To the editor:

I recently wrote a letter to The Republican saying we need an Aldi in Caz to bring down food prices. We do. But not where the current proposal puts it. The Aldi belongs where the 2008 Comprehensive Plan and subsequent zoning put it: north of Route 20 East.

This community’s opposition to a strip mall across the road, fronting the south side of Route 20 East, is plainly stated in both the Village’s 1991 and the joint Town/Village 2008 Comprehensive Plans which clearly state: “Retail/commercial land uses would not be permitted.” and “Strip-commercial development along Route 20 shall be discouraged.” The 2008 Plan also states that development on the south side of Route 20 would be “non-retail” and – precisely to eliminate strip malls – limits building footprints south of Route 20 to a non-big box dimension: only 3,500 square feet. See the 2008 Comprehensive Plan at Appendix “A,” Table III.2.1 (“Non-Retail”).

Mayor Wheeler recently published a letter in The Republican seeking to justify an Aldi strip mall along this frontage by invoking the Village’s actions to rezone for big box development under the guidance of the Economic Health and Heritage Committee. He claimed in that letter that “The town of Cazenovia was well represented in that process.”

Not exactly. The pertinent minutes show that this committee was a Village affair without any input from the full Town Board. And then came this committee’s June 25, 2013 meeting when the Town Board’s Bill Zupan saw the problem in proposing zoning changes that included “commercial” for this area when the 2008 Plan expressly says “no retail.” Consequently, Mr. Zupan asked these questions: “Does commercial include retail? Do we need to clarify it? We made it very specific the first time it was written: there was no retail.” In other words, Mr. Zupan asked how the Town could agree to changes which would allow “retail” south of Route 20 when the Town Comprehensive Plan says “no retail.”

Mayor Wheeler answered this question. Here’s what he said: “The goal is that we don’t want strip mall construction. We don’t want to take business out of the downtown.”

Bingo. According to the Town’s Comprehensive Plan, that’s still the goal. But you wouldn’t know it from the Aldi proposal which the Town Board is now being asked to facilitate by voting for annexation. The Aldi proposal represents precisely the big-box, strip-mall development Mayor Wheeler said we should reject. And it would “take business out of the downtown” by moving the AmeriCU office out of downtown and into the strip mall.

Can this Town Board facilitate strip mall construction along this frontage when doing so tosses out two years and $200,000 in planning, on the strength of a Village re-zoning process that never involved the participation, and considered deliberation, of the full Town Board? Not without causing a lot of Cazenovians to question the transparency of this Board’s procedures.

Barry M. Schreibman

Cazenovia