NARROWSBURG, NY — The November 22 Tusten Planning Board meeting opened with a moment of silence for Ed Jackson.

Jackson served for many years as board chairman, and was named president of the Northeast Region New York State Planning Board Federation. He passed away October 18, 2022 at the age of 85.

Following the moment of silence, the board turned to considering a letter received from the Narrowsburg Union. The letter expressed the Union’s concerns that neighboring business Bar Veloce may not comply with local and state code in a number of particulars.

It really doesn’t apply to us at this point, said planning board member Kenneth Baim. The planning board didn’t enforce code matters; if anything with Bar Veloce came before the planning board, that body would have it on file.

Bobov Yeshiva Educational Center

The board discussed a proposal for the Bobov Yeshiva Educational Center, intended to be built at Silver Lake.

Rick Woidt, president of Woidt Engineering and Consulting, discussed the work he had done on the Silver Lake Dam.

The dam has an intermediate hazard classification (indicative of the level of property damage that could result from a breach), which requires a compliance check list, said Woidt. He had begun a compliance process with the property’s current owner, and found a few issues that needed to be addressed: the spillway capacity did not meet regulations and there were several large-diameter trees near the dam, in addition to other similar issues.

Joel Rosenfeld, representing the group behind the educational center project, assured the board that the group would follow through on the multi-year plan laid out to bring the dam into compliance if it bought the property.

The board didn’t express any major concerns about the dam; it doesn’t appear there’s an immediate danger it’s going to burst and kill everybody, said Baim. The board focused on other aspects of the proposed plans, including the placement of a leach field for a proposed swimming pool,  and the presence of water storage tanks in the property’s lodge.

“We came to the board [for] two reasons,” said Rosenfeld. “First of all, we want to purchase this property, we’re in contract, we wanted to make sure we can get a special use permit to actually operate over there as an educational institution. And additionally, we wanted to get [a] preliminary OK to go ahead and have all these additions that we need in order to operate for our programming. All the details and fine tuning the specs exactly… obviously, that’ll come once we go ahead [and] purchase the property.”

The planning board intended to review the project under the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) act (a necessary part of project approvals) at its next meeting.

Eagles Nest subdivision

The planning board also reviewed the application by Robert Weigers to subdivide a property he owns at 437 Hankins Rd. It accepted the zoning board’s approval of the project and that body’s SEQR review, and set a public hearing for 7:25 p.m. on December 27.