Village of New Paltz trustees will be going to court to force the annexation of the New Paltz Apartments parcel into the village, after town council members voted it down. The legal costs will be picked up by the developers.
Mayor Tim Rogers noted several perceived flaws in town officials’ process and reasoning. One was the seeming contradiction between celebrating the importance of the university in the community, while also highlighting problems with having students live here. During the council deliberations, it was suggested that pushing for more housing on the campus would be preferable, as that is seen as shifting much of the cost of the additional residents back into the university budget.
Framing college students as being aliens in the community was clearly problematic for Rogers. “If it’s marketed to students, they are town residents,” the mayor said. It’s true that the property being in the village would result in some village property taxes, the mayor acknowledged, but all properties in the town are taxed to support the town budget’s A fund. That line of reasoning is based in seeing the village and town as “competing entities,” when in fact that property in question “is already in the town” and will remain in the town.
Rogers also dismissed speculation that this property would be sold to the university and be removed from the tax rolls. Town officials used a proposed walking trail to campus as evidence of this possibility. Rogers recalled working with the previous town supervisor, Neil Bettez, on making that trail happen to avoid this development becoming a “driving silo.” When principal landowner Michael Moriello first presented this project to neighbors in October of 2020, Harvest Hills resident — he and bicycling advocate — William Weinstein suggested extending the walking path into that adjacent development, but Weinstein’s neighbors appeared horrified at the idea. Moriello assured them at the time that there was no intention of providing non-motorized access to their cloistered enclave.
Trustees joined the mayor in objecting to a process which included generating an environmental findings statement years after that review had been completed, and in noting that the rejection does not comport with values expressed at the governmental level. Many applications for the $10 million downtown revitalization grants have carefully joined town and village interests, noted deputy mayor Alex Wojcik. The objections raised are not within the purview of any elected officials, pointed out trustee Stana Weisburd. William Wheeler Murray called it “antithetical to our community.”
Rogers said that Will Franks will be representing village interests. Moriello is a lawyer specializing in land use, and will likely have opinions about the case. The town’s attorney, Joseph Moriello, is Michael’s uncle, and may choose to recuse rather than raise concerns about a conflict of interest. Those conflicts are generally limited to direct financial benefit, but sometimes a recusal is taken to avoid the sense of conflict tainting the proceedings.
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