Opposing the Elimination of the City of Troy’s Planning Commission
July 11, 2024
Background: Local Law No.3 (Casey) eliminates the City of Troy’s Planning Commission immediately upon its adoption and filing. In the event of Local Law No.3’s passage, Ordinance 39 (Casey) would establish a new Planning Board for the City of Troy once Local Law No.3 is filed with the state. Planning Commissions are established under Article 12-A of the NYS General Municipal Law, while Planning Boards are established under Article 3 of the NYS General City Law.
Analysis: The Corporation Counsel’s memorandum of support for Local Law No.3 focuses entirely on a range of alleged failures of the individuals currently serving on the Planning Commission and broadly argues that the Planning Commission inappropriately injects personal biases and preferences into a technical role. If the Administration believes that Planning Commissioners are failing in their role, § 71-5 in the current City Code plainly states that “any member [of the Planning Commission] may be removed by the Mayor for cause and after public hearing,” which has not been attempted to our knowledge. The less adversarial approach to addressing personnel issues on bodies is to appoint better people when somebody’s term expires, which currently happens every three years. Under the proposed Planning Board, members would serve for a term of five years. If anything, this change would exacerbate the problem that this legislation was nominally drafted to address.
In general, it is bad practice for governments to address personnel problems with structural solutions and vice versa. Since this is a structural solution, it is unclear why there is no attempt to justify it on structural grounds. On the contrary, the Administration’s unattributed memorandum of support for Ordinance 39 states that the Planning Board is “similar in all material respects to Chapter 71 ‘Planning Commission’ repealed by Local Law No. 3.” In addition to what was noted above regarding term lengths, this is untrue for the following notable reasons:
The Planning Commission consists of seven members, with at least four having substantial experience in land use-related fields, while the Planning Board consists of five, only three of whom must have relevant experience;
Three members of the Planning Commission would constitute a quorum, while a ‘majority of the authorized membership’ would constitute a quorum for the Planning Board.
Conclusion: We would be forced to infer that this legislation was a pretextual and contrived attempt to remove duly appointed commissioners and replace them with individuals who are better aligned with the goals of the Administration and their friends in private development if the memoranda of support — and Councilmembers themselves — did not more or less admit that outright. TIMBER, a public interest group for working people in Troy, strongly opposes these legislative proposals.
