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In addition to what promises to be a big public hearing over the White Farm Road condos (see previous post), a question of sidewalks also comes up before the Town Board tonight.

When the developers of the town homes on Factory and Freemason Streets (across from the Episcopal and Methodist churches) proposed their project in 2004, they promised to build sidewalks.

Town Manager Wyatt Cutler says that as the town homes project is ‘about to wrap up’ those building the town homes are now suggesting that they not pour the sidewalks: instead they want to give the town $2,300 that would go toward fixing the standing water/drainage problem on Factory Street.

The total cost of fixing the drainage problem on Factory Street near the town homes, says Wyatt Cutler, would be about $3,500. (He adds that it is not in the “top 20” of drainage problem spots in town and that others are a higher priority.)

The proposed swapping of promised sidewalks for drainage money raised questions at the Planning Board meeting the other night. Among them:

- just how much sidewalk had been promised and where; – whether $2,300 would have been enough to pour a sidewalk in the first place; – whether the 10-townhome project had contributed to the drainage problem and should be paying toward the solution outright and not as a swap for something already promised; – and what message would the town be sending in its effort to have more sidewalks.

On the question of where the promised sidewalk was supposed to go, Town Manager Wyatt Cutler said he understood it to mean on Freemason, across from the Episcopal and Methodist churches. He said that the Factory Street side had no curb or gutter and little space for a sidewalk because of the swale (for drainage) there.

Planning Board Vice Chair Dee Sage brought up a document from October 26, 2004 showing the conditions the Planning Board had placed on the building of the town home project. Dee Sage said that according to the conditions, the developers would build sidewalks that “extended the length of the property” in the town’s right of way.

Dee Sage said she interpreted “length of the property” to mean sidewalks would be built along the two fronts of the project, on Factory and Freemason Streets.

She said she favored having the developer build the sidewalks, at least on the Freemason Street side. She said that was in keeping with a vision of being able to one day walk a sidewalk from Town Hall down Church Street to Freemason and on to Lou Mac Park.

Meanwhile, in the ‘either-or’ scenario offered by the developers — of sidewalks or drainage money — fellow Planning Board member Paul Olson leaned the other way. He said that he thought that, “maybe the drainage is a lot more important.”

But another planning board member, Katy Pugh, questioned whether the drainage fix was a “shared responsibility” and suggested that, “the construction had something to do with it.”

The town homes sit on what had been a grassy triangle of land. With grass covering all of it, it could absorb more water and cause less runoff than the town homes and the asphalt parking lot behind them now do.

Town Manager Wyatt Cutler told the Planning Board that most of the town homes’ water “is going the other way”, away from the Factory Street side.

Wyatt Cutler later said that that’s what the developer had told him. He has not been able to ‘shoot’ the site to independently verify that the majority of the run off goes to a curbside gutter on Freemason.

To the naked eye, it does appear that some of the site falls toward Freemason and teh drain. Wyatt Cutler also says that drainage had been a problem on Factory Street before the town homes went in.

But there is still the question of whether the town homes project exacerbated the drainage problem on Factory Street.

The next question, and one that was asked at the Planning Board meeting, is this: if the new town homes have contributed to the drainage problem, should the developer pay for a portion of fixing it?

Currently, the town makes no such demand of the developers. There is no procedure for new projects to pay to compensate the town for drainage stresses they create.

From the back of the audience at the Planning Board meeting, another developer offered another approach. Sylvan Friedman suggested that the town should seek “another thousand dollars” from the town homes’ developer, John Shepard.

$1000 would seem about fair … if it were determined that the town homes created about a third of the $3500 drainage problem.

The Planning Board declined to take a position and sent the matter up to the Town Board. It’ll be up to the Town Board to decide on the developer’s proposal to avoid putting in sidewalks in exchange for ‘giving’ the town $2,300 toward the drainage work.

As the Town Board takes this on, a question: why should the town have to choose between the two? Why doesn’t the town press for both the sidewalks and some money from the developer for the drainage?

There are several benefits to this.

First, the sidewalks. If the town holds the developer to his word of building the sidewalks, we not only get sidewalks, but we as a town also lay a firm foundation that developers have to come through with what they promised. That’s good public policy. It enhances trust all around.

As for the drainage, it may be that the town doesn’t currently have a formula or process for getting those that caused the problem to pay for their share of fixing it. But there’s nothing to prevent the town from seeking the money, is there — and it hardly seems extravagant for the town to seek a thousand dollars — or even several thousand — from a project of ten town homes.

Some towns don’t have to ask. From the audience at the Planning Board meeting, contractor Bill Speas said that in other places where he’d lived, towns required developers to post a bond. That worked as sort of an ‘insurance policy’, said Speas, and gave the towns ‘recourdse’ when problems that might arise after a project was completed. The bond was a way for the town to get the developer’smoney to fix the problem.

With more development coming, Oriental may do well to set up such an insurance policy.

Especially for the low-lying parts of town where a rain shower can create pond-sized puddles in an instant. More development will bring more runoff and standing water in parts of town. We should figure out how to keep the puddles from taking on the dimensions of whole lakes.

The sidewalk promise/drainage money proposal comes up toward the end of the agenda at tonight’s Town Board meeting.

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Historical note: The town homes across from the churches were among the first buildings in Oriental to take advantage of the town’s 2004 height limit. The backlash to the height and scope of the project in the middle of town led the then-Town Board to require Special Use Permits for multi-unit projects.

That requirement remains, as do the public hearings that go with the Special Use Permit requests.

More multi-units are coming. This morning developers of a 12 unit condomiminium project near Whittaker Creek marina hold an informational meeting at 9am to tell neighbors about their coming project. Tonight there is the public hearing over the 144 units on White Farm Road. Next month, there will be a public hearing on Sylvan Friedman’s plan for 12 Tudor-style condos behind the Post Office.

Posted Monday July 31, 2006 by Melinda Penkava

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