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Cold Spring's Special Board Community Update and Forum Delves into Multitude of Issues Relating to the Village
By Kevin Foley
An energetic and collegial group of about fifty residents and business owners gathered at the VFW Post on Kemble Avenue in Cold Spring last Saturday to share ideas about the future of the Village. They did so under the auspices of an organization with the daunting title of the Cold Spring Special Board Working on the Comprehensive and Local Water Revitalization Plans.
Appointed by the Cold Spring Board of Trustees in December 2006, the Special Board is a volunteer group charged with studying all aspects of Village life and commerce as well as soliciting the views of residents of the Village and the surrounding communities with the goal of creating plans and zoning recommendations to set the course for the Village for the next couple of decades.
The meeting room walls were festooned with large posters describing the function of the five working groups of the Special Board and outlining issues the groups believed important to the Village. As they entered, participants walked around the room studying the information, which was supplemented with planning drawings, photographs and Google satellite shots of Village areas. With pens and post-its supplied by the Special Board, attendees were encouraged to stick their comments and ideas on the posters, a process that stimulated conversation and occasional laughter.
"This is one of many forums in which residents, business owners, government officials and neighboring communities will be updated on the working groups of the board and given an opportunity to give your ideas and concerns," said Carol Casparian, the chair of the Special Board as she opened the meeting. Casparian emphasized that the Special Board was engaged in a painstaking process to solicit the widest possible range of views to have a firm basis for proceeding with the development of plans. She said that a summer survey of Village residents was still being worked on to make sure the results were validated accurately and that it would be made public when complete.
Casparian then introduced each of the chairs of the working groups who briefly reported on their activities, which are largely in the information gathering stage. Each of the working group chairs stressed that their process was open to the participation of all who are interested and that more people were needed to help with the effort. Membership on the Special Board is restricted to residents of Cold Spring Village but other interested parties are welcome to share their views at both board meetings and those of those of the working groups, said Casparian.
Special Board member Judith Rose, who served as meeting facilitator, then asked the audience to place colored dots next to those issues on the walls, which they believed most important for discussion. Another set of dots randomly assigned the participants to one of the working groups discussion tables. For the next hour people proposed, questioned and argued about a variety of issues large and small, referencing the examples of neighboring villages, other counties and even other countries, all with an affable air of cooperation that underscored the general appreciation of Village life today.
Although the different discussions touched on education, transportation, housing and the environment among others, the more mundane matter of Village parking clearly dominated the afternoon. While no specific consensus proposal emerged, there was broad agreement that a bolder parking plan
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