90- Affordable Housing Committee Mission Statement (a)

This is the first of four posts about the Woodstock Affordable Housing Committee's Work, 2003-2004.

Affordable Housing Committee Mission Statement:

This mission statement was produced as a result of a freedom of information law request. There is no date on it, but it can be assumed that it was produced in 2003 or 2004, since that is the time period that all of the other documents were produced, and it seems to be when the committee met.

"The purpose of the Woodstock Affordable Housing Committee is to find information and make recommendations to the Woodstock Town Board with respect to the Town's role in facilitating affordable housing in the Town of Woodstock. The committee should look to a variety of housing types to accommodate the varying needs of Woodstock residents including but not necessarily limited to seniors, starting artists and young families."

What strikes me about this mission statement is that it refers to the needs of "Woodstock residents." This means that the committee existed to serve the needs of actual residents of Woodstock. It does not mean that it was supposed to define the needs of existing residents of Woodstock, and then serve the needs of people just like them but from other towns. No, the mission was to serve the needs of people living in Woodstock. It was not to grow the town. It was not to diversify the town. It was not to attract new business such as housing developers. It was not to make a political nightmare.

The mission statement goes on to read that the committee should investigate sources of funding at all levels of government, and then presents "Areas for initial investigation" and these "areas" are comprised of a list starting with the number 1. The problem is that this list also ends with the number 1, and the number 1 is the St. John's parcel, which is where RUPCO now is proposing to build Woodstock Commons.

Hmmm. Sort of sounds like the mission statement was written after all the work to eliminate all the other sites was already completed, huh?

Plus there is no date on the mission statement.

Well, anyway, nobody is perfect. Ahem. Moving on. The committee writes in the mission statement that it is part of the mission to look at the prospects of this parcel. The "further considerations" are listed, curiously, by letter:

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

a.

b.

c.

I'm not kidding.

Anyway, the second "a." on the list reads: "Research the impact of such a development on special district (water and sewer) infrastructure, services and taxes."

OK, so was this done? Hardly. The only thing that was done was to estimate the demand for water and to figure that generally, the town's capacity to provide water was greater than the estimated demand from this project. Thing is, in a town with water flowing in a specific configuration of pipes, it actually matters WHERE you put the 53 new residences.

NO estimate of the demand in the specific neighborhood was made. No simulation was performed. In fact, in the DEIS, there was, presented so nicely, a simulation, in great detail, of a previous expansion of water service. What this shows is that the water district serves more people now than it used to. Basically, that simulation only shows that the district was expanded once, not that it can be further expanded without compromise to water pressure, in the same region.

Here is the situation in the water district: Currently, there are about 25 houses supplied with water from one six inch pipe. RUPCO wants to add 53 residences to the same six inch supply pipe.

The standards to which New York subscribes, called the Ten States Standards, requires "normal" water pressure to be between 60 and 80 psi, but in no case lower than 35. I measured my water pressure, and keep in mind that my house is right off the main, and the first time I measured it, it was 36 or 37 psi. That is dangerously close to the minimum pressure. I would bet that a simulation of Woodstock Commons water demand would show the neighborhood pressure falling well below 35 psi. That would be a problem, for the town, actually. Substandard water pressure? I don't think so.

The DEIS also does state that there will be a substandard water pressure for firefighting purposes, but that is a whole different category, not a day to day problem. We will get to that later.

Another problem with this mission statement is that it assumes that Woodstock Commons is actually eligible to hook up to the hamlet water and sewer systems. Iris York pointed out that the property currently pays taxes to a different sewer district, and so that, by definition, means that it is in a different district, and ineligible to hook up to the hamlet sewer system. This is important because it means that the project will have to dig its own septic system.

The town should have made sure that the project was eligible to hook up to the water and sewer districts prior to the future, which is when it will dawn on the town that this is not the case. I am sure that nobody will care what I say, but eventually my research will feed a legal argument. I am gathering documents, making a record, and will make it very easy to present all of this to a judge. That's where this looks like it is going, and I'm going to see it all the way through.