Notes from the Philipstown Town Board

Oct. 6, Oct. 12 and Oct. 19 meetings

By Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong

• The board scheduled a public hearing on the 2017 budget for 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9. At workshops on Oct. 12 and Oct. 19, it discussed spending for emergency services and the highway and recreation departments.
• The board decided to begin adopting traffic regulations as resolutions instead of laws, a lengthier process that requires public hearings. Supervisor Richard Shea said the change was prompted by frustrations with the simple task of installing no-parking signs on Indian Brook Road after “a sudden surge in popularity of Indian Brook Road and Indian Brook Falls, with people parking wherever they wanted in vast numbers, blocking the road, and us not really having a legal maneuver to tow them away and ticket them.”
• Joining other voices up and down the river, the board expressed its “firm and unequivocal opposition” to an industry proposal to allow oil tankers to anchor along the Hudson River, including between Beacon and Newburgh. The U.S. Coast Guard is soliciting public comment; the board asked that it hold public meetings. “Certainly it’s not going to help tourism here,” Shea said. “No one wants to see 10 barges parked off the dock.”
• The board hired the consulting firm AKRF for a $757,137 project involving an environmental impact statement and engineering and bid documents for the riverfront segment of the planned Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, a path that will parallel the river and link Cold Spring and Beacon. The funding comes from a $400,000 state grant and up to $400,000 in private matching money through the Hudson Highlands Land Trust.

  

• The board accepted a $15,500 bid from Land Works Excavating for drainage work on East Mountain Road South. In a letter, the town’s consulting engineer, Ron Gainer, noted the project “represents the final Hurricane Irene-related work to be performed by the town” and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded Philipstown about $16,000 to cover the costs.
• The board authorized Highway Superintendent Carl Frisenda to spend $50,237 on a S650 T4 Bobcat Skid-Steer Loader, a compact piece of road machinery used for lifting and moving earth.
• The board appointed Max Garfinkle, a member of the Conservation Board, as natural resources review officer. He fills the vacancy created by the death in August of longtime wetlands inspector David Klotzle at age 72. In addition to his 33-year career as a natural resources manager, Klotzle spent more than four decades as an outdoor educator. He began his work in the early 1970s when he was employed as a barn cleaner at the Teatown Lake Reservation in Ossining and was asked one day to lead a group of children on a hike.