Another project that I’m looking at for next year is to either put an addition on the Town Hall or find a new home for it. I’ll be establishing a building committee in January to look at options. The building was built in the early ’50s, and we’ve basically run out of space here. Our meeting room downstairs is small, so as issues come up, we’re lacking space there, and our record management room is very small. Our justice court upstairs is the third busiest in the county; they’re in Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and the place is packed constantly.
Last year we replaced all of the upstairs windows with energy-efficient windows and put insulation in the attic, so we believe that will help with saving some energy and being more efficient that way, but we definitely need to look at an expansion of Town Hall.
Looking back at 2014, what do you see as your major accomplishments?
The big thing for 2014 was the zoning change for the Hudson Valley Wine Village project. Assemblyman [Frank] Skartados put together a couple of meetings with the town, the developer and Scenic Hudson, and I think we had some really good productive conversation. We were able to pass the zoning, which is going to lead to a bright future for development in the town.
And back in March, there was notification from Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA) about some increases in prices to our transfer station. They were looking for us to sign a ten-year deal with them with some other fee charges they were going to pass on to the towns, and at that point, we were looking at closing our transfer station because the costs would have been too much for the town to take on. But after working a lot of hours with the Ulster County Supervisors Association, we were able to thankfully keep the transfer station open. The UCRRA backed off of the ten-year contract, and they also were going to charge us $85 a container for the recyclables — which we didn’t think was fair because they’re making money off those — but now they’re going to give us the containers for free and they’re going to maintain the pull charges at $43 [the county agency had planned on raising them to $62]. So with those concessions from them, we’re going to be able to keep our town transfer station open.
You had talked about raising the permit fees, too; will that be happening?
We are going to have some fee changes, and I don’t think they’re out of line. There hasn’t been a change there for a long time. The [annual] resident fee will go from $20 to $35 and a senior citizen permit will go from zero to $15. I think that’s fair, and hopefully it’s enough to keep us close or break even. We understand that it’s a service that people in the community need. It’s not always easy to break even, but in years past it was a substantial loss to the town, and I think we’ve got that under control.
Looking back at 2014, if there anything you would have done differently?
No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty proud of the record that we’re running on here. The only concern that came up quite a bit last year was on a particular residential housing project on Toc Drive. As the town, we followed the procedure of notifications and public notices about zoning changes, but in the future, depending on the location of the project, I think we would exceed what the state requires us to do. I would emphasize that we followed the state guidelines and we did what we were supposed to do, but I think we could have gone a little bit further; it would have given the folks surrounding that area more time to voice their concerns. Would it have changed anything? I don’t know. But it would have given them an opportunity to speak, and I think that was their big concern. I think we’ve gone a long way since I’ve taken office of getting information out there — we have the TV, the robo-calls, all the information is on the website — but maybe we could go a little further.
What’s new with the Hudson Valley Wine Village?
Right now we’re looking for funding. We’d applied for a CFA [consolidated funding application] grant last year to finance running the water down 9W from Rite-Aid to the project. We did not get that, so I think that’s going to be the next step; who’s going to finance the water getting down there. The Wine Village staff and team are looking for other options.
What are you personally looking forward to?
We did get a CFA grant for $190,000 to help put up the Discovery Zone signs, and that’s something I’m looking forward to. We appreciate getting the grant; that was a lot of hard work by Walkway and Scenic Hudson and the volunteers that we have here in town. And we’re hoping that somebody next year will be the first to jump into the Gateway District zone to open up a business and get that going. I think there’s a lot of potential moving into next year commercially. There have been inquiries about Highland Square at the 299/9W intersection, and Zumtobel [Lighting, Inc.] was just awarded a $750,000 CFA grant. We’ve also got Selux [Corp.] on Lumen Lane, they’re putting a 20,000 square-foot-addition on. I think things are slowly starting to turn around a little bit.
And we’re looking forward to the official opening of the Bob Shepard [Highland Landing] Park. They’ve put in hundreds of volunteer hours under the direction of Matt Smith, and this year they’ll have the landscaping done. So by spring, I’m looking forward to my first picnic lunch down there.
Do you plan to run for office again in 2015?
I will be running again. I look forward to serving the residents of the town of Lloyd; I enjoy it very much.
