Questions about Richmond Glen / Serenity Ranch
1) Why is this easement worth $10? Or is this easement worth $70,393?
2) Why not put the land up for auction?
3) On April 15, the MRJs Jesse Buchanan reported:
During Fazzone's presentation of the request, Town Councilor Tim White questioned the value to the Town of granting the easement. Fazzone answered that there would be a benefit. "It would appear to be a tax-positive to the town," he said.
When will the town see the basis of this assertion? Has someone created a fiscal impact analysis?
4) The PZC approved this plan in 2005. Has CT's "age-restricted housing" market changed during that time? How about during the past year? If so, and if the Council approves this easement, will there be a request - similar to New Jersey - to eliminate the age-restriction before the development is even complete? Why does AARP seem to think that age-restricted housing is overdeveloped?
5) Was the Council given good advice on the runup to the Richmond Glen / Serenity Ranch vote?
6) If this easement is not granted and the town-owned land remains undeveloped, what will most likely happen with the abutting property?
7) Has the Council been given a thorough debriefing on all the actions and key dates leading up to this easement request?
8) Do town residents, particularly those in the Buckland Drive neighborhood, support this easement?
These are (at least some of) the questions that I think need to be considered by the Council. I suggest starting with a Planning Committee meeting.
Tim White
5 comments:
can you post a cliff notes version on what this thing is all about...1) What is this? 2) what happened 3) What SHOULD have happened 4) Why did #2 occur in the first place?
A few comments and questions
Brodach's application included a $70,000 payment to the town to make site improvements on Weise Rd. At the last meeting, the town engineer said thase were completed with other work on Weise, but no payment was ever recieved. It seems that no one has tried to collect the money or is even monitoring this $70,000 payment amount. It seems that if this had not been brought up, the requirement to pay this could have easily slipped off someones desk or simply be accidently forgotten, as has happened with other things, and the taxpayers would have been out the $70,000 cost of doing the work. Is Milone going to get the money?
Fazzone in answer to the question, "What is the town getting out of this?", Mr Fazzone said the town would get somewhere between $9,000 and $10,000 in tax revenue per unit and he stated that this is based on Stonegate which he said was a similar age restricted development. Well, there can not be a comparison to Stone Gate that features individual units in $550,000 and up range. River crest, a Brodach development in the northend, is advertised as a luxury development originally sold for $330,000 at the height of the market. It is hard to believe that Brodach would get $330,000 for attched units in this market, as a matter of fact, there are units still for sale at Rivercrest.
Exactly when is Brodach expected to actually complete his first unit, or is he simply getting complete approval of everything and selling it at a huge profit without ever building anything. Or, will he sit on it for years and come back asking for more thing from the town.
Cheshire already has too many housing units for the market with many more proposed developments. The W/S 140 units that the land owners and W/S would attract empty nesters and another development at the juction of Mountain Rd and W Main, how many unit I don't know. These other developments could be started soon or never, we just don't know.
There was talk that the sewer plant was near capacity. Mr. Fazzone offered his knowledge and tried to reassure us by saying he thought there was suffient capacity. How can we have capacity, when the plant is over loaded during storms and we send raw sewage into the river that ends up in Long Island sound?
The entire processed used to get appovals for this development looks like it was carefully planned to get approval without providing the public with a clear picture of the whole and there wasn't any attempt by the Cheshire Planning Department improve the transparancy. The entire approval process needs to be fixed.
"Exactly when is Brodach expected to actually complete his first unit, or is he simply getting complete approval of everything and selling it at a huge profit without ever building anything. Or, will he sit on it for years and come back asking for more thing from the town."
-Really? Did someone really ask this question? F.Y.I. - You cannot build without permits and required easments/agreements in place BEFORE construction STARTS.
I believe the $70,000 was IF the town agreed to allow the sub division to be built.
can you post a cliff notes version on what this thing is all about...1) What is this? 2) what happened 3) What SHOULD have happened 4) Why did #2 occur in the first place?I'm working on it. Hoping to get it done prior to the May vote.
Hi Tim:
When did you get the memo? Was it after the last meeting where the $70,000 was discussed.
It seems strange that it was HAND DELIVERED and no one else was copied, not the town engineer or Fazzone, both of whom were mentioned in the memo.
At the meeting, I don't remember the town manager mentioning that he had recieved the memo mentioning the $70,000 and the town engineer appeared to not know anthing about the status of the payment.
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