Music festival shatters the peace

Permit revoked for Bethel campground

FRITZ MAYER
Posted 10/4/17

WHITE LAKE, NY — Everyone agreed that the music was too loud, went on too long into the night, and the hyper-amplified base was especially offensive. A parade of neighbors testified at a public …

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Music festival shatters the peace

Permit revoked for Bethel campground

Posted

WHITE LAKE, NY — Everyone agreed that the music was too loud, went on too long into the night, and the hyper-amplified base was especially offensive. A parade of neighbors testified at a public hearing at the Town of Bethel meeting on September 28.

Comments from Nicolas Ivanoff, who lives near the Bethel Hideaway Campground near Swan Lake, echoed many others when he said, “The music was nonstop, about 18 hours out of the day, for three straight days, and it went something like this;” He then banged his hand on the microphone several times creating loud thumping noises. “You felt it in the floor, you could felt it in your heart, the glass on the door was shaking.”

Four other people testified about how unbearable the three-day event at the campground, from August 18, 19 and 20, which coincided with Woodstock Weekend, was for everyone in the neighborhood.

Then one of the campground owners, Jennifer Colaiacomo, took to the podium, and she agreed with what the neighbors had said. She apologized to the neighbors and town board and explained how much she and her partner had invested in the facility since buying it last year, and how many people it brings into the community.

As to the weekend in question, she said, “I truly didn’t know what this no-words music was about. And what it escalated and turned into was a mini-Mysteryland… We really tried to work side-by-side with BJ [Gettel, the municipality’s code enforcement officer]; she was onsite with us for most of the weekend. We did have to bring in our own security once we saw where this was going, and had I had a better business sense I would have never had them unload truck one.”

She said she had to send her 13-year-old son home because of the atmosphere. She said, “People were defecating in my showers, I have graffiti all over my brand new bathrooms… It was just a constant battle of asking them to turn down the music and 15 minutes later it would be turned up again.

She said there was music on other weekends, and there were no complaints for those weekend, only for the one in which an organization called Down to Earth Music Festival took over the campground. She added, “We did communicate with our local authorities because we wanted it shut down.”

Colaiacomo’s husband, Frank Vanleeuwen, also spoke. He said, “It got to the point that I screwed my bathroom doors closed, and I brought in port-o-potties, because like Jennifer said they were defecating in the showers, kicking down urinals. The festival people were originally going to allow Jennifer and I to put people on the sites; that changed. They wanted to be in control of that. We allowed that, and that’s where we made our biggest mistake; we lost control of our campground.”

He said he asked the state police to shut down the festival and they declined. He said the festival organizer “Left in the middle of the night, stopped payment on the check, and burned us for $15,000.”

The couple had one more noise permit for this year, for the weekend of October 7. The question for the board was whether to revoke the single remaining noise permit for the season. The board voted unanimously to do so.

Supervisor Dan Sturm said there were limits to what he could say because the circumstances surrounding the weekend were under “legal review.”

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