By Michael Turton
At its July 23 meeting, the Cold Spring Village Board began addressing the question of whether food trucks should be allowed to set up on village-owned properties, and if so, to what extent.
The village recently permitted Michelle’s Roadside Kitchen to set up at Mayor’s Park on July 20 and 21. The truck will be there again this weekend to help the board assess its operation and related issues.
The village code, now being updated, requires that food truck operators pay the municipality $25 per day. Trustees agreed that, if allowed, the fee should increase.
Two restaurant owners told The Current they oppose allowing food trucks because of the potential impact they have on brick-and-mortar eateries. The Village Board will likely discuss the matter again at its Aug. 6 meeting.
Code update
The ongoing update of the Village Code is nearly complete. Deputy Mayor Marie Early said a public hearing to review the recommended changes will be held by the end of September.
Early said making the revised code readily accessible is “a challenge.” The 500-page document includes 134 chapters, some of which had not been reviewed in 40 years, she said.
Trustees favored producing “redline” copies showing both the original and revised text. Residents will be able to submit comments for up to 30 days after the hearing.
In other business …
The board approved the purchase of a boiler for the water treatment plant on Fishkill Road. Pidala Oil submitted the successful bid of $9,875.
Early and Trustee Fran Murphy completed the annual audit of Cold Spring Justice Court records for the fiscal year ending May 31, as required by state law, and found no irregularities.
Six docking requests from the sloop Clearwater for dates through early October were approved, along with an Aug. 6 campout at Dockside Park. The Clearwater’s request to dock from Oct. 3 to 7 was shortened by two days because SeaStreak cruise boats will be docked on Oct 6 and 7. Docking fees were waived because Clearwater is a nonprofit educational organization. The River Rose was also granted permission to dock at Cold Spring on Oct. 18.
The third annual Church Street block party will be held on Aug. 31, and trustees approved closing the street for the event.
As a resident for the last 4 1/2 years, I have been frustrated by the poor level of service provided by Optimum. Ongoing outages of internet, phone and TV service have become routine, and continued follow-up calls to Cablevision’s Customer Service-along with escalations to supervisors-have been ineffective in improving our quality of service.
This is an issue that I have brought to the attention of Richard Shea and the Philipstown Town Board. Efforts reportedly are now underway to set up a meeting with Optimum; Robert Flaherty is responsible for setting up the meeting.
It would be very helpful if concerned residents would consistently report outages to Cablevision, and also report this problem to the NYS Public Service Commission (per request by Richard Shea). If would be very helpful if The Highlands Current would publish this information.