Bedford works towards Comprehensive Plan update

BEDFORD, N.Y. - On the cusp of formally updating Bedford’s 22-year-old Comprehensive Plan, the Town Board asked the community last week for any last-minutes wishes.

And the community—a small sampling, anyway—made a major wish clear: preserve the town’s emblematic dirt roads. Three of the seven speakers addressing a public hearing at the Town Board’s March 4 meeting called for protection of the 32 miles of unpaved rights-of-way.

The hearing will continue, including emailed comments, until the board’s next meeting on Tuesday, March 18. Barring a need for major changes, the lawmakers are expected to “fairly quickly” adopt the update.

Bedford Today, a 134-page document, is poised for adoption five years after the Town Board set it in motion and an army of community volunteers, planning professionals and town officials made it a reality.

“I think it does a good job of balancing preservation and progress, insuring livability, sustainability and economic vitality,” Supervisor Ellen Calves said of the plan. It “continues to encourage collaboration between residents, organizations, businesses and the town,” she said before inviting residents with comments to come to the town hall lectern or raise their hand in the Zoom audience.

John Stockbridge, the town historian, praised the work of the Comprehensive Planning Advisory Committee and others in producing Bedford Today. But he called for a final draft stating “a clear policy to preserve dirt roads” rather than language that suggests paving as a potential alternative.

Two other speakers also urged that the final document make crystal clear the town wants the dirt roads to remain unpaved.

Nancy Kronenberg, speaking via a Zoom link, echoed Stockbridge in asking for “a policy of how to preserve dirt roads, because they have their unique characteristics, including maintenance issues.”

The third speaker, Roger Vincent, said he and his wife, Nancy, had lived on two dirt roads—the corner of Broad Brook and Succabone roads—for more than 50 years. “The highway department, in my judgment, does an excellent job [of maintaining them],” he said.

But “they don’t do enough,” Vincent asserted. “They don’t do as much as they used to.”

Vincent attributed that perceived falloff to a reduction in the money allocated for dirt-road maintenance. If that funding were restored, he suggested, “legitimate concerns” about dust and other conditions could be addressed.

Asked the next day about Vincent’s comments, Kevin Winn, commissioner of the Public Works Department, which maintains town roadways, said in an email, “There has been no cut or reduction to the budget for road maintenance. There is no separate budget for dirt-road maintenance; it is part of road maintenance.

“Dirt roads, by their nature, provide a somewhat lower level of service than paved roads, but also contribute to the rural, equestrian-friendly quality of Bedford, and to traffic calming,” Winn said. “The DPW routinely inspects dirt roads for maintenance needs and responds to resident concerns. We apply calcium chloride to dirt roads in the summer to reduce dust.”

Calves had anticipated some pushback over paving concerns, telling the March 4 meeting, “We received many, many emails today about dirt roads.” Word was circulating that something in the plan, she said, “had it out for dirt roads.” Calves assured the audience that the document embraced dirt roads as an essential part of Bedford’s rural character.

The problem, she said, appeared to stem from the draft plan’s mistakenly including Guard Hill Road among the town’s so-called collector roads like McClain Street and Bedford Center Road. The erroneous designation placed the venerable byway in a category just below arterial thoroughfares for carrying traffic, raising fears the road could become a candidate for paving.

In discussing Bedford’s many characteristic features, the planning document notes, “The town’s history remains visible with physical assets like . . .  rugged dirt roads that harken to an era that predates motorized vehicles.”

Bedford Today is available on the town website, bedfordny.gov (go to Government/Departments/Planning and, under Quick Links, choose Comprehensive Plan. Next Tuesday’s public hearing, a continuation of March 4’s comments, is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Once that’s closed, Calves said, the Town Board would incorporate any needed changes into the draft plan and hopes “to approve it fairly quickly after that.”

'Battery Farm' Law

A task force looking to draft a local law regulating large-scale storage-battery installations was continuing its work this week with a new deadline, once again months away.

The Town Board, which had ordered a six-month freeze on battery-farm applications last August, renewed the moratorium at its Feb. 18 meeting for another six months.

A task force studying the issue has met with NYSERDA, the state’s energy research and development agency, and the town’s fire departments, Calves told the February meeting. “I think we’re getting somewhere,” she said, “but we need more time.”