Frosch and river council duke it out

By DAVID HULSE

NARROWSBURG — The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) last week issued a denunciation of allegations made by its Town of Hancock delegate and told him to straighten up his act.

In February, George Frosch decided to “put these dead rats up [on the table] and see if we couldn’t get rid of them.”

According to the UDC findings prepared by the Operations Committee, what followed was a list of “previously unarticulated questions, complaints and allegations.”

Frosch:

• questioned expense billing by an employee, claiming the employee was a personal friend of a personnel committee member.
• claimed the UDC’s position on the state’s construction of the Mongaup access was contradictory to the River Management Plan and a resolution of the Water Use Resource Management (WURM) Committee, and that then chairman Larry Richardson denied Frosch time to state his complaints before the UDC.
• questioned whether a member of the UDC officers nominating committee can be nominated for office by that committee.
• claimed the National Park Service (NPS) had provided “untrue” information about riparian land owner claims.
• questioned the impacts of NPS river management on blue-stone mining.

The UDC finding did not address Frosch’s final point or directly speak to the Mongaup issue and alleged NPS untruths, but repudiated the remainder of them in some detail:

• noting the lengthy UDC history of participation in the activity named in the expense voucher, and that employee-UDC member friendships sometimes pre-date UDC involvement.
• found that staff has never been directed to “concentrate their work on current tasks” and that if, in future, they are to compile a history of the Mongaup access, it will only happen at committee direction.
• found that Richardson had a right to call for a vote and end discussion.

The findings also noted that Frosch has been actively lobbying the Hancock Town Board to withdraw from the UDC and form an opposing organization of non-participating towns.

It also “urged” Frosch to follow “proper protocol” in the future and “conduct himself in a civil rational manner.”

Frosch issued a statement of his own in reply to the findings, which essentially restated his complaints.

The UDC voted to distribute both their findings and Frosch’s reply.