New Paltz supervisor asks committee to keep the public informed about expanding affordable housing options

The most important job that members of the Town of New Paltz’s Housing-smart Committee has is to make sure town residents aren’t surprised by any of their suggestions. That interpretation by Neil Bettez is based on the understanding that change is hard for most, and that it takes time to get comfortable with new ideas. 

During an interview of a prospective committee member, the supervisor said, “One of the problems with housing is that older — mostly white — people go to planning board meetings and stop everything.” That’s a finding in research that Bettez has reviewed on the subject. Based on that, what Bettez wants more than anything out of the housing-smart committee members is a lot of energy put toward public outreach and education. Expanding affordable housing options won’t come without change, and exposing residents to proposals in as many ways as possible is what it might take to get any of them adopted. 

Council members were interviewing Ivan Echenique, program director at Family of New Paltz, for a seat on the committee that is tasked with ensuring local participation in the county-wide housing-smart communities initiative. Loosely based on the state-level climate-smart communities program, this initiative is designed to provide unspecified incentives for participating communities. Once those incentives are specified, it’s expected that they will be distributed based on the number and type of approved “housing actions” undertaken in a given community. These include creating a housing plan, adopting rent stabilization rules, modifying zoning and tax exemptions to encourage the building of more affordable housing and establishing a housing rehabilitation program. Actions that appear already to have been completed in New Paltz include law changes around short-term rentals and accessory dwelling units. 

Echenique has already been sitting in on committee meetings, as they are held in the Family of New Paltz building on North Chestnut Street. Echenique was asked about interest in housing, time to commit to this project and about relevant experience. Not everyone on the council felt that all of the questions were equally relevant, however. For example, when Amanda Gotta asked Echenique, “What would you ask to be done?” Kitty Brown cut in to say, “That’s premature.” 

Bettez appeared to be most focused on the housing action of establishing a community outreach plan, and is of the belief that the success of anything members ask to be done will hinge on such a plan. “We need to be very open and transparent” to avoid stiff resistance, the supervisor said. “Six months or a year from now, the comments are going to be, ‘this is the first I’m hearing of this.’ We need lots of activities to get guy-in from the public. There’s a reason there is not a lot of housing; people are immediately against affordable because that’s not for them or their friends.” 

Brown pointed out that a 51-unit affordable senior project was recently approved in the village, but Bettez reiterated, “This is what’s in the studies.” To counter that tendency, Bettez wants to see frequent and varied efforts to advise residents about the different plans being considered to ease the housing crisis locally. 

Echenique was added to the committee. 

That’s sick

It’s been an informal practice for awhile now, but members of one town union are now going to be able to bank sick days for mutual aid. Employees at the New Paltz Recycling Center, in the highway department and with buildings and grounds are now able to participate in a mutual sick-day bank, thanks to a memorandum of understanding approved by union leaders and town council members. Under the scheme, an employee who has run out of sick time may use time donated by others. An employee must maintain at least ten days of accrued sick time, but on request may donate additional time to a coworker in need who requests the same in writing from the department head.