Education and Technical Assistance Local zoning referrals and technical planning assistance are major work areas of the Board. Major projects reviewed were expansion of the Hudson Valley Mall, a new lodge in Gardiner, major expansion of Shop Rite in New Paltz, numerous convenience gas stores around the County and several technical zoning changes by municipalities. Although most referrals receive a no county impact determination, Principal Planner Dennis Doyle does often provide non-binding technical advice to help municipalities in their work. The County Planning Board also sponsored four Planning Law Seminars including two with attorneys and staff from the N.Y.S. Department of State. These seminars are a popular and valuable service for improving local planning decisions.
Technical advice ranges from phone calls to technical memos to meetings with municipalities.
We are now in the process of hiring a new Planner and a Planning Technician who will be using the lab to generate much needed information about the County including the first overall zoning map of the county, mapping traffic information, infrastructure, environmental considerations, sites for industrial development, etc. We want to work very closely with localities, the Information Services Department, the Ulster County Development Corporation, and the public, to provide the most useful and needed data. This will be an extremely powerful tool to bring us into the next century. Another very promising addition to the department is the designation as a Census Data Center. We have received an upgraded computer from Information Services and this combined with special data files from the New York State Data Center will greatly expand our data analysis capacity.