Town Meeting

Action items on the agenda for Town Board meeting March 22

1. Vote on proposed Local Law 1 of 2010 - Indemnification of Officers
2. Vanderburgh Cove loan -  general vs. part town, cap project
3. Approve Court annual license/maintenance agreement for $800.00.
4. Approve Dr. Tumolo's request to place dog waste dispensers behind Starr Library and at the Rhinecliff dock at Rhinebeck Animal Hospital's expense. 
5. Approve February 11^th, February 24^th, March 1^st, March 8^th   and March 15^th Town Board meeting minutes.
6. Appoint Richard Cunningham to Board of Assessment Review, term to expire 9/30/2014.
7. Authorize Supervisor to sign Young Rhinebeck contract for 2010 for $4,500 per budget agreement
8. Authorize Supervisor to sign Ziv Tech agreement
9. Louis Fernandez resolution from Counsel
10. Docking policy from Counsel
11. Vote on possible AFLAC payroll deductions for Town employees.
12. Authorize cemetery to go out to bid for tree work in old section of Rhinebeck Cemetery.
13. Authorize Cemetery to advertise for 1 full time employee and 1 part time employee at Cemetery, not to exceed 6 months.
14.  Appoint Tom Mannix as Clerk of the Works for Vanderburgh Cove Treatment and Collection System Phase I projects at request of the Vanderburgh Cove Committee
15. Appoint Melissa Cohen as Chair and Andy Sheppard Vice Chair to the Rhinecliff Advisory Committee.
16.  Appoint Chris Lipscomb as Chair and Jonathan Mensch as Vice Chair of the Open Space and Affordable Housing Committee.
17. Approve $2,900 for dock construction.

December 21,

A final vote to approve the Rhinebeck Comprehensive Plan was delayed this evening. Citing the need to comply with Public Notice requirements, the Town Board delayed their vote until December 29th or the 30th in the event of a snow storm. 

Video clips from the December 15th Town Board meeting. While board member Dod Crane explained the significant problems of developing the rhinecliff extension as described in the Comp-Plan, board member Dan Staley expresses his desire to see substantial development in Rhinecliff and the need "to make it worth some developers time and money"

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In an effort to shed light on the controversial Town meeting that took place on December 15th we have extracted two clips of video from the meeting.

Rhinebeck Town Board Comp-Plan and zoning workshop12/15/08 Holy Cross video clip:

Rhinebeck Town Board Comp-Plan and zoning workshop 12/15/08 Rhinecliff extension video clip:

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You can now watch the complete video of the controversial meeting of December 15th and the meeting of December 30th

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In perhaps the most well attended Town meeting in recent memory, just a day before new years eve, a hundred or so residents showed up to voice strong opposition to the votes cast by the board on December 15th.

By 7:30pm the board had finished Town business and opened the floor for public comments. First up was Rhinecliff resident John Lyons. He read from a letter that spelled out the adverse impacts on the community and ended by urging the board to reverse their decision. (Click HERE to view letter)

Mr. Lyons was followed by Rhinecliff Advisory Council member Tom Holsapple who read a letter from the Council that spelled out the Council's dismay over the Board's actions. (Click HERE to view letter from the RAC)

Morton Road resident Michael DeCola spoke next and handed the board a petition signed by more than 100 residents requesting additional public hearings given the substantial changes made to the original Comp-Plan. Mr. DeCola was interrupted by Supervisor Traudt’s informing the room that the votes of December 15th were simply to “tell the Town’s planners what to look into.” Essentially the board said the votes of December 15th were not final votes, just a “poll” of the board for the purposes of a working meeting to direct planners to “look at issues”. This explanation did not sit well with anyone in the room. Chants of “read the minutes” (of the last meeting) could be heard for several minutes. Clearly uncomfortable, the board attempted to explain why they had no minutes prepared from the last meeting.

Additional members of the community spoke as well as Jeffrey Anzevino from Scenic Hudson (Click HERE to view letter from Scenic Hudson) The comments were unanimous in their disapproval of the Board’s actions.

We will be adding all the Town Meetings from January and February shortly. Please note that there are some sound problems in this video but the sound improves after the first five minutes.

We would like to make note that towards the end of the meeting Dennis McGuire, the Town Supervisor from several years ago, expressed his dismay over Rhinecliff's leaf pickups. Mr. McGuire went on to say that this had never happened before and it was "not fair" to the rest of the town.

We found this particularly odd as Mr.McGuire allowed this very practice while he was Town supervisor. We reviewed old copies of Town minutes during Mr. McGuire's tenure and found multiple examples of meetings he supervised that mentioned Rhinecliff leaf pickup day. Click HERE to view one example from the November 14, 2005 Town Board Minutes.

10/22/07 Rhinebeck Town Board Town Board Regular Workshop Meeting Preliminary Agenda October 22, 2007 Call to Order: 8:00 PM Roll Call: Announcements: Rebuilding Together Dutchess County, formerly know as XMAS in April, is beginning its 17th year of providing home repairs for low income homeowners in our county. Applications are available in the Town Clerk’s office and must be filed by November 30, 2007. Please call Barb Cunningham, 876-3409 for further information. The Town of Rhinebeck Highway Department will hold a “Bike Rodeo” on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at the Highway Department facility located at 119 Rhinecliff Road, Rhinebeck. Cooperating agencies include the Rhinebeck Police Department, AAA Club of New York, and the Rhinebeck Recreation Department. Old Business: 1. Authorization for the Highway Department to purchase an International 7400 heavy-duty class 8 truck complete with dump body, plow and wing, not exceed $125,000 and budget transfers within the Highway Department budget to facilitate this purchase. This purchase will upgrade three vehicles in the fleet. 2. Authorization for the Highway Department to purchase a Ford F-250 pickup truck, with plow, not to exceed $25,000 to replace the current truck that will be purchased by the town cemetery, and budget transfers to facilitate this purchase. 3. Authorization for the Cemetery to purchase the 2002 Ford F-250 from the Highway Department for $12,500. New Business: 4. Considering contract with Dutchess County for the production of the Town's Open Space Map for an amount not to exceed $600. Proposed Actions: 5. Approving regular check disbursement list. 6. Approving capital project check disbursement list. 7. Approving minutes of October 22,, 2007. Adjourn

Town Board Regular Workshop Meeting
Preliminary Agenda
September 24, 2007

Call to Order: 6:45PM

Roll Call:

Announcements:

The town clerk’s office will be closed Tuesday Sept 25th for off-site computer training in the new clerk’s software package.

Town Hall, the highway department and the transfer station will be closed on Monday, October 8, in celebration of Columbus Day. Consequently, the next regular town board meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 9, at the Rhinecliff fire house.

Registration for winter basketball and gymnastic programs will be held on Saturday, September 29, from 9-12 in town hall.

This year's Community Development Block Grant applications are now available in the Town Clerk's office. Completed applications must be submitted to the County by October 5, 2007.

Weather permitting, the Highway Department will complete the Mt. Rutsen Road safety resurfacing on Monday September 24.

Rebuilding Together Dutchess County, formerly know as XMAS in April, is beginning its 17th year of providing home repairs for low income homeowners in our county. Applications are available in the Town Clerk’s office and must be filed by November 30, 2007. Please call Barb Cunningham, 876-3409 for further information.

The Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan training for evaluating the consistency of federal, state and local public and private land use proposals with the provisions of our approved LWRP will take place on September 27 at 7 PM- 9 PM in town hall. The primary audience for this training is the CAC, town board and the planning and zoning boards. Two staff member from New York Department of State will conduct the training .The public is welcome.

Presentation:

The Hudsonia Bio-diversity Study of Rhinebeck
Andy Reinmann, biologist and the principal investigator will present

Old Business:

1. Latest report on discussions with the State Department of Transportation regarding construction of a park 'n ride lot on Rt. 199 near the 9G intersection.

2. Considering a plan from the Highway Superintendent and the Supervisor in response to the request of the Heart Safe Club of Rhinebeck to deploy AED equipment throughout public facilities and to train public employees and officials. The proposals include town purchase of eight new AEDs to be located at town hall, stone church fields, the transfer station, the dock, the cemetery, and three at the highway department to augment the single unit currently located at the Thompson-Mazzarella Park., and a morning training program with the entire highway department staff and as many town hall employees and officials as can be persuaded to attend the session, for a total cost of $16,000.

3. Report from Board member Linda Souers and developments at the town landing in Rhinecliff.

New Business:

4. Identifying dates for the Town Board to accept and begin considering the 2008 preliminary budget.

5. Considering a resolution of thanks to Arthur & Nancy Kelly on the occasion of their receiving the Dutchess County Historical Society’s Helen Wilkinson Reynolds Award for their efforts in preserving local history.

Proposed Actions:

6. Accepting bids for material and supplies for the 2008 highway department budget, as recommended by the Highway Superintendent.

7. Approving regular check disbursement list.

8. Approving capital project check disbursement list.

9. Approving minutes of September 10, 2007.

Adjourn into Executive Session:

Vanderburgh Cove litigation

Rhinecliff Advisory Council 14 point review of proposed Rhinebeck Town Comprehensive Plan.

If you wish to download the complete meeting to your iPod CLICK HERE.

rhinecliff.org will be re-launching with many new features and a much improved graphical interface. One feature we have been planning over the last few months is the ability to provide the community with a complete video stream of every Town Meeting. We think this is the future of every community around the country as it harnesses the best features of current web technology to keep the community informed and the government open and accessable. While we are not ready to launch the new rhinecliff.org, our automated video encoding and compressing is now working! We will endeavor to post every Town Meeting within 7-10 days of the meeting. These meetings will be archived to make them available to everyone at anytime. We want to thank PANDA for providing the broadcasts over Time Warner cable channel 23.

This is the Monday, September 17th meeting. The town board met in public session to discuss the draft zoning modifications with its consultants and volunteer leadership. No public comment took place during these sessions. This was "in order to complete the work of the town board in preparing the various documents -- zoning code in this case -- for public distribution and to launch the SEQRA and public review and comment phase of this process."

If you wish to download the complete meeting to your iPod CLICK HERE.

In case you missed the final round of the Comprehensive Plan’s Public Hearings on the 26th, Rhinecliff came out strong, with more people voicing their concern for potential development that will directly affect the historic hamlet. Speakers talked about: