2019 Year in Review and the Year Ahead
After a pause, Fallsburg’s Future resumes its communications with you all. As many of you have heard, we lost one of our founding members, Steve Gordon, in November due to complications of cancer. The sudden death of this tireless political activist is a big loss to the Fallsburg community and especially to us at Fallsburg Future and Friends of Columbia Hill in Hurleyville, Steve’s base of operations. As Brian Manown, a co-founder of FF along with Steve in 2016, put it: “Steve was a great friend and a wonderful human being. He was dedicated to the well-being of the people around him. Fallsburg’s Future was one of the many ways that Steve expressed his commitment and dedication to the community. He believed that it was through individuals that the important concerns of the community are expressed.”
We miss Steve – his knowledge and insights will be difficult to replace -- but he is well remembered.
2019
Implementation of Comprehensive Plan?
In many ways the work of Fallsburg’s Future during the year is a tribute to Steve. It built on our earlier support for the town’s update of its Comprehensive Plan, the vision for development over the next decade, and our advocacy for the moratorium on further residential development until such a plan was adopted. One of our members, Rebecca Pratt, provided the leadership to the Comprehensive Plan Committee that pushed through many of our recommendations.
We identified several (perhaps note them here) of the 100 recommendations of the CP and began 2019 by advocating to the Town Board that it include representative residents on an implementation committee to insure that the CP be taken seriously. Our letter to the Town Board stated in part:
“The 2018 Comprehensive Plan Update, adopted in June, 2018, includes a list of recommendations to be implemented by the Town Board. We welcome and support the most of the recommendations, the first of which is to appoint a committee that will take on the task of implementation.…we are concerned that this committee has not yet been established, to the best of our knowledge. We want to be sure that the town creates this committee.
Without it, confidence in the Comprehensive Plan can easily be eroded if residents believe that it only sits on a shelf collecting dust.
Fallsburg’s Future sees the Comprehensive Plan as a living document, a useful tool in guiding the development of our town.
According to the Comprehensive Plan itself, in the section “Other,” O-3 states:
‘Establish a standing Comprehensive Plan Implementation Committee to ensure implementation of the recommendations of this Plan subsequent to its adoption, by continually monitoring progress and communicating with the Town Board, staff, and relevant Boards and Committees.’
We respectfully ask the Board to provide us with the following information.
Has the Comprehensive Plan Implementation Committee been established?
If not, why not?
If not, when will it be established?
Who will be represented on the Committee?
Will the town accept nominations for the Committee from the public?
If the Committee has been established, who are the members?
Does the Committee hold regular meetings?
Are the meetings open to the public?
Is the Committee authorized to act independently, to carry out activities in response to the recommendations in the 2018 CPU Update?
We appreciate your timely response and look forward to finding ways to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan’s crucial recommendations.”
To date we have not received a response to this letter. We have been told informally, however, that an implementation committee will not be formed and that reviews will be undertaken by representatives of the different town boards and offices.
Communication with Residents
Our team at FF also identified the lack of clear, accessible and timely information regarding official town meetings as an obstacle to public participation in the civic life of Fallsburg. Members of the Town Board sometimes lament the low turnout at town meetings and we believe some of them genuinely would like more public participation that they feel would raise sorely needed trust in their work. However, their communications through the website remain woefully inadequate.
We wrote a letter to the Board (date?) presenting our case for more transparency, which read in part:
“We write out of our shared concern that Fallsburg residents have timely and complete access to information, especially agendas, documents and minutes, relating to the various town board meetings. We appreciate that the Board is looking for ways to increase public awareness of the town’s official business.
From our experience, however, we find that the current communications setup, including the agenda formats and page locations on the Fallsburg’s website, do not facilitate the smooth exchange of information.
The current bare-bone agendas and location of relevant documents relating to official meetings hinder the ability of residents to become involved. When residents cannot easily access and review necessary information prior to board meetings, their capacity to engage in the proceedings is diminished. We believe that significantly more information should be available to the general public so that it can be reviewed and digested by all town residents.
While some information is available at the Code Enforcement Office, we would like as much information as possible to be digitally available on the town website. This would include the applications that are submitted, as well as site plans, surveys and all the related documents for projects.
Without knowledge, the public cannot effectively participate nor assume responsibility for what happens in our town. More people are interested in the affairs of the town than what is reflected in the attendance at meetings. More people would show up for meetings if they had easier access to the information they need in order to comment and interact with the various boards.
We ask that you please consider more ways of making all pertinent information available on your website. We will be grateful for your acknowledgement of this note.”
We received no formal response from the Board but we were told that they would, for example, make space available at the Planning Board office for residents to look at site plans…..(?)
Studying the Long-term Impact of Development
Fallsburg residents are concerned that the accelerating development of residential housing in recent years runs counter to the rural character of the area and could preclude our aspirations to rebuilding our economy to become a much-needed environmentally, attractive destination for visitors from nearby urban areas. We do not want to wake up in five, ten or 20 years and find that our water has run out, our sewer treatment plants are overwhelmed and our streets are impassable for vehicle and pedestrians alike. We are not against development. We do want an ethnically and racially diverse population who can enjoy good jobs, good schools and the great outdoors. Everyone should have a place in Fallsburg.
For this reason, Fallsburg Future believes one of the most important recommendations in the 2018 Comprehensive Plan is for the ongoing assessment of the cumulative impact of large-scale developments on the infrastructure of the town. Again, we addressed our concerns to the Town Board. Our letter said in part:
“The construction of thousands of new homes - built, under construction or before
the Planning Board -- on such a small and relatively poor rural community’s physical
infrastructure, namely the streets, water and sewer, continues to move forward
without the benefit of having important information that a study might provide. The
impact of this growth, if not carefully managed, could possibly lead to outcomes that
put the town in an unsustainable financial position.
Such a study would include residential developments oriented as independent site
plans as well as those that might be classified as sub-divisions.
It might also include information/data and observations about how these changes
affect the character of the community.
We would like have accurate data that quantifies the number of rental homes,
homes that are occupied part-time/seasonally, and homes that are occupied full-
time/year-round. We believe that it’s important to have a much better
understanding of the number of seasonally occupied homes versus permanently
occupied homes for you to have the ability to manage the town and its resources
effectively.
Therefore, we ask that the Town take the necessary first steps to engage in a study,
as recommended in the 2018 CP, of the impact of high-density housing
developments.”
To date we have received no response from the Town Board. There was talk of a water and sewer capacity study in 2019, but nothing was made public. At the same time, there were reports of inadequate water pressure, especially to new developments, which could have been catastrophic had there been a fire emergency. As well, last summer water main breaks occurred at a rate of one a week according to reliable sources. Some waste treatment plants are already working at capacity during peak season.
The Year Ahead
As we regroup following Steve’s death, we expect to continue to identify problems that we will take to the Town Board and publicize our news better to our network of concerned residents. It is not enough, of course, to point out the problems. We must come up with solutions as well. For this we need well informed supporters and participants and expert, sometimes technical, advice.
For instance, we will continue to put pressure on the Board to undertake a broad review of Fallburg’s current and projected demands for water, sewer and road use given the rate of growth that can be expected. We must have real data and, despite dismissive reassurances that there is nothing to worry about, it has become quite clear that we, at least we in the public, do not have access to hard data aside from year-end water and sewer reports. Who pays for the huge upgrades and expansions that are clearly needed?
While it is the responsibility of the Board to come up with the funds pay for a study of this scale, we at FF are exploring the possibilities of finding grants that would cover the consultants and expenses for such a technical and politically sensitive project. Any ideas?
Similarly, on the issue of the Town’s website, we may have to find ways to support them in getting the right information posted in a timely manner. This will require a review of what exists and what is needed. Your thoughts are welcome.
We need more on the issues that we plan to explore, list and then issue an appeal for new people, something like this:
If you are interested in working on any of these issues, please contact us. You can email us at office@fallsburgsfuture.com. We would love to have people with legal, governmental, environmental, economic, IT and community organizing knowledge but enthusiasm and patience will do just fine.