Letters to the Editor 10/10/24

Guidelines for AirBnBs in Amenia

In the Sept. 26 issue of The Millerton News, a brief article highlights the discussion amongst members of the Amenia Housing Board and their decision to table for a later date the creation of regulations for AirBnBs and short term rentals in the town of Amenia.

I urge the Housing Board to go forward with this idea instead of its decision to forgo it for a later time as reported in the article.

The growth of over tourism and gentrification in small towns and cities all across the Hudson Valley has created a variety of negative impacts on the daily life of permanent residents with the biggest being the dearth of affordable housing. There are a plethora of articles, both anecdotal and academic, that catalogue the negative effects of turning viable permanent residences into AirBnBs. Some of these effects on communities include:

AirbnBs can increase housing costs and reduce the supply of affordable housing.

They can attract upscale businesses that drive up property values and taxes.

Neighborhood dynamics can lead to a transient population that disrupts the sense of community.

A transient population can make permanent residents feel insecure when they don’t know who will be next door at random times.

They can cause noise, disturbances and increase traffic.

Displacement and gentrification - lower income households can be displaced to make way for high end businesses where locals can’t afford to shop.

Decreases the amount of options for long term rentals (Veven, 2020, 2024; Lee & Kim, 2023; Catalyst Planet, 2024).

A cursory Google search for AirBnBs in Amenia turns up just a handful at this time. Therefore, this is the perfect time for the Amenia Housing and Town Boards to be proactive and draw up and pass regulations that create reasonable guidelines.

Alison Francis

Wassaic

Vote early and vote for Charlie Miller

Early voting starts October 26 (Cornell Cooperative Extension is our closest site) and I urge Amenia residents to vote for Charlie Miller for Amenia Town Board. Charlie is running for the unexpired 1-year term remaining on Leo Blackman’s vacated seat since he was elected Supervisor last year. As Amenia’s Finance Director, Charlie knows exactly how our taxes are being spent. When he knocks on your door, I encourage you to ask him anything you’ve been wondering about. How much is it costing us to run our water system in Amenia? What will the new highway garage cost and how will it impact our taxes? Why haven’t we built a sidewalk to Freshtown Plaza? It’s impossible to stump Charlie! And he’s eager to get back to you about any question you have about town operations. Literally, any question!

How committed is Charlie to moving Amenia forward, you might ask? Charlie’s been to every board meeting and headed up the Wastewater and Affordable Housing Committees for the past several years. In that time, he and his committee members have written and been awarded grants that covered such items as engineering fees for the wastewater feasibility study. He has invited engineers and planners to Town Board meetings to provide detailed, accurate reports on the state of our water and wastewater infrastructure. He even invited our Town Assessor to explain how Silo Ridge’s increased assessment has impacted our taxes (why haven’t our taxes gone down?) — a question asked most often of him. The recorded explanation is on our town website, courtesy of Charlie!

Charlie and his committee updated the Comprehensive Plan with a new affordable housing addendum that spurred legislation increasing developers’ “fee in lieu of” affordable housing. The result? We expect over $2M from one developer versus $610k. Incredible! These fees can be used in a variety of ways to spur workforce housing and rentals, one of our greatest challenges. These fees can also be used to help build a wastewater system in the downtown business district that will dramatically increase affordable housing options for our workforce and seniors.

Make a plan now to vote for Charlie. We need his fiscal expertise and excellent communication skills to explain complex topics – such as how big-ticket items will impact the average taxpayer -- in easily understandable, accurate ways. Having served on the Town Board for 20 years, this has been sorely lacking. Adding Charlie to the Town Board is an historic opportunity to remedy this.

Vicki Doyle

Wassaic

In support of Charlie Miller

As a descendent of four generations of Amenia farmers and having worked and raised my family here, I am grateful that so many have stepped forward to help out in our community. This year we are fortunate to have two candidates for the open town board position. After much consideration, I feel I must support Charlie Miller. We need to spend taxpayer money conservatively and expand the tax base in order to meet the many needs of the community.

Our first priority is a new town highway garage. This has been a need for decades. I’ve seen how Charlie jumped into action on it. Working with the Highway Superintendent and others, he pushed to finish the feasibility, presented the project in extreme detail to the town board and community, mailed project postcards to everyone in town, put together the documents to get engineering proposals and has been working through the environmental reviews. It takes so much to get things done and Charlie has endless energy.

The economy and the demographics of Amenia have changed dramatically since I graduated from Webutuck in 1969 and even more since I retired from teaching at Webutuck in 2007. The population is more diverse and has aged. This has created many needs. The top priority being housing for working families and seniors. Charlie’s position as chairperson of the Amenia Housing Board has given him insight and knowledge in moving forward with these projects. Specifically, he won $175,000 in grants and was behind increasing developer fees to $2.3 million – money that will go directly to supporting more homes for our community’s families. He understands finances and can walk you through anything you want to know about the town’s budget. If he doesn’t know an answer, he’ll say so and quickly find the answer for you.

He also knows the importance of spending taxpayer money wisely. Charlie is opposed to the Amenia Green project, which would spend millions of dollars to turn the field next to Town Hall into a splash pad. I love parks and would like to see Beekman Park updated and for us to focus on other needs in our community like off-street parking and pedestrian safety.

Lastly, Charlie loves living in Amenia because it is a small, rural town. Finally implementing the changes many of us want, while maintaining our beloved small-town, open farmland feeling, is why Charlie is running and why I am supporting him.

Rosanna Hamm

Amenia

Appeasement

After spending too much time over the last 50 years trying to understand how, given the same situation and basic facts, people can have such different perceptions and opinions of occurrences and issues. These differences that people shared were one of the first things I learned as a child though I never understood why this situation existed.

Forward 30 years or so I began consuming all of the information I could that could help me understand this dichotomy. I spent a lot of my free time looking into any of the “ologies” that pertained to this dilemma. I read history, social psychology, anthropology and neurobiology. I learned a lot but actually arrived back at the recognition I had as a child . People are just different, even amongst family members. It is this reality that has helped us as a species to survive and also sometimes fail. Understanding this and usually accepting this truth has led me to a situation of appeasement. I am not as quick to discount the views of other people and try to give their opinions a little more time to sink in.

This leaves me in a position that can sometimes be neutral politically and enables me to better examine the major issues that are most important to the people of America.

Often during the news feed of a broadcast the media will focus on what issues, that are tabulated through polling, the populace finds most important. To make a point I will present a typical current list. The Issues are:

Inflation, Healthcare, Congressional Partisan Intransigence, Drug Addiction\, Gun Violence, Violent Crime, The Federal Debt, Moral Values, Immigration, Education, Racism, Climate Change, Terrorism, Unemployment, Trade

In all of the listed issues, any single issue considered will have an effect on one, two, or three of the other issues. Some of these effects may be minor or major and can act to increase or decrease the severity of the problem.

However there is one outstanding single issue that has the power to have strong effects — depending on how it is addressed — on all of the other issues. If we do not address this one issue it may have the power to increase the threats of all the other issues tenfold. If we do pay attention to the issue we may actually be able to relieve some of the current stress currently afflicting our society.

The Issue I am referring to is Climate Change. The increased frequency and severity of floods, hurricanes , tornadoes, and drought and prolonged periods of increased temperature are all evidence of Climate Change.

Of the two major political parties vying for control of the country, one party has made addressing this issue a major priority. The other party is still in a state of denial. Warnings of this condition were first presented some 65 years ago but were shelved because the actions necessary to alleviate the issue conflicted with the normal operation of our economic activity. The current administration has enacted programs to build economic activity while addressing the increasing threat that the changing climate has on all of us. Please consider this situation when Voting.

Scott Culbreth

Millerton