NARROWSBURG, NY — The Tusten Town Board voted unanimously at the meeting on May 14 to reject a proposed Property Maintenance Law. At an April 10 public hearing, members of the public harshly criticized the proposed law as being too strict and overreaching.If, for instance, the code enforcement officer found a house with peeling paint, the owner of the home would be in violation of the law.

Council member Jane Luchsinger said the board passed the resolution to create a draft law in July 2018.She said, “It was a suggestion—please have faith in your elected officials—the board realizes this is a process. The process is that we look at a drafted bill, put it out to the public, listen to the public, and make a decision, we have done just that.”

Council member Brandi Merrolla noted that she sent a letter about the proposed law to the zoning review committee in February saying, “this is a far overreaching law that I absolutely will not support… the demands both financially and esthetically are unacceptable….”

Council chair Carol Wingert, said “I didn’t support it then, still don’t.”

Council member Tony Ritter, who is stepping down from the council at the end of the year, said he, too, was opposed to the law. He said the law was drawn up by professional planner Peter Manning. “In this case, when you have professional planners who really don’t know about this town, they don’t know how it ticks, there should have been someone that raised his hand and said you know what this is not going to fly, rework it, because when the public finally hears this, and they will hear it, there’s going to be so much blow back that it will not work.”

After the town board voted to reject the law, businessman and former council member Ned Lang accused the board members of deceiving the public. “Back in January, Carol had these town laws in her email, the fact that they tried to pretend that this all the sudden just flew across their desks, and they were so opposed to it, is baloney,” he said. “If we didn’t attend that town board meeting the other night, we would have had those laws passed, we would be subjected to them, this would be a whole other story.”

Kathy Michell, chair of the zoning review committee, has said in the past the committee was not involved in drafting the proposed law. She said the drafting of the law as paid for by a grant from Sullivan Renaissance.

She also said new laws regarding noise and mass gatherings would be amended once the zoning review committee had transcripts of all the relevant public comments, and there would be another public hearing on those laws.

Jim Crowley, the town code enforcement officer, addressed the proposed property maintenance law and said, “I already have this law, I don’t need this, I have this from the secretary of the state of New York. I have a whole book on property maintenance.” He said that if he strictly enforced every regulation in the book, “everyone would be in violation of property maintenance, everybody including myself.”

On the subject of the possibility of the Town of Tusten hiring seasonal constables, council member Jill Padua said that she is gathering information on the subject. “If the town were to hire constables at all, that would only be for the summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, she said. “Calculating the cost of four armed constables, weekends only, with the exception of holiday weekends, which would include a Sunday night, and certain events where constables would be paid for by event producers. The shifts are 4 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 8 a.m.”

She said the plan being considered involved two constables and two constables-in-training, and the entire cost would be $19,308.She emphasized that no decision has yet been made.