Letter to Steve Vegliante, Supervisor, and Town Board Council Members

March 10, 2019

Steve Vegliante, Supervisor, and Town Board Council Members

Town of Fallsburg

Accessibility to Information

Members of the Fallsburg Town Board Council,

We appreciate and share in the Board’s desire to increase public involvement in the town’s official business. We believe that Fallsburg residents should have greater and simpler access to information relating to the goings on at the various board meetings, and get that information in a timely fashion.

Our experience is that when we find out about a proposed project we have very little time to look it over. Our ability to react to it in an intelligent way is hampered by limitations of the information available on the Fallsburg website and limitations that we face at the Code Enforcement Office.

The Website

1-    The amount of information available on the website is limited. Usually there is the name, number and date of the project, the zone, a short statement on what the requester wants, and a vague description regarding where it is.

a.     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.

b.     This information should be digitized by the developer or resident making the request, and then uploaded on to the website.  Alternatively, the information can go up on the developer or resident’s website and the town given a hyperlink to the info.

c.     The information would include the applications that are submitted, as well as site plans, surveys and all the related documents for projects.

2-    Getting information at the Code Enforcement Office

a.     The people at Code Enforcement are always pleasant and forthcoming. The problem is that the only place to peruse the information is at the counter.  Within a few minutes one feels like he/she is in the way.  It is a busy place, and in actuality, you really are in the way.  

b.     When lay people want to look at a proposed project they will probably not know exactly what they want to look at, but would like to look over the whole submission. The act of looking is part of educating the public.

c.     We would like a space set aside where residents can look over the sometimes quite large documents,

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. We will be grateful for your acknowledgement of this note.

Sincerely,

Fallsburg’s Future