North East’s new town garage gives fire dept. temporary relief

MILLERTON — The Town of North East held a board meeting Thursday, Oct. 10, discussing a fire department request to use space in the new garage while they are resurfacing the floors in the firehouse.

The department originally asked to use the old highway garage on South Center Street, however, because the fire engines are too large they were unable to fit.

“The nice thing is that they fit beautifully in the new highway garage,” Town Supervisor Chris Kennan said. “I think this is one of the very good things that happens in this county, which is that towns can work together and share equipment that no town would need full time. And that’s about what you’ve got going on up there. It is good to see that the town is using one of its facilities to help out one of our local entities.”

The Community Revitalization Council passed a draft of neighboring towns about their housing opportunities, with opportunities that could come to the Town of North East.

“Hopefully we can share that in the very near future, but really positive opportunities that will be coming,” councilwoman Megan Winkler said. “We have an opportunity to as towns, joining together for a grant for the plus one grant program, which helps folks be able to build accessory dwelling units. So these are to renovate existing structures, or convert or build, and the grants go up to $175,000 so we as municipalities can put in a request to be able to be the administrators.”

A small survey was sent out to hear from residents and received positive interest. The survey was posted online and residents were notified by postcards, receiving feedback from about 50 people.

“There’s some buildings potentially going up right around us that will be apartments and townhouses for rent and for sale,” Winkler said, “We tried to do a survey of the town for people who had trouble getting on the internet…Many people have buildings with space in the building that is not being used, or they have a garage with which could have an apartment over it, and this could be income.”

The town has been in contact with the county to discuss the removal of snow and ice for some of the roads located in the Town of North East, but are considered Dutchess County roads.

“There are some roads in our town which are county roads, which are a long way for the county to come out and plow, and they have proposed a reimbursement to the town for us to take care of some of these roads,” Kennan said. “We have done this now for quite a number of years. I think from the standpoint of the town, it’s been a very beneficial arrangement.”

Kennan met with the county executive last week to discuss a handful of ideas, mainly including the emergency medical services and the ambulance contract.

“We learned a few days after that meeting that the commissioner of emergency response, Dan Smith, had resigned and so that’s too bad for what we are trying to do because that is the department which oversees emergency response.”

Northern Dutchess Paramedics have proposed an increase of over 70% for their EMS services. During their five-year contract the town paid about $376,000, with a new pitch of around $646,000.

“We have looked at ways this would create a really difficult and really unsupportable increase in taxes in the town and particularly in the village,” said Kennan. “We still are waiting to see what the county may be able to do to help us with this.”

“This is a burning EMS crisis around the county and around the state, we’re not in a unique situation,” Chris Drago, County Legislator, said, “The budget of the county is $601 million, a lot of money, and one of the things I see as my job is to be an advocate, for our towns and the district I represent…There’s been work done to really try to see where we can solve this critical issue.”

There will be a public hearing for the town’s budget on Thursday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 p.m.

Town Board members also heard new concerns about pipeline construction project.

Emily Skydell, Hudson Valley Senior Organizer for Food and Water Watch, attended the town board meeting via Zoom to share what she said were threats of methane emissions from the Iroquois pipeline Corp.

“The Iroquois pipeline corporation has proposed a dangerous project that they call expansion by compression and, if it’s approved, Iroquois will substantially increase in the risk of leakage in fires and explosions, while also increasing the pollution in communities that live near the compressors,” said Skydell, “Here in New York, we can stop the expansion of these pipelines and power plants and start to really invest in renewable energy and renewable energy sources.”

The Iroquois pipeline is planning on creating compressor stations so that gas is able to push through Long Island and New York City. The company is not proposing more gas to be delivered to the Northeast Dutchess County region.

“It’s a proposal that allows more gas to get pushed through an existing, 30-year-old pipeline,” Skydell said. Skydell said there are many risks associated with older pipelines, especially when trying to do an expansion.