then when it comes to decide where you wa=
nt
to go to dinner, well somebody says Outback, somebody says somewhere else, =
so
it's a little harder to get to the detail of that, people sort of generally
think development is good here, but when you ask them specifically they're
broken up about what they think is best. Residential
(Tape #1, Side A ended - may have missed some) what kind of retail developm=
ent
would you favor most? Would y=
ou
favor collections of small retail stores, such as those in downtown Most
of the strategies that can be used to attract businesses were favored by
residents. And we gave them a=
list
of things, we asked them whether they strongly or somewhat favored offering
these things. So tax incentiv=
es,
2/3 of the folks strongly or somewhat favor offering tax incentives. About that amount also strongly or
somewhat in favor of providing funds for infrastructure improvements. 74% s=
aid
hey, we should have a marketing plan, that's good, strongly or somewhat fav=
or
that, and 74% also strongly or somewhat favored making zoning changes if
necessary to encourage business development. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 10<=
o:p> We
also asked specifically about willingness to pay, so if you, in terms of th=
e Next
we asked "do you think the Town of Next
we asked "do you think the Town of Conclusion: The purpose was to gain input about
preferences of Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 11<=
o:p> Fewer
though were willing to pay the taxes necessary for economic development
policies, only 1/2 would support the $50 or more for improvements on That
concludes the presentation. I=
f any
of you have questions, Mark and I would be happy to take them. 5. &nb=
sp; Coffee
Break - 8:00 p.m. None 6 &nbs=
p; Question
and Answer Session - 8:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. =
; Mr.
Jack Traver: When you got through with this and
compiled it, and having done this in many other locations, did anything jump
out at you to say =
; Mr.
Simonsen: No, this I think is pretty interna=
lly
consistent. There are differe=
nt
questions asking similar things, for instance small town character and that=
sort
of thing that comes out I think pretty clearly that there is a lot of people
who care for that. It comes o=
ut
clearly I think that people in the Town support development of some sort. Mr. Robbins: (Inaudible) different than other c=
ommunities? Mr. Simonsen: Is that what you meant? =
; Mr.
Jack Traver: Yea, right. I understand your report, but I ju=
st
don't understand whether this is plain Vanilla or we are oddballs here or w=
hat? Mr. Robbins: We haven't done surveys identical =
to
this one in lots of communities so we can tell you with any scientific
certainty whether these patterns are similar. Certainly the trends for tax and
spending preferences are very similar.&nbs=
p;
People tend to be more supportive in general of any sort of service =
that
you can think of until you talk about how much it would cost, then that sup=
port
drops off, so I mean Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 12<=
o:p> Mr. Simonsen: And an example of that, a survey we
conducted a number of years ago in the City of Eugene, Oregon, looking at
different tax preferences there to solve a really significant budget problem
that they had, the most preferred tax, since they were home ruled they could
put in what they wanted, most preferred taxes were the hotel/motel tax and
corporate income taxes, and what was going through people's heads was they'=
ll
pay it, we won't. So if you g=
o for
a free lunch box, we'll take it. Mr. Gary Martin: Is the 400 number you used for the=
survey
consistent with any population or is that, I mean if it's 100,000 people you
still do 400, does that still represent the. . . . Mr. Simonsen: Yes, that's right. The population size is irrelevant =
unless
you get to very small populations, so if you're talking about 400 out of 1,=
000
then it actually makes the margin of error shrink, but Mr. Colin Adams: How many people did you have to su=
rvey,
how many phone calls did you have to actually get 400 people to take the
survey? Mr. Simonsen: I don't have that number with me, =
it's
generally a lot. Usually we r=
un
around 20%. Mr. Joe Pawlak: One of the questions that you aske=
d with
respect to retail selection satisfaction in Town and you indicated that eit=
her
they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied and that was about 80%, which
surprised me, but if I remember correctly in looking at your report, the re=
tail
satisfaction category also included (inaudible) which in my opinion tends t=
o see
that towards the high end as opposed to normal (inaudible) retailing so I t=
hink
it's worth pointing that out, when people say 80%, I mean most people proba=
bly
do shop (inaudible) so that number is probably higher (inaudible). Mr. Robbins: Right, when you're thinking ab=
out
individual retail purchase, groceries that you might make. Mr. Joe McGrail: We were sort of torn on that questi=
on,
because if you put too many exclusions in then people tend to think that yo=
u're
trying to bend the numbers a certain way, so that's why the only thing we
really excluded on that question was the cars, because that's a big . . . .=
. Mr. Pawlak: The only reason I brought it up wa=
s because
there's always a question of whether you want a smaller retail store or a b=
ig
box store and it's worth pointing that out because it is a significant port=
ion
of let's say, I wouldn't say disposable income, that's necessary spending a=
s opposed
to disposable which is more like (inaudible). Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 13<=
o:p> Mr. Robbins: Mary had a question which is that =
when
we talk we talk into the microphone because it's being recorded, so I can b=
ring
this around to people when they ask a question. I think it's removable. It has a long cord. I can act like an emcee. Mr. Martin: The survey itself, was it fairly
consistent with other surveys that you've done as far as the way the
questioning was approached and how the questions were worded? Mr. Simonsen: Yes, it is and we have to be very
careful about those things, question wording and the answer choices that you
give people, and we spent a lot of time with the E.D.C. in collaboration wi=
th
them to try and make this questionnaire work such that folks were getting t=
he
right answer choices to give them the right information that they wanted and
the questions were getting at what they really wanted to get at. Mr. Robbins: The longest part of a process like=
this
really is the questionnaire design, working on question wording, making sur=
e you're
not trying to answer 2 questions with 1 question so that you can really be =
sure
you're getting the response that you want, the whole process of pretesting =
and
listening to calls and all that goes into designing the survey so we did th=
at
already. =
; Mr.
Joe McGrail: Can you just expand on the part, I=
know
we limited the questions to get the highest degree of accuracy to attain th=
at
95% +/- the 4.9%, can you explain that if we had sort of diluted or expanded
the survey to a larger number of questions what the results would have been=
? Mr. Robbins: The tradeoff he's talking about is
between the number of questions that you can ask and the number of people y=
ou
can ask questions to, so you can't have both of those things, kind of an
unlimited sample size and an unlimited survey size, so we did sit down and =
have
to work with the Commission to limit the size of the survey so that we could
maintain the most representative sample that we could get. Certainly if we wanted to double t=
he length
of the survey, we would have been down to a much smaller sample and you
wouldn't have had the high degree of confidence that you get with this, that
you really are accurately representing the views of everybody in Town. Ms. Donna Masi: I have one question about the summ=
ary
and you didn't mention it in the presentation, that we did have people that
were for office, 25% of the people were for office. (Inaudible) and that wasn't all we
seemed to be talking about is the retail and manufacturing so to me office =
and
factory would be more compatible than a big chain retail which people (inau=
dible)
say they don't want, they want to maintain the small town character by havi=
ng
small town retail, so I was wondering why that was kind of glossed over? Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 14<=
o:p> Mr. Simonsen: No, it's in the body of the actual
report. It may not have been =
in the
conclusion because we're summarizing this, but there was no attempt to gloss
over anything. It does say in=
the
body of the report, does report the amount that were for the office. =
; Mr.
Ted Migliarese: Yea, but the numbers=
to
encourage more retail are the 60 something percent, the more office was only
54. =
; Mr.
Simonsen: Yes, it was less. Mr. Ted Migliarese: It was less so there was more
encouragement for retail than office. Mr. Simonsen: (Inaudible.) Mr. Migliarese: That’s right, here I hav=
e it
right here. In the survey the
results on the more office development were roughly 14% for very important,=
and
40% somewhat important. Under
encourage more retail development very important was 25.5% and somewhat was
43%, so the numbers added together, retail development was much more than
office development, so I don't think it’s the other way around. =
; Ms.
Donna Masi: Well if you were to look at page 5 =
the
type of development it's 12.5 office space and 33 for manufacturing, if you=
put
those two compatible uses together we have 45.5% which is greatly larger nu=
mber
than 25% in types of development favored by most Watertown residents. Mr. Ted Migliarese: You're not talking the same thing.=
=
; Mr.
Simonsen: In this case if you look at the tab=
le
here, where we asked them which development strategies they wanted the most=
, as
you can see, as I mentioned before, most folks want some development, but
manufacturing and retail were more important, more folks wanted that than
wanted office space, when we asked which they wanted most. Mr. John Mastropietro: Were people allowed to answer more =
than
one category for this question? Mr. Simonson: No, well they could say no
development. They could volun=
teer
more than one category and some people did, and some people said hey, I like
office and manufacturing, or whatever, and that's the 4.5% there. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 15<=
o:p> Mr. Carl Mancini: I picked up that the residents did=
not
support residential development. Do
you have the percentage of the 400 residents that were polled, if they were
long term or short term residents?
By long term I mean 10 years or more, or if they were short term res=
idents. It's funny to see that the short t=
erm
residents all of a sudden don't support residential development once they g=
ot
here. Mr. Simonsen: We didn’t run that against th=
at
question, but the median number of years living in Ms. Judy Wick: Was there an opportunity, supposing
someone who said I prefer manufacturing development, I think we should have
development and I prefer manufacturing development, but if it's not going t=
o be
manufacturing development then I don't think we should have development at =
all? Or if somebody says I think we sho=
uld
have retail development, but if it's not going to be retail then I don̵=
7;t
think we should have any development at all. Was that, there was not that opport=
unity? Mr. Robbins: No, it wasn't a take it or leave it=
type
of a question. =
; Ms.
Judy Wick: So it was just this is=
what
you prefer the most and the other option wasn't there? =
; Mr.
Robbins: Right, but we do ask whether they =
think
they can gain financially from some of these other things so you can infer
separately about them from other questions, but this particular question di=
dn't
allow that. Mr. Mark Tedesco: Correct me if my presumption is
wrong, but you mentioned Echo Lake Road before, is this survey basically do=
ne,
I mean the largest, last piece of parcel left in Town that could be possibly
conducive for development, is this survey basically being done for that pie=
ce
of property? Mr. Simonsen: No, it came up as part of the ques=
tionnaire
design that we ought to ask about that because it was a target for potential
development, but it wasn't designed for that. It's only one question in the whole
survey. Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 16<=
o:p> Mr. Joe McGrail: Let me expand on that. Let me make it clear that this sur=
vey
was done long before any rumors or people started talking about potential
development in that area, this was again months before, if you want to call=
it
a rumor, of any potential down there.
This was strictly an economic development and it talked about equally
what we should do with the land down there, whether it be industrial, we we=
re
open minded, there was nothing, so I don't want anyone to think that the ti=
ming
of this just coincides with what happened, I mean, so . . . . Yea, Jack just pointed out too, if=
you
go to Page 6, I think that was one of the tax increase questions I guess, w=
hat
we were trying to do is actually get water and sewer down to that area, so
that's how the Echo Lake Road question came up, because we knew it stopped =
at
the Devino property and the question really, the survey really was pushing =
okay,
what do we do, how do we, will the Town support us to put water and sewer d=
own there
in the hopes of opening up that whole area? Ms. Donna Masi: We talk about what people would li=
ke for
retail and where they would like to spend their disposable income, is there=
any
correlation between what people spend in retail versus what a town gets in
revenue? Does it necessarily =
mean
that our revenue is going to be increased because of all the hidden costs of
retail, and I think you mentioned that in your summary? Mr. Robbins: We certainly haven't studied the ki=
nd of
revenues that one particular development strategy would produce versus anot=
her,
so that's kind of beyond the scope of this to be able to comment on sources=
of
revenue, you know the judgments that this Town gets to make about the kinds=
of
growth that will produce additional revenues through property taxes or what=
ever
mechanism. (Tape #1, Side B e=
nded -
may have missed some.) Many
people saying thank you very much. Mr. Joe McGrail: On behalf of the Economic Developm=
ent
Commission I'd like to thank Mark and Bill for their efforts, and that's the
conclusion of our meeting. 7. =
Adjournment &=
nbsp; MOTION: (Mr. =
Migliarese,
sec. Mr. McGrail) to Adjourn the Joint Meeting at 8:00 p.m. &nbs=
p; Discussion: None<=
o:p> &nbs=
p; MOTION
PASSED UNANIMOUSLY Economic Development Commission/ Planning and Zoning Commission/ Joint Me=
eting February=
15,
2006 Page 17<=
o:p> &=
nbsp; MOTION: (Mr. =
Russ,
sec. Mr. Tedesco) to Adjourn the Joint Meeting at 8:00 p.m. &=
nbsp; Discussion: None<=
o:p> &nbs=
p; MOTION
PASSED UNANIMOUSLY &nbs=
p; The
Town Council did not make a Motion to Adjourn. &nbs=
p; Joint
Meeting Adjourned at 8:00 p.m. Respectfully submitted=
, Joseph McGrail, Chairm=
an &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p; &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p; &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p; &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p; Lynn
M. LaForme, Clerk
Economic Development Commission
Approved: =
_____________________________