At the March 3 Town Board meeting, Gardiner officials as well as representatives of the not-for-profit Friends of Tillson Lake (FOTL) advocacy group reported substantial progress in their negotiations with the Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) with regard to the future of Tillson Lake, which PIPC had targeted in 2018 to be drained on account of leakage problems in its dam. According to town supervisor Marybeth Majestic, she and deputy supervisor Laura Walls had a very productive meeting on February 14 with two top PIPC officials, Bob Kuhn and Joshua Laird, along with Evelyn Wright, assistant to county executive Pat Ryan, FOTL president Maury Gottesman, Gardiner highway superintendent Brian Stiscia and code enforcement officer Andy Lewis. “They’re no longer pursuing an amendment to the Minnewaska State Park Plan,” which protects Tillson Lake, Walls said of the PIPC officials. “It was like a 360. They were very amenable.”
The most formidable missing piece in the effort to repair or replace the dam, rather than dismantling it, has been finding sufficient funding in state coffers. Majestic noted that the town had applied to both state senator Jen Metzger and assemblyman Kevin Cahill seeking funding for the project to be included in the FY 2021 New York State budget, up for passage in April. But the decision might be delayed until November, the supervisor said, when a major capital projects bond act will be up for a vote in Albany.
Meanwhile, all parties had agreed that the next step was to draw up a cooperative agreement delineating the responsibilities of the town, PIPC, the state and other stakeholders in maintaining Tillson Lake if it is kept intact. “We have to make sure that if we do get funding, we’re shovel-ready,” said Majestic. According to Gottesman, Kuhn had committed PIPC to upgrade the parking lot, boat launch and trails around the lake “at their expense. The Friends will do the maintenance…Our group is prepared to step up.”
Walls said that meetings with Metzger and Cahill’s staffs were being scheduled within the next few weeks. She urged that Gardiner undertake a design charrette process to elicit residents’ ideas and priorities for further development of Tillson Lake as a public park, suggesting bike trails as one of the possibilities. “Or we could rent boats; that could be very lucrative.”
Join the family! 
