NARROWSBURG, NY — The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) earlier this month awarded $23,377 to fund four projects through its 2020 Technical Assistance Grants (TAG) program, but a tiny declined grant acquired the most attention.

The full council approved a resolution at the October 3 UDC monthly meeting to award the grants. According to a UDC statement, Chair Harold Roeder signed it “under protest, as NPS would not fund Berlin Township’s grant.”

Roeder’s statement referred to a $710 grant for a website update project by Berlin Township for which the Project Review Committee favored approval, but the National Park Service (NPS) Northeast Region denied, contending that it did not conform to the goals and objectives of the 1986 River Management Plan (RMP) for the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River to justify an appropriate use of federal funds.

The NPS decision came despite an appeal letter filed by the UDC on September 25 noting that, “Our research reveals that, with active NPS participation in the TAG review process, the UDC has assisted in funding the development and updating of member municipality websites 10 times since 2001, at a total cost of $22,745 over that 18-year span. We are not aware of why this website update would require meeting any different or higher standard of TAG program acceptability.”

The September 25 letter cited two RMP goals and Principle B of the Land & Water Use Guidelines (L&WUG) that the UDC believes the application addressed based on the intended content and utilization of the upgraded website.

NPS officials maintained in an October 2 determination that the proposed project was not an allowable expense, claiming that regulations aimed at promoting fiscal accountability have tightened over time. The newly approved grants bring the cumulative amount that the UDC has provided to its member municipalities and counties to $891,952 since 1988. In all, 257 projects have been funded.

Approved for FY 2020 (October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020) funding were: for the Town of Tusten, $10,000 for a Phase I update of the 2007 Town of Tusten comprehensive plan; for the Town of Tusten, $7,250 to finalize an update of the Town of Tusten zoning ordinance which has been underway by a zoning rewrite committee for two years; for the Town of Hancock, $5,000 to hire a consultant to conduct a recreational access study along the Delaware River from the Village of Hancock in Delaware County to Long Eddy in Sullivan County to assess the feasibility of developing a walking trail and improving access to the river for fishing and boating; and for the Town of Delaware, $1,127 to create and print 1,000 copies of a tri-fold “Guide to Permits” brochure to provide information to the public on the town’s building permit requirements and answer frequently asked questions.

Technical Assistance Grants are available on a competitive basis to the UDC’s eight member New York towns, five Pennsylvania townships, and their encompassing five river-corridor counties.

Buckingham and Manchester Townships in Wayne County, PA would be eligible to receive this member benefit if they joined the UDC.

At the November 7 meeting, the UDC directed resource specialist Peter Golod to write a letter to the NPS for the UDC chairperson’s signature and copied to the Town of Highland, stating the UDC’s recommended finding that the 2019 Highland Zoning Law does not substantially conform to the L&WUG with a request for a final determination to be made.
They also approved the submission of a letter to the editor of The River Reporter for publication regarding council concerns about the article, “Highland blames UDC staff for poor communications,” with a copy of their letter sent to the Town of Highland.

The panel also directed that meeting packets be sent to five absent members (Highland, Lumberland, Westfall, NPS, DRBC.)