Holidays

Seasons Greetings from
Auntie Alibi and the Team!

From “Woodbury to Wawayanda: More Parks” or “Orange County Re-purposed.”

Dear Nieces and Nephews

IN 2030, the landscape of Orange County will have changed so drastically that anyone who remembers it the way it is now, will not recognize the land that was once open space, farms, wooded areas, interspersed with homes, developments and businesses. In 2030, the “powers that be” from today will have found a way to develop the state, county and local parks. Others will use Orange County as a model of developing parkland and forests in order to implement their plan for the Adirondacks, which is on the list.

No more Harriman/Bear Mountain State Park or Goosepond Mountain State Park!

No more Thomas Bull Park or Orange County Arboretum or Winding Hills Park!

Sterling Forest gone! Black Rock Forest will be a mere memory of the old timers who moved to Sarasota, Florida back in 2025!

West Point will be a museum with pictures of the Hudson River outside the windows and Port Jervis will be proud of it’s “preservation” of the Delaware River, adorned with water slides, tunnels and concrete barriers in primary school colors, with dead fish for the kiddies to play with! (2030 STEM requirement for Science)

No more gaping at the beautiful fall foliage, one of the main reasons for tourism today; there will be no trees, there will be a series of naked, hollowed out mountains, with “rock climbing Parks” all over the place!

Horse farms? “What’s a horse?” Says the average child of 2030.

Storm King Arts Center and the Brotherhood Winery will be shopping centers to accommodate the high density developments in Cornwall and Blooming Grove, respectfully.

Even Warwick will have been decimated by the “tourists” who are destroying the very thing at which they have come to gape! The environmental/economic balance will not be maintained.

Chester? The Town and Village of Chester will be a swath of high density housing with businesses operating in the basements and water parks (Great Wolf will develop another park for 16+ age groups called Big BAD Wolf) The Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center will become a meeting hall for the unions and tradesmen to plan their next big win. (and all of them will have moved out of Orange County closer to their leader and FOS in Ulster County.)

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

Montgomery will be a depot for Pharmaceutical and Medical Supply companies because of its proximity to the interstate highways. Campbell Hall, because of it’s proximity to Montgomery, will be corporate parks for these companies who decide to move their HQ’s closer to their distribution centers. There will be no horse farms (remember, most children will know horses only as mythological creatures seen on a merry-go-round in one of the pavement amusement parks.) the former horse farms will be high security homes for the pharmaceutical company executives and some of their employees. All within walking distance, so these companies can claim to be “eco-friendly”!

Newburgh, Wawayanda and nearby Stony Point in Rockland County (which is adjacent to Woodbury) will be testaments to the “backward vision” of our current elected officials, by providing us will “new” power technologies dotted all along the landscape (e.g. fracked gas power plants, bragging of fewer water draws from the river) . “Cleaner coal” as a back-up, will still be the cause of coal ash deposits wreaking havoc with our drinking water.

And Goshen in 2030? What else can we say about Goshen, who has been leading the way when it comes to profits over common sense. Goshen, which has already lost it’s way due to the either lack of backbone or the corruption of their elected and appointed officials (the opinion of many), will be a plastic brick park, warehouses, high density housing that exceeded their sewer capacity back in 2022 and food processing plants that source their ingredients from the “family farms” (aka corporate farms that must continually be reminded about the definition of animal abuse) in California because there will no longer be farms in OC from which to buy. Goshen! The county seat and the first of the many municipalities to follow the plan seemingly laid out by the County Executive, will no longer be recognized as the civilized, cultured place that it once was! Even Tuxedo, another historical spot in the county, ( home of many scientific discoveries and where the “Tuxedo”-the gentleman’s formal attire- was created ) is falling prey to the “Theme Park” and not even a real one! (virtual, get it?) Whoo hoo!!! Great place for a mugging, they won’t see ya coming!!!

Sadly, Warwick will change when it’s residents will be betrayed by now future leaders who find legal methods for overturning all those conservation easements and by current leaders who who turn Greenwood Lake into a big bath tub!!! None of you will live here because the quality of business and tourism will be high but the quality of life will be trash! Gone! Will be the farms dotted with free roaming bovine; gone! beautiful waterways and forested lands!

Deerpark? Deerpark will not be over run by those Falun gong people*! But Deerpark will be overrun.

“But Auntie,” you say “How can you exaggerate like that? Are you just trying to scare us?”

No, Cari Nipoti, your Auntie sees this as what’s to come, You can see some of it now. We are at the point, right now, where we tip the balance between environment and business. We are not anti-business, we are anti-”excessive number” of businesses, the wrong kind of businesses and developments that cannot be sustained in regards to natural resources.

This is the great part of Orange County, nieces and nephews. Say “goodbye!”            

  

(And, yes, we even want to keep Pine Bush as the UFO capital of the county, lol.)

Remember what your Auntie said last year about the path of development along Rt 17, the NYS Thruway and Interstate 84? How can you doubt your Auntie when this is also how OC looks NOW. Say “hello” to more! 

 

So, whether you are wandering in Walden or hiking it in the Highlands, when you tell yourself that you are too busy to be involved and that the “Legoland is a Goshen thing” or the “Woodbury Common expansion is a Woodbury thing”; when you think that the “Great Wolf park is a Chester issue only” or “CPV is a Wawayanda issue” and“Danskammer is a Newburgh thing”, think again.

And start thinking regionally or at least county wide, because we are on this path.

And it is up to you to stop it! Join Riverkeeper, Black Rock Forest Consortium, Protect Orange County, Orange County Land Trust, CAPP, CC4HV or a bona-fide conservation group of your choosing.

Go to Planning board meetings or at least send an email to local planning boards and Town/Village boards.  We understand if you do not want to go to a meeting on the other side of the county but your computer is right there in front of you!

https://www.orangecountygov.com/153/County-Clerk 

https://www.orangecountygov.com/DocumentCenter/View/127/County-Clerk-Ready-Reference-Guide-PDF?bidId=

Send an email to your County Legislators asking them what their ultimate plan is for the county and if they want to have this paved over, multi-theme park, warehouse, distribution center of a county as their legacy!!!

https://www.orangecountygov.com/903/Legislature 

https://www.orangecountygov.com/DocumentCenter/View/5916 

Make sure you go to this meeting or send comments (your device is right in front of you):

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NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Orange County Planning Board will hold a Public

Hearing regarding updates to the County Comprehensive Plan. The plan updates are posted

on the County website: https://www.orangecountygov.com/376/Orange-County-Plans-Documents 

The document is available for viewing at the Orange County Department of Planning,

Office Hours: 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, 124 Main Street, Goshen, New York. The Public Hearing

will be held on December 11, 2018 at 7:00 PM

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Remember that in NYS “Home Rule” is controlling, that means zoning within a Town or Village is decided by that municipality, NOT the county, no matter what the County Executive may assume.

And Vote! Vote for those with the courage to represent ALL of their constituents fairly.

Make your voices heard!!!

Make your Auntie proud.

Or leave now, while you can still sell your homes to some unwitting dupe* from NYC.  

*This is not meant to disparage any group(s), just your Auntie again, employing sarcasm to make the point.