Woe is Gardiner - by M. Kells

I attended a Gardiner Planning Board meeting last night. I can’t say how long it had been since I had attended one of these agonizing meetings. And, it was more agonizing by far than the last one I attended.

What is so obvious is that we have tied ourselves into knots in this town. Overarching the whole proceeding was the sticky governmental intrusion into the minute details of the smallest improvement anyone wants to make on their property.

There’s the Open Space Law, the present zoning laws, the county restrictions. And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. There will be new zoning laws to mesh with the Open Space Plan. If you can’t persuade the hapless landowner to protect by one of the ingenious conservation arrangements, you can force him by restrictive zoning. There is more than one way to skin a cat, as we used to say.

And it isn’t as if we did not have good zoning in this town before all the cognoscenti arrived here, with their utopian (in their minds) dreams of a rural paradise where men would be laboring in the fields and vineyards in overalls and the ladies would be doing homey things in their calicos and sunbonnets. I exaggerate! But, it isn’t far from true. Our present zoning, hanging by a thread waiting for draconian change, prevented the slaughterhouse from being built next to homes. There were sensibilities here before the invasion. We had entered the twenty-first century.

Once upon a time, the town was run by elected fellow-townsmen (gender neutral), and they did a creditable job of making plans. Now, plans are made for us by an army of outside consultants, with their pre-conceived ideas of how Gardiner should live. Boiler-plate, jargon infused ideas. They never lived here, or knew the people here. They were just paid to come with their “strategies” and fit their plan to another place almost like the last place and the place before that.

Mike Boylan ran the meeting with good humor, firmness and fairness. He could only go with the laws that control what the board does.

I had to leave the meeting before it ended, so I was sorry not to have been able to shake the hand of Jim Freiband, who has served for years and years as the dependable Planning Board advisor. It was his last night in that capacity. He who knew almost every blade of grass in Gardiner. The turnover is almost complete.

Woe is Gardiner!

Highway Headaches

At the July Town Board meeting, the town board should have signed a Highway 284 document, which spells out in detail the major road projects to be worked on in 2006. Simply, it’s an agreement between the Town and the Highway Department for capital improvements to be made during the year.

However, as the board was about to act on the document, former town highway Superintendent Mike Caldreone asked to be heard with some comments of his own. First, he stated that the document outlining projects, by law, should have been submitted and finalized at the beginning of the year, not at this late date in the summer. No legal expenditures on roads can be made without this being signed.

Secondly, Mr. Calderone noted that one of the projects specified for 2006, Lake Road, had already been funded in a previous year’s budget, but that the work was never done, due to delays in the rebuilding of the Lake Road bridge. This funding, by law, should still be lying, unspent in the Highway Capital Reserve Fund, and may not be appropriated or taxed a second time for the same project.

Current Highway Superintendent Charlie Haynes was not present at the meeting to answer questions. The Town Board, reluctant to compound problems by having further delay in executing the document, voted to accept it subject to necessary changes.

UPDATED 8/10/06 Highway issues continued to be under discussion at the August 8, 2006 Town meeting. Charlie Haynes was present to discuss the projects in process, and he indicated that because of unexpected additional high oil and fuel prices, all costs having to do with highway maintenance were up….and that an approximate $25,000 additional budget was going to be needed to finish the roadwork scheduled for this year. Roads are the most vital “corridors” in Gardiner to link our rural town, but the town board and supervisor needed to discuss this with the “finance committee” before giving assurances that the money would be there for the Highway Department.

Also, Mike Calderone, former Highway Superintendent of many years, brought up again the question of double taxation by the town for the same project, namely Lake Road. The money was taxed for this project back in 2000, but since the work was not able to be done at the time, the money should have been held in reserve, and not taxed to the people a second time in the 2006 budget. The town supervisor said the money was not in the budget, and that he would contact the town attorney about the matter.

PAY UP, CARL!

Pay up, Carl! Earlier in the spring of 05, there were two pay periods where the town payroll account was not sufficiently funded. This caused a deficit in the account with not enough money to cover the town payroll. In addition, at least one town employee "bounced" his electronic payment of bills because of this.

At the Sept. 12th town board meeting, Carl Zatz danced around the trugh when he implied that it affected only one person, and that it was their fault for assuming that their money would be in their account on time on payday.

The truth is that it affected the entire town payroll, on more than one occasion. This is totally unacceptable accounting practice, and the question was if this problem could potentially happen again under the current chief fiscal officer.

The answer is "Yes", it can happen again, and it did, the first week in January. The inept manager Carl Zatz, when asked about it by town employees, blamed it on the consultant CPA for not making a bank deposit on the "snow day". First of all, Carl, since when is it the job description of the CPA to make bank deposits.....and why are we paying out $85 tax dollars an hour for someone to make a bank deposit. Don't we have a town bookkeeper? And, if she was not available, where were you, our great Chief Fiscal Officer of the town? Secondly, are the town finances so tight that the payroll can't be met if one bank deposit is missed? Whatever happened to Carl telling everyone that we are just "rolling" in money?

Our town employees deserve to be paid on time every week. Not doing so is an outrage, and if it were a private business, the person responsible for such a lack of accountability would be fired. Maybe the person responsible should be fired!

The Foundations of our Government - Lets Keep them Strong

In a recent editorial by the Times Herald Record, the editor berated citizens of this country for not knowing the basics about the documents that are the foundation of our government, and the Constitution in particular. Seems that in a recent survey, people were unable to identify some of the basic rights afforded them by the Constitution, but they were able to identify personalities from sitcoms.

In fact, think about the last time you actually took the time to sit down and read our Constitution, Bill of Rights or Amendments? It's easy to lose sight of the importance of our freedoms, and how hard won they were, when we aren't even sure of exactly what they are. Most of us are guilty of being not as knowledgeable about our documents of freedom than we should be, and the editor is probably right.

On the other hand, it's easy to write an editorial criticizing people for being ignorant, but what exactly is the newspaper, or for that matter anyone in the media, doing about it? That editor was in a perfect position to take his article one step further. Instead of just criticizing and complaining about the lack of knowledge by the American people, why not use their paper and their ink to print and publicize our documents of freedom...the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence? If each and every newspaper would print these documents once or twice a year, maybe people would take the time to read them, and familarize themselves with these unique charters that we live and die by.

We've decided to give you the same ease of access to our Constitution, and here are the links that will take you directly to copies that you can read, download, and print.

Gardiner Rail Trail Saga by Marion Kells

For more than two decades the question has cropped up in Gardiner -- to take over (buy) , or not to take over the portion of the old railroad bed that runs through our town. Recently, Louis Benson and Joe Katz formed a committee to look into the question. After some investigation they suggested that, in their opinion, it was time for Gardiner to purchase the property. And they gave several reasons for it. They gave none of the reasons for approaching such a purchase with caution, if not downright refusal. And in the ensuing months, the euphoria over possibly owning the rail trail has the Town Board on the brink of ownership. That would be ownership by the taxpayers of Gardiner.

The committee mentioned relatively small sums for the purchase and other costs that would be incurred if the town bought the rail trail. They never were able to give a figure for how much it costs the Town and Village of New Paltz to operate and maintain the rail trail in their jurisdictions. That would be a very important, even deciding, figure to know.

The reasons Gardiner does not now own the rail trail, and some history of the years-long discussion are interesting.

In March of 1982, notices were sent by New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) announcing the abandonment of portions of the Conrail right-of-way (ROW). The notice informed towns through which the ROW ran, that they would have preferential right to acquire the property, and that the towns must advise NYSDOT of their interest by certain date, or those rights would lapse.

In May of 1983, the supervisors of New Paltz, Gardiner, Shawangunk and Montgomery contacted NYSDOT asking that their four towns be granted preferential status. Negotiations concerning purchase price and other considerations would involve the towns, NYSDOT and Conrail.

Following that period, attention to the rail trail was low priority for the Gardiner Town Board. The towns of Montgomery and Shawangunk purchased the ROW in their towns in October 1985.

By 1988 a group calling itself the Wallkill Valley Railroad Associates (WVRA) made a bid for the ROW traversing Gardiner and the Town and Village of New Paltz. A June 1988 letter from Matthew Bialecki, representing the WVRA, apprised the Gardiner supervisor of the intention of the group, if their bid was accepted, to sell off the ROW to the municipalities. He added that if the municipalities were not interested,, WVRA would sell to private individuals, most likely adjacent landowners.

Later in 1988, the ROW came to the interest of the Wallkill Valley Land Trust (WVLT), which had organized for the purpose of furthering land preservation. How the WVRA was eclipsed by the WVLT is not clear, but from that point on, the WVLT controlled the ROW. They stated that their association with the Trust For Public Land made it possible for them “to participate in projects which might otherwise be beyond our financial or technical ability”.

The WVLT issued a Declaration stating what obligations they or any subsequent owners of the ROW would have. These “rules” would be in effect permanently, and dictate how the ROW would be administered. Apparently, the Town and Village of New Paltz agreed to the “rules”, and contracted with WVLT early in 1989, to purchase their portions of the ROW. There followed a flurry of letters to the Town of Gardiner urging them to “sign on”. Clearly, the WVLT, not wanting the responsibility of ownership, hoped to turn over the rail trail, with their added Declaration of restrictions, as quickly as possible.

During that period Gardiner town boards changed from election to election, but those boards were always only lukewarm to any takeover of the ROW. The reluctance by Gardiner in the ROW discussions was for several reasons: the well-known (but now past) Gardiner aversion to spending taxpayer money for non-essentials; the apprehension about taking on a liability with possibility of lawsuits; demands by a few that more and more amenities be added to the rail trail; the demand by WVLT to impose restrictions on use of the trail, even if Gardiner owned it; WVLT would not guarantee title or the value of quit claims; the contention by the Town and Village of New Paltz that they had the power to commit the Town of Gardiner to purchase Gardiner’s portion of the ROW; and, among additional reasons, the correct assumption that the rail trail would benefit New Paltz residents and other outsiders, far more than Gardiner residents and serve as a unique corridor of access to our town, and the properties abutting the trail, that could have undesirable consequences.

In July 1988, the Gardiner Town Board sent a questionnaire to Gardiner residents whose property abutted the ROW. The results of this questionnaire were almost unanimously against the use of the ROW as a rail trail or linear park. Also, the Town Board received letters from other taxpayers in the town, objecting to the use of tax dollars in such a purchase and continued upkeep.

At a meeting in June, 1989 between the Gardiner Town Board and the WVLT, the Gardiner Town Board gave their final NO to any takeover of the ROW.

A February 7, 1991 letter from Steve Ruelke, Project Manager for WVLT, to the Gardiner Town Board, announced that purchases by the Town and Village of New Paltz of their portions of the ROW were completed. He added that the offer to the Town of Gardiner to purchase their ROW portion was now null and void. However, the door was not shut to possible negotiations in the future.

Mr. Ruelke went on to outline some of WVLT’s plans for the rail trail: their intent to improve the trail between 44/55 and the Town of New Paltz; decking the Forest Glen bridge; brush clearing and ditching; working with the Wallkill Valley Railroad Association, volunteers committed to operating, managing and maintaining the entire 12 miles of trail; planning a small railroad museum; organizing nature walks and other activities.

The WVLT’s annoyance with Gardiner’s turn down was thinly concealed. Newspaper reports had then saying that Gardiner was “putting up smoke screens”, and Gardiner Town Board members wouldn’t participate in the rail trail scheme because they were “afraid of new ideas”. And periodically, throughout the 1990s, feelers were sent from the WVLT to Gardiner officials to see if a change in boards might have brought about a change in minds.

An example of such an attempt to spark Gardiner’s interest occurred in 1993. WVLT asked that Gardiner agree to act as municipal sponsor for a grant application under the ISTEA Transportation Enhancement federal program. The plan was that if WVLT succeeded in receiving the grant, the money would suffice as Gardiner’s payment for the rail trail. It was learned that by being a municipal sponsor for the ISTEA grant, Gardiner could be left in the sorry position of being responsible for the rail trail if the other parties failed their part of the agreement. In addition, the town board asked WVLT to release Gardiner from the restrictions placed on the rail trail by the WVLT Declaration. They refused, and once again, Gardiner had to deny WVLT’s request.

CODA: The above decisions of the past Gardiner town boards are proven to have been wise. Time after time stories in the local papers have told of vandalism, intrusion on private property, necessity of police involvement, and continued demands by trail users for additional amenities. All of these problems and costs would have been the responsibility of Gardiner taxpayers, had we bought the ROW.

The facts that Gardiner has within its borders a fine town park, as yet not fully developed, a state park on the Shawangunk Ridge, along with the recently added Awosting Reserve and Tillson Lake land, other parcels in the town set aside for future parks, and expansive yards where most residents do their recreating, all work against Gardiner taking on still more park land.

It is unreasonable that Gardiner should buy the rail trail. Gardiner will not be deprived of it, since it runs through our town. It is owned by a group pledged by their Declaration to continue it as a rail trail. Working with the Wallkill Valley Railroad Association, they have the clout to obtain grants (already proven), and they have the enthusiasm of the people who are interested in such a linear park. It is just and fair that those who believe in it should shoulder the burden, not all the taxpayers of Gardiner.

TRANSFER STATION RATES RISE

Apparently garbage doesn’t pay. According to Town Supervisor Zatz, the Transfer Station is losing money. According to Councilman Joe Katz it’s losing money “bigtime”. And, this is in spite of scrap prices being high, and these revenues coming in to the town. So, the town board has decided to up the pricing for all residents using the transfer station. New rates will be posted at the station, and also on the town website. You will no longer be able to pay cash for the service, but will need to pay by check. It seems as if the town can find a grant for all the purchases it wants to make in terms of land, so maybe they can find a grant to cover the cost of “environmentally sound garbage disposal”, so that we all don’t have to foot the bill.