A Look Back - And Ahead
When asked to summarize how this year went for her, Town Supervisor Jacqueline Annabi was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. After a long pause and obvious consternation, she finally exhaled, saying "2024 was a whirlwind."
It certainly started off badly, with the death on January 15th of the town's newly elected and highly regarded town clerk, Kimberly McKeown. As McKeown had, until that election, been the town's deputy clerk, her passing left Putnam Valley without anyone in that office with key administrative experience. "It was the blind leading the blind," said Supervisor Annabi, who spent the next few months recruiting and training new staff. With the election last month of Michelle Stephens as the new town clerk - and Stephens' replacement in the Building Department with a new staff member - Annabi believes Town Hall is well positioned for the future.
And that's a good thing, because next year will bring some additional responsibilities. More than a year after the Town Board voted to impose regulations on short-term rentals, most commonly associated with Airbnb, that process is finally getting underway. At the 6pm December 18th board meeting, Annabi is planing to unveil details of how that process will be administered and how the new 2% tax on room rentals will be collected.
Annabi attributed the lengthy delay between the passage of the law and its implementation to the state's need to review and approve the town's approach. She says the town has created a streamlined checklist for homeowners applying for a short-term rental permit. Each homeowner will need to schedule time with the Building Department, starting in January, to review their answers to that checklist. Those that pass muster easily will then have an inspection scheduled for their home. Annabi estimates that there could be 50 to 60 applications to administer, but insists that there is no need to hire additional staff to handle this new procedure and that the process should be wrapped up within a few months.
While all this activity was going on in the background, Annabi also spent 2024 running the equivalent of a construction management company. As anyone who lives in Putnam Valley knows, the storm of July 2023 caused an estimated $8.5 million worth of damage to roads, culverts and bridges. Annabi says she has been working daily with FEMA and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation to get the necessary permits and funding to rebuild the town's critical infrastructure, leaning heavily on the town's part-time engineer and part-time town planner. Annabi says most of the smaller repair projects should be completed by the end of this year, with great improvements to drainage and storm run-off near Lake Peekskill in particular. That will leave three or four of the larger, more complex projects, such as bridge and culvert work at Horton Hollow Road and Cimarron Road, to get underway in 2025.
Annabi has chosen to add to her construction agenda in 2025 by embracing the installation of EV chargers. After initially expressing concern about their safety, Annabi is now working on installing charging stations that would support at least two cars at Town Hall, and at least four cars each in the parking lot near the Post Office where the substation is being removed and the municipal lot at Lake Peekskill. She says she became more enamored of this option after learning that there have been no fires in the last few years from some of the newer, larger companies that install the charging stations. She expects state grant money to fund their installation.
At the December 18th meeting, Annabi also expects the town board to approve the launch of a long-desired initiative to make Putnam Valley more business friendly. Once approved, Annabi will name seven people to a Neighborhood Business Committee (NBC) that will be charged with identifying and recruiting new businesses to fill currently vacant commercial spaces. She says she wants the committee to be filled with "people who are vested in this community and want to see it grow - but not [like] Route 9. We won’t even be Cold Spring. I get that."
The NBC could also recommend zoning changes to create opportunity for more mixed-use buildings in town hamlets. Among the places where Annabi sees opportunity are areas near Tompkins Corners Cultural Center and Palumbo Soccer, on Wood Street near Char Restaurant, and the area near Enloe Street and Oscawana Lake Road.
Annabi stressed that the group will need to be sensitive to the unique needs and character of the town, which she described as the perfect bedroom community. "Nobody wants in their residential community a restaurant in the middle of your street," she said. "We want to make sure that we have businesses coming into this community that will be supported. No one’s going to pay $4 for a tomato."
Annabi wants the NBC to become the equivalent of Putnam Valley's chamber of commerce. To create some momentum for this effort, she and other town board members released a series of videos, now available on YouTube, to promote Putnam Valley's current small businesses.
At the Wednesday evening meeting, Annabi and her fellow board members will also be asked to consider launching the town's first food scrap recycling program by applying for a new DEC grant. The proposal, drafted by a group of local homeowners, would enable residents to drop their food scraps in bins at the Putnam Valley Library. A carting company would then pick up the scraps weekly and potentially deliver finished compost afterward. The estimated cost to the town: $5,000 in the first year, $3,200 after that. A survey conducted by Sustainable Putnam identified 80 Putnam Valley households that said they were interested in participating in such a program. Similar programs already exist in Beacon, Philipstown, Sleepy Hollow and Cold Spring, among others.
With all of these initiatives swirling, 2025 is shaping up to be as much of a whirlwind for Supervisor Annabi as 2024.
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