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A Few Clouds and Breezy Village Board takes first steps on long-range plan
The Village of Sea Cliff Board of Trustees have begun what will be a year-long process beginning with the gathering of information and opinions from the residents for the village’s long-range plan. This plan, overseen by the board and the Long Range Planning Committee, is the first of its kind to be implemented in Sea Cliff since the 1970s. It will include ways to develop the village and help it achieve its best future.
The idea for a long-term plan was initiated in 2019, with the creation of the Long Range Planning Committee. Then trustee Elena Villafane was selected to be the Board’s liaison with the committee. She oversaw the distribution of a survey asking community members what changes or improvements they would like to see in the village.
Despite a promising response from roughly 500 Sea Cliff residents, like so many other things, the coronavirus pandemic put the long-term plan on hold indefinitely. During the pandemic, Villafane was elected mayor, where she subsequently sought to improve the efficiency of the committee by shrinking it and adding a second liaison from the board.
“We were very heartened by the community response, but then the pandemic hit and everything was shelved,” Villafane explained. “Based upon what I had seen in the first go-around, a too big committee was too hard to get moving.”
With the pandemic winding down however, business for the board has returned to relative normalcy, and the trustees have now begun to establish an outline of their long-range plan. To this end they have hired BFJ Planning, a consulting firm specializing in urban planning and design.
The committee settled on BFJ after putting out a request for qualifications, which allows vendors or contractors to provide their expertise on specific products or services, during which they spoke with numerous firms to get an understanding of how to go about beginning a long-range plan. This was followed by a request for a proposal, in which the government lets companies present offers on a project. The committee interviewed four of the six respondents.
BFJ has now begun the early stage of reaching out to the community for surveys and studies to begin to establish the parameters of the long-range plan. According to Trustee Nick Pinto, one of the board’s liaisons with the committee, the plan is meant to be community-focused and driven, with the focus on addressing issues or concerns any Sea Cliff resident may have.
“The long-range plan is actually a blueprint for the next 20 years of what we’re going to be doing in sequence,” Pinto said. “It will help prioritize projects like maintenance of our coasts and coastline and things like that.”
The plan will be funded through money budgeted for it by the village board, who will also be applying for grants and funding through the Consolidated Funding Application, a web-based application designed to streamline and expedite the application process for grants available through New York state agencies and authorities.
The major focuses of the plan will be to address the concerns and opinions of residents on the future of the village, as well as look at and head off potential issues ahead, such as climate change. Trustee Dina Epstein, who is the deputy mayor and the other liaison to the Long Range Planning Committee, explained that the board would be looking to explore supporting a wide range of issues, ultimately leaving the final decision of what to focus on up to the community.
“It’s all going to be based on community outreach, it’s going to be based on looking at what we have in place now and speaking to the residents and seeing what they want,” Epstein said. “So we don’t know the outcome right now, that’s why we’re going through the whole process.”
In the meantime, the committee has been setting up a website for the long-term plan which will be attached to a link on the village website and accessible to Sea Cliff residents. The website is currently under review, and it is expected to be launched in the next couple of weeks.
