NEW YORK — Big, out-of-area applications—like Camp FIMFO’s application before the Town of Highland—can be the first of their kind for a planning board.

Town codes may not anticipate the range of projects that might someday come before them. Planning boards are often expected to make high-impact decisions without having a comprehensive code to guide them. Commercial projects not typical for a community can spark controversy and drag on. Norm Sutherland, the former planning board chair, said the large-scale Camp FIMFO project–which seeks to install 252 RV park model trailers at Kittatinny Campground in Barryville, among other changes–is “probably” the longest-running application to any planning board in the county.

New York state operates under a “home rule” system, in which municipalities pass laws freely, as long as they don’t conflict with state law. New York Zoning Enabling Law grants municipalities the authority to decide their own planning and zoning affairs.

Home rule is intended to give municipalities the authority to meet the needs of its residents in ways “tailored to their unique local context,” and to give them “freedom” and “self-determination” to contribute to regional needs, according to “Local Zoning, Regional Needs: A Regional Review of How New York State and its Neighbors are Handling the Housing Crisis,” published in January by the Center for Housing Solutions in collaboration with Alan Mallach, Senior Fellow Center for Community Progress.

In practice, carrying this out can be difficult for small towns with limited resources. 

Big-time lobbyist, small town budget

Members of the Highland Planning Board are volunteers. There is no financial compensation. Board members say they’ve dedicated hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteer hours outside of meetings.

Among Camp FIMFO’s representatives is Alexander Betke, an attorney and lobbyist who “enjoys considerable experience working with the Governor’s Office, the Legislature, state agencies, the Attorney General and the State Comptroller, along with New York’s federal government representatives,” according to the web page of his employer, Brown & Weinraub. His clients include major industry associations and Fortune 500 companies.

Brown & Weinraub was the state’s top lobbyist in 2022 and 2023, bringing in the biggest sums, $15.5 million and $21.15 million, respectively, according to City & State. In 2023, New York hit a new record high on the amount of money spent on lobbying.

Camp FIMFO, a subsidiary of Sun Communities, is a publicly traded real estate trust that invests in manufactured housing communities, recreational vehicle communities, and marinas. Its revenue was $1.398 billion in 2020. Revenue for the first quarter of 2024 was already up to $669.7 million.

By contrast, Highland officials work with a budget of a little more than $3  million.

Highland is currently working on rewriting its ten-year comprehensive plan, which will be used to inform revisions to the current town code. 

“So I think you guys can tell from the past two to three years, we’ve had a lot of big projects come our way, and we’ve had a lot of changes in our community,” Highland Supervisor John Pizzolato told residents at a recent scoping session on the plan. “This is the public’s opportunity to inform how we change how we grow, how we evolve, what we want to stay in, what we don’t want to stay in, or what we don’t want to evolve into. But it really is for the taxpayers for the public and for the residents to inform what the next 10 years of our town our codes and our rules look like.”

The updated comprehensive plan will lead to an update of town code so that it can meet the challenge of new and changing applications before the planning board. But the update, which happens only every ten years, is not free, and will take time.