A Shandaken man approached me last month and asked why the Town Board won’t relocate its offices to the former Phoenicia Elementary School. I’ve read similar queries on social media. To answer: municipal offices are critical facilities and critical facilities shouldn’t be in the floodplain, much less a floodway, as is the case with our current Town Hall.
Critical facilities are essential properties needed to maintain public health, safety, and disaster recovery. During a flood or similar event, these sites should be up and running when everything else isn’t. During Irene, the Town Hall was inaccessible because of flooding and Rob Stanley relocated municipal operations to the Shandaken-Allaben Firehouse for a bit, and then hopped around for a couple of weeks. We continue to hop around with our emergency services. Our ambulance is spread out in three locations, a situation that is far from ideal!
Imagine having police, ambulance, highway and even county facilities in one location—with capacity to heat and cool and communicate during storms, heat waves, and major disasters. Well, that’s the plan.
This week, the Catskill Watershed Corporation (CWC) approved significant funding to purchase land to build a Town Hall Complex, well out of the floodplain, on Route 28—a primary evacuation and detour route. This is fantastic news for everyone—from here to NYC—who is a fan of drinkable water, as our highway fueling station will be relocated and moved out of the Esopus floodway. Environmental studies on the new site will be complete soon, but so far it looks promising.
In the meantime, as summer rec staff cram into our breakroom to fill out paperwork, the air conditioning limps along to sometimes cool Town Hall, and our building department has a critical space shortage for files—we look forward to a roomier, accessible, safe facility to co-locate our emergency and other services.