State and local conservations groups, officials, staff and stakeholders gathered for an announcement in Amenia last week that the 260-acre Rattlesnake Ridge in Amenia, visible in background, will be protected by a $350,000 grant from the State Department of Environmental Conservation for the purchase of a conservation easement through the Dutchess County Land Conservancy.
AMENIA — The Dutchess Land Conservancy has received a $350,000 grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to purchase a 260-acre conservation easement on Rattlesnake Ridge, located within the Taconic Ridge/Harlem Valley.
The Amenia property, comprised of upland conifer and hardwood forests, has been identified in the New York State Open Space Plan as a “priority for protection” and will add to more than 1,100 contiguous acres of adjacent protected land, including farmland, and provide important habitat for threatened timber rattlesnakes and endangered Indiana bat.
“We’re really excited. It’s really a big effort,” said Erin Hoagland, DLC’s director of conservation.
She referred to the Rattlesnake Ridge easement as “crucial for connectivity and habitat, and some farmland protection is at play as well.”
Conservation department interim Commissioner Sean Mahar announced more than $1.26 million in grants for four land trusts, including to Dutchess Land Conservancy, to support five projects aimed at safeguarding local forests.
The grants, administered by the Land Trust Alliance in partnership with the conservation department, were made available through the Forest Conservation Easements for Land Trusts grant program.
“New York’s natural landscapes are vital to our quality of life and our economy,” Mahar said in making the announcement on Thursday, Oct. 24.
“This $1.26 million in funding for land trusts will empower communities to protect cherished open spaces and contribute to the State’s 30 by 30 initiative — conserving 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.”
State officials said the land trusts will use the funding to create new conservation easements aimed at protecting water quality, building wildlife corridors, preserving old growth forest, increasing climate resilience, strengthening biodiversity and expanding recreation opportunities for New York.
Kelly Turturro, regional director for the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson Valley office, which covers Northern Dutchess County, said the state works closely with New York land trusts, private landowners and stakeholders in the community “to preserve and grow our forest resources for the benefit of future generations”
The Forest Conservation Easement Program, she said, “is just one example of our ongoing support for New York’s land trusts. Through our partnership with the Land Trust Alliance, the program provides grant funding to land trusts around the state to purchase high-priority conservation easements.”
At last week’s grants announcement in Amenia, with Rattlesnake Ridge as a backdrop, Katie Petronis, conservation department deputy commissioner for natural resources, explained that since the program was formed three years ago, “we have now protected 2,800 acres of land, like we’re here standing on today, using under $4 million.”
This year, she said, response to the project more than doubled the amount of award funding available.
“That really tells us there is a need statewide, and not just here, but elsewhere.”
The grants are funded through the state’s Environmental Protection Fund.
In addition to the Dutchess Land Conservancy’s $350,000 grant for Amenia’s Rattlesnake Ridge, other grants included: $199,950 to the Genesee Valley Conservancy in Livingston County; $350,000 to the Cazenovia Preservation Foundation, Inc. in Madison County; and two separate grants totaling $361,800 to the Tug Hill Tomorrow Land Trust for conservation easements in Oswego County and Herkimer County.
“Our forest lands play critical roles in terms of providing jobs, wildlife habitat, and helping to mitigate climate change,” said Jamie Brown, New York senior program manager for the Land Trust Alliance.
“New York’s nearly 95 land trusts are working to protect these important lands, as well as other open state that is important to all New Yorkers. We are grateful to the state’s support and leadership in protecting our natural resources and important places.”
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.
Edward Downey, left, president of the North East Historical Society with Ralph Fedele, president of the Friends of the Irondale Schoolhouse, at the Society’s Annual meeting at the NorthEast-Millerton Library Annex on Saturday, Nov. 16. Downey presented a lifetime membership in the society to Fedele in recognition of his work in preserving the area’s history. Downey noted, “Ralph Fedele is a force of nature, filled with ideas and energy.”
MILLERTON — For most teachers the capacity to influence students ends as they walk out the classroom doors and the teacher clears the board for the final time before moving into retirement.
That was not the case, however, for Violet Simmons, whose impact on the community and the world continued well after she completed her 48 years of service in schools throughout North East.
On Saturday, Nov. 16, at the NorthEast-Millerton Library Annex, Ed Downey, president of the North East Historical Society, presented the following information via Power Point at the society’s annual meeting, detailing the life of “a remarkable woman” who challenged all to utilize whatever gifts they might have been given and, as former student Patricia Fernandez once observed, “go out into the world and do great things.”
Born on March 3, 1911, Simmons lived her entire life in Millerton with the exception of four years at the State College at Albany and a short time at Noble Horizons before she passed away one day after her 90th birthday, and was one of the first four graduates of the Elm Avenue School.
In her valedictory address, she forecast her meticulous approach to the classroom quoting Michelangelo who once explained to a friend who questioned the time he spent reworking the arm of a statue, “Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle.”
Downey noted she focused on enrichment in which students learned “concepts as well as facts,” and believed “You get what you demand.”
Forever curious and always at home in the classroom, Simmons demanded as much of herself as of her students, teaching and learning, doing graduate work at New York University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, Vassar College and the State University of New York at New Paltz.
When Simmons moved from the elementary level classes to social studies at the newly created Webutuck School she stopped using textbooks, turning instead to original sources and books — either required or student selected — which she believed added diversity and liveliness to classroom discussions.
She arranged for students to interview experts in the field being studied including part-time Amenia resident and civil rights Giant Thurgood Marshall.
Downey noted Simmons believed “From those to whom much is given, much is expected,” so when she became legally blind, she continued to teach for 20 years with the aid of a jeweler’s glass and eventually an assistant who read students’ work and recorded her comments.
Her service to her students started early when, as she began teaching, Simmons was required — as all teachers were — to contribute $100 to a student milk fund from her salary of $1,200. Taking care of her pupils continued when, upon her retirement, former students and community members attended a sold out dinner for 200 honoring her and raising funds for scholarships for Webutuck graduates, a program she helped to administer until her death and which continues to the present.
To access a video of Downey’s extensive discussion of Simmons, write to eddowney12@gmail.com.
