NARROWSBURG, NY — The Tusten Town Council’s public hearing was rough from beginning to end Monday night. 

Two council members were late, thinking the hearing was scheduled for another day. When they arrived, the 2019 preliminary budget—which was meant to be up for a vote—was missing, and then misprinted, leaving the five people who had showed up to question the financials confused. A resident and local businessman expressed frustration with lights not working throughout the town, while tension bubbled over hurdles to installing a new generator for the council building.

“I think this council has lost its sense of direction”

“I think this council has lost its sense of direction,” accused volunteer firefighter and owner of Peters Pharmacy, Colin Peters.

All of this overshadowed the evening’s main event, which was to take public comment and approve the local law for the Town of Tusten—a 300-plus-page document that includes all regulations and laws since the town’s inception. The town has never had a complete code before, so Supervisor Carol Ropke Wingert has spent the last year overseeing the compilation of one, which includes laws related to taxation, animals, building codes, water use and more.

Wingert said that there are not many serious changes in the code, which can be found in full online, but that there were some minor changes due to repetition or irrelevant regulations from years past. The zoning portion of the code, chapter 300, is still missing from the document and awaiting review by the board.

Read the new Town of Tusten Code here.

The other item of the evening was review of the town’s preliminary 2019 budget. Because the preliminary budget was not readily available at the meeting—though it can be picked up at the town clerk’s office—Wingert postponed the vote for a 10 a.m. public hearing Thursday.

The 2019 preliminary budget is now available online at the Town of Tusten’s website. Here are a few takeaways from the preliminary numbers: There will be a big increase in fire prevention and control funding, from $144,432 to $230,732, due to events from the previous year. Additionally, due to the closing of the Narrowsburg Adult Home earlier this year, ambulance and emergency services have lost money they would normally get from Medicaid and insurance payments, Wingert said. The town has increased funding for the ambulance and the constable of public safety—which is a heading that includes keeping the police station and ambulances in town—by $3,500 in order to help buoy the company.

Look through the 2019 Town of Tusten preliminary budget by clicking here.

“So their calls are down, but you still need coverage 24/7,” Wingert said. “The last thing we need is to go privatized,” which would cost more money and move the ambulance farther away.

The town will continue to pay $2,500 for street lighting and $14,000 to the lighting district, despite the fact that board members said the New York State Electric and Gas Corporation (NYSEG) has failed to replace burnt out light bulbs. For this reason, the town is planning to switch to LED bulbs and extricate itself from the contract with NYSEG.

There are slight increases in payments to the water and sewer district administration. The town has historically paid for two top personnel in the water and sewer departments to be licensed. Wingert said that they are required to work for one year before receiving their licenses. Historically, the people in those positions have left after receiving their licenses, thus requiring the town to pay for a new person to go through the training process.

This time around, the town will pay an extra $5,000 for the personnel to receive their licenses, but have signed an agreement with the trainees that they will stay on for five years after being licensed.

After finishing the public comment on the budget, the meeting shifted to a discussion about a new emergency generator. Councilperson Tony Ritter expressed frustration that after putting out specs and receiving two bids from agencies for new generators, the board has decided to start the process over again.

The board approved specs for the project that were too broad, said town clerk Crystal Weston. Because of this, the bids—which were presented at the last regular town meeting—were impossible to compare and did not, in some cases, meet the requirements released by the board. The sizes of the generators were different, and one company included the price of propane while another did not. “It was like comparing apples to oranges,” council members said.

Choosing between these two would be illegal, Wingert said. Board members squabbled as Ritter disagreed on the decision to restart, saying that it would be February or March before the town building had a new generator.

“We might as well just do it right from the beginning,” Wingert said, effectively ending the discussion and the meeting.