Seeing the Forest for the Trees

We here at the Saugerties Times realize there are many critical issues coming to a head all at once in the town and village, none more important at this time than the proposed $62 million school capital project. We promise to stick our necks out and weigh in on this issue in next week's paper, in plenty of time for the Tuesday, December 10 vote. But this week, something came up that has the potential to shake the blinders off of Saugerties' developmental shortsightedness forever. Coming on the heels of a number of other successes for open space advocates, the decision by Tom Struzzieri of Horse Shows in the Sun to locate a major hunter/jumper facility on land owned by Family of Woodstock, rather than Family having to sell the land to a real estate developer; the town and the village both opting to join Greenway; and the judicial rebuff of Gilbert Shott's suit against the town for restricting mining in residential areas ‹ this new revelation has the potential to tip the balance of runaway development and industrialization of this lush, transitory piedmont between the river and the Catskills back toward the center where it belongs.

Kudos to Otto Scheu and the Keyser family for seeing the bigger picture and deciding, in seeming opposition to their own self-interest, to sell their glorious 156 acres along the upper Esopus to the Esopus Creek Conservancy for a song rather than to a developer for a tidy sum. Altruism such as this is what gets your name etched on monuments. Congratulations as well to everyone involved who refused to panic in the face of adversity: to the fledgling Esopus Creek Conservancy, to the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, to Mayor Yerick and Supervisor Helsmoortel, to the small ragtag army of local activists spearheaded by Susan Bolitzer and to the unfailingly effective Citizens Action for Residential Environments in Saugerties (CARES), which so far is batting 1.000 in land use battles.

Whatever the Esopus Creek Conservancy comes up with for this land is certain to be another jewel in the crown of Saugerties¹ growing reputation as an earthly paradise. In extending the concept of land stewardship southward into the previously helter-skelter development gulag of Barclay Heights, the town may have finally turned the corner and begun to establish itself as a community with a vigorous sense of its own worth. Any municipality that doesn't sell itself to the highest bidder ‹ just as does any person with the resolve to resist easy financial temptation ‹ has a chance to keep its honor, its spirit and its character intact. And Saugerties, through the farsightedness of the handful of individuals involved in this landmark decision to reserve 156 acres of prime land for the benefit of the souls of all Saugertiesians, rather than to line the pocketbooks of a privileged few, has demonstrated an awareness of this fact.

Congratulations, Saugerties, for seeing the forest for the trees.

-Steve Hopkins