Beacon Roundup

Updates from the City Council

The City of Beacon plans to install a bench and seating area with a plaque on Fishkill Avenue to honor Amalio Lombardi, the Goshen man who was struck by an excavator and killed on July 28 during work to replace water and sewer infrastructure beneath the roadway.

Chris White, the city administrator, did not make his normal report during the Monday (Aug. 4) meeting of the City Council but instead spoke about Lombardi, a foreman for Sun Up Construction of Wappingers Falls who had worked on capital projects in Beacon for decades. 

Lombardi, 61, was described as a model employee by colleagues, White said, and as “a good guy. That’s a compliment that you hear repeatedly from all who knew him. He was well-known to our staff and our engineer, and he was universally liked.”

He was close to retirement, White said, “and had certainly considered it, but he had never filed for it because he enjoyed working and spending time with his co-workers.”

Lombardi is survived by his wife, Juliann; his children, Amanda, Marissa and Michael; his mother, Lina; and his sister, Teresa Fini. Michael Lombardi is studying engineering at Clarkson University. 

Lombardi came to work on a Saturday, two days before the accident, to make emergency repairs to the water main with city staff. Likewise, White praised the members of Lombardi’s crew who stayed on-site to fill the trench in the road after the accident, “because that’s what Amalio would have done.”

“Residents of this city should be very proud of the response by our staff in the face of this tragic accident,” White said. “It was handled with professionalism, skill and respect.”

Following Lombardi’s death, Mayor Lee Kyriacou ordered flags lowered to half-staff for the remainder of the week. The Beacon Police Department and the Dutchess County Medical Examiner’s Office are investigating the accident, along with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

248 Tioronda Ave.

The council will ask an “independent expert” to weigh in on The Arno, an apartment complex at 248 Tioronda Ave. where the developer has built two residential buildings but has been unable to find a tenant for a commercial structure that is yet to be built. 

The commercial structure is required by Beacon’s zoning laws. The City Council agreed in December to allow the building inspector to issue certificates of occupancy for 64 apartments. The developer, Bernard Kohn, constructed the apartments but did not build the commercial structure at the same time, a condition for projects within the Fishkill Creek development zone. After the December agreement, Kohn said he would return to the council regularly with updates on the tenant search. 

On Monday, Jay Blumenfeld, a project representative, said the developer has still been unable to secure a renter. There have been 25 to 30 inquiries, he said, but “only a couple were substantial enough to even think about putting the financing together to build the building. We just feel like we’ve hit a dead end.”

Council members last year discussed allowing a third apartment building if more than 10 percent of its units were offered at below-market rate rents. If a conversion to residential were allowed, Kohn would be willing to go beyond the city’s 10 percent requirement, Blumenfeld said. 

It was Kyriacou, then a council member, who in 2017 proposed the law to require that developments in the Fishkill Creek zone have a 25 percent commercial component, but “I do not believe in it anymore,” he said Monday. “The market has changed dramatically. We have an extreme housing shortage in the area, and we have a commercial glut.”

Kyriacou noted that a 2022 Dutchess County study recommended a “fair share” approach through which municipalities would address affordability on a per-capita basis. In Beacon, it suggested 100 “interventions” — roughly equivalent to the construction of a housing unit — at a rate of five per year for two decades. 

Poughkeepsie and Beacon have the most subsidized apartments in the county, and “we should not be one of only two communities that’s trying to solve the entire region’s affordability,” Kyriacou said, cautioning the council in its negotiations with Kohn. If subsidized apartments are lumped into one or two areas, rather than spread evenly, “the numbers actually don’t help us either,” he said. 

Still, “I’m hesitant to throw up our hands and say this is not possible,” Council Member George Mansfield said. His comment led the council to discuss bringing in an independent entity, such as the Dutchess planning department or Pattern for Progress, to talk about commercial viability at the site. 

A segment of the Fishkill Creek Greenway & Heritage Trail running through the development also opened recently. 

New officer

Landfill gases

The City Council on Monday authorized the Hudson Valley Regional Council to begin collecting baseline information on the greenhouse gases being emitted at the former Beacon landfill on Dennings Avenue. 

Last year, the planning, education and advocacy organization was awarded a $3.06 million grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency that will allow Beacon, Philipstown, Dutchess County and 11 other municipalities to install biofilters made of compost that reduce methane emissions from closed landfills. 

The first step is to measure the emissions being released through candy cane-shaped PVC vents at the site. A 2021 study estimated that more than 60 percent of Beacon’s municipal emissions come from the landfill, which was closed in 1977 and repurposed in 2018 with a solar array that supplies 70 percent of the electricity used in city buildings. Biofilters “could eliminate the majority of those emissions,” said Faye Leone, the city’s Climate Smart coordinator. 

State leaders hope to reduce emissions by 40 percent over 1990 levels by 2030, “but we would like to do better than that,” Leone said. “That’s not even enough to meet the threshold of keeping [global] warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.” The biofilters are expected to be installed by 2027. 

Firefighters’ contract

The council on Monday approved an agreement through 2029 with the union that represents Beacon’s 17 paid firefighters. The current contract expires Dec. 31. 

The contract represents a step forward in the city’s transition from an all-volunteer department to one largely comprised of paid staff, White said. It revises the salary schedule and adds two steps to the schedule over the course of the agreement. 

Nevertheless, Beacon’s salaries still trail neighboring departments, such as in Poughkeepsie, where the city moved to paid staff years ago, White said. “We’re trying to recognize that we are in this transition,” he told the council. “This contract is vital to making sure that the people we hire can stay here through their career, that it’s not against their own economic interest not to go to another, higher-paying department.”

DMV lot

The council will hold a public hearing Aug. 18 on a local law that would regulate parking in the Beacon Center (DMV) lot at 223 Main St. 

The lot is owned by Dutchess County, but under a 2021 agreement the city enforces parking restrictions. Under the law, spaces designated for county employees would be restricted from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. Otherwise, all spaces would be open to the public. The lot is closed on Sundays from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the Beacon Farmers Market.