Protecting the community

Normally somnolent, Barryville has been alive with controversy since the introduction of a proposal to build an automatic car wash in the center of the hamlet.

Pro and con factions, which have formed in the hamlet, prompted a lively 90-minute debate at last week’s public hearing before the Town of Highland Planning Board.

“Are public meetings always like this?” one woman asked after the session, reflecting some shock at the apparent dissension.

“This was nothing,” the reporter told her. “When the park service arrived here, they used to come and chant slogans and ring cow bells.”

Last week’s hearing was tame compared to some of the sessions from the 1980s, but it was pretty much about the same things: zoning and different ideas about the best way to protect the community.

In the 1980s, zoning was a fairly new concept in the Upper Delaware. So was the National Park Service (NPS). Having seen the condemnation of land in the Middle Delaware, many people thought the advent of the NPS would mean limitations on the use of private property and business, and they protested. But limitations were not coming from the NPS.

Since then the population and values of our communities have changed somewhat. Several years ago, Highland residents complained that sloppy timber cutting practices—on someone else’s property—had ruined the views from their homes and a timbering practices ordinance resulted.

Another more recent ridge top clear-cutting incident has the town planning to reduce the allowable acreage that may be clear-cut. Many people have come to rely on the limitations on property use and business that zoning provides.

This has happened, in part, because the demographics of Highland’s population have changed. Once a community of shopkeepers, self-employed tradespeople and laborers, the town now has healthy mix of second home/weekend home residents and retirees.

Many of these folks came here and liked the looks of the simple rural hamlets, places that another daily publication recently described as “anti-chic.” They fixed an image of what they liked about these places in their minds and like others who came before them, decided that they wanted these places to stay that way—to protect the community.

While all this was going on, the shopkeepers and tradespeople and laborers who had written the town’s zoning laws and run the town’s government, began to see new opportunities for investments in their businesses. It would mean new prosperity and a growing tax base —to protect the community.

A collision was inevitable.

To get by this impasse, everyone needs to remember that a community, like anything alive, is dynamic and needs to move and change in order to survive.

Sullivan County is preparing for casino gambling, a performing arts center and an influx of Orange County’s overflow growth. The car wash will not be the last of the changes in Barryville, nor will it mean the end of civilization as we know it.

Rather than rejecting change, a formula that we found would not work in the 1980s, we need to see to the details of how it happens. Rather than rejecting a new business, make sure the hours of operation will be appropriate for the need. See to it that the lighting and noise levels are appropriate and measurable with available technology. If vegetative screening is called for, make sure that it will be maintained along with building appearance, which should fit in with the hamlet’s rural atmosphere.

And if you are still irked by the prospect of a car wash after all this mitigation, I’ll offer a spot on the Half-Way Brook where you can sit with your feet in cleaner water and know that you’ve done something good for the environment—to protect the community.

David Hulse, News Editor