NARROWSBURG, NY — What defines a summer camp? What role does a planning board play in the approval of a project?

These questions, and others, were asked at a February 28 meeting of the Tusten Planning Board, focused on a project that has inspired heated community sentiments. 

Summer camp or educational institution?

The Bobov Yeshiva Educational Retreat (BYER), the project under discussion, would house approximately 150 students from a yeshiva in Monsey at the former Camp Wel-Met property in the Town of Tusten hamlet of Beaver Brook. 

The students attending BYER would stay for approximately two months during the summer, around the months of July and August, according to project sponsor Rabbi Joel Rosenfeld. 

BYER will be used primarily for religious instruction, with some aspects of recreation, the project’s applicants have repeatedly said. They have applied for a special-use permit as an educational institution, planning board chairman Ken Baim confirmed to the River Reporter. 

As defined in the Town of Tusten zoning law, an educational institution is “an institution of secondary or higher learning chartered by the State of New York or a private educational institution subject to regulations prescribed by the State of New York.” As defined by the Town of Tusten zoning code, a summer camp is a property with temporary occupancy “during the period, or part of the period, from May 15 to October 15 in any year,” which may provide “recreational and/or other programs offered for the benefit of the occupants.”

The Monsey yeshiva serves students from pre-kindergarten to 11th grade, according to information from privateschoolreview.com. However, only the 10th and 11th grade students will attend BYER, Rosenfeld has said. 

Members of the public in attendance insistently made the point that the project was, at its heart, a summer camp, whatever it was called. It’s a point with great stakes: the former Camp Wel-Met property sits within the R-2 zoning district of Tusten: that district allows educational institutions via special-use permit, but does not allow summer camps. 

It’s a point that, according to the applicant’s lawyer, has been litigated and won already. 

A religious retreat is a legitimate use of property, said Steve Barshov, the attorney for the applicants. The Talmud Torah case, brought against the Town of Wawarsing, had determined that a summer retreat by a religious institution was just that. “We’re not trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes or violate the law. In fact, what we are doing [is] following what the courts have said the law is.”

Rules and laws

The town’s zoning process and the rule of law came under fire in broader terms as well. 

The public hearing process seemed pointless if a project the community didn’t want could be approved, said Brian Mendoza. “It feels very pointless that the rules are just going to override what [we’ve done]. We as a community have invested in our comprehensive plan and elected people that we think represent our views… but ultimately, that doesn’t translate into what happens in the town.”

The rules do, however, play a part in the translation process. 

Zoning rules come directly out of the comprehensive plan; they enact into law the guidelines that the comprehensive plan laid down. The Town of Tusten passed its most recent zoning revisions in 2022, following several rounds of public comment, following up on its 2021 comprehensive plan revision. 

“We are governed by the rules, by the ordinances that are passed by the town board,” said planning board member Mike Farrell. 

Challenges against a planning board’s decision can be taken up in court through Article 78 proceedings, but those challenges often hinge on whether a planning board overrides a community’s will as expressed through the zoning regulations, not the other way around. 

The room remained unconvinced, and attempted to appeal to the spirit of the law.  

“When the town decided to say no more camps, what was the decisional force behind that?” asked Denise Frangipani. A project can’t circumvent the plan of the town by calling itself not a camp, she said. 

“I don’t think that was really done,” said Baim—he had worked on both zoning rewrites and on two comprehensive plan updates. The town looked at properties in the Beaver Brook area that had historically been camps—hunting clubs, the Boy Scouts property, Camps Sternberg and Wel-Met—and wanted to keep those large acreages intact, to keep the town rural, he said.  

“They’re calling it not a camp, so we’re not looking at a camp,”  Baim added. “And this operation has been there since 1935.”

Impacts on the property

Discussed again at the meeting were the potential environmental impacts of the property’s use. 

Star Hesse mentioned that residents’ environmental concerns had not yet been answered, and found it hard to see how the granting of any permits could be considered when there were so many serious concerns remaining. 

BYER’s applicants plan to respond to the planning board in writing, they have said. 

A letter submitted by the Gurdjieff Foundation, the current owner of the property, contested claims made by neighbors that the property was hardly used. Overall, it had been used at least 90 days per year with over a hundred people in attendance, and over 400 during the largest event, with two hundred staying overnight, it said: based on the info submitted for BYER, “their use of the property will likely be less intense than ours.”

Neighbors remained unconvinced. “I appreciate that they wrote a letter, but I don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Joanne Pentangelo, to applause. “I have never, ever, ever seen hundreds of people over 90 days a year using that property.”

Neighbors as well remained concerned that BYER would not follow the zoning ordinances set down for it. 

Participants on both sides of the debate have stated that the community’s opposition to BYER is not founded in antisemitism. 

Two members of the public conflated the Monsey yeshiva with other yeshivas. One offered the board the examples set by other yeshiva-run summer camps as proof that BYER was a summer camp. The other took the Monsey yeshiva to task for property violations incurred by a development in Brooklyn, which she said had built and sold apartments under the guise of being a yeshiva.  

“So when you talk about being a good neighbor, that is B.S.. A good neighbor doesn’t do something like that,” said the latter commenter, addressing the applicants’ lawyer. 

Next steps

The board did not take action on BYER during its February meeting. The town’s engineer still needed to review some of the material submitted by the applicants. The next planning board meeting will occur on Thursday, March 28. 

“If there is steadfast opposition that is in the category of ‘it doesn’t matter what my client says, it doesn’t matter what they do, it doesn’t matter what they offer and it doesn’t matter what they promise and it doesn’t matter what they commit to,’ those kinds of concerns, those can never be addressed, that kind of opposition can never be addressed or ameliated. Maybe time heals it, if people become acquainted with one another and become good neighbors,” said Barshov.