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Cold Spring's Special Board Program July 12 to Focus on 'Sustainability' in Hudson Valley
Public invited to training and learning session
Members of the Cold Spring Comprehensive Plan Special Board and affiliated Working Groups will meet July 12 to learn about "sustainability" in Hudson Valley communities, reviewing ways other towns are addressing economic, environmental, and preservation questions in their comprehensive plans or capital improvement initiatives.
To begin at 6:30pm in the Cold Spring Fire House on Main Street, the session will feature Melissa Everett, executive director of Sustainable Hudson Valley, an internationally-connected "think-action tank" with expertise in sustainable regional development strategies and planning, and Jaime Reppert of the New York Department of State, who will discuss the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program and plans.
Ms. Everett, who teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, holds a doctorate from the International, Off-Campus Program of Erasmus University's Centre for Environmental Management and Sustainable Development, located in the Netherlands, a pioneering program for mid-career professionals. At Rensselaer, she involves undergraduate engineering students in servicelearning projects on campus and in the community; her own thesis for Erasmus dealt with "community turnarounds."
"The Hudson Valley is at a crossroads," Sustainable Hudson Valley states on its Web site. "Sprawl, housing prices, traffic and commutes, climate change and floods (and) loss of farmland all are signs of development patterns that cannot be sustained." It cites the need "for new economic strategies - focusing not only on business development, but on quality-of-life" concerns as well as "preservation of natural and cultural assets in our communities."
Encouraging an economic strategy based on environmental and community revitalization as industries in their own right and as conditions for healthy development, the group serves as a resource for consultation, training, and education on sustainability and measures of progress within what it calls a "triple bottom-line" framework of community, environment and economy.
Mr. Reppert is on the staff of the New York Department of State Division of Coastal Resources, which oversees LWRP activity. "A Local Waterfront Revitalization Program is both a plan and a program," the division explains on its website. "The term refers to both a planning document prepared by a community as well as the program established to implement the plan."
According to Coastal Resources, 90 percent of New York State's population and a wide variety of economic activities are concentrated in waterfront communities - from huge cities to tiny hamlets. "Our waterfronts are rich in natural resources - with abundant fish and wildlife as well as bluffs, beaches and wetlands, forests, and rolling farmlands," the division states. Increasingly, it adds, communities are viewing their waterfronts as a way to bring in "new life and energy" by "creating new economic activity, redeveloping historic and abandoned structures, improving waterfront recreation, and restoring and protecting natural resources."
Following their presentations, both Mr. Reppert and Ms. Everett will engage in discussion and questions-and-answers with the Special Board and, subsequently, the general audience. The Special Board urges all Working Group members to attend and invites the public as well.
Appointed in December 2006, the Special Board is overseeing development of a new comprehensive plan, intended to guide overall village policy and help officials make decisions about the future of Cold Spring. Then called a "master plan," the last plan was completed in 1987. The Working Groups, or subcommittees, are helping to address the topics of Community Resources; Government, Infrastructure and Public Services; Waterfront and Open Spaces; Village Character, History and Historical Preservation; and Economic Development.
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