The empty pool in Rosendale. (photo by Lauren Thomas)
At its meeting on Wednesday, July 10, the Rosendale Town Board voted unanimously to accept a bid of $39,000 from the engineering firm of Weston & Sampson to provide construction documents for the replacement of the Town Pool located on the grounds of the Rosendale Recreation Center on Route 32. The board also unanimously authorized town supervisor Jeanne Walsh to pursue major funding for the project from multiple potential New York State sources. Heavily used during its six-decade prime, the Town Pool has been dry for the past two summers, its crumbling gunite liner no longer watertight.
Rensselaer-based Weston & Sampson is the same firm that was retained by Rosendale in 2012 to conduct a preliminary engineering study of the deteriorated pool to determine whether it could be repaired or needed to be replaced. Citing “unsafe and poor structural conditions along with obsolete mechanical and code compliance issues,” the consultants concluded that the structure was too far gone to be fixed by merely patching up the liner, and recommended extensive repairs that will essentially amount to replacement, at an estimated cost of $1.5 million.
That figure was later adjusted down to $1.2 million, and a fundraising campaign was initiated in 2012. Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of contributions have already come in from individuals, local businesses, social media campaigns like Indiegogo and events like the Rosendale Pickle Festival to support the Rosendale Pool Project. But at least one large grant will be necessary to fund such a costly undertaking and construction documents are required to qualify the town for funding from state agencies like the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (NYS-OPRHP).
One of the passed resolutions authorizes Walsh to seek a grant of up to $500,000 from NYS-OPRHP under “the provisions of Title 9 of the Environmental Protection Act of 1993 or the Recreation Trails Program.” Another will allow her to fill out a single Consolidated Funding Application that would have the project considered for grants of varying sizes under several state funding programs, including Community Development Block Grants, Market New York, Rural Area Revitalization and other eligible categories.
While acknowledging that the pool project was the town’s current top priority for fundraising, councilwoman Manna Jo Greene also brought to the Town Board’s attention the fact that funding is now available from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)’s Cleaner, Greener Communities program. Such grants could fund revisions of town zoning and comprehensive plans to bring them into alignment with the Mid-Hudson Regional Sustainability Plan.
Don’t do it. The Town of New Paltz pool has never made money to sustain itself; and that is the philosophy of the town board, particularly Logan, who thinks that the more money the Town of New Paltz pool loses, the better it is doing? Really. He says so in public.
The town of new paltz pool loses millions of dollars, and whatever can’t be gotten in grants or donations, they tax all the taxpayers for, yet, at the same time, have taken the public picnic area away from the public, including the picnic tables, barbeques and picnic canopy in order to make it private for their “country club.” They have shatter the park environment, and just come and take a gander at the butchered juniper bush at the entrance to the park done in order to make more parking for two events a year, four cars have a space where the bush used to be and is now dying.
Mulberry street is a traffic hazard, it is only 15 feet wide, one foot less than the town requires for a two lane private driveway at new houses, yet speeding cars go back and forth, no sidewalks, no caution signs, and a speed limit of 30 mph?
Everyday, the town crew, summer, fall winter and spring, have to monitor the antifreeze in winter pipes, chlorine and its expenses, and make sure that the gate to the once public picnic area stays locked so the only people who can use it are those who pay at the pool.
And Zimett and her cronies have a board of assessment review with two members who get STAR exemptions on commercial lodging services, Taylor and Ruger, so do you think any of these people give care that they can privatize a public picnic area when they steal money from the disabled and handicapped and run rackets through the assessment rolls. Like the pool, they are all off the deep end.
One important thing you folks in Rosendalbe are missing is that the New Paltz pool is filled from the new york city aqueduct water system, not some lousy stream that doesn’t work anymore for your pool. The new paltz pool is dug in shale, which leaks like a sieve, but who cares as long as the ashokan has water? Not new paltz. so all the water that leaks out into the shale is not like your pool, which is cement. Yours got old, but shale doesn’t. New Paltz just opens up the hydrants, runs a fire hose across the park into the pool and fill it no problem. Bill Ruseell the pool director makes $50,000 a summer. What do you pay your pool director. Imagine if that large canopy of yours were gated and locked and shut and only paying people for the pool could use it? That is what they do in New {Paltz, while all the time the assessment roll books are full of commercial lodging services with STAR exemptions, seasonal residences with STAR exemptions, no commercial property taxes levied on income producing businesses, etc. You, Rosendale, are support the New Palrtz pool, along with the rest of the county. And until the assessment roll books are corrected and the bums thrown out of office, it will always be so. You would be better off opening up your own hydrants, if you have any, cause I don’t think Rosendale is on the New York City aqueduct system? You can ask though; the village of new paltz has been in violation of its NYC water board contract for 60 years or more by selling village/new york city water into the town, which is a violation of the contract. Go ahead, see if the village will sell you NYC water for your pool. All they can do is say “no”.
The biggest difference between the Rosendale and the New Paltz pool is that you have only had one pool; the town village pool in moriello park has been reincarnated five (5) times.
In 1950, the “pool” was an inlet of water from the pond on Tributary 13, where a parking lot is now. Then, the inlet was closed on it’s fourth side (keep out the snapping turtles.)
Then, the whole swimming hole/pond was torn out, and a cement swimming pool was built. it crumbed, so the city fathers (sic.) built a new pool up above, where the pool stands today, and filled in the old cement pool down below.
Finally, a big grant was obtained to redo the pool site and bath house up above, so that pool was busted up, the dirt from the fill in of the old cement pool down below was dug out, and all the concrete from the pool on the hill was carried by bulldozers to fill in the now empty fourth pool below, and a new fifth pool was built up above again in place of the fourth pool, the fragments of which are in the third pool, the first cement pool.
Well, anyways, that is a lot and lot and lot of money, and consultants always get first bite. Send them to me. I don’t bite?
And don’t start me on grant writers. Anyways, forget about grants, new paltz gets them all. And even with grant money they can’t keep the pool afloat (CAN”T KEEP THE POOL AFLOAT! get it?). It leaks money like it does water. really. You know who keeps the books on the pool in New Paltz, do you know the person who tally’s the numbers? I will tell you. The pool director, who also gets $50,000 a year to run his “yeah, we lose money, but that is the purpose of the pool in our recreational master comprehensive plan.” See what I mean. The Zimmett crew will say, “it is part of the master comprehensive plan to lose money at the pool. We have accounted for that, and Bill Russell counts for us because he has been doing it for so long, that everybody know he will count the money right in order to keep his job. As for The town of New Paltz Assessment Roll Books and the fact that two members of the Board of Assessment REview are getting STAR exemptions on their commercial lodging services, what do you want, Rosendale?”
I, Ron Turner, brought the Department of Justice to New Paltz to have the town put in handicapped access into the picnic area they stole from the public. Nothing, no teeth to the American With Disabilites Act, and no political will by zimmmett, logan, what’s her face and what’s her face and the lawyer, nothing for the disabled and handicapped. Know why. Because they would have had to open back up the privatized playground area, and not be able to charge the disabled extra money for using the recreational facilities. Nevertheless, has your consultant told you the signifigance (sic) of the year 2013 in regards to the Americans With Disabilities Act? If your rosendale consultant didn’t start off with that, you have been deep-sixed allready. All the way to Davey Jone’s Locker.
Then, if you fix your pool, the elcted officials start kanoodling naked in the pool after midnight. Logun was one, that is why he loves the pool so much. He can kanoodle and he can steal my Supplemental Security Income any time.
I am solely responsible for these comments.
There is a Town of New Pltz town board meeting this coming Thursday night. Have the Rosendale Town Board, your “consultant” ad the lumpen proletariat of Rosendale Rocks come on in to the meeting for Public Comment and see if they can discount any of the above, or not? See if you can see the books for the Town New Paltz pool before you go anyfurther. Those books are probably as bad as the assesment rolls, and speaking of assessment rolls, yours are all messed up as well. You should get grants to fix the books first, then use the revenue for your pool, expensive or not. New Paltz can afford on top of this pool a Village Gov ernment, but Rosendale got rid of its village in 1978 because it couldn’t afford two governments. New Paltz has all the county’s monies now, Rosendale will take a bath on this Rosendale pool and everything else unless you fix your assessment roll books, BAR members with STAR exemptions on commercial lodging services not withstanding.
Shale? How do I know so much about shale? Because my house was the original site that was settled in 1669 because it had a cellar house dug into a shale bank. Why this shale bank. Because of all the shale banks that are in the neighborhood, including the shale bank the moriello pool is dug into, this, my shale bank, had the best drainage. So there is a hole and a trench which was settled by Sephardic fur traders who made liquor for the beaver skin trade here. Got. it. So I know all about shale, and the shale bank the moriello pool is in, in a word, sucks. It can never be right. what does your consultant know about shale banks, and that is no crack?
Dear Town of Rosendale,
In the Assessor office of the Town of New Paltz are two hundred pages of the history of the Town/Village Park and Pool. It includes three consultant reports, each done over a span of fifty years, all paid for by grants and tax dollars. Not in the folder are the actual accounting reports for losses of revenue, you will have to get those from the town book keeper. You gather up all those pieces of information, and don’t spend money on consultants.
I will be in the pool.
Sincerely yours,
I am not hard to get along with; I am just not a team player?
.
The Town of Rosendale, meanwhile, is allowing a very few vocal NIMBYs systematically delay with the hopes of killing The Williams Lake Resort Project which, silly me, will increase town revenues, draw more visitors to Rosendale, stimulate the downtown business district and possibly – dare I say it – provide support for the pool. But the Town of Rosendale instead entertains the pathetic cries and whispers of the lies told by the NIMBYs AND fools around with repairing a pool on a SITE in which a pool should not even exist dues to geology, aesthetic and functionality. So odd to me when people just lie in the ditch with OLD habits and completely fail to see the potential in something new.