ROSA 4 Rockland

Northeast DGEIS Public Hearing Monday September 13, 2021 at 7:00 in Town Hall.

On August 11, 2021 the Town of Ramapo Town Board accepted the “DGEIS” as complete and set a public hearing.

RAMAPO PUBLIC HEARING DETAILS

Do you live in the Town of Ramapo including the 11 Villages that are within the Town of Ramapo?

Are you concerned about the lack of Comprehensive Planning in the Town of Ramapo?

Do you want the Town Board to update the Comprehensive Plan and look at the totality of the Town and create a town-wide overall strategic plan before working on area specific recommendations? 

. . . Get involved and share your personal concerns and aspirations for comprehensive planning in the Town of Ramapo before it’s too late. 

HISTORY

  • July 2018 – The Town Board chose LaBerge a consulting firm to develop a “Townwide Strategic Plan”
  • October 2018 – The Town Board authorized the agreement to work on a Townwide plan.
  • November 2018 – The posted a meeting notice late Friday 11/23 for a workshop meeting Tuesday 11/27 and a presentation on 11/29.  Consultants showed up with no environmental maps and no knowledge of the area.  Supervisor Specht promised that there would be similar meetings for all areas of Ramapo starting in March 2019.
  • January 2019 – The Town presented draft plans for increased density on the Minisceongo Golf Course by up to 12x, along Rt. 202, and adjacent to the wetlands behind Gracepoint church. The Town consultants again promised more meetings on other areas of Ramapo. Those meetings never happened.
  • February 2019 – The Town started a State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process on the Northeast Strategic Plan and Comprehensive Plan Update of the Town-wide Existing Conditions, but no such documents exist.
  • July 2019 – Without any documented plans in hand the Town Board, placing the cart before the horse, voted to proceed to set a public hearing to scope an impact document based on nonexistent plans and unspecified code changes will have negative environmental impacts that must be studied. 
  • August 2019 – There was a single public hearing for a draft SEQR scoping outline to study plans that do not exist making rational public input impossible. The Town made no presentation to explain the process or purpose.
  • December 2020 – The supervisor submitted a draft of a final scoping document that did not address many comments made without explanation as required by the SEQR code. 
  • January 2021 – The Town Board approved the draft of the final scoping plans without any revisions based on substantial public comment.
  • February 22, 2021 – The Consultant uploaded a draft of the Town Wide Existing Conditions Document dated December 2020 and the Town consistently refused to answer many questions from the public despite promising to do so.
  • March 22, 2021 – The Town has called for a special meeting consultants to update the board. The update was not informative.

For more history you can visit a prior posting on this topic here: https://rosa4rockland.org/northeast-2/

If you have specific questions Contact Us. 

We will post comments during our review process on this page.

Submit Your Comments and Questions to the Town 

You can submit comments to the supervisor – SpechtM@ramapo-ny.gov – or the Town Clerk – OsherovitzS@ramapo-ny.gov. You can try using the Comment form on the website. We cannot speak to the the efficacy of that form.

ROSA 4 Rockland Statement

ROSA 4 Rockland volunteers, followers and supporters are not anti development,  we are pro-sustainability.  Universally residents from every part of the Town are concerned about development that does not follow established zoning patterns and substantial changes in zoning patterns without substantial planning studies. We are long overdue for comprehensive planning.

Updates to Comprehensive Plans are recommended to happen every 5-7 years. It has been 17 years (!) since the Town of Ramapo passed the 2004 Comprehensive Plan.  It has been overdue for an update for 10+ years. In 2017, Supervisor Specht ran on an election platform that promised a Comprehensive Plan update. Since then, the supervisor has avoided normal comprehensive planning processes and instead has taken action to increase development in Northeast Ramapo to cater to the golf course developer and commercial developers who have interests in this area.

The Town Board has moved forward on a piecemeal planning effort that is developer centric. Without analysis of the past plan or existing conditions the Town kicked off a process in 2018 designed to target one of the lowest density, most environmentally sensitive area of Ramapo for significantly higher density housing including multi family housing.

ROSA is opposed to a segmented process that doesn’t involve of all the residents of Ramapo. We invite all residents of the unincorporated areas in the northern portions of Ramapo, and in the adjoining villages to pay attention to the Town of Ramapo’s Northeast Strategic Plan efforts – archived documents here.

Please donate to support the hiring of professionals to advocate for residents in these processes.

Please support ROSA’s efforts to hire planners and attorney’s to represent existing residents concerned about how they are moving forward with planning please DONATE here.

Directed donations specific to the Northeast Strategic Plan can be made by selecting it from the dropdown.  See screenshot.

Please consider making a monthly donation for the duration of the Town’s planning cycle.

Join the ROSA mailing list here if you want to be kept in the loop of important upcoming Town meetings and hearings.

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