Summer Preview

Nice weekends. We’d like to see nice weekends this summer, if that’s not too much to ask. It’s the editorial opinion of this newspaper that we deserve it. We also favor barbeques, with fewer yellow jackets than usual. And drinks in big glasses, soft drinks of course. And visitors, we would like a lot this summer please, but only good ones, no jerks. We think the Town Board should pass a resolution that everyone in Shandaken should have a nice summer. But it might be too political. Could be trouble.

We predict hardly anybody’s going to get bored this summer. With so much to do, who’s got time to be bored? Think of it. One town with 23 major mountains, 16 of them more than 3,000 feet high. 27 named valleys and creek systems. A railroad that goes clickety-clack, and the coolest little railroad museum anywhere. A great music festival. Tubes out the wazoo, kayaks and emus, and Sweet Sue’s reopening, even a Paradise Picnic Supply. Perfect. Well, almost.

Okay so it’s an election year. So we’ll have caucusus too this summer. No, not the kind like in Dr. Zhivago, the kind with candidates, and it looks like there’ll be plenty. And good ones, we hear rumors. Good candidates, both major parties. And issues, man are there issues. People have been working on them all year, just waiting for summer.

For instance there is, or was, or might be one day, a Comprehensive Plan. Committee Chair John Mathiasson’s resigned though. We guess he’d had enough, documented in his final report to the Town Board, a good read by the way, online at www.phoeniciatimes.com. Seems like plenty of the other members have had enough too: Counselman Paul Van Blarcum polled the committee and found that a majority didn’t want to continue their work. Chuck Perez, The Committee’s Co-Chair sought and obtained an offer of new funding to hire a planner, something the committee had agreed they wouldn’t do on their own initiative. At first blush it’s a hopeful note, but then the offer came from the Crossroads Corridor Foundation (wow, who even knew Route 28 had been renamed!). Perhaps it’s the thought that counts, and in a more perfect Shandaken one would think a committee of the town government could accept money from just about anywhere. But it does seem a bit farfetched that’s likely to be viewed as appropriate or politically acceptable in very many places.

Will the committee meet again? Can they have a private picnic to try to work things out without violating open meetings laws? If they could, would the Citizens for Progress let them? Maybe. But if most of the committee wants to resign, is there someone in Shandaken who’d run a public meeting at which a new Chair or new members would be proposed? Is there someone in Shandaken who’d sit on that committee? Sadly,the reality of the Comp. Plan’s prospects has long since dawned on most of us. There’s a time and a place for everything and this doesn’t look like either . Not that we don’t need a Comp. Plan, we do. But we don’t need it more than we need civil war. Our view: we should pick up the Comp Plan sometime down the road, after there’s been some resolution to what’s going to happen with the Belleayre Resort project, whenever that is. But that’s a choice for the Committee and the Town Board.

Meanwhile there’s a big review going on, and though we don’t know what the time-frame will look like, it should provide some good summer reading, particularly for those who’ve finished all 3,000 pages of Crossroads’ DEIS. One day probably soon, DEC will announce they’ve deemed the opus “complete” and the Belleayre Resort’s Public Comment period will begin. Figure 60 days, more or less, of who-knows-what, but people will definitely have comments. And not just us, all kinds of people and groups and agencies.

The big question on this is whether Shandaken as a town, as an “Involved Agency”, can participate at all during this one brief window in which the town’s concerns can be explored and researched and shared with the Lead Agency. In simple terms it’s a question of money the town doesn’t have. Solving it’s simple, but the usual solution, negotiated voluntary funding from a project’s developer - hasn’t worked. Well, not from the municipal point of view anyway, since without money to hire people to help us decipher the big doc, the town’s not going to able to say much of anything. Well, so maybe it has worked, at least so far, depends on your point of view, like whether you’re the hostage or the other guy. That’s why the town’s considering a law to obtain some funding, which of course will be challenged and so on. Guess we’ll just have to see how it all plays out. As we said, should make for good summer reading, though we’ll probably experience it like a movie in a movie in a movie. We’re going to look for our 3-D glasses.