BEAVER BROOK, NY — A proposed educational retreat in the Town of Tusten has its potential neighbors concerned.

The Bobov Yeshiva Educational Retreat (BYER) will house approximately 150 students from the Bobov Yeshiva in Monsey during the summer at a property on Blind Pond Road, if it receives approval from the Town of Tusten Planning Board. The applicants first went before the board in May 2022, and the project reached the public hearing stage on January 24.

The Orthodox Jewish community moves up to the country during the summer, Rabbi Joel Rosenfeld, the project’s public face, told the River Reporter. The Monsey yeshiva has for years sent its students to a bungalow colony in Monroe during the summer, but that place was old, and the yeshiva looked to purchase another property.

“This is a learning camp,” Rosenfeld told the planning board at a January 24 public hearing. “Eighty percent of the day will be between praying, learning—there is recreation, we’re going to have a swimming pool and there will be boys playing ball a little bit, we’re not going to have major leagues stuff, but there will be recreation.”

Why are people concerned?

The prospect of a summer camp operating in the middle of the Beaver Brook community has raised the concerns of residents.

Two specific points in the application have come up: what the special use permit authorizes, and how the environmental assessment form (EAF) was filled out.

Beaver Brook residents have claimed that allowing the applicant to fill out the EAF introduces bias into the process, and have requested an independent review of the project’s environmental impact.

The applicants worked with the planning board throughout the process, said Rosenfeld. “It’s not like this was pushed through; [it’s not like] we brought an application and we filled out an EAF, checked all the boxes, and the planning board rubber stamped whatever I said. It was thorough discussions on everything.”

According to New York State process, the first form in the EAF procedure, Part 1, is always filled out by the applicant; it contains answers to a host of environmental questions, including impacts on water, sewer and traffic. Parts 2 and 3 are filled out by the project’s lead agency, a municipal entity that has declared itself the oversight agency for the project; in those forms, the lead agency reviews the Part 1 form and determines whether the project will have a significant impact upon the environment, both natural and human-made.

The Tusten Planning Board declared itself the lead agency for the project and completed Parts 2 and 3 in a meeting on December 27, seven months after the project first came before it. It issued a negative declaration for the property, indicating that, in its view, the project would not have a significant environmental impact.

Other concerns

Advocates have also expressed concerns that approval of the project gives the applicants a blank check to build at the site.

“If the group seeking the special use permit acquires the property and is issued the permit, they will as of right be able to run an educational facility 365 days a year, all day, every day,” Joanne Pentangelo wrote in a January 29 email to the planning board.

Preventing development beyond what is permitted is actually the keystone of the special use process. An applicant can only build the project that a special use permit approves; the planning board can impose additional conditions on that approval if required. In the case of BYER, the EAF Part 1 specifies that the project will operate “24 hours during summer.”

In bringing a project to the planning board, the applicants are saying that a summer camp for religious education is what they’re building, Rosenfeld told the River Reporter.

The BYER’s proposed location increases the potential for its presence to be felt, Peck said. Located at the intersection between Blind Pond Road …

Will it impact the area?

Beyond specific environmental concerns, advocates have expressed concerns that the presence of a camp in the middle of Beaver Brook will damage the community’s quality of life.

Attorney for the applicants Steve Barshov expressed skepticism on that point at the January 24 public hearing: “I don’t believe it will change the nature of the community,” he said. “Residents will be quiet, and mostly indoors.”

The camp will have an impact; let’s get on the same page and talk about it, Beaver Brook resident MacKenzie Peck told the River Reporter. She pointed to preexisting camps in the area, where their neighbors can feel the impact of delivery trucks, hear music and the like: “Their presence is known.”

The BYER’s proposed location increases the potential for its presence to be felt, Peck said. Located at the intersection between Blind Pond Road and Ryer Road, commonly refered to as “the Beaver Brook four corners,” the buildings at the camp are close to the road.

They had moved from a crowded place to a place of peace and quiet, Peck said of Beaver Brook residents. She said they have invested in a life here, and don’t want it to change in a big way.

“Don’t just say, no, you don’t want it in your backyard,” said zoning board of appeals member Pat Hawker, speaking to the public as a member of the public during a February 14 town board meeting. “If you’re going to say that you don’t want it there, you have to say more than, ‘it’s going to just do a, b and c,’ you have to say why, and what kind of effect.”

What’s the town board’s role?

Supervisor Ben Johnson addressed the issue in comments at the start of the February 14 town board meeting. While he had received a lot of communication on the subject, it was a planning board issue, he said; the town board would not put its thumb on the scale.

The Beaver Brook residents who spoke at the meeting expressed frustration at a lack of responsiveness from the planning board: “We’re just really frustrated; nobody’s listening to us,” said Pentangelo.

Johnson assured the public that the letters and the comments received were heard and made their way into the public record.

People don’t trust the mechanisms of oversight, Peck told the River Reporter, citing that the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Health are understaffed, and there’s only one code enforcer for the whole area. It feels as well like there’s an absence of empathy from officials for what the community is bringing to them, she added.

The planning board meets again on Tuesday, February 28, with BYER on the agenda. The conclusion of the public hearing started a 62-day timeline for …

What comes next?

The planning board meets again on Tuesday, February 28, with BYER on the agenda. The conclusion of the public hearing started a 62-day timeline for the planning board to conclude its review, giving the board a deadline of March 28.

The community’s organization around BYER has, to a certain extent, brought it together. Neighbors met neighbors they hadn’t met before at the January public hearing, and those connections have continued into advocacy.  

“Whenever people are confronted with something they don’t know, they are curious about it… but one of the things that I hope will happen is that neighbors will get to know each other, and they’ll actually realize that they have far more in common than they think they do,” says Barshov.