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1983-08-09The regular meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals of the Town of Wappinger was held on Tuesday, August 9th, 1983, beginning at 8:00 p.m., at the Town Hall, Mill Street, Wappingers Falls, New York. Members Present: Carol A. Waddle, Chairperson Angel Caballero Charles A. Cortellino Joseph E. Landolfi G. George Urciuoli - arrived at 8:08 p.m. Members Absent: None Others Present: Hans R. Gunderud, Bldg. Inspector/Zoning Admin. Betty -Ann Russ, Secretary Joseph Tinelli, Deputy Bldg. Inspector/Zoning Admin. Mrs. Waddle: I would like to call this meeting of the Zoning Board to order. Betty -Ann, have all the appropriate property owners been notified. Mrs. Russ: The abutting property owners and the appellants were notified according to the records available in the Assessor' office. The roll call was then taken. Mrs. Waddle: I would like to welcome you to the Zoning Board this evening and I will tell you a little bit about how the Board operates. We will hear each appeal, everyone will have a chance to speak, pro or con on the appeal, after the appeal is closed the Board will do its deliberation up here, at that time that the Board deliberates there will be no more audience participation, we may or may not render a decision on the cases this evening. I am going to take the first appeal out of order since I know that there is a large crowd here for that. Zoning Board of Appeals -2- August 9th, 1983 Mrs. Waddle: "" Appeal # 668, at the request of Greystone House, Inc., seeking a Special Use Permit pursuant to Article IV, Section 421, paragraph 5 of the Town of Wappinger Zoning Ordinance, to permit the utilization of buildings and land to be used for a residential program for Dutchess County Mentally Retarded Individuals, on property located on Wheeler Hill Road, being the Augustinian Novititiate, being parcel # 6057-03-487186, consisting of approximately 107+ acres, in the Town of Wappinger. Is there anyone here to speak for this appeal. Mr. Mitchell: Good evening, my name is Rick Mitchell and I am an attorney with Mc Cabe & Mack, the attorneys for Greystone House and I would like to introduce Marc Kelley who I believe is known to you, he is the executive director of Greystone House, he will give our presentation. Mr. Kelley: Well, I have presented our program outline before, I thought I would start Mrs. Waddle: Sir, you have to present it again because this is the public hearing. Mr. Kelley: Yes, I realize that but I just wanted to start with my letter to you of August 3rd, 1983, I recently wrote the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board on behalf of Greystone to notify them as of this week, in fact it was August 1st, I was notified by the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, that the provision of the budget which establishes what is called per bed cost for hospitals, nursing homes, medicaid programs to which this program would be a medicaid entitlement program, that they developed new guidelines in terms of what is cost effective and after their review of our program they felt that we would have to increase the capacity to 44 clients for them to approve the program rather than the forty which was which I had originally discussed at the public meetings and the meetings with the neighbors, so I did write the Board on the third of August which was as soon as I knew about the change. Zoning Board of Appeals -3- August 9th, 1983 Mrs. Waddle: I am sure you have the documentation that we can see that they asked you for these changes. Mr. Kelley: I was told on the phone and if you would like Mrs. Waddle: Yes, we would. Mr. Kelley: Yes, also as I mentioned in my letter to you that I went over the plans with our architect, Al Mauri, who presented the plans to the Planning Board, we noted that the building, the Novitiate, the main building was originally designed for approximately 100 people, so we felt that programmatically in terms of capacity of the water system, all of those things, that the addition of four or five would not measurably affect our intention. Mr. Cortellino: Mr. Kelley, I have no doubt that the housing is available, my question is, first off, the way it is worded4it is a guideline, you are saying that it is a requirement, you will not receive money otherwise, now, next year they could change the guideline, in other words we are trying to gauge how many residents you will have there and you are telling us that we have no way of knowing it, the State will determine it. Mr. Kelley: No, the per bed cost is for establishing programs, okay, so if we rent the property, they take the annual rent and the cost of renovating for our use, okay, they average out on a per year basis and divided by the number of beds and come out with a per bed cost, what they are telling me is that when they did that with our program it came out too high and, therefore, by increasing the number of clients in the program you would reduce that per bed cost and, therefore, fall under their guidelines. Zoning Board of Appeals -4- August 9th, 1983 „r Mr. Cortellino: How long is your lease for. Mr. Kelley: The lease that we have talked about with the Novitiate is ten years, with options. Mrs. Waddle: What are the options, sir. Mr. Kelley: The options are, the first option is the right of first refusal, a thirty day right of first refusal and an option for an additional five years. So this per bed cost is only Mr. Cortellino: The Novitiate could be asking for an increase if they had another client perhaps. Mr. Kelley: They have never done this to any of our other programs, this per bed cost is for establishing programs, it has nothing to do with our operating rate once we get started, this is for the renovation money that they are giving us to start the program, besides we are licensed and our license states exactly how many clients we can have per square foot, we would be licensed for 44 clients. Mrs. Waddle: And that would be it. Mr. Kelley: I have never had a license changed unless I had additional square footage or something more in order to do that. Zoning Board of Appeals -5- August 9th, 1983 Mr. Cortellino: But you have a lot of square footage, that is where I am losing track, you preface your remarks by saying at one time there were 100 novitiates there if you would, so 44 is left than half Mr. Kelley: We designed and we looked into it, 100 novitiates in single rooms is one way to look at it, we look at living -space a lot differently, we talk about recreation space, living space, dining space, we create more recreation area than the novitiates had, so our assumptions is different, the bathrooms, the water system, the septic system and the individual bedrooms are per 100 for our use, we see no, we do not envision going anove the 44. For those of you who do not know about us, Greystone House is a not for profit corporation, we presently operate a similar type program but on a much smaller scale, residential treatment program for the mentally retarded in Hyde Park, New York and we have been developing over approximately a year and a half this 44 bed residential program for mentally retarded/developmentally disabled and we have been negotiating with the neighbors and the owners since approximately January of this year for the Augustinian Novitiate on Wheeler Hill Road, in the Town of Wappinger. This program type is called an intermediate care facility, it is defined under Title 19 of the Medicaid Law, which is a federal component of our program and part 681 of the New York State Mental Hygiene Law, to date our agency has received Dutchess County Departmental Hygience approval, our program description and Hudson Valley which is a five county regional agency which oversees any program that uses State money, it has to approve the start up of any Medicaid or State funded program and we have received their approval, the intermediate care facility type program is designed to meet the clinical needs of the mentally retarded, therefore, the services are broken down to two basic categories, routine and special services, routine services would include services that the client might need on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, i.e.: nursing services, transportation, medical services, social services, recreation, speech and psychological and less frequently used services or required services, are services that we might contract out with less say St. Francis Hospital for the wheelchair clients such as occupational therapy or physical therapy -would be considered Zoning Board of Appeals -6- August 9th, 1983 special services, the aspect of the intermediate care type model and there are various type of models that you could choose when you design a program, is that it provides for both what we call direct care supervision and clinical supervision in the building, a lot of programs presently operating where you have to go outside if you want to see a doctor, if you want to get speech, if you want to get nursing services, any type of service you have to go outside the facilty and transport your clients outside for those services, this model provides that you are provided with additional funds on a staffing pattern to provide that on grounds, for the 44 clients we envision having 82 full and part-time employees, the staffing plan is designed for 24 hour supervision in eight hour shifts, there will be no sleeping in of the staff, as part of that we are providing 24 hour nursing coverage and we envision having our administrative offices located at the Novitiate, hopefully in the mansion which is attached to the chapel which is attached to the main novitiate. Mrs. Waddle: And they are just going to be offices, there is not going to be any living quarters. Mr. Kelley: No, as I pointed out to the the Planning Board, the only living on grounds of people that we anticipate being there are the brothers that requested that they be allowed to stay on in the convent and that doesn't affect our program per se. Mrs. Waddle: How many priest, brothers. Mr. Kelley: There are three there now, I don't know what the capacity of the convent is, that is a separate building on the grounds, I have been in it, there are three floors and there are approximately six rooms on the first floor, six or eight on the second floor. I thought that I would talk a little bit about the mentally retarded Zoning Board of Appeals -7- August 9th, 1983 themselves, those of you who don't know, intelligence is categorized into basic groupings ranging from profoundly mentally retarded, which in essence is the bottom of the intelligence group, up to genius, the profoundly retarded would be anyone with a testable IQ of under 20 and the cutoff for mental retardation is 70, therefore, anybody over 70 is normal or a genius or anybody in essence of an IQ above 130 is considered a genius and anybody under 70 is classified as mentally retarded, the majority of our individuals who are program is designed for function in the profound range of mental retardation, meaning they fall in the under 20 IQ range, if you equate that with the normal person's functioning, they would function on the basis of a four year old or younger on most everyday tasks, in essence what that might translate into functional terms is that they might be able to dress themselves but could not tie shoes, or might be able to fill a pot with water but would not be able to measure a cup versus a quart, no quantative skills, they would have gross motor skills but not refined the things that as we grow older we learn so they really function as a four year old or less. Therefore, we recognize the fact that they need assistance to complete most daily tasks, obviously they need to have their shoes tied for them or get them loafers, something where they can function more independently themselves but also because they are four year olds and intellectually their behavior is generally predictable, of the 44 clients that will be in residence, 20 to 24 will attend rehabilitation programs, day treatment center in Poughkeepsie daily, Greystone will be providing an additional day program for the remaining 20 clients, our. program will be in part at the Novitiate and in part at Roseview Stables in Hyde Park, New York. Of the 44 clients, approximately 27 will be coming from Wassaic Developmental Center, 10 from the community in terms of Dutchess County community and 7 will be Dutchess County residents who will be returning from out of state placements who are Dutchess County residents. These out of state placements are clients that cannot live in wood frame buildings due to their limited physical capabilities, meaning, I discussed this at two of the other meetings, if you can exit a building by yourself in New York State independently and under 22 minutes you are not allowed in a wood frame building, so if a client or child or adult who has lived at home all his life with his parents, the minute they turn 21 and the parents are looking for alternate placement for that son or daughter they would have to go or in essence in this county you would have to go to Wassaic, you could not Zoning Board of Appeals -8- August 9th, 1983 go to a residence for family care home because you are not capable of exiting that house. Mrs. Waddle: Mr. Kelley, all these people you plan to bring from Wassaic they are all Dutchess County residents. Mr. Kelley: They are Dutchess County residents, yes. We have a signed, contractural agreement with Dr. Glatt, who is Commissioner of Mental Hygiene for Dutchess County, he has veto power on all of our admissions and the preference is Dutchess County origins. As you probably know, community based residential programs for mentally retarded individual over 18 that are fireproof, there are some for physically disabled, rehabilatation programs, two that I know of are specifically for physically disabled;, but for much higher functioning physically disabled and in essence for people who can get out on their own in under 2�2- minutes, so the choice for parents is to put their children, 21, 22, once they have aged out of educationally programs, is to put them into nursing homes in Connecticut and New Jersey and Pennsylvania because there is really, there are no places for them in this county, that is why Mr. Cortellino: Excuse me, Mr. Kelley, are they going out of state because other states have less rigid requirements or do the other places have fire retardent buildings. Mr. Kelley: They have fire retardent buildings and there is a shortage of beds in this county and the State. It is not clinically appropriate to put a 21 year old mentally retarded young man or women in a nursing home with 60,70 and 80 year old people other than just a shortage of places. Mr. Cortellino: Then may be you did not understand my question, the ones who are mentally retarded that are in Connecticut, are they in a fire retardent building. Zoning Board of Appeals -9- August 9th, 1983 Mr. Kelley: Yes, that is the ultimate point, the ultimate point is that they have to be in a fireproofed building and number two if you don't have any other places, a nursing home will suffice. Mr. Cortellino: Oh, then we go back, they could be in nursing homes in other states where they couldn't do it in New York State, is that what you are saying. Mr. Kelley: Because of the overcrowding in nursing homes there isn't a place, you go to the least objectionable alternative, number one they have to be in a fireproof building, period, New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, don't care, they have to be in a fireproof building. Mr. Cortellino: An alternative would be a nursing home that met that requirement. Mr. Kelley: If there isn't any other place you have to take what you can get. I would like to emphasize the fact that the Dutchess County Department of Mental Hygiene comes with what is called a local governmental plan for mental hygiene services, part of that plan is what the County envisions is their need for the mentally retarded and the developmentally disabled, our program has been in that local governmental plan for the last two years while we have been trying to locate a facility for this program and it has been a recognized need in Dutchess County not only on our agency's part but on Dr. Glatt and the County as well that there is a tremendous need in this county for a fireproof building for the physically disabled and profoundly retarded who can also not get out cf a building in under 22 minutes. In terms of the buildings and the grounds themselves, the Novitiate property consists of approximately 107+ acres, in that 107 acres there is a mansion, a chapel, the main novitiate, a large carriage barn, convent, smaller barns and several small out buildings. Our plans call forleasing from the owners approximately 33 acres which would include the one quarter mile driveway, the mansion, the chapel, the novitiate, the carriage barn and some out buildings, the acreage would include the septic fields and wells and cisterns as well as providing access to the main buildings. The novitiate would be used as a residence for clients, in addition to developing three residence within the building, Zoning Board of Appeals -10- August 9th, 1983 one per floor with their respective supervisors, no sleeping and no dining facilities, we will be upgrading the fire protection system as per State and Federal requirements and painting the entire interior with fire retardent paint, both points which I brought out at the Planning Board meeting, we hope to use the mansion for administrative offices but that also depends upon the cost of renovations, the carriage barn would be used as a basketball court and would house a few small animals as well as horses for clients and the present owners are requesting, if possible, that the Brothers be permitted to stay on, we have mutually agreed that if they so choose, they are welcome to stay in the existing convent building as their residence. A few points I would like to make in terms of the clients and everything, our clients are mentally retarded, I don't mean to bad mouth any other disability but I would just like to make distinctions, they are mentally retarded, they have an IQ under 70, they are not drug abusers, they are not alcoholics, they are not mentally ill, not that those people don't deserve a place in the community or a nice place to live, I am just trying to distinguish mentally retarded from other types of disabilities because at our first meeting we discussed the differences between mentally ill and mentally retarded and also you already ruled on that aspect, our clients are mentally retarded not mentally ill. The level of services and supervision is the highest available outside the institutions, there is a documented need for this type of program in Dutchess County, this is documented by the five year local governmental plan by the Dutchess County Department of Mental Hygiene, in fact, in terms of an actual local need, we have envisioned admitting I think three to five clients whose parents or themselves live in the Town of Wappinger. The program will be situated in the middle of 107 acres, I literally do mean, literally in the middle of 107 acres, I don't know how many of you have ever seen the property but I emphasize the fact that the driveway is a quarter of a mile long, the buildings are on the Hudson River side of the property, which is sloping down to the Hudson, the driveway is a quarter of a mile long, I have stood on every aspect of that building and tried to see a neighbor and I cannot see one. Mrs. Waddle: Mr. Kelley, how much of that property are you actually renting. Mr. Kelley: ,*W 33 acres. Zoning Board of Appeals -11- Mrs. Waddle: 33 acres, do you have a site plan with you. Mr. Kelley: Yes, I do. Mrs. Waddle: August 9th, 1983 Thank you, could you delineate for us on this map the acreage that you are actually going to rent. Mr. Kelley: Perhaps, I could preface my comments to you by saying that at the Planning Board meeting this was discussed and they requested that we provide a more detailed plan, because they said that to mef at the time we have not been able in essence to procure a surveyor, so the architect and I figured that it would be approximately 33 acres, okay, we would be a hundred from the driveway, the location from the sign Mrs. Waddle: Can you tell me approximately where it is going to run from the driveway. Mr. Kelley: Okay, I was going to start from the driveway, it would be 100 feet either side of the driveway, coming in up the hill, then it would go, if you look at the last elevation to the left, it is 120 and 130 and 140, then on either side of that road is the approximate location of the septic field, alright, it is a large septic field, okay, so if you drew a line from approximately the 120 foot elevation, okay, from the driveway, alright, going south, southwest, according to the marking on the left, just go straight across at the 120 line, 120 foot elevation, okay, then you would go right up, including the pool, it would be a straight line, including the corner of pool, it would include the entire pool, see that on the left and then it would go if you can see here there is a poorly marked building, that is the cistern, okay, so it would go up the hill and include the cistern and then back down to the driveway and then back down the driveway, a hundred feet, either side of the driveway, so its not actually square, it is Zoning Board of Appeals -12- August 9th, 1983 as close to a square, it is as close to a rectangle that we could get. Mrs. Waddle: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kelley: But, we will be providing that as we promised the Planning Board. Would like to say two other brief things and that is for those of you who don't know us, our agency started in Dutchess County because of a few parents who felt there was a tremendous need to provide services for the autistic and there was no one in Dutchess County at that point willing to provide that service, so the parents and I put Greystone together and it came out of their desire to have a decent place for their sons to live, I am very proud that Greystone has a very good reputation in Dutchess County, we have a very good one in Hyde Park, and I can't speak for our neighbors but I think, am reasonably sure that they have not had any incidents, or felt insecure about having us for neighbors, when I first told the Novitiate, I thought it would be a perfect place for these clients, it is as I said, naturally screened, there would be minimal contact other than cars, seeking a van go up and down the road, or staffing going up and down, there is 107 acres for which there is more than enough room for us and the neighbors as far as I am concerned to live amicably next to each another but I would like to point out that Greysone in its attempt to avoid controversy first went to the neighbors on January 24th, sending them a letter asking for a meeting with them to discuss the impact of our program on them as neighbors, we additionally held a second meeting, I sent them another notice, on April 6th and we had a separate meeting then and I just want to reiterate that we have gone about this in what I consider a very logical and soft sell approach and we hope you will act favorably on our application. Mrs. Waddle: Thank you, is there anyone else here to speak for this appeal.