The proposed Dot and Ira Burdick Park plan with funding donated by Gayle Bontecou in memory of her late husband Jesse, features among other things a berry patch, beehives, crab apple walk, benches, walkways, a pollinator meadow, split rail fence, a pavilion for field trips and historical society exhibits, a pond with a boardwalk over it, and parking.
STANFORD — When an ambulance arrives in the next three years to save a life in Stanford, it will be doing so largely thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor who recently gave what Town Supervisor Wendy Burton describes as a “jaw dropping” $2 million to pick up the lion’s share of that service’s annual fee of $750,000.
When families build memories in the soon to be created Dot and Ira Burdick pocket park, named respectively after the former historian and town supervisor, their appreciation should go to Gayle Bontecou for the $150,000 donation she made in memory of her late husband Jesse — one of many they made over the years.
Both contributions were announced in a recent newsletter by Burton who says, “we have something going on here” with the gifts representative of the way in which the once fractured town has “come together” and is now a “town that just wants to take care of itself” with citizens stepping up to manage the many needs.
In discussing the donations, she explained that in the past, the “must have” ambulance service had been provided by volunteers such as those currently at the fire department whom she says are “the best ever.” However, when the volunteers needed to be replaced by a professional service, it came with an eye-popping $62,000 cost per month — 92% of which will now be covered for the next three years by the donation.
The other contribution, the new park, will adapt wetlands for nature trails, a pond, historic and nature kiosks, bird houses and a pollinator field. When the donated land was accepted five years ago, it was with the provision that tax money would not be used on it.
When Bontecou, whom Burton describes as “an incredibly generous woman” asked what the town could use, Burton showed her the park plans. She reported Bontecou “said, ‘I’ll write a check for $150,000’ and one of us started crying.”
Burton feels that citizens stepping up is typical of Stanford and believes it may have begun with the privately funded library which is now the “center of the town,” with the “best programming in the world.”
Similarly, the recreation park was built by some 200 citizens sharing their talents in everything from carpentry to hole digging to child care with the efforts under the direction of the organizing company.
Burton also pointed with pride to the way in which the community came together to support the Kemmerer family after a horrendous fire destroyed the heart of their 100 year old farm, raising $100,000 through Go Fund Me with local goods and services donated to a $25,000 auction.
Burton, a 17 year resident of Stanford, who has been supervisor for the past five years says that some days are filled with people complaining that “a garbage truck dropped garbage in front of their house or they don’t like the way a tree was trimmed or there’s a pothole and you’re just going, ‘I’m not the Master of the Universe here.’ And then you have a day like this and you go, ‘Wow! I love my job.’”
Residents of Silo Ridge and Amenia Fire and Ambulance volunteers posed with a big check in front of the volunteer ambulance Sunday morning, Nov. 17.
AMENIA — Jamie Vitiello presented a check for $50,000 to the Amenia Volunteer Ambulance Corps Sunday morning, Nov. 17, during the Amenia Fire Company’s pancake breakfast at the fire house.
Vitiello said he heard about the ambulance corps’ need for a life-saving device called the Lund University Cardiopulmonary Assist System device, or LUCAS device for short. The LUCAS device assists emergency responders in applying chest compressions. The mechanical device can be situated around a person’s chest in the case of cardiac arrest and used to provide compressions that are more consistent and generally safer than a human providing CPR.
“I sent out a text in the morning and then went to Town Hall,” Vitiello said. “By the time I had gotten to Town Hall we had raised $25,000. By the end of the day we had raised the whole $50,000.”
The LUCAS device cost just over $20,000 to purchase. Vitiello said the remainder of the $50,000 donation will go to the Ambulance Corps fund to support regular costs like ambulance maintenance.
The donation was made in the name of Silo Ridge residents in association with the Amenia-Wassaic Community Organization.
MILLERTON — In what Mayor Jennifer Najdek has described as “a huge bump for us,” New York State has awarded Millerton an Intermunicipal Water Infrastructure Grant (IMG) to fund various projects which continuously monitor and improve local water quality. The size of the grant is a generous $5,082,099, an amount which cannot be exceeded.
The official acceptance of the grant, which is application-based, came together fairly quickly as officials had only one week to decide. With the knowledge looming that grant requests may be bypassed or allocated to other communities without a decision being reached, Millerton leadership aligned after careful consideration at a special meeting held last week, signing off on Nov. 8. With the grant now secured, Najdek is optimistic Millerton can now move forward on pending wastewater concerns like water treatment and stormwater projects, saying “This project has great potential to happen now.”
One downside regarding the grant, however, is the impact the award will have on additional grants. As the mayor explains it, this grant differs from others in that it must be combined with other grants and the amount may eventually be reduced, contingent on the awarding of additional grants or projects running under budget.
Najdek also pointed out the downsides of future wastewater projects, citing potential impacts on the implementation of new businesses on Main Street, but it’s a hurdle to leap when — and if — the time comes. Her focus is firm on the benefits of the grant and the projects which may result from the award. She was quick to quell concerns of residents outside the district who have voiced taxation concerns connected to wastewater projects, pointing out they will not be impacted. “This is important,” said Najdek. “It’s about slow, sustainable growth … and it’ll maintain the character of the village.”
MILLERTON — The Town of North East discussed the next steps for the Zoning Review Committee during its board meeting on Thursday, Nov. 14.
Edith Greenwood, committee chair and vice chair of the North East Zoning Board of Appeals, joined the Town Board meeting to share what the committee has completed in the last four years.
“The review is a result of the Comprehensive Plan … which was adopted in 2019, and the logical planning progression is a visioning document of where you want your town to go,” Greenwood said. “And the next step is to incorporate those concepts, those goals in your code.”
The Zoning Review committee has spent a large portion of its time redoing the zoning for the Town of North East’s commercial district. This part of the town stretches from Route 44 to the Connecticut border and mostly consists of commercial buildings.
“We retained a consultant who has been the town planner for probably ten years and is very knowledgeable about our situation,” Greenwood said. “We grappled with where to start, and we decided that it made sense to start with commercial.”
According to Greenwood, the most significant change to the code is moving the special permitting process from the Zoning Board of Appeals to the Planning Board. This will prevent applicants from having to go back and forth between different boards.
“There are two other sections which we have had to address because of the complexity of codes and the way it overlaps,” said Greenwood, “but we have not taken a substantive view of the residential, or what we call Land Conservancy, our wetlands issue … We have not made any changes to the outer boundaries of any of the three sections we looked at. We’ve reconfigured the Boulevard District. It currently has six sections. It’s gone down to three sections.”
The committee’s plans show that an applicant requires a special permit and site plan approval, which will allow a municipality an extra level of protection.
“What we are handing over to you today does include some aspects of the residential and the land conservation, but they’re far from flush and where we needed to just pull this together and make sense of the zoning document,” Greenwood said, “There should be a part B to this process, we’re definitely more than halfway through, maybe we are even 60%, but there is more work to be done to complete this code, especially on the housing.”
“What I would really like to point out to people is that this is a committee of volunteers who have met on 90 occasions to go through the zoning of the Boulevard District,” Town Supervisor Chris Kennan said. “That’s a lot of hours of people’s personal time spent trying to make this town better.”
The board reviewed the Town of North East’s budget and announced a new negotiation with Northern Dutchess Paramedics.
Previously, the town had a five-year contract with NDP for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) alongside the towns of Dover and Amenia. The Town of North East paid NDP 2% more each year during the contract.
NDP has recently pitched a new contract with North East that would cost $646,300, increasing its budget by 71%. According to Kennan, with that budget, town residents outside of the Village of Millerton would see an increase in their tax rate by 1.16%.
“That contract ends at the end of December, so we have been negotiating with Northern Dutchess Paramedics over their proposed increase,” said Kennan, “The increase that they had proposed, we’ve written about, we’ve talked about at previous meetings, was really overwhelmingly intolerable for the town. It was a huge, huge increase.”
North East also looked into a different contractor, Empress, who services the western and southwestern parts of the county. However, their proposal was “wildly” more expensive than NDP’s first offer. Now, the town has met with NDP and reached a new contract price of $511,558, a reduction of $134,742.
“The reasons for their increase are that they were locked into a contract for five years, which each year had a 2% increase and going through the period of COVID,” Kennan said. “Everyone knows we have seen inflation in all kinds of different items, in labor costs, particularly in materials, especially medical costs, the cost of an ambulance itself has gone up dramatically, so they were basically struggling to deliver the service to the town for these past few years.”
The town board will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 5:30 p.m. to finalize and adopt the revised budget.
Pro-housing pledge
The Town Board members signed a pro-housing pledge, stating that they were aware of the lack of housing for New York state residents and that income levels negatively affected future economic viability.
“The housing crisis has negative effects at regional and local levels, and whereas we believe that every community must do their parts to contribute to housing growth and benefit from positive impacts a healthy housing market brings to the community,” Town Clerk Tilly Strauss said, reading from the pledge.
Supervisor Kennan said he has met with the management of the Millerton Gun Club to discuss the town’s concerns and to limit the club’s shooting hours.
“I have met with the management of the gun club on multiple occasions and expressed our desire to have them think about not having shooting on Sunday and not having shooting permitted after five o’clock or sundown during the day to give people the opportunity to enjoy their evenings without gunfire,” Kennan said.
The town has received a speed reduction request on Route 22 from Chuck Road to the Village of Millerton line. The request asks the town to reduce the speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour.
“Chuck Road to the Village of Millerton has seen increased traffic and dangerous intersections,” Strauss said. “The highway superintendent and the town board have determined that the current speed limit of 55 miles per hour on this portion of Route 22 is too high, resulting in hazardous and dangerous conditions.”
Holiday lights went up last week in Millerton in preparation for the Thanksgiving weekend Festival of Lights.
