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1. What is a Super Majority?

A majority of all of the voting members of a board, plus one. For example, a "super majority" of a seven member board is five.

2. How can I find out more about County Planning Board trends, membership, responsibilities, procedures, and areas of review?

Please click here  to review the most recent Ontario County Planning Board By-laws.

Please Click Here  to review the most recent CPB Annual Report.

3. What information is typically included in a County Planning Board referral?

Referral to the County Planning Board requires a “full statement of proposed action.”  Current NYS General Municipal Law Section 239-m 1(c) defines full statement of such proposed action as “all materials required by and submitted to the referring body as an application on a proposed action, including a completed environmental assessment form and all other materials required by such referring body in order to make its determination of significance pursuant to the state environmental quality review act under article eight of the environmental conservation law and its implementing regulations. When the proposed action referred is the adoption or amendment of a zoning ordinance or local law, “full statement of such proposed action” shall also include the complete text of the proposed ordinance or local law as well as all existing provisions to be affected thereby, if any, if not already in the possession of the county planning agency or regional planning council.  Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this paragraph, any referring body may agree with the county planning agency or regional planning council as to what shall constitute a “full statement” for any or all of those proposed actions which said referring body is authorized to act upon.”

To facilitate efficient review by County staff and ex-official members of the Board (Agricultural Enhancement Board, Public Works, Emergency Management, Economic Development, Tourism, and Soil and Water), a complete County Planning Board referral package typically includes the following information:

• A complete cover sheet
• An application with all information required by the referring board, drawings included.  This typically includes a narrative description of the proposed activities and information sufficient to determine the action’s impact on natural features/conservation areas, grading, drainage, sequencing of construction activities, access and traffic, and buildings, signage, and lighting.
• If a local law or ordinance a full copy of the proposed law.
• Any relevant county or state agency correspondence which referring board would like considered.
• SEQR Part 1 documentation if applicable
• Agricultural data statement if applicable

4. How to review property characteristics of a site & surrounding area or know if an application is within 500' of boundaries, roads & other features subject to County Planning Board referral

Click here for the Explore Area application.  This application allows viewing of environmental features on or within 500’ of 1 or more tax parcels.  Because the application consolidates a huge amount of information, it will take quite a while to generate the report of features on the defined site or in the buffer area.