Paul Szmal: We're joined in studio by Geneva Town Supervisor Mark Vanuti. I have to apologize first because I almost forgot you. I was sitting around middle of the month and I'd say, oh yeah, I didn't schedule my... because your days, your meetings fall on different days of the month, so I always have to wait and schedule them, but I realized that you just had your meeting a few days ago, so welcome back.
Mark Venuti: Thank you, happy to be here.
Paul Szmal: So the first thing is we had a reappointment to the County Planning Board and an appointment to the Town Planning Board. Just remind us a little bit, those are kind of those behind the scenes positions and they make very important decisions.
Mark Venuti: Yes, so we have a planning board, all the jurisdictions do, that looks at subdivisions, site plan review when people want to do a development. We're actually looking for people for our planning board and zoning board of appeals because we've had some resignations, but we've appointed Ken Gregory to the planning board who applied and we could use some more if anyone out there wants to join. Then the county has a planning board also and certain things that are going on in your towns also have to be referred to the county planning board and our resident Steve High has been on that board and is actually the vice chair and his term was up, so we reappointed him and he's a great representative also, goes to those meetings and then comes to our town planning board meetings and our town board meetings to keep us up to date on what's going on in the county.
Paul Szmal: And those zoning board of appeals jobs, those are fun, people call up and yell at you each year.
Mark Venuti: Well, when I tell people, would you like one of these jobs, I have to warn them that once in a while you have to be, you know, you get yelled at by your neighbors who want to do something that maybe they can't do.
Paul Szmal: So the cost for dog licenses in the town is going to go up and that's basically a pass-through. You contract with the county for dog control services and their price is going up, so yours is going up.
Mark Venuti: Yeah, exactly. They've changed the way that they do the formula and now it's based on population, so we went up significantly and we can't let the, we can't subsidize this by other people in the town, so we had to raise the rate. It's still, it's not bad, but you got a license every year, but it was just a pass-through, we're not making any money on it.
Paul Szmal: It's time to update the town's comprehensive plan. The last one was 2015, so you have a committee put together to do that and I was just thinking about this this morning, you go back to 2015 and if you'd said what are going to be the top issues in 10 years, nobody would have ever said anything like short-term rentals. I mean, it's amazing how things can change.
Mark Venuti: Yes, it's true and we did a good, I thought we did a really nice plan in 2015, but now we're up to 10 years and it's, you know, we've got some lessons learned, things have changed. We have what is now acknowledged as a housing crisis and so, you know, we have to get more flexible, we have to allow different kinds of zone, we have got to change our zoning to be more flexible with housing. You know, the old way of looking at things with, you know, a certain lot, a certain size, you can only have one residence on a lot. People are looking at that now and saying it's too restrictive, you've got to allow more density in areas where you have services, water and sewer and all that stuff to protect the, like the farms and the places where you don't have services. So, we're going to look at our plan, we've got a committee formed, we've sent an RFP out to find a consultant to work with and, you know, we're going to do that in 2025 and update that plan. And our meetings will be open to the public, so people are welcome to come and we'll do some public outreach too.
Paul Szmal: Have you or town officials talked to any housing developers who've said, you know, we'd love to build but we can't under the current regulations or it just wouldn't be profitable for us?
Mark Venuti: Well, I know that, you know, we had a public hearing on a planned unit development that we're working on at the end of Carter and Gamby and a lot of people came from Carter Road that weren't happy with the idea, but also some real estate agents came that said, we need this housing, we can't find it. So, we're trying to do this to keep it under 200,000, which, believe it or not, is affordable housing, 175,000. And this isn't rental, it's purchase, you're going to get a smaller lot and a smaller home on it, but it's going to fill a niche, a market that is really badly needed. So, yeah, I mean, that's something that we're looking at and without doing a planned unit development, no, it would not comply with current zoning. So, that's why I think jurisdictions have got to look at their zoning and find areas where they can be more flexible.
Paul Szmal: The other thing that is changing in zoning is mixed uses versus it's all one use. So, maybe you have a little store or some kind of shopping area in the middle of a residential area, which is how we all were 40, 50 years ago when Geneva had 50 grocery stores.
Mark Venuti: Well, and that's coming back too, because I think, didn't you have a survey where residents said one of the things they want is to be able to have walkable services?
Paul Szmal: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's where we're heading. We went in the other direction, only one thing in one area, and it made some sense for certain things, right? You don't want a smokestack next to you, but a grocery store or the butcher or a hair cutter, what's wrong with that?
Paul Szmal: So, it's official now, the county landfill will close at the end of its current term. The vote was 20 to 1 in the county supervisors.
Mark Venuti: Yeah, that was, you know, I'm just so, I'm kind of overjoyed. I pinch myself once in a while, because it's been a long goal, you know, I've been in this sort of paying attention and trying to get the landfill under control since before I was a supervisor. And, you know, the goal, we knew, you know, we have a contract, you can't break the contract, it ends at 2028. So, the goal was, let's be done then. And inch by inch, we moved the needle and had an overwhelming vote to close at the end of our time. All, you know, and I give credit to people in different parts of the county that really aren't impacted by the landfill, like the town of Seneca, the city and town of Geneva are, who finally said, okay, we've had enough. There's, you know, the people on the east have suffered enough with this. It's time to move on.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I mean, it's easy to say, what's the big deal? But then when you drive by, I mean, a couple times recently, I've driven by with windows down and go, oh, yeah, you can smell this from a mile out, or depending on the winds blowing. I mean, sometimes you walk out into our parking lot here at the station and smell it.
Mark Venuti: Oh, yeah, you can smell it at different times. And it's the truck traffic. I mean, we've got 100 trucks going, and then they're returning. So, 200 trucks coming through our roads in the town, the city of Geneva and up on 5 and 20 and rumbling along. When they're going, they're stinky, and they come back. It's a lot. It's a big burden. And then why, you know, we have millions of tons of other people's trash, garbage, and other things that really aren't so nice, like contaminated soil and asbestos. We've got enough. I mean, that's got to, Casella will have to spend 2029 and over $20 million closing it down and capping it. We need that to be done, and then they have to monitor it. And we hope that it just doesn't, you know, poison our groundwater one day. But it's time to stop. And if we have to export a little bit of trash, a relatively small amount, we don't have to feel guilty about that. We've taken in millions of tons of other people's.
Paul Szmal: Well, and that's one of the pro arguments is always, well, we have to have some place to put the trash. But in the town of Geneva, you've taken a leading role in saying, well, let's have way less trash to begin with. And that leads into the Geneva reuse systems. The group just had a retreat in November and sort of clarified its mission and what it wants to do going forward. So what was the result of that retreat?
Mark Venuti: Well, we did a couple of things. And let me just say that the county is also committed. We passed a resolution to close the landfill at the end of 28, but also told our Department of Sustainability and Solid Waste Management to, you know, redouble your efforts. We want to reduce what people have to throw out. And the reuse system is like that. So we had a retreat and it was really, it was very well done. We changed the name actually from Geneva Reuse Systems Inc. to Reuse Systems Inc. because we really want this to be broader. We don't want people to think it's just Geneva. This is going to be a pilot that we hope to roll out in other places in the county. And we looked at our mission and refined that. So we're hoping in 2025 we've sent some applications out for funding. We want to hire a director so that we can find our place and open our first. The first place will be in Geneva, but then we hope to, you know, we could have satellite places in other parts of the county. And these are really comprehensive all the way to deconstructing buildings. It's not going to be in competition really. In fact, we'll help places like the center of concern. But it's just more comprehensive. Appliances, bigger stuff, all kinds of things. And things that we can't sell, we'll find places to recycle or to send them to other markets. So we're really going to be a comprehensive place where you can take your stuff that you don't need anymore that's still useful. And we've seen already that this works with Fix It Day and Free Stuff Day on a smaller scale. People bring a pile of junk and you go, oh boy, is anybody going to want this? And then people come in and they want it and it all goes home. Or like you say, the lamp that just has a broken cord gets fixed and instead of going to the landfill, it goes back home.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. And I think, you know, what we'll have is basically Free Stuff Day every day. But it's not going to be free, but it's going to be greatly discounted. And as the stuff stays on the shelf, it gets marked down and marked down until it moves. And we'll do instead of Fix It Clinic twice a year, maybe every week, get our fixers out there. And so we just want to keep useful things in circulation and not in the trash, basically.
Paul Szmal: Now, we were talking earlier about the housing situation and you took part in a webinar called Avoiding the Housing Trap. So what did they see as the trap and what did you learn?
Mark Venuti: Well, this is done by this group, they call it Strong Towns, and I read this book a couple of years ago. And they're really thinking, you know, deeply into these things. And so what one of the important things about in this webinar was, and I kind of mentioned it, we were talking about zoning and our comprehensive plan. You have to be more flexible with housing. Simple, the basic zoning now says you can only have one residence on a lot. But what's wrong with you've got a four-bedroom house, your kids are gone, and you want to rent out a room. And maybe you want to build like a separate entrance for that room to make a little extra income so that you can stay in that house because the taxes have gone up. And that's another one of those things that people used to do all the time.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely.
Mark Venuti: So and then it became outlawed. So we've got to allow that. Or they talk about a second residence like the mother-in-law or the grandmother small house in your backyard. Right now, current zoning wouldn't allow that. Well, why not? It could be a rental for income. It could be for your kids. It could be for your mother. It could be anything. So we want to, so this webinar brought up those things. So you've got to allow these accessory structures on a lot. You've got to allow a rental in the house. And that's, you know, those are the kinds that are going to be well-maintained and well-supervised because you're there. It's not absentee investor doing it. And then they also said you've got to really support these sort of, the small-time contractor that can fix up the apartment for you or do a small house. Cultivate that kind of thing in your community or those kinds of people so that they can be doing that work and it creates local jobs.
Paul Szmal: The other thing that smart towns is against is parking mandates, the big parking lots. So if you look at our Walmart or at the plaza, the old town and country plaza, acres of unused parking.
Mark Venuti: Yeah, I mean that's never at capacity. Never.
Paul Szmal: And they build them, you know, the old codes made them based on square foot. You've got to have these gazillion parking spaces. And those places could be housing. They could be other things. So...
Mark Venuti: And they can also be trapping storm water so it's not running all over the place.
Paul Szmal: Right. So take a harder look at the parking mandates basically and reduce those. People will find a way to park and you don't have to, you know, Black Friday is once a year. You don't have to build a lot for a once-a-year event.
Mark Venuti: Well and that goes back to, you know, I remember growing up in the old days, you'd go, you know, I lived in a little rural place way smaller than the town of Geneva and you'd go in town for shopping and you'd stop and park at six different places and shop at six different stores. Now what you go to the one giant store and everybody wants to be able to park, you know, 10 steps away.
Paul Szmal: Right. Well, we just have to get, you know, I spent a lot of years in Washington, D.C., my middle years and, you know, you're spoiled around here. You want to drive up and be right in front of the place. When we were in D.C., if we could get within a couple of blocks of where we wanted to go, we were high-fiving and you just get used to it. It's no big deal. You park your car, you walk a block or two.
Paul Szmal: All right, Supervisor Mark Vanuti, thanks for 2024. You really bring a lot of information to the town residents and we're happy to share a role in doing that.
Mark Venuti: Well, my pleasure. I really enjoy it. Thank you.
Paul Szmal: All right, thank you.
